So, as normal, I’m operating on a timezone that bears no relevance to my current location. While the rest of the world is slumbering, I’m exhausted, wide awake and have absolutely no inclination toward going to sleep in the near future. And, whenever I find myself writing a blog post at this time in the morning, it’s usually the end result of being in the same mind-numbing scenario: I’ve run out of company, entertainment and drugs. And, while I have a few beers at my disposal, I don’t think it’s likely that drinking them all will lead to a particularly restful night.

Being in this position, I end up letting my thoughts wander all over the warped and pitted landscape that makes up my subconscious, and the things that I find there scare me from time to time. By this, I neither mean that my thoughts are notably evil, nor that you would be likely to find them in a low budget, painfully dated, ‘gore is more’ horror film. No; the thing that scares me isn’t necessarily what these thoughts are even about, but simply the sudden realisation of how much certain thoughts have managed to play on my mind for weeks, months, or even years in some cases.

Traditionally, most people will write their new year’s resolutions as a way of bettering themselves, whether by means of giving up smoking, using that gym membership or limiting themselves to only 2 hookers a week. Unfortunately, the tradition follows that after writing said resolutions, most people will shirk, begrudgingly ignore or otherwise fail to adhere to them within a fortnight. I, however, have decided that I might as well just write down all the things that are playing on my mind, and solve them one-by-one across the course of the year. Theoretically, if I can solve these issues, I should hopefully achieve some sodding inner peace. And, if that doesn’t work, then I haven’t exactly done any worse than the other 20 new years preceding this one.

So, seeing as the internet doesn’t quite have enough information about me already, here is a non-exhaustive list of my fears and anxieties. I think a lot of people will know where I’m coming from, although not necessarily on all fronts.

• I have about £3 in my wallet, and that has to see me until my student loan comes through.
• Hindsight taught me that I found it too easy to fall in love. Now I’m wondering if I’m finding it too hard.
• I take incredibly bad care of myself, and one day I’m going to have to give a shit.
• My parents are disappointed by the waning anti-climax that is my educational career, and I can feel it whenever I’m around them.
• If the world continues on its current downward trajectory, all my children can hope to live for is slavery, ignorance and futility. That thought alone is honestly enough to put me off having children.
• No matter what I may tell my friends, my family, and even tell myself, it’s been almost 2 years and I’m still not over it. Worse yet, I don’t think I’m getting over it with time, only getting numb.
• I get on much better with people who smoke weed, but I’m still not sure if that’s causality or mere correlation.

Addendum: There are other things playing on my mind, far greater than anything in the list above, but I don’t feel that I have the writing ability to express them in a way that won’t immediately dump me in a particular pigeon hole. Whenever I’ve attempted it before, the end result is that people see me as a bad combination of a dumb hippie stoner and a miserable emo kid, regurgitating the same clichéd shit that they’ve heard a million times before. So, for the sake of not further stereotyping myself, I’ll sadly hold my tongue.

I don’t know why, but whenever I can’t sleep, my subconscious turns its efforts to constructing nice-sounding phrases. Annoyingly, sometimes my subconscious manages to get the attention of my main conscious train of thought, and I end up writing lyrics to songs that don’t exist yet. Here’s my latest effort, which I’ve formatted a bit differently to normal – the first syllable on each line matches to the first beat of a bar, to help you read it how I’d be saying it.

I’m always told I blaze a lot, and fuck it, yeah, I know it; I
smoke enough that really I should probably just grow it; at
2.8 it’s underweight, it might be oregano, well it
smells alright, it smokes alright, but how the fuck should I know? Cos’

it’s like a constant battle with the skunk that I puff, but it’s
rare I ever get that chronic high-grade stuff, and I’m
told it dulls the brain if you partake of it enough, so I
spit incessant prose to help my intellect stay tough.

But, blazed or not I bring no antisocial behaviour; in my
heart I wanna be the modern world’s final saviour, like an
atheistic Jesus, I’m a humanist inside, propa-
gate a peaceful race and we’ll have real cause for pride, cuz the

system’s broken so I’m toking to escape this shit, don’t you
dare suggest I’m joking, not one tiny little bit; I am
always scared of living, but that won’t mean suicide; we might
be stuck here for a while but human spirit won’t have died, and that’s the
truth.

So here I am, sat amidst this piggy pandemic,
with the news readers telling us our bodies are pathetic;
Nobody’s immune to this deadly strain of virus,
it keeps the people scared and effectively requires us

To spend more time alone and keep stocked up on medication;
Tamiflu is powerful – at market penetration;
It’s that name you turn to when you need to treat flu,
Cuz it’s sold around the world and it’s target market’s you.

While I might sound like I’m being unreasonable,
Think of all the finance that could become feasible,
If part of your business was a Tamiflu merchant,
Just as a “lethal” strain had turned emergent;

I wouldn’t fuck about, I’d get straight down to thinking,
I wanna make some cash but our economy is sinking,
So I’ll raise the markup on the flu drug that I’m whoring,
Demand is forcing market clearing price to keep on soaring,

Every time you sneeze or cough, a vapour is expelled,
In which you’ll find a multitude of germs being propelled
So catch it, bin it, kill it, don’t give them the satisfaction
Of profiting from illness that is acting as distraction

From all the flak the government has taken as of late;
The expenses scandal hasn’t surfaced on the TV since the date,
That the W.H.O. (yeah, who?) told us all,
We’re expecting a pandemic; human race is set to fall;

So rush out to the shops but be sure that you don’t breathe,
It’s probably much worse than we have led you to believe,
Make sure you buy that medicine, even just in case;
It might even kill you! Nah, we’re lying to your face.

The only people dying are the elderly and weak,
Don’t think that influenza’s going on a killing streak,
It’s only going to effect a third of us at peak;
Don’t believe the media, it’s truth that you should seek.