blog.djstead.net

As a few of you may know, I decided to have my own mini-adventure for my 33rd birthday. (photo-heavy post ahoy!) My journey starts at the Grand Depart in Leeds - apt given that my destination was France… {A brief history - my cousin married a french woman 6 years ago, and I met one of her best friends - Laurence - at their wedding, and we have kept in touch ever since. Laurence herself is getting married later this year, but now she and her fiance Laurent have a place of their own - with guest bedrooms! - I was invited to go and stay…} Thursday Stepping off the plane in Nantes I was pleasantly surprised as to how warm it was. ‘Unseasonably warm’, was the verdict we came to. For the first few hours of my stay, we did nothing out of the ordinary - and yet because the surroundings were new and unusual, whilst we drove back to their house, stopped off for bread, ate a steak lunch, then headed into town and parked in a multi-storey - there was already a surre...

I’m not built to operate with a constant influx of changing information. Ironic, given that the universe is made up nothing *but* change; but let’s skip the metaphysical here: Every morning I check my Twitter feed, Reddit, Facebook, BBC News - obvious discussion about a personal bubble goes here - and there is so much to take in. Mainly because every time I go to sleep, about 4 billion(?) people have the tenacity to carry on with their lives; and some of them are in a position of power to do something that affects the way the world ‘works’. Currently my bubble is dominated by the antics of the questionably-haired fuckwit at the head of the largest democracy on the planet (#MuslimBan, if future species are wondering what specific event in the last days of humanity I’m referring to - although that seems to have been blocked by the supreme court). My particular bubble is focusing on the protests taking place in US airports about this - evidently some lawyers are w...

If there is one aspect of the idea of Post-Truth that I am comfortable with, and that is the idea there is no such thing as facts. Right. Initial inflammatory statement made; how to continue? If you want to skip ahead to the part where I regain sense and reason, head to the All that said section below. If you want a little journey inside my head, simply follow on below… So here’s the Platonic dialogue that I ran through in the shower this morning: BeardyMan No such thing as facts eh? Well how about this one: London is the capital of England. GingerDan Alright. Is it also the capital of the United Kingdom? BeardyMan Er… let me get back to you on that one. But it is definitely the case that London is the capital of England. GingerDan Yes, but what does that actually mean? BeardyMan Well… it means that is where all the key stuff for a country happens. Like government, GingerDan So you are saying that all gover...

2016 has truly been a sobering year. But for me, this has meaning beyond the standard aphorism - 2016 was a sobering year, with the added kicker that I hadn’t even realised I had been drunk. Allow me to explain… [WARNING: This post deals with personal death and a whole load of other features of 2016 that - frankly - have no right to be ruining your Christmas spirit.] - One of my favourite tropes in films and books is the ‘Loss of Innocence’. Off the top of my head, Almost Famous, the Chronicles of Narnia, are two examples that deal with that emotional transition. This typically takes the form of the beginnings of sexual discovery, or the realisation of responsibilities that you previously never had. I guess ordinarily this lasts into your twenties by which point you have been given most of the traditional ‘adult’ education you need - certainly from an academic point of view [bar further education], but also from a social ‘finding your feet’ perspective, an...

Every time you encounter a new person, you essentially are trying to share your world view with them, and see if you are a comfortable fit. Except you don’t share it all in one go - you would literally have to recount your life experiences to that point; all the changes you’ve gone through - and of course the other person is effectively doing exactly the same; sharing their world-view. It is literally impossible for one individual to share their world-view instantly with every single person they encounter. If we could, you could therefore plot the entirety of human social relationships as one GIANT Venn diagram. And by that I mean that you would see your Venn diagram that includes your world-view to date; your views, your opinions, your tastes, your standpoints (political and otherwise), why exactly you are you and not anybody else. And, intersecting your Venn diagram, would be everyone else’s. So you could identify the people that share most of your worldview (...

I’ve been thinking a lot about coping mechanisms recently. More accurately, I’ve needed to use these quite a lot in recent months; and that got me thinking. In times of loss, frustration, upset, anger, bewilderment; I have turned to Twitter and (on occasion) Facebook. And this is nothing new for me - before these I put my thoughts together in a blog (who remembers Revelations Online?), and I have continued this blog in the same vein. And here is my key point - very often this is the coping mechanism through which I express my self; my inner thoughts. My immediate thoughts. Some of them are well-formed, but the majority are not - they are new, unfiltered, immediate thoughts. That occasionally are - in hindsight - pretty poor, and they have on occasion upset people close to me. And here’s the thing which I wonder might be an issue not just for me - but for many in this brave new world: Social media is my primary outlet of emotion. And at my darkest times, it is my...

Back in the Good Old Days™* of the early 2000s I was part of an online community known hereafter as the OceanCrew. As has already been written before now, it was a great group of people (hell, still is). And the best thing about it (well apart from the endless quotes of course) was that we all cared about each other. (Hell, still do). Whenever we logged onto that community (as I did pretty much every day); there was always a familiar username, a friendly avatar, on the forum and in the chat - and when we asked each other ‘how’s your day been?’, it was because we genuinely cared (hell, we still do). *GOD may appear greater than they are - Why bring this up? Well, for me I think that sense of belonging I had with the OceanCrew is akin to what I felt much more recently in the last few years with two relationships in particular. You will notice I said ‘had’ there - not because I don’t consider myself close to the OceanCrew as I once was - but because the reality...