Hope.

Surely I have the answer to this?

Surely there must be something in my experience which explains how this has happened?

Why hasn’t my life delivered on anything?

Do I really belong in this mess I live? Is this deserved? Or is it just my ticket in the lottery of life?

I would have thought that somewhere in my subconcious there lies an answer, it seems reasonable to think that even if I have made a million mistakes and bad decisions in the past that some part of my mind and memory should be able to assemble it into some sort of a meaningful map of what has happened and what has happened as the result of my actions and gravitate naturally towards the decisions which work, no matter what the cost. We know that death ultimately awaits, we know from this our life will take us there no matter what? So what is it that keeps us from the things we want knowing even that the worst than can happen to is that we’ll die in the attempt, and that this will happen even if we spend our lives in contempt, given these choices it seems only natural to strive for the best at every chance.

It seems to me that behind all the neurosis of the mind and nervous system is an untouched self from which it all emerges, this given though why run with ones neuroses rather than the untouched mind that lies behind it all? What benefit is there from living in fear of ones opportunities? Shying away at every step?

One thinks in each moment “I know how to achieve this, I know the path to what I want, but so much I seem to side with the part of me that hates and derides success like everything I see is fools gold”, but in truth I think the very thought there is some such thing supremem and better than the chances that lie here with us now in each moment is the fools gold itself.

And I believe the mechanism which explains why we fail to take opportunities even knowing they won’t kill us is that death is not the worst thing, in fact death is the best thing, it is surviving failure that is the worst thing since then we have to take the concience of it with us. Remaining with the simple things we can achieve easily keeps us in a round of successes whilst keeping us from risking what we really want and failing, because as long as we don’t try, we can at least live with the fairy tale of what would have happened if we did. Which is preferable to the nightmare of realising the fairy tale is just that and the thing we wanted is really forever out of reach. The benefit of not trying is being able to continue to live with the lie we could have it at any time, if we really went to it, never having to chance a move into a reality in which we have discovered that we can’t.

The fantasy of hope and success is the imaginary prize which keeps us going. No wonder we busy our minds and hands with other tasks so we don’t chance shattering the illusion.

Single.

I’m a single guy, I haven’t got a girlfriend. You know why? Because I just don’t get it that’s why. I’m sure I must be missing something that you people in long term relationships are getting and I’m not but what? Sex. I know what sex is like I’ve had over twenty sexual partners and yeah, I get it, sort of, I just don’t get it any more than I get going for a swim or going to the gym or reading a book. Is that what you stay together for, is it for the sex? I’ve heard people have this feeling of needing another half, a kind of alter efo thing they find in their partner like a kind of mini me or something. I don’t get that. I look at pretty girls and then I think, what have they got to offer me? Conversation? Sex? I don’t need that. When it comes to having someone to go on holiday with the thought of having to have somebody with me on holiday or anywhere is profoundly depressing. If I need something from B+Q and I go on a Sunday and it’s littered with people lockstepped into some kind of harmonic complacency and they’re playing eighties and nineties throwback music over the PA as if to recreate the memories of why they got together in the first place and it’s always the really depressing music I’d rather forget. I mean, I’m not shitting on you if you’re in a couple. I just think you’d all be much happier alone. Isn’t life crappy enough without having to force your children to go through it too? Surely non-existence is better than existence, no worries, no standing on the prongs of the rogue three pin plug in the dark when you’re finding your way to the toilet and screaming the house down, no stubbing your toe against the corner of the chest in the lounge. Why don’t I kill myself then, well I’ve thought about it and my answer is twofold, one, if the religious people or the Buddhists are right then it could get a whole lot worse if I do and anyway whilst I have this one shot at looking out into space and wondering why there’s so much of it and why there are so many massive things in it with no known purpose other than to sit there looking totally amazing I may as well make the most of it, plus, I tend to think I’m the enlightened one and you lot are a bunch of deluded, insane nutjobs who know nothing other than the politics you’ve been fed by your parents and your schooling and you’re just doing it all like you’ve been brought up to without really spending too much time risking bursting the delusionary bubble you’re in by actually asking yourselves where it’s all heading because the last thing you can stand when faced with the question is a truthful answer because it would mean that most of your life is either pointless, immoral or wasted or devoted to frivolities you throw yourself into to try to forget the other three.

How is this blog different from the billions of boring others?

I want to invite you to take part in a forum about standards, one in which you are encouraged to question the ones we have and encouraged to exemplify, and instead discuss what could happen if the industry could shake off the models we have and ask what it could be if we might direct it’s feelings, as a body, for alternatives in the way of improved systems, models, structures, hierarchies, practices and ethics.

This blog is:

• The result of many hours, months and years of study and work in IT.

This blog is not:

• A personal diary logging my complaints about life or my dates.
• Light and breezy.

Aims:

• To bring something new and refreshing to the blogosphere.
• To invite criticism of what is held to by convention.

What I encourage:

• Lively banter; debate, discussion and analysis.
• Remarks which have gravity by being supported by content which can be reached with a standard web browser.

What I discourage:

• Arguments which waste time making personal attacks.
• Uncorroborated opinion: If you think item ‘A’ is brilliant and item ‘B’ is rubbish, it is your responsibility to prove it.
• Whilst I encourage humour, I do not respect juvenile mudslinging contests. If you want to shout and swear and be nasty there are plenty of services out there for you. For example, the mental health service.

Where’s the fun in that?

• Let’s play a game of fantasy IT? Ask ourselves how things might by and how they might have been. Let’s say what steps we can take to change the landscape?
• Let’s also use our own ideas and intelligence to explain how we got in this beautiful mess in the first place.

Why?

• Let’s analyze and discuss topics, for example, the proliferation of cases when the best man either didn’t win or just did a whole lot worse than we’d expected.