Time for a rant

It's been a while since I posted a proper rant.  But I've just come back from the gents in this shared, serviced offices I now work in and I had to sound off about something.  Two somethings in fact.

Sharing a communal kitchen
A lot of us, at some point in our lives (work or personal) will have shared a kitchen.  Either with flat mates, partners, work colleagues, parents.  Now I'm going to disregard the partner / parent situation because unless you are very unlucky these people love you as much as you love them and are kind, considerate and pay attention to making your life as easy as you try and make theirs.
I will also (for now) ignore the flat mate situation.  I may return to this subject at a later date.  For now, I'm going to focus on the work colleague one.  I am not tarring everyone with the same brush here - I am sure all you people reading this are considerate, thoughtful, clean, tidy and otherwise proficient in cleaning up after yourselves and leaving things as you'd like to find them kitchen-wise.  I am going to talk about those ignorant, lazy, selfish, diseased bell ends who constantly regard the shared kitchen as their own personal space to fuck up with spilled liquids, rubbish, empty food packets and dirty cutlery.  I've lost count of the number of times I have gone to make a brew in the kitchen here at my current place of work, only to find spilled milk on the counter, or dirty cutlery scattered around the sink / jar of hot, washing up liquid'd water rather than IN the fucking thing.  Finished with that pot noodle?  Put the pot in the bin.  Finished with the milk?  Put it back in the fridge.  Seriously - are you that busy and rushed for time and important in your own little mind that you can't spare the  3 seconds (yes, 3 seconds - I timed it) to put the milk away?  The spoon in the dirty spoon jar?  And when making a coffee, try this.  Put the sugar in FIRST, then put the coffee in.  That means, no coffee in the sugar bowl for those of us that don't want coffee in their tea.  I dread to think what these peoples home kitchen must be like - or is it really only in a work place that these people feel the need to become uncouth, dirty, lazy fucktards?  Which brings me onto...

Male toilet habits
This is what triggered this particular rant.  And please forgive me if this makes you gag a little.
I can no longer speak of the habits of women when it comes to using public conveniences - not since the court case and subsequent adding of my name to some register.  But let me tell you, men are fucking disgusting.  The office I work in now has a gents toilet on this floor with no urinals, just three cubicles. And I swear, to some men, I think this is seen as a challenge to see who can make the most disgusting, fucked up mess in one cubicle in one day.  Luckily I've yet to see a dirty protest type situation, but just now I needed to visit one of these havens of pestilence and filth to ... let's say, 'drop a deuce'.  I entered one of the cubicles, looked down, and found that someone had considerately pissed all around the floor of the toilet, on the seat and on the cistern at the back.  Lovely.  So I went to the next cubicle (the third being occupied) and found another ring of piss colored puddles surrounding the toilet.  Think about that for a second.  If I wanted to 'evacuate my bowels' (to paraphrase Dr. Sheldon Cooper) I would have to lower my trousers and underwear into someone else's piss.  Fuck that noise.  Why are we, as a gender, so unable to steady, aim, fire at a target that's no more than a few inches away and wide enough for even the most overly-optimistically misjudged penile length? And OK, sometimes the initial spurt maybe a bit wild and inaccurate but please, for the love of all that's pure and decent, have the common courtesy to wipe up your own mess.

I guess both the points above come back to one thing - thought for others.  If we could all just spend a second, whilst doing anything around other people, to think about how our actions would affect those other people, the world would be a better place.  Yes, I know, trite and simplistic and probably wishful thinking but it's so true.  And maybe it would stop me having to wipe up other peoples piss.

Peace.

Male PMS

I had to think for a little while about posting this, but in the end I decided that even if one person agrees with me or feels the same, it would validate my own feelings.  (Not that I need my own feelings 'validated', but you get the point I hope...).

I'd like to know if any other males go through an emotional cycle on a monthly(ish) basis. Yes, I know, some of my more low brow friends and acquaintances will now be shouting "gay!" at me, and wondering if I'm going through a trans-gender procedure but I can hold my hand up and honestly say I think I do go through this.
There has been some research into this - for example in 1929 a researcher carefully followed the moods of 17 men and it showed that they did go through an 'emotional cycle' every 4 - 6 weeks - however, I can only speak of my own experiences, and maybe see if anyone else out there feels the same.

I can't pinpoint the exact start and end dates of these feelings, but I do know that periodically I start feeling quite low, sad, fed up, bored. There is no cause, it doesn't happen because of any particular event, and quite often there isn't a lot I can do about it until the feeling passes.  Sometimes it lasts a day or two, sometimes nearly a week.  These feelings in themselves shouldn't be destructive in any way, but for me they bring on periods of self reflection and I tend to focus on the negative things in my life - which combined with the previously mentioned feelings make me feel even worse.  The logical part of my brain knows that I am very lucky in some ways (health, home, son, loving partner, family & friends etc.) but during this period of maudlin introspection I can't see the value in these things and tend to think too long on the negative - failed marriage, weight issues, money problems, isolation.
I lose interest in social media, I find that I want to cut myself off from people, and nothing seems to keep my interest (reading, TV etc.).
The company of my son, the support of my partner, the communication with my friends & family can help alleviate some of the depression but at the end of the day all I can do is ride it out.

