The Absurdity of Being Human

Recently I was thinking about how people react when I tell them that I like to make music, not for other people, not to perform to a crowd although that would be fun and not to make money (mostly because this is practically impossible with the amount of middlemen and thieving music industry types who have no interest n music as an artform), but to simply enjoy the process. This is often met with a silence, a kind of 'what do you mean you don't want to make money or be famous?'. Yes, I, and I suspect many, many people out there do not see my hobby, what I love to spend my own time doing as a commodity to make money, or for the enjoyment of others. The same happened too when I was very much into model making - my horrible ex-wife would constantly be asking how I was going to make money off of it. I was already providing, this was my time, my enjoyment. Now I have been making music since the late 1990's and I have always been a creative in work and in pleasure. I'm in ...

By now it's pretty cliche to say that 2020 sucked. Of course, the pandemic and it's associated disruptions to our lives had quite an affect on on a lot of us, but for me in all honesty it was not too much of a bother at first seeing as though I was not one to go out and socialise anyway, most of my social life existed online. The bigger disruption for me, in fact, the life changing disruption was getting epilepsy. I had my first seizure in June, completely terrifying  and out of the blue, bought on by stress I later discovered. Since then, I have experienced 2 more and now have to get used to the fact that it can happen again, and all I can do is learn as best I can to spot the signs, keep myself safe and try my best to get my quality of life back; because this is what has happened. Since June, everything I enjoyed in my life has been put on hold, and I am having to make changes in myself to get used to the new me, and try my best to forget about the old me and move on.  What ...

I first experienced Anxiety and depression at the end of the last century, roughly back in 1998. At that time, I had very little idea of what it really was. I thought, as many did and still do to this day, that it was just a bit of sadness and dissatisfaction with life, and I just needed to "get out there, have some fun and pull myself up by my bootstraps". When you are so young, your own sense of invincibility clouds the signs of depression and anxiety, and only makes it worse.  I used to work for a company that was located close enough for me to get a bus to, or walk to and the job itself was easy albeit very low wage. The company however had two locations, one based in my local town and another some 14 miles away in a neighbouring town. For financial reasons, they decided to close my local site and move to the one 14 miles away. Thankfully however, for the current employees they hired a coach to pick us up and drop us off every day. As much as this was an absolute godsend,...

Hello, my name is Simon, and I am, at time of writing a 40 year old Graphic Designer living in the south of England with my amazing wife and 2 children. I've got many interests, but my main passion in life is the rather niche hobby of painting and modifying Japanese scale model mecha models , i'll write more about this in another post, but what I do want to do is post about my story so far and why I have decided to create this blog.  I'm not new to blogging, through the years I have written blog posts about my hobby, about psychology, opinions and politics, but for this blog I have only one intention, to write about my experiences and just how much my life been completely turned upside-down in the last year. It is my hope that my experiences can at the least, help other people going through what I have been through, and what I am experiencing now, as it's been beyond a doubt the hardest time I have been through, and I am thankful to be alive. Let's start with just a...