JMG

January is a shit month. It's winter, it's the wind down after the festive season, it's back to work time, it's dark all the time, except for where it isn't but it is here so there.

It's just shit. Crap month, everyone's depressed, everything downhill. It's the 31st today which means it ends tomorrow, technically in 8 1/2 hours in my time zone. It'll all be over, it will be gone. For another year.

So that will be it, except reality isn't really like that, and when things are shit and a new epoch begins it doesn't necessarily mean things will somehow start to shine it just means that even more time has gone since you've earned any money and all the stuff you auditioned or applied for that you hoped would be replied to by the end of the month is officially not happening  and that it's time for the utilities to be sorted out (or not if you can't sort them out because it's so long since you've earned money) and it's time, I mean really time this time, not time like the other times when you said it was time to actually get off your ass and get shit done not like the other times and getting off your ass isn't only deeply unpleasant it's proving to be utterly ineffective and a wall of rejection well not even rejection just blank space is greeting you and the outlook for the future looks dimmer as every minute passes. At least it does if you're me and I am so it is.

Anyway, I've been in kind of a funk, in case you didn't notice.

On it's way out.

I've had a personal battle with the month of January for the last few years here on this blog. It's due to the fact that January is generally shit, it's boring, it's grey, and just in general bleh. The past few Januaries in particular have, in fact sucked. Then February would come and honestly didn't get much better, and often specifically crappy stuff happened, and on with March, etc. So, usually things suck, whatever month it is, plus greyness.. darkness.. end of revelries etc etc etc. This January has been in that way like all others, in that it has been fucking awful. It's been different than the others as well, it's been particularly shit, and shittier than any other month, January or otherwise that I've experienced for years. Not all of it, some of it was vaguely pleasant, but it started unpleasant, stayed just plain boring for a while, got slightly interesting but really nothing all that great to be honest and then everything went to shit in a spectacular way. JMG! I say, and have said for many years, there's barely 5 hours left of it and good fucking riddance! Unfortunately, this year more than ever the transitioning of the months won't make a damn bit of difference other than to make things why yes.. even worse, so thank you, um, universe. The shit that went down wasn't the kind that flares up, is really bad for a bit, then simmers down and is kind of bad and eventually disappears.. no, it's the kind of event, a revelation that tells you this is how it is, and this is how it's going to continue to be.. and actually later on it's going to be more like this. And starting tomorrow, in February, it's going to be more like this. And this, I completely fucking hate. It has been opined that it is a good thing, and I suppose in a way it is, but's the kind of good that's good for you rather than, you know, good.. sort of like broccoli, except I really like broccoli so it's not a very good example, more like, studying, exercise, doing taxes and sorting out bills. Things that I put off, and most of the time just don't plain do. When it can't be avoided, I ignore the reality that they exist for as long as I can. this is exactly what I'm trying to do now, but it's hard when reminders are being thrust into your face as you go along in your usual daily distractions, and there's that nagging feeling that you really should be doing stuff to get ready for this eventuality. So yeah.. um, JMG, and whatever.

Oh yeah.. JMG!

January is usually a kind of shit month. Well.. not really, the past few Januaries have been..probably ranked similarly to the other months, I don't know, but it's generally a dreary month,winter, post holiday all that.

This one's been ok for these eleven days, relatively warm, even unseasonally warm I might say which is nice though I do like snow and would like some.. though I've kind of forgotten it even does that, over the weeks, well the weather is ok. And other stuff.. well.. haven't gotten too far with my whole "this is the year" plan, but it's been ok. Nothing spectacular, but ok.

Still tradition is tradition, and I'm nothing if not traditional and we decided that Jan Must Go one day.. one January day I'd guess, a few years ago, so it must go. We've managed to get rid of almost eleven days not there are only.. um, 20 left. I will destroy them. If I do nothing else this year, I wll at least get us to Feb.

jmg

Hopefully there won't be too much more of this going on..

It's WOTD time.

wellaway \WEL-uh-WEY\ , interjection: (Used to express sorrow.)
She entered under the dome weeping and wailing, “Wellaway!"
-- edited by Leonard Charles Smither, The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night"Wellaway. My little son so dear!" So sad he was that no one could cheer up at all…
-- Marijane Osborn, Romancing the GoddessWellaway is related to the contemporary word woe. It came from the Old English phrase wā lā wā meaning "woe! lo! woe!"

So.. not the cheeriest word. More fitting to the earlier parts o the week than now, fortunately, and it is.. of course, the last day o Jan.. woo hoo! J is finally going to g.. thank goodness, in just under 5 hours, and in a bit I'll be going out to celebrate this momentous occasion by drinking with people I've never met before in a place I only vaguely know the whereabouts of.

