Well, I guess I'll give this another shot...

Not much has changed over the past few months. Powergen/E.ON still haven't billed me correctly, so I'm waiting on a bill to arrive in September for both gas and electricity, which will amass to a whole years worth of dual-fuel. That's something I'm pretty anxious about, as I'll still have to pay the council tax, water bill, TV license, rent, car payment and insurance all on time. I'm really angry at Powergen and I really would like to take it further and be compensated for the hassle they've caused me, but I just want the whole ordeal to be over and done with. I dread getting letters from them, because I know it will be MORE trouble that I really can't cope with right now. Overall, I have spent over 16 hours on my mobile to them which comes to a figure of around £250 of phone bills. All they have to do is listen to me tell them two figures and not screw up when writing them down. So far... EPIC FAIL. I have even got them to read the figures back to me a few minutes after dictating them and they were correct. How to they manage to fail between hanging up and billing me?

Anyway, enough of those bastards. Never let the bastards grind you down. I'm trying at least. Frankly though, I'm majorly unhappy, depressed I think, but not confirmed by a doctor. Just another thing I can't bring myself to face. Procrastination is my fault right now.

I know that I need to make some major changes and soon. Detailed as follows:


1: Social Life - Or lack thereof... I used to be a very popular person. I used to walk through the town center and my girlfriend at the time would get irritated, because we couldn't walk for 20 seconds without someone saying hello and stopping for a chat. I used to be friendly, funny, kind, almost hopeful. People wanted to be around me.

So, where did it all go wrong? Who knows. Not I, for sure. At some point, I lost my self-confidence. Possibly for no reason, probably because of bad girlfriends. The pattern went: Meet a girl - Impress girl with good sense of humour - Date girl, fairly seriously - Fall in love with girl (at least it felt like it) - and then I found out I'm "dumped" and they're dating either one of my friends or one of their friends...

Anyway, as I was saying... I used to be popular. Now I can't seem to find a friend for love nor money. I had lots of friends in Hemel, but now I have moved to Dunstable, no-one can make the effort to drive 15 minutes up the road to come see me. Don't believe me?! Please find exhibits A, B and C.

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Exhibit A) Shortly after moving to my house with Amanda, I invited my entire fucking phone book to come over for a late night party. Understandably, a lot of people couldn't make it. That happens, I can deal with that. What I didn't like was that a total of 16 people said they WOULD be there. So, I go ahead, I make food, buy booze etc etc. It starts getting late, so I make the phone calls. "We're just waiting for xxxxxxx, we'll be there in about 30 minutes". The time comes and goes, so I make another phonecall. "We've left, we should be there in about 30 minutes". Again, nothing, so I make the phone calls. "I don't know what happened to xxxxxxx, he must be asleep". So yes, they had left, but then an hour later, they hadn't seen the driver all day. Strange. From the rest I got the usual cop out excuses and later found out that they had all gone to some club in Luton together. Yes, Luton, to get there, they have to drive past my house. My night was a great success. Only one person turned up. Manda's friend Jenny who also happened to be the ONE person Manda invited about an hour before the night was to start. she put my "friends" to shame that night.

Exhibit B) I have just recently had a two week holiday from work. I didn't go away, because I couldn't afford it if I wanted to. I just stayed at home and invited friends over/out/anywhere. EVERYDAY I invited people and not ONE made any effort to come up or do anything, unless I would go down there to them. Obviously, I don't like doing this, because it leads to disappointment for me. Needless to say, I tried it once early in the holiday. I drove down to Hemel to spend a "few hours" in town with a friend. I left immediately, arrived in Hemel, only to find out that my friend (who had been in town for 15 minutes) was done and decided to go home. It took me longer to drive there in the midday traffic.

*NOTE* It is here that I feel the need to apologise to people like Toby and other real friends (the type where I could not see them for nearly a year, but when I finally do, we just pick up where we left off). Sometimes I have said I would be somewhere or try to visit you, only to no-show. Now, I know I had good reasons for that, mostly because I couldn't drive and when failing to get there, it was due to either having a nightmare getting to Uxbridge from Hemel on public transport (2 long 20 mile bus rides and a shit load of trains that I had no previous experience of using before. Trust me, I used to worry about getting on a train that might be going in the opposite direction) or I would have been cycling for around 35 miles and get knocked off my bike, breaking my foot again. I made all the efforts to get there, but I apologise, because I know how it feels to be on the wrong side of a "no-show".

Exhibit C) For my birthday, my lovely girlfriend arranged a surprise birthday party for me, to prove to me that I did indeed have friends. She did a truly amazing job. I honestly had no idea that anything was happening until I walked through the door and got bombarded with silly-string and party streamers.

