Sleep

Well at the moment I cant sleep worth a damn it is quarter past seven in the morning and I have been wanting to go to bed since like 2am but haven't managed to get my ass in there hopefully writing this out will kick in some small part of my subconscious and I will finally be able to hit the sack. I have just realized that I can finally truly touch type although for some reason I am not entirely convinced I know where the Y is at all times.

I am still without a job here in London although the college course seems to be going ok but I really need to get my ass into study/reading/mock exam taking mode, but we all know that aint gonna happen til my sister gets back and I actually feel the need to be a real person again.

One of the things I will always miss the most and not just because of leaving Middlesbrough were the games of DnD that I ran at my flat from about August/September time through to February I think maybe someone can correct me on that in 2004-2005. I do not think I will ever get to experience the kind of bastardized camaraderie that we shared for those months and that saddens me in a way that is very difficulty to articulate. Before going to college I had never really been confident of my self and somehow ever since then I have been getting more and more self assured and I really think you guys helped me grow. I know I never learned how to budget while I was in Middlesbrough but it would appear (appear is very very very circumstantial at the moment) that everything is going ok on that front finally. I am cooking for myself more, walking to places that I could get the bus to and just generally getting on with life. I know that if it had not been for coming to Middlesbrough and well and truly tossed off two years of my life I would not be as comfortable with what looks to be my future, at least for now. Even having said that though if someone offered me the chance to relive those months, the good and the bad, I would in a heartbeat. Not all of you were always my friend, some of you hurt me and you either knew you would be doing so or damn well should have and yet still I would go back and relive those months. Sometimes we have had fallings out about petty insignificant things and I can not help but try and analyze them somehow but I have decided I am just going to move on and for every memory I have I don't like I will tie it in with at least a dozen I hope never to forget. Any time I think of Simon I always remember how much he pissed us off but at the same time how much of a release he was for the groups tensions and general misdirected rage. Any time I think of Carl I remember the stupid things he has done and how badly we had a go at him and almost never he complained (would we have stopped, I hope we would have and did?) and I always remember the times he was there for me when noone else was and I would dearly like to think that I was there when you needed me. Matty managed to rarely piss me off but it was always like a dagger in the spine when he did, don't know what it was about you sometimes but I think it was mutual and only came about when we where both in a bad mood, that in its own right I suppose speaks of the good times the til 9am CS sessions, the putting my keys in an envelope and posting them to me because I was in bed, the discussing where out campaigns where headed in the fervent hope that at least one player would be on our side. Chris you piss me off so badly cause for some reason you could seem to have so much potential, same with you Adam, and never quite manage to do anything with it one day (soon hopefully) an opportunity will cross your path and that will be it either jump on and hope for the best or drift away into obscurity. I would like to stress that neither option is ideal and both have pros and cons so in the end I hope the choices you make are the ones you want not what anyone else wants, because despite what other people say whatever makes you happy, whatever makes you feel complete is something to be strived for whatever the cost. Leady I doubt you'll ever get to read this but someone might point you here so who knows. Thankyou. For being just willing to have someone come into your domain and never ask them to leave, maybe you complained about me behind my back maybe you didn't I don't ever need to know all that mattered was when I had nowhere else to go nothing else to do somehow wasting my days talking with you didn't seem like such a waste. Dale again maybe you'll read this maybe you won't but cheers man. I thought for a while I would never be able to find people that where like the ones I had already met and I would be stuck with 'normal' people for the rest of my days. To some random guy I met in London at one of my sisters friends barbecues, thanks for telling me that no matter what it doesn't matter as long as you enjoy it. Ollie might be the most difficulty person for me to write about on here. For some reason we never got to be 'friends' really and all I can put it down to is you where the first person that hurt me out of anyone I met in Middlesbrough, it might never have crossed your mind that I did psyche warfare in America who knows maybe you didn't believe I had been and done those things. God knows I doubt I look/looked the part but what in fucks name did you think I thought you had to show Yankee upstairs at your house when Lisa was trying to get me thrown out of that house on Pelham street? I say Lisa not Alex and Lisa because I know better, how? Alex told me. I mean really I could not believe you would do that while I was in the house and then later that night tell lies about me to make yourself look good. Actually yeah I can. And I think that is why it hurt me more I could never trust you, because I had been there done that and I would never trust me either. So I am sorry when I don't answer your calls half the time I really don't get them and the other half I guess I must be feeling vulnerable but at least when we do talk it is about something. Oh and btw I know I said I'd ring you but I ended up spending all day Sunday fixing my PC cause it major league bricked on me. Still I had fun all those nights we played MTGO til stupid times in the morning. Yankee us two had/have? too much in common to have packed in like we did I'll never know how it happened or why but I think it was when you got your own flat that we drifted. I mean sometimes it seems like I speak to you more since I left Boro than when I was up there those last months. I know you're in a bad place right now and I offer my sympathies and I deeply hope that you get whatever it is that makes you happy cause very few people I have met deserve to be happier than you. My memories of you are all in restaurants when it was just you and me and some fine waitresses. I can't believe it took me over a year to get up to asking you if Ollie had said what I think he said that night and I couldn't believe that you could remember it. Maybe I will feel stupid about having written all this but I will be damned if I have sat at my computer for 45 minutes and not post this. I have no idea but I swear I am missing someone of this list. Maybe it will come to me. Maybe I'm thinking of my flat. I cannot believe it has been three months, a quarter of a year and nothing has really changed. I could blink and be sitting in a broken ass chair in front of a PC playing Counter Strike while Chris beats Carl on Soul caliber 2 and we all call him a cock for blocking with Yankee in the kitchen making Tacos, Adam playing some stupid deck against Dale and Matty on the kitchen table dale with something containing swamps and matty playing a deck he really shouldn't. The twice weekly hunt for the DM Screen. The feet of death. The three death without save effects in a row that hit Simon. The seven character deaths in two session with only two players controlling them. The using random treasure tables. Hiding in broad daylight by laying on the floor. Silencing bags full of kittens. The minotaurs. Simon and the minotaurs. Matty coming to the conclusion I am so right wing I'm a bleeding heart liberal and back round to right wing. I think in all my time in Middlesbrough the one thing I would like to have done while I was there but am glad I didn't know I have left is gotten laid. Strange that don't you think? I don't know why I am happy I didn't but maybe that's because we all secretly love the unknown and regret losing that innocence when we have been there. Anyway I am knackered and it is now 8:04 am so I will go to bed and set my alarm for three in the afternoon so I can get up and go to college. May the sun always be on your back and a cool breeze be on your face (yes its not right but we're geeks dammit). Seize the day.

yours,

-David Jonathan Sykes