Internet ruins people. People ruin everything. Ergo MADNESS.

I kind of miss not having the internet (and I don't just mean for a couple of months whilst having router issues, I mean the prehistoric times when the internet didn't even exist). I sometimes wonder what I did with my time back then, and vaguely remember calling friends instead of leaving graffiti on their walls (although I sort of did that then too...) but although the internet has given us access to a world of information and given us the opportunity to reach out and touch numerous amounts of people, it's also enlightened us to the fact that:

People are freaking idiots.

I don't mean the ones who can't add, or the ones who never remember which way round the i and the e go, I mean people who put a profile picture of their eyes or them hiding behind a carefully placed box to cleverly convince people they're not fat. Bored housewives unleashed upon messageboards everywhere to be frustratingly obsessed with the acting/singing/dancing lustbunny that they will wear their typing fingers down to the bone to swear blind they feel nothing but parental love for. The serial blogging narcissists - oh, how the rays from their rear ends blind us from our computer screens!

I miss enjoying a film or a tv show without some imdb dickhead arguing about how the main character is gay. I miss discovering music the hard way and when comics and books really were an escape and not just a fashion statement. I miss when the things I loved weren't ruined by other people who I never would have been aware of without the open maw of the internet.

Ignorance was bliss, I just didn't know it at the time...

Onwards, Upwards, Outwards...

Ladies and maybe one Gentleman, I am at an impasse.

Life as I know it is gut wrenchingly boring, and my days consist of waking up earlier than necessary so I don't feel robbed of "Time Not Spent At Work", avoiding members of the household who insist on being in the kitchen when I just want to have breakfast in peace without making small talk with people who I don't get on with, getting a lift into work with a friend (gawd bless 'er!) and rolling into work at 20 past 8 just in time to spend the next 8 or so hours death staring the clock into moving faster. And when those clock hands finally limp to the finish line at 5pm, I have one and a half hours travel to look forward to on the buses for a journey that only takes 20 minutes by car. Of course, all then I can be bothered to do is open a beer or three and pretend I don't have to do the same thing tomorrow...It's a strange feeling, to hate to go to work and yet knowing that you need the job because of the money, and that you're probably lucky to have a job at all.

But is this a healthy way to live life? Heck no! I spend most of my day avoiding things, whether that be people or just the heart breaking truth that This is not where I thought I'd end up.

But is it enough of where I wanted to be that I can still get by? I'm putting out an albums worth of (admittedly unmastered) songs, I've been offered a gig in France, I mean to me that's pretty amazing and something I would have been so happy to know I would be doing in the future, had I been told that at the age of 15... maybe that's the problem. Always comparing reality to some idealised view I had when I felt about school the exact same way I feel about work now.

Who invented this 9 - 5 culture? Who decided that money was the middleman and trading had to go? Don't people realise how insane it is when they have spent their entire life with nothing to show from it except a next generation with the same dull pointless prospects? We've created a race of people with nothing to gain, nothing to strive for, no dreams! We've been told that the biggest achievement we can have in life is a job, a house, two kids, a marriage, and all that of course is fine but what else?

When you meet someone for the first time, generally you used to get asked "What do you do?" and you'd have to give them your job title while you then both feigned interest in explaining and listening about what that entailed - now you're more likely to hear "What do you do for a living?" which at least acknowledges that 99% of the time (and these percentage are 100% legit, of course.) you aren't your job, and also allows you to look bored while you briefly explain your current job title as an insurance advisor.

It's easy to slip into those 9-5 shoes, numb yourself so you can make it through the day because if you realise it's only 2pm and you've been sitting in that chair for 6 hours and still have 3 to go...well, I'm surprised there aren't more people jumping up and running screaming for the exits.

So! It's all well and good to have a moan (I am English, after all) but to be unhappy with ones situation and do absolutely nothing about it is unforgivable. You get one life, in one order, and if (touch wood) I get to a grand old age without losing my marbles, I'd like to be able to sit at the window in my nursing home and watch the world go by knowing that I truly experienced what it had to offer.

I want to ride a motorbike. I want to travel across America and get a snapshot at what daily life is like for people from state to state, I want to see their familiar sights with brand new eyes and wonder how different it is from theirs. I want to travel around Mexico. I want to experience Día De Los Muertos in Guadelejara where the dead live in love and orange flowers cover graveyards like snow. I want to play the ukulele in Hawaii and realise what it is to be a tourist. To walk the bustling streets of Japan and to be the one out of place. I want to go to Ireland and feel at home. I want to live.

I don't know how this life will go, but if I don't do something then I'll die sad and brittle along with the rest of them. So this is my plan:

1) Complete the CBT and buy myself my first 125cc. I'm no sportsbike enthusiast, and the Yamaha Virago is something I've had my eye on (only slightly in the pervy way.) Idealistic as I may want to be, I still need money and I still need my job for at least another year. This way I get to do something I've always wanted to do since I gatecrashed a biker gathering at a pub as a teenager, and I get home quicker as well. Bonus! Also, bike skills will come in handy in another point later...

2) Pay off all debts. Those sneaky little credit cards with their empty promises can sure pack a financial punch with interests. When all's said and done, I'm lucky enough to be living at home so there's no excuse not to be paying off these things hardcore! And I can finish off paying back the pennies (or multiple pounds) that I've borrowed over the years from my parents. No financial ties...

3) Save. This bit will most likely be the killer. It means maximum incomings and minimum outgoings, working 6 days a week without spending boredom money on crap, but the payoff will be worth it.

4) Travel. This is the goal. I know where I want to go, I'm open to visit places I've never heard of. I want to meet people who can teach me how to throw off the social inhibitions I was raised with and who I can meet myself around. People who each have their own little piece of the puzzle called Life - it'll be like philosophy pokémon!

5) University. Ideally by this time they'll have scrapped tuition fees, but probably not...Anyway! I never went to University because I didn't complete Sixth Form. Nobody could tell me why I needed to be there and I sure as hell didn't have any answers for myself - besides, they didn't let you smoke on college grounds, and at that age I didn't really care about much else. It's taken a few years, but I'm shrugging off that educational apathy bit by bit with Open University courses (despite one tiny meltdown and a week in which I missed all three deadlines for all three of my courses) and I want to have a University experience. Whether I go with English, Scriptwriting, Linguistics, Psychology, Creative Writing is all up in the air right now, but hopefully whatever I choose in the end will help with the last point...

6) Live. The last thing in the world I want to do is do everything I've said I'll do so far, graduate from University (again, touch wood...) and go straight back into that 9-5 routine, being a big fun ball of hate once again. I think if that ever happened then the emergency plan would be to repeat parts 3 & 4 again, but hopefully I'd be travelling every few years or so anyway...

I used to wish I could see into the future, visualise the outcome of every little decision made before making it so that I'd never be surprised and I would know that I always ended up where I wanted to be, but I just didn't get it. By focusing on what may happen, what could happen, I didn't actually put any thought into what was happening right now. I never got round to achieving anything because by always watching the future I was forgetting to make any changes in the present, and I just stopped.

And now, the first task is to stop worrying, stop obsessing, and stop being so goddamn self involved - the path ahead will always be there, so it's about time to start walking!