Category: Everyday

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Unforced Isolation or Socially Disengaged?

Glorious isolation! by Kate Jewell is licensed under CC-BY-SA 2.0

How do?!

It’s been a while, eh?

I have to say, from the off, that study is taking up most of my time and inner thoughts right now. In some ways it makes me feel as though I have reverted back to being a teen. As a teen I felt very lonely. I didn’t really have any friends, school was horrible, then I left early but still just tried to teach myself things and keep my brain active. I listened to music a lot. Other than that, I was pretty directionless. I became used to my own company.

I was nervous around people but tried not to be nervous. Talking was difficult, though I would make myself try. I didn’t have a group of friends to hang out with. I didn’t go out with people. No mates. No boyfriend. No days out. No gigs. None of the “regular” teen stuff. Most days I was at home alone in my room and listening to music pretty much all day long. Daydreaming. Watching the clouds gently roll along across the sky thinking how amazing it would be to be a meteorologist and know that it would NEVER happen to me.

Okay, today is different. I am studying and I am not alone…outwardly. What feels comparative to my teenage years is my insular nature. As a teen, as much as I wanted friends, I didn’t really seek them out. I was too affected by the bullying I experienced to want to seek out friendships. Relationships? Boyfriends? Slightly different, though not much. It was attached to the safety of a neighbour’s brother, or the relative of my brother-in-law’s friend or some such as a love interest. Never a complete stranger! Not until my first serious boyfriend did I experience starting a relationship with someone absolutely unknown to me. Then it was his friends that I orbited around with him for company. Not exactly friendships in their own right.

Through my twenties I had three friends – my mum, my neighbour, and Steven – the person I have sustained the most enduring friendship with (minus my mum, of course). Even within these, I had a lot of alone time. I was content to be alone a lot – buried within my own thoughts.

In the mid 90s I had a job within a company that had a small workforce. Two of the workers were my brothers, and I knew the rest (around 25 others) in a strictly workplace environment. Never really made any friends while working there, either.

When I met my OH and then moved to the UK, I continued to be in that place of “Billy Nomates” – I knew NOBODY other than my OH when I moved to the UK. And it stayed like that until I became a Simple Minds fan. I tried making friends through pen pal ads placed in magazines or online in newsgroups (the precursors of today’s social media) but not much came of those. I would always lose contact with people in the end. I got VERY used to my own company for the 15 years between moving to the UK and becoming the SM fan I am now. I was very comfortably insular.

It wasn’t good for my mental or (especially) my physical health. It is why I will always be thankful for exploring the Minds back catalogue. Where I spent many years fearing being gregarious, becoming an SM diehard made me bold. I began to feel a little less inhibited and started to branch out. I found it all very scary. Making myself known to the fans by starting to communicate with them, eventually being brave enough to meet some face-to-face.


I remember my very first SM gig at the Cambridge Corn Exchange in April, 2015. I had agreed to meet a fan face-to-face, but I was ssoo scared to expose myself, I just chickened out and didn’t look for them and seek them out. I kept myself hidden so they couldn’t find me either.

There were other things happening in parallel to my SM fandom that meant I grew in confidence and started to really step out from my own shell and get to know people, meet fans and form friendships. I have some wonderful, amazing friends. Beautiful people.

I can feel myself retreating back into myself as my study progresses. The combinations of things that had me step out of my shell or now kind of reserving and I am withdrawing back into it. I feel less and less affiliated with things that are happening within the fanbase. I feel maligned and ostracised. That feeling keeps me away from wanting to interact too much. I have no idea when I last posted on SMOG (Simple Minds Official Group page on Facebook). I still respond to Jim’s posts on the band page on Facebook, by and large, but he doesn’t post that often. I used to interact a lot with fans via the comments on his posts as well and I rarely do that now.

Worst of all is I am withdrawing from my friends. I want to keep my focus on uni and after I’ve spent the day studying, I just want to stay in my own headspace or just watch some things on YouTube and just retreat and withdraw.