See you in Feb.

And back to normal.

So life back from the early week pit of hell that these relatively on a world wide scale well off Westerners had to endure, to the typical dull humming of the mundane, but mostly comfortable. There was a moment when I thought they (the eternal THEY who are responsible for all these cockups, and everything really) had fucked my computer, but I got it working after a bit. After that I settled back into the usual.

And yes.. it's getting closer and closer to that haven that I've decided the end of jan.. ie February is, only one full day and this evening left. And seriously.. it better be an improvement.

Well.. on the 29th and 30th of this month.. the rest has just been.. nothing special but more of the same.. where have I heard that before? *scratches head*

2 days to go

Jan is nearly over, and though it doesn't promise and end to bullshit bullshit that's bullshit, and in fact historically has rarely been any improvement and some years crappier than Jan, it promises a start to something I to be perfectly honest I'm not sure I want to do but I'm gonna say it's a good thing. One must have something to look forward to, one has always said. Well one is saying it now anyway.

This day was barely if at all an improvement on the pit of despair that was yesterday. Much the same in many ways.. and had to dewal with annoying bureacratic stuff.. a lot of waiting etc etc. A
 new thing well not a new thing but something that was annoying me but I had a slight hope I'd be able to do something to make it less bad came up, and I can't make it less bad, it's official. Still no power, but at least it was sorted and now it's just to wait for it all to be fixed, so at least that, at least a potentially better day to look forward to.

Apart from that... once this has sorted out, apart from not being exactly richer, and probably even poorer than I'd like to be.. well, than i expected I'd be, well in the proxy way, if that means anything, then it will be much as it would hagvfe been the rest of this month of Jan, whcih is, meh.. nothing to write home about.

Oh and it rained today.

But still.. 2 days.

OFF*%FS!

Today is a shitty day. A really fucked up crappy, crummy day.

Here I was thinking.. Jan is coming to a close, it's warming up, had a lovely eve yesterday, ice skating (not well, and not even half well but after 10 minutes considerably better than first getting on the ice) for the first time in.. well, yonks, under the light snow, and though it was far from perfect, (arriving late because though it says online they close at 10, they closed at 7, and skating without Erik, and as I said not exactly getting on so well) it was quite nice. It even snowed, I may have mentioned. Oh and Erik found some spare batts, rechargables that worked really fine so I was able to take photos with my cam again just in time for a pretty snowy eve. We had a beer in a charming English style pub named after a koala and, well.. one of the more pleasant eves, in fact overall days of Jan so far.

Then came today. The last Monday o Jan. And they (the infamous They who are responsible for so much grief) weren't going to let us off easy.

Erik had some visa stuff to do in the morning. We were chatting back and forth in the morning, silly stuff, as he waited and waited, until they turned the electricity off. Yeah, they turned the electricity off. So he calls and sends messages to whoever after I manage to get him to call me, call, let him call back, but at first he answered and used up some precious few credits I had left, but whatev.. and then back and forth again. Here I am thinking he's already at work, but there's still 144 people until his number comes up at the whatever office ministry thingy he was waiting at. So, no answer from anyone. I try everything a layperson can do in this situation, knowing not if we'd been turned off or some muppet working on the flats int he building had turned off the power in the wrong flat or bumped into something or whatever, just waiting for someone to get back to him and for him to get back to me. He called a bunch of times, but to ask how I was doing, which was not at all. Finally, after a few hours, well many hours the maintenance dude guy from upstairs came by and tried all the boxes in the electricity cupboard thingy and none of them worked. Once again a mundane and pointless story of my life is getting very long and detailed, so basically what happened was, still don't have power, Erik was at the ministry thing all day, and then they gave him shit about stuff but at least he got the visa, and now he's at the dentist.

It's not as cold as it was, I suppose that's one good point.. but IT'S COLD ENOUGH IN A FLAT THAT HAS NO HEAT NO LIGHT NO HOT WATER AND OH YEAH.. NO ELECTRICITY TO RUN ANYTHING AT ALL!

Gotta sort this shit out tomorrow. Another day, another shitty day. JMG.

Eleven.

Days to go. Of this month. Nothing will change and if it does it won't be necessarily better, just cos it's not Jan anymore but.. it's good to have something to look forward to, no need to worry that there isn't actually such a thing until such time as it occurs. Or doesn't.

It's my way of coping and I'm sticking to it.

JMG!

Dear Weather Gods

I'm getting real tired of drizzly. Please do something about it.

