A Shut & Open Case
After more than a year of completely unintentional neglect, I’ve returned to say one last thing: cheerio!
As I write this, myself and my flatmate are on the verge of being kicked out of the snug little Aberystwyth abode where we’ve rotted for the last solar cycle, due to a lack of funds having prevented us from paying our rent in a timely manner. While undesirable, this isn’t as big a deal as it may seem, as within the next few weeks we’ll be relocating ourselves to Frankfurt. Frankfurt am Main in Germany, to be precise.
See, Fabi has a pretty high-profile placement at a pretty high-profile firm in Frankfurt as part of his degree course. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I’m going along with him as I’ve precious little keeping me here in Aberystwyth, Wales.
As such, I'll be living and (hopefully) working outside the UK for the first time, which is a wonderfully daunting prospect. We’ve been having a few issues with securing a flat out in Deutschland (ruthless German efficiency appears to be absent from the letting agencies), but one of the joys of moving to a city is that we’re not exactly short on choice.
The past year has been uneventful, by and large. If nothing else, it’s reinforced in my mind the reasons I’m not much of a patriot. I’ve had one too many accidental run-ins with the bureaucrats that are supposed to be aiding and abetting the welfare of the common man. Council Tax is the spawn of Lucifer himself, it really is. I’d have thought a supposedly forward-thinking nation such as this would realise there’s an untenable gap between their high taxes and my low wages, but apparently not. Indeed, it was this exact assumption that led me to inadvertently committing benefit fraud a few months back, a decidedly hairy, almost disastrous experience that I have no intention of repeating. My solicitor was a deliciously sarcastic bastard, embittered in ways I could relate to with utter clarity.
I’ve been employed at the local Spar 24-hour convenience store during my time in Aber, which has been the precise opposite of my last job in that my fellow employees and managers are generally good people, whilst my customers are almost all self-centred opportunistic bastards. I wouldn’t say it’s a bad job per sé, but it is quite deeply depressing as you serve people an endless stream of cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets; each seems to be a cause or an effect of the stupidity that plagues this town. I’ve grown to be rather judgemental about it, to be honest. But I suspect serving drunks at 2am five or more days a week would do that to almost anyone.
There are some weird and wonderful regulars who I serve behind the till, such as the legendary Guy With Cat On His Shoulder, and the truly repulsive ‘Boomer’ (who you can frequently smell before you see). But mostly, I deal with petulant alcoholics, tactless women, egocentric students and frequently, a combination of all three and more besides. The experience has cultivated a certain degree of misanthropy and misogyny into my outlook on people in general, and as such, I’ve become much more foul-tempered than before. I’ve decided by default that, well, I just don’t like people in general. They’re a bit shit.
Personally, I’ve not changed too fundamentally, anger-management issues aside. I still aspire to being some sort of visual entertainer, while never getting around to putting my ideas down in a way anybody else can digest. I still buy and play videogames prodigiously, sometimes at the expense of more important things. I still occasionally get wistful and downbeat about the attention of the fairer sex, or rather, the lack thereof. I’m still not much of a social animal.
But I do think I’ve grown up a fair amount since I moved out. I’m not all the way there yet, granted - if nothing else, I whiff a little of ‘manchild’ - but I generally feel I have a much greater hold on my own psyche than I used to. I get a lot less time to ruminate uselessly these days, I suppose.
The change of tune is part of the reason that I’m finally bringing this LiveJournal to a close, after six years of intermittent service. I had good times with it back in the day, and there are people I’ve met through it that I’m glad to have become acquainted with - you all know who you are I’d wager, if you’re even reading this.
But I feel it’s time I perhaps began writing longhand in earnest again with a fresh canvas to match the generally less whiney outlook I have on life these days, which is why I’m migrating over to the Blogger service. It offers a lot more creative freedom with a much nicer interface than LiveJournal for my (no) money, plus you guys can comment using your LJ accounts if you ever feel the need, which is nice.
Additionally, I’ll continue to use Twitter for my more of-the-moment, stream-of-consciousness ramblings. If you’re not already on the service, I can honestly recommend it. It’s one of those things I’m not really sure how I managed without. As an added plus, it is infinitely less cluttered and annoying than the likes of Facebook, too.
I’m also experimenting with an opinion-blog focussed on the wonderful world of videogames, one of the few subjects I can talk about at truly dizzying length. Rather than cluttering up my personal journal with such witterings, I’ve elected to open up a dedicated blog known as Grumble Pak for my thumb-twiddling nonsense. As I write this, there’s pretty much nothing there, but I’m hoping to rectify that reasonably shortly. I have an awful lot to say, after all.
All in all the future is unclear, but seems to be reasonably promising. Settling in Germany will undoubtedly be rough at first, but with time I’m hoping it will be a move for the better.
Aberystwyth has been a nice place to live, for the most part - I just wish I’d had the resources and the wherewithal to make more out of it. I’ve met a few great people here who shall be missed, and it’s likely (though not entirely certain) that I’ll be moving back here in the coming years. Fabi still has a degree to finish, after all - though it’s not entirely out of the question that I may stay in Germany on my own, depending on how the money is. We’ll see, I guess.
I digress, though: Aber is a pleasant place to be, most of the time. A lot has happened in the year I failed to write about, but most of the details, like the swathes of drunken students, that awesome little second-hand games shop and the constant background noise of militant seagulls, are somewhat banal. Initially, I guess the reason I was never compelled to write was that there was little of interest to write about. Then I guess I just stopped occurring to me.
My web-browsing habits changed, too - I really fell in love with Twitter, which is much more compatible with a life in which I generally can’t (or don’t want to) sit down and opine at length. I haven’t even read my friends-list in all this time, something I’m going to try and rectify with a little RSS witchcraft, I think.
I still draw, by the way. The usual anthropomorphic gubbins, in a style that hasn’t really advanced. I don’t get the itch nearly enough these days, and right at this moment progress is being hampered by my müllered graphics tablet and the sultry weather we’re having. But still draw, I do.
It’s a little maddening, really. I’m constantly teased by obscenely grandiose (and occasionally grandiosely obscene) ideas, and yet when it comes to noting anything down… poof, gone. This is manifested most obviously by my newest nebulous endeavour, a science-fiction, spacefaring webcomic in collaboration with Fabi that we’re currently calling Silence. We’re using a harsh, two-tone aesthetic with coloured highlights for emphasis - not an entirely new idea, but one that we’re putting our own slant on anyway.
I’m not progressing with my side of things - visual character design, dialogue, setting, etc - anywhere near as quickly as I’d like, really. Which is annoying, as I would dearly love for a project to finally leave the confines of my head and be seen by the world at large. Something does always seem to get in the way, though - like work, taxes and emigration. I hope, once my tablet’s replaced and we’re properly settled, that I’ll finally decide to make some headway. I can dream, can’t I?
Hopefully, that unspeakably dense wall-of-text will suffice in getting you up to speed with regards to, well, me. I’m sure it was a truly riveting read. I didn’t really proofread it, so apologies if it seems a little disjointed.
As I’ve said, this’ll be my final entry in this here blog. Here’s to a bigger, better, shinier future!
Tschüß!
Felix