It’s been slowly happening since we moved to Glasgow, but the past 12 months in particular I have felt it – coinciding with my university study. Since the move to Glasgow, I have made two further friends that I feel very close to. One who lives in the city and the other online (and they live in another part of the world).

My mental health has suffered over the past few years as well due to the loss of my mum and the pandemic and my physical health is sliding back to how it was pre-Simple Minds fandom.

I’m worried that my uni study is just making it easier for me to retreat and withdraw and become that insular mole again.

I just wanted to talk about how I am feeling and what is happening to me in regards to this. It started as a cycle of “once I get past this assignment, then I can have social time for a bit until I need to start on the next one.” Now…there doesn’t feel like there is any gap. Or more that I am not allowing there to be any gap. That I just want to stay focused on the uni, maybe write a blog post when I can and…that’s it.

I’m not sure what to do to pull myself out of it. I’m not sure I WANT to pull myself out of it because being within myself feels safe.

Uni study since Christmas has been intense though. I was very focus-driven with my study of Twelfth Night and Jane Eyre. I only just finished my assignment yesterday and apart from the day away I took to see Kula Shaker in Edinburgh, I have only had one other day off since the beginning of January.

I did study today, but it was light studying and I will be diving in deeper tomorrow. I am not allowing myself any time off for handing the assignment in because I will have to take a day off next week to see the Hamish Hawk gig.

I keep projecting forward to the spring. By May, when this module will come to an end, I feel like I’ll be able to truly unwind and have time for friends and social stuff.

But is that just an excuse I’m using to justify not socialising right now?

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This Week I Have Been Mostly…

Reading Jane Eyre. Currently at Vol. 3, Chapter II, page 313 – nearly two thirds of the way through. This is a lot of reading achieved by a self-confessed SLOW reader. I am really enjoying the book. I’m unsure which way I am going to go to complete it. Either just read on and then tackle the course material and regular study, or complete the book first.

We’ll see. Tomorrow I have tutorials to tackle and will take a break from reading the book.

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Demotivation…

I feel low today. Demotivated. I feel like I need to do something but I can’t conjure up the energy within myself to do it.

I think it’s a little bit of “be careful what you wish for.” Jim had been quiet and the past couple of days I found myself wishing he’d post something. Especially in light of Terry Hall’s passing. Years ago I’d freak out if he went quiet. I’d start to doom think – begin to worry if he was okay and start to be concerned something had happened. Of course it never had. Then I would be scornful of myself for caring so much and give myself a telling off. “Jim’s as fit as a Mallee bull” as the Australian colloquialism goes, “dinna fash” – as the locals say when appearing to fuss or stress over nothing.

Then yesterday he posted with his review of the year/“best of” kinda post. Mr “I don’t look back” seems to have at least reviewed the past 12 months. I do wish he’d stop with this “never look back” business. It gets a bit tiring after a while. It’s always said with this air of superiority that grates on me. Like, he feels “a better person” for this perceived lack of desire for nostalgia tripping. Except he constantly contradicts himself with it and cannae even see it.

Good luck with “never looking back” while writing your memoir, Jim!

Without even thinking, I replied to his post. It’s something that has been such an unconscious response that I did it without any second thought. Until after I had posted it and thought “Oh, you fool! There you go again. Straight in with a response. As if he’s waiting on your response. HE DOESNAE CARE! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET THAT IN YOUR THICK SKULL?!” I guess I could have deleted it. Or just responded on my blog instead but the action was so spontaneous – as it has always been that I just initially didn’t stop to think.

Then I keep going back to the post to see if he has liked or responded to anyone else. Feeling a weird sense of relief that he’s responded to no one at all. I don’t feel alone.

I keep thinking about the person who described Jim as “esoteric.” It’s a good description. I think about it in relation to Jim’s previous post in which he talked about the fans being “our tribe.” But there are those who are within an “inner circle.” They’re the REAL “tribe.”