Widen the scope please, and preferably.. actually most certainly wider than the overcast to heavy rain spectrum, that would not necessarily please me in fact it might just (in fact yes it will) piss me off. So not that, something nice, something pleasant. A little bit of cold (not below -6 please) with some pretty snow would be good, for a while. And an early spring.

Just stop the drizzling.. and all the other stuff I don't like, I know it's Jan but.. come on!

Feelin really Jan.

Blurgh. It's Jan, it's drizzly and I'm feeling jan and drizzly myself. It just is.

I was going to mention something else, but I forgot what it was, it was so boring. Whatever it was is the most interesting thing that's happened today, judging by my original intention to mention it but.. can't think of it.. oh well, if it's important enough it'll come back. It isn't though.

Someone measured the windows today. don't know what it's for.. why would someone measure windows? What are they going to do? Am I gong to have to deal with more days of worker dudes coming by.. waiting all day for whenever they come, sitting here while they bang and clash with whatever they're doing with the windows, go out again because they need some part, come back, and then come back another day, whatever time they show up, to fix it? and then probably come back again at some unspecified I have to wait around all day time? That will suck. an it probably won't make any difference.

Happy Jan.

That's one down.

Well 2 for Jan, but the first official working back to normal all those shenanigans over and our guests have left too so.. it's kind of that.

Also one whole (working) day of the year of the year passed without me having achieved a whole lot of the long long list of difficult and time consuming things I need to do before it gets too far into the year ok nothing at all ok.. happy!

Tomorrow I swear I'll get things done. What tings, I don't know, just how exactly cos this getting stuff done thing is so vague because it's all so.. encompassing its difficult to be too specific about it. But I'll do something, honestly. Well I'll try. I'll think about it.

I'd like to turn this here blog into something worthwhile with interesting stories, articles, stuff about ideas.. big events and general stuff that isn't just stuff that I'm involved in.. but so far there's no evidence of that.

Well.. happy beginning of the regular sensible season and stuff. I spose.

And it's here again.

The bland, blurry, bleakness of Jan. Starting now and continuing unless the JMG project goes considerably better than it has managed in the past, for 31 days. We're only just beginning, it's a long road ahead.. January 20.. er.. that number, oh yeah another thing, the year is this not considered particularly lucky and aesthetically displeasing number which I'd ideally like to avoid most times, but now it's going to be at the end of EVERY FUCKING DATE FOR A YEAR! And we're right at the beginning of it, the Jan bit, which we're just starting now.

And you know, I kind of like that it's calming down after the silly season, even though we still have people here, but I don't particularly like that it's "back to work" so to speak, which means for me getting serious about a whole lot of things which I can't keep putting off forever and although I skipped the formal resolution making this year I am going to be fff.. well older by the end of the year and.. I'd like to have gotten stuff done by then, might make me feel better about turning.. oh fuck it's so old I can't really be but you know all the same, I really need to do stuff. Starting now. Well tomorrow but that's soon, and there's all too much of Jan left at this point, and there's all too much of '13 left at this point, and by the time that ends I will be that thing that I haven't actually mentioned but you know what I mean.

So.. JMG and all that. At least I'm feeling ok, with being kinda lightweights and not staying out so late (we aren't exactly kids anymore remember) and having gotten to the party kinda late due to being given the wrong address and having trouble getting through to the host for a while and having to Scooby gang it over to the actual address with some people we'd just met and only having a glass of champagne and a little bit of beer and 2 fernets with the guests before leaving there wasn't that much alcohol consumed, which I suppose is a good thing. I'm glad there's at least one.

JMG!

Now, let's see if this works.

Yeah.. I've been going on about this Jan thing well.. all month.. the thing is that January is supposed to be a crappy month full of crappy stuff and crappy weather which is at best just unbearably dull and considerably irritating... and yeah, it's been that..

the end of Jan is supposed to be.. the end of all that.. well it'll still be a bit cold at least but the rest, I'm hoping for a clean zapping of it in.. well, just over an hour now.

*waits*

Can we get it over with already...

Yeah.. Jan is being a pain in the proverbial... stupid things, little things that you just feel like a pissy little whiner when you whine about them but they're whine worthy... being scolded by employers, screen going all fuzzy and difficult to read, the spare hard drive er.. smoking, people still not giving me answers to questions and others hounding me for the answers to those questions, long planned projects going awry.. you know the sort of thing..well maybe you do.. you probably know things equally vexing..

I mean, I'm trying to convince myself it's just Jan... and in a little less than a week now things will become magically rosy... *waits*

J.. m.. oh whatever.