Unfortunately, that was her first success. Inviting lots of my friends, not ONE of them managed to show, despite around 10 of them telling her they were all in. So, there I am, at my own birthday party and the first thing she says, after Happy Birthday of course, is "Sorry, none of your friends turned up. I've got tonnes of food and drink though. I spoke to everybody and they said they'd be here at five, but I guess they're not coming... It being six and all".

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To this day, the only two friends who have visited me in my house in nearly a year of living here, are Toby and Gemma. I thank you both from the bottom of my heart for making me not feel completely pathetic.

Back to my list...

2: Work / Career - I think I mentioned how shitty my work is in my last (first?) post. It's got worse since then. I still have no promotion but probably do the most work there and definitely do the best work there. I have won another 4 internal awards for outstanding service and won the HR Waste Challenge Award for my SEVENTEEN unique suggestions as to how to company could perform more efficiently, including one of which I completely implemented myself by creating an easy-to-use, efficient yet still accurate M.I. log sheet that has allowed the team to easily compile extremely detailed Pareto charts that has enabled us to spot all the problem areas in our processes. Basically, (bigging myself up for the first time, career-wise) I have done a fucking good job despite being the lowest grade in the building, probably one step above McDonalds staff and one-step below shit-shoveller.

On top of what transpired before, we've now had a new manager come in and is quickly running our department into the ground. When I joined there, we had 10 members of staff. The work has actually increased in volume and has a couple more processes. We needed more staff. However after being cut repeatedly, in approximately one month there will be just three members of staff. Myself, one more morning person (who finishes at 12pm) and the one who got promoted above me (who now cannot do the work due to audit reasons). In a nutshell, we are royally fucked. Budgets need to be met and the head-count has to be reduced, but making these numbers by cutting the department where the work starts, which is already grossly understaffed, is NOT the place to do it.

It irritates me so much, that I can't actually switch off after I get home from work. At work, I constantly want to shout and/or hit stuff. It's not healthy. I want a new job, one nearer to home and one that pays more than £13k. I used to think this is out of reach, but having seen what I can achieve in a corporation that affords me little to no freedom of duty, where I have had to force people listen to me, I think this is a wage I would easily be worth. I'm not expecting to get that much anytime soon, but I see no reason why I couldn't.

3) Finances - This stems from point number two. I have no savings and sometimes feel like I'm falling slowly into debt. I don't think I am unable to, but it certainly feels like I won't be able to afford the bills, especially with the recent economical doom and gloom being spread around everywhere you look/read. I really need to find a fairly-paid job and cut my spending/out-goings so I have financial stability. My finances are by no means bad, but they're not good, which is where they should be.

I think I'll cut that list short. I see the irony in using that word, but believe me, this list could go on forever. God help me if browser crashes and loses this before I post it.

I don't think it is immediately possible to rectify the above problems, but what I can do is make a start, a small start. I have been listening to music a lot recently which has always been an enjoyment of mine, but I stopped doing it around a year ago. Before that, I used to go to bed every night with my MP3 player, and when I was on the PC the first opened program would be Winamp, without fail. I have only recently started listening to music again and I'm glad I have renewed my passion for it. I like getting lost, just listening to the melodies and experiencing the magic that is harmony.

Right now, that pleasure happens to be coming from Eric Clapton - Layla... The extended version with the Dominoes. The three-minute breakdown at the end of the song is just magical, and never fails to send shivers down my spine. I've been finding a lot of music that has the same effect, but the ones you would most likely have heard of are Newton Faulkner and, wait for it, Avenged Sevenfold. lol AX7 are going to go down as legends I think. They were average at first, but now they are truly becoming a fantastic live act. You may not like their music, but by god, the live version of "Afterlife" is something you HAVE to hear. The guitars are flawed perfection, the bass and drums are tight, the backing vocals are sound and the lead singer, "The Rev" is one of the greats. His voice is something I would trade my soul for. Dirty but it works so well. In fact, I think I shall post a video from Youtube, if any would be kind enough to take 5 minutes and experience it. I doubt you'll be disappointed. You might not like the music, but you can't fault the performance.

Newton Faulkner is also someone you MUST listen to. I first experienced his music in the form of "Full Fat" on some obscure musicians television channel approximately 8 years ago. He was using his real name, Shaun Newton Battenburg Faulkner. I desperately tried finding his MP3's on WinMX when the whole MP3 scene starting taking off, to no avail. To my delight though, 8 years later, I heard that same song on the radio and found out that he had finally been signed. I hastily went out, bought the album, and my god he's beautiful. I don't mean to sound gay, but if I could have sex with one man, it'd be him. Sorry Toby, but I guess I'd let you watch... Good enough?

I think I'll leave this post here, because it is monstrously long. I feel better for getting all this off my shoulders mind you, it's almost been enjoyable.

Hopefully if anyone reads this, they'll leave a comment or two. Maybe we could be friends? *smirk*

Stay safe,

Dan