This is a story about repetition ad nauseam...

I have been stuck in a trance, obsessed with the past wrongdoing of a couple of people. I need to draw a line under things and move forward. I know they will be relieved to hear that, and feel that they got away with things and they're off the hook. However, my writing has gotten very repetitive and boring, because I keep labouring the same points. Time to change.

I know it must come across that I'm very stubborn, determined, single-minded. I don't quit, I don't relent, I'm a dog with a bone that I won't let go of. This has taken me fairly far in life, because I've solved problems that other people couldn't. I've achieved things that other people wouldn't, because it just requires too much sacrifice and dedication.

Mucking about with computers is not healthy or normal, and it's certainly not a choice, it's more of an alternative when other routes are barred. Yes, I would love to be part of the gang, part of the crowd sometimes, but I'm clearly odd-one-out. Piggy-in-the middle is fun to tease. Excluding a minority gives you somebody to pick on, to point and laugh at, to make you feel better about yourself. "At least I'm not them, ha ha ha!"

I've retreated inwards as a response to stress and depression. It might seem mad to cut yourself off, but when your general life experience is of loss and people turning on you, then your survival instincts tell you to be self-reliant in dark times. A life lived on Facebook is no life at all, but the virtual world seems more friendly to me than the one where I have lost so many friends.

It takes two to tango, and I know that I've not been a very good friend. I know that I've let friendships go cold, not replied to messages for long periods, not picked up the phone. I can't remember the last time I made or received a phonecall. It must have been over a month ago.

Communication is a strange thing. I remember being able to text message at lightening speed on an old Nokia phone where you had to press the number keys multiple times to get the letter you want. Why didn't I just phone? It would have been quicker.

In a world that has been largely offensive and unpleasant to you, bullying, the protection of a screen is hard to deny. I can compose my thoughts. I can review what I'm about to say. I can edit before I send. I also like the fact that there is a written history of what has been transmitted and received. I find that a lot of people have very poor memory of what has been said, when later quizzed about things.

I find it very frustrating dealing with people who are not honest, straightforward, rational and have a good memory. I'm not sure whether it's drug and alcohol abuse, or simply genetic flaws, but there are definitely people who I find it very frustrating to deal with because of their selective recall of events, and irrational bias that they place on their interpretation of reality.

Everything in the world is fairly clear-cut to me. I try and avoid black & white thinking, but sometimes the blindingly obvious is clearly a polar thing. There is such a thing as right and wrong. All the interpretation and alternative opinion in the world doesn't make a difference when you apply a rational objective analysis of events over the top of things.

You normally get quite a few warnings from me before common sense eventually has to prevail, with me leading the charge. My friend Laurence was driving too fast down country lanes. There was a friend and me as passengers in my hire car. He was jeopardising three lives, plus whoever he was going to have a head on collision with, plus my hire car that he wasn't insured on. I warned him multiple times that I was unhappy, afraid, and that he needed to slow down.

I pulled the handbrake on as hard as I could when we reached a straight piece of road. This seemed very sudden and dangerous to Laurence, but it was quite a calculated act after a good 5+ minutes of me warning him to slow down, and the lanes were getting narrower and narrower, with more and more blind bends. Potentially there wasn't going to be another wide stretch of straight road, before we collided head-on with another vehicle. It was then or never.

Keeping a sliding car on a straight road is not hard. Momentum will carry the car on a straight line. Even if you spin, you're unlikely to do much more than bump off the hedge. More likely, the car will just continue on the original trajectory, because there is so much forward momentum. The back of the car started to slide out, but it really didn't make much of a difference whether Laurence corrected it or not.

Laurence was upset, but his interpretation of events was incorrect. He was speeding down narrow country lanes, round blind bends, uninsured in a car, with two other people he was responsible for, ignoring all reasonable pleas to slow down from the person who was legally in charge of the vehicle. Clear cut. Case closed. No other interpretation necessary.

When I act, it might look sudden and brutal, but a lot of thought has gone into things. My actions are far more premeditated than they look. When I take risks, they're calculated.

Sometimes I can override my own calculations. My friend JP was hanging off a broom handle tied to the roof rafters, suspended several feet above the ground, in order to practice some kiteboarding moves. I said that it looked very dangerous and I thought it was going to snap and drop him onto the hard ground. After he had been successfully doing it for some time, I decided that perhaps I was wrong and I would risk having a go. Of course, it snapped, and I landed on my shoulder, possibly breaking a bone. I now have a lump on my shoulder on that side. I literally have a chip on my shoulder.

However, I'm a balanced person, because I went snowboarding on an indoor slope, tried to do a flip and landed on my shoulder the other side, doing a very similar injury. I now have chips on both shoulders, balancing me out.

You will find me fair and reasonable.

Oh man I miss boardsports. I would love to be kiteboarding or snowboarding right now

Tags: #divorce #parents #friends #childhood #computing #socialmedia