January is as usual a pointless and dreary month, partly because of it being winter, partly because, well.. a lot of my life is kinda dreary and pointless. And there isn't even any snow..which is one thing I look forward to this time of year.

And I still haven't done any of the stuff I wanted to get done this early part of the year.. somehow it.. just doesn't happen. All my fault I know. Therefore not much going on, not much of interest to write, in fact, nothing, but still I write.

Maybe in 12 days things will be.. slightly different in a mostly positive way. Then again, probably not.

20 Days Left.

20 more days and Jan will be over. Then, we can get on with stuff without stuff sucking so much. I surely do hope this hacking cough goes away considerably before the end of Jan.. like, 20 days earlier.. or so. Other stuff.. I can live with.. it's slow out there so there won't be so many tours, not the hugest tragedy tbph and really.. in past years, stuff hasn't improved so much on the 1st Feb, as far as I remember. Not that things really are that much crappier in January than other times of year.

Still.. JMG.

*grumbles, whines and moans*

JMG!

Yeah yeah, blah blah blah, 2012, new year.. whatever. Despite all the excitement of a new number to put after the 20, it's still the month of fucking January. Yes, the JMG campaign is back on... 28 days left of this shit, and I've already had enough!

So.. have a few hours after midnight of watching some fireworks, enjoying the spectacle, dancing a bit though they did have a really big stretch of totally sucky music at the 80s and 90s party.. after midnight of course, strike number 1 I guess that was.

The next day I woke up with a terrible pain in my neck, couldn't turn my head and couldn't move at all without hurting.. fortunately, someone covered my tour that night, so this particular strike wasn't as bad as it could have been, but still.

Was better yesterday, though it still hurt and I did work last night, thought it went ok, and it was relatively warm, and I was underground for this tour so I didn't think I was out in the cold too much, but still, after I got home I started to feel a tickle in my throat. I hoped it wouldn't lead to a full on sore throat, which leads to a general cold/flu, 4 or 5 days of coughing, sniffling, sneezing and feeling generally shit but after a night of not sleeping in which is got progressively worse, I got up with a really sore throat. And I have to work tonight, and it's a late tour, and it's outside in the Old Town, and it's colder again today.

Jan Must Go.

*holds breath and hopes to last for 3 hours and 58 minutes*

*gasps*

*breathes*

Ok so I lasted 12 seconds or thereabouts.. not too bad.

In only 3 hours and 58... nay, 57 minutes Jan will be over. Yes, over.

If you wonder what I'm talking about or know what I'm talking about but note that I've barely mentioned the anti Jan campaign over the last month (which as it happens has been Jan) well it's because it didn't occur to me that often tbph... (to be perfectly honest that is).. but I still want to see the ole inaugural month of the year out in the what must be by now a traditional manner.

So JMG.. and it will G in exactly 3 hours 55 now.

And tbph it hasn't been all that bad this month really.. just typical post holiday winding down.. business picked up a bit, got a bit stressed with training for this tour job but then I went well... pretty much graduated (if you can call it that) first in my group.. not bragging or anything so obvs I got the job...

will be doing a bit more training (this is not shitty tour folks) and some time in Feb might start doing real life tours for actual people, so that's something to.. um.. look forward to.

Didn't return to the Meisner class.. am taking the semester off, for the mo, mostly because I just couldn't afford it but it turned out to be just as well because the training was pretty intensive.. and otherwise.. well.. the usual.

Anyway.. I'm going to go with the fact that Jan sucks regardless, because that creates something to celebrate.. so for one last time..

JMG!

3:52 :)

I don't want to count any chickens or anything..

but I might be doing stuff this er. bit of the year. Like work, ie a new career path which might mean actually earning money for once. I can't say anymore because that would be too much like the aforementioned counting o chickens which I wished to avoid. Ok so it's doing tours and stuff.. I'll see this week if it suits me and if indeed they accept me to do it.

Oh and I mean to make more films and stuff. That's a bit less formal than this extremely informal going along to one of the tours to see what it is and talking to the person who runs it.

Well anyway.. it's January 4, time to get to work!

Oh and JMG!

All that fuss for this?

So it's done, we're here and we are now living in 2011. Awesome. Yeah, but one thing that I completely overlooked, during all those festivities and the big celebration that commemorated the coming o the new year was that not only does it bring us a fresh shiny new big number at the last bit of the date for the next 12 months, it also brings us Jan.

Yeah, January. Brilliant. For another 30 days 4 hours and 22 minutes they expect us to just shut up and put up with it. Fuckers. Well I for one will not take this lying down, I intend to fight it all the way!

JMG!