I loved feeling involved. A part of it. If not right within that inner circle, then at least able to delude myself I might find myself in it one day…or something like that.

It was always just that sense of wanting to matter.

Today is the winter solstice and a lot of people are sharing the SM song Solstice Kiss. My mate, Birdy, sharing a photo of her signed CD – “Solstice Kiss Birdy.” A reminder that I was not “worth it.” That, combined with the weather and the disappointment in myself for STILL desiring that sense of exchange with Jim that long passed – eating me up inside.

These days it feels like I write AT him, not TO him. It has ALWAYS been one-sided. It very rarely was two-sided. I have held on to those little exchanges for so many years. It’s ridiculous. And just when I feel like I am getting stronger and getting over it, a few days like these are enough to bring me down into a spiral.

Wishing for a word from Jim. Terry passing away. Telling myself that Jim will be fine – he’s fit as a fiddle! A word about Terry from him would be nice. I think of “Skin” (Tony Donald) and Alan McNeil and the contemporaries of his that have left us and I get maudlin. That time for us is precious. It’s nearly Christmas.

He posts. Present for a moment, then gone. It’s solstice and there are no kisses. Not even a like…or anything. And I have to try and stop myself from wanting to “talk” to him, because it’s absurd and it doesn’t matter. “It doesn’t matter to you, it matters to me”, to quote Bono’s line from So Cruel. I think it is probably just about my favourite U2 song. Certainly is from my favourite U2 album.

I have a Christmas dinner meet-up tonight. Birdy and I are out with our friend, Michelle, to have tea at a local Vietnamese restaurant. And I am trying to get myself in the mood. I don’t want to be the wet blanket tonight at the tea. I have been looking forward to this meal and the “girl’s night out” for weeks…and now that it’s here? I just want to stay home and curl up in bed.

So…in essence, one must be careful for what one wishes for.

Tomorrow is the last Kerrsday before Christmas and … oh, Lord is there something visually splendid coming to the Priptona Weird blog! Look out for that! Other than that, it’s gonna be a quiet old Christmas and I should probably just bury my head in my uni study because, there ain’t nothing else doing.

I wish I could write something good…

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So, Why The New Title?

I was just bored of Antipodean – The Right Side Up. It wasn’t really relevant to me any more and I wanted something different. Something that would represent my life as it is right now, with university taking the main focus but also something that evoked being where I am in the world too. In heraldic terms, the unicorn represents Scotland, and with Glasgow being the heart (if not the capital) of Scotland – and it also having MY heart – the wonderful alliterative draw of “University & Unicorns” revealed itself.

Unicorns are also mythical beings. Only looking at the Wikipedia entry did I see this association with “entrapment” and how unicorns are depicted on tapestries in which virgins, fertility and love feature. The poor unicorn is a sucker for a damsel in distress it seems. I guess there was something fantastical and romantic that appealed in the idea of the unicorn, and that heraldic link to Scotland only served to strengthen that allure.

I guess I could have just as easily called the blog “The bird that never sang”, in relation to the city crest of Glasgow, but “University & Unicorns” it is. I like that it blends fact and fantasy. Objectivity and focus with myths and dreams.

Perhaps I should have gone for “The dreamer that wants to move mountains”?

Nah! That would be too much of a nod to Jim Kerr and the stuff he spouts. Although I like the ethos behind “only dreamers move mountains” – I’m pretty sure he doesn’t see me in any way as “kindred” to him. How very dare I?! What have I ever moved? What worthless dreams do I have? They may be worthless to him, but they are not to me. All that I have to do is prove it to myself. The only validation I need is of my own worth to myself. Today, I am worthy! I am “worth it” – and I never needed to hear that from Jim Kerr. I needed to hear that from Larelle Read!

Welcome to… University & Unicorns!

Photo by Nathan J Hilton on Pexels.com