I realize I could be opening myself up to some ridicule with this post - but you know what?  I've been bothered by these feelings for too long and I thought it time I see if I'm not alone.

So I throw the question open to anyone who still reads this blog.  Men - do you get these feelings?  If so, are you confident enough to be able to post in the comments about them?  Women - do you know / live with any men who seem to get 'moody' for no discernible reason?

As always - peace.

It's like making love

My attitude toward blogging, that is.
No, not sweaty, panicky and with mixed results.
I mean I'm hoping to start off slow (the odd post here and there over the next few weeks) build up momentum (a few more posts, more often) and then approach a massive messy climax (a post every couple of days).
I do miss writing things for my reader to read but my motivation and inspiration are like my hair - very sparse and fading fast.   What triggered another bout of desire to write something was just a harmless tweet from someone I follow (https://twitter.com/#!/cjade82).  We've had a couple of conversations via another mutual twitter acquaintance (https://twitter.com/#!/NotBanksy01) and she just happened to tell me she'd been "reading and enjoying my blog".
"So why don't I post more?" I thought.  There's nothing stopping me, when I haven't got no.1 son with me I have bog all else to do in the evenings... so why not get going again?

We can expect posts on subjects such as:
 - My attitude toward social media
 - How am I coping after my divorce (that should be a riot, that one!)
 - Fatherhood
 - Why I still can't abide the general, unwashed, ignorant, masses
 - My alternating mental state
 - Questions and subjects to spark debate and thinking among my loyal followers follower.

So stay tuned, if you're still around thank you for you patience, and please feel free to share this with others.

Peace.

Try something new for 30 days

I was sent this link at work:

http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_cutts_try_something_new_for_30_days.html

If you ignore the over the top U.S enthusiasm (as much as we love our U.S cousins, those of us that are British prefer something a little more 'reserved') the idea of trying something new for 30 days is actually a good one. I recommend you watch the video first (it's OK, it's SFW and is only a couple of minutes long) and then have a think about if it's something you could do.

I've decided that starting tomorrow, I will attempt the 'take one photo a day' one. This should be easy as I always have my (new!) phone on me, and the camera is frankly awesome. If I can stick at that, who knows what other challenges I could do?

Thoughts / comments to the usual address....

Quality not quantity

Ok, so straight away I'm contradicting myself from yesterday. I've decided that I WON'T be posting every day (apart from yesterday and today, obviously). I think the problem I had before was that I would attempt to post something every day - even when I didn't really have anything to say. This led to an overload on my blog and me boring the pants off those of you that have been reading for a while. My better posts were those that were published with something to say or a point to make or a good ol' fashioned rant, and that doesn't necessarily happen every day. This decision will hopefully take the pressure off me a bit and make for a better blog. So this post is to explain that to you all. I will be trying to strike a good balance between nothing posted for ages and posting every day. I hope you can bear with me and will appreciate the quality over the quantity.

Aythankyou.

Peace.

New job, new start

Previously on iSimon...

Our hero started a job working from home, thinking it would lead to bigger and brighter things. Unfortunately, this was not the case and so he entered into a period of depression, misery and darkness, the only saving grace (apart from the periods spent with friends and family) being his no. 1 son. The job turned out to be a career mistake and our hero looked doomed. But faint heart never won fair lady and so after a few interviews and some serious talking to by his inner self, we find him embarking on a new career, with a surprising but none the less pleasant return of a former favourite...

That's a very flowery way of saying I'm back. I have a new job, and decided that I would try one more time to enrich the lives of those who read this blog. It will be the usual combination of observations, moans, confessions and nonsense. I hope that those of you who are still around will keep reading, (and thank you for your patience) and to those new readers... Welcome. I will make every attempt to update daily, so stay tuned.

Coming up - the joys of commuting into London, the new people I'm working with, and how much weight have I really lost?

Really angry

Right, I was all ready to record some stuff tonight. I've been to the pub and had a couple of drinks to get me mellow and relax my voice. I'd been inspired by reading Q magazine and I thought I could produce some good stuff tonight. And then I got home, set the laptop up with the recording software on it, poured myself a glass of wine, got the mike stand out - and it's knackered. Cue trying to fix the mike stand, getting more angry and annoyed, and now I'm several steps past mellow with a headache and feeling really hacked off.
So no - no recording tonight. Instead I have an evening of shite tv and bubbling rage to contend with. FML.