A(nother) New Low

My can do attitude about how this year was going to go lasted all up until the first Friday of the month. I've spent the last few days ensconsed in internet trawls through blogs, myspace conversations between people I don't know nor will I ever, and (most depressingly of all) obsessively looking at facebook photos of people on my friends list and then looking at the photos on my profile and deciding whether my life, as it is pictorially shown, compares favourably or less so with these people. The way this would work is by going through every photo on person X's profile, going back to my profile and flicking through all of MY photos, the repeating the process for person Y, person Z, and person infinity squared (you may have noted that, coincidently, everyone I know on facebook has kind of a Prisoner themed name. I hadn't thought about it before but yeah, I guess that is pretty weird). I want to state, for the record, I am neither proud nor gladdened that I indulged in this curious brand of post-modern self-obsession. I offer no defense for my addictive behaviour. I know it's sick and wrong and, unlike... say, sex or drug addiction, there's not even any fun to be gleaned out of it at the beginning before it all goes horribly awry ('Dude, remember when we could just look at facebook pictures and enjoy the rush of judging other people without them ever knowing it... Those halcyon days when we could look at drunk people and read the amusingly pithy comments their friends left or feel superior to stupid people trying to be funny and ruining it by using inappropriate caps and too many exclamation marks? Now I have to look at least 70 pictures a day or I feel like I can't even function. I think I'm going to lose my wife and kids soon man! WHERE WILL IT END?!'). There are plenty of ways of judging yourself and your worth, none of the judgments made where you pit yourself directly against other's generally lead to a happy place (unless you're Paris Hilton and you only make your judgments based on how thin, blonde, tanned, and rich you are compared to the rest of the world's inhabitants - as those are the value levels of contentment most of us are judged on she wouldn't be a fool to do so - in which case I expect she bounces out of her bed made from endangered trees in the Amazonian forest and put together with the blood, sweat, and tears of oppressed third-worlders at 11:57 every morning feeling like Empress of the World to start another day of concentrating on how much better she and her life is, than everyone else's), but facebook comparisons; where we are only letting people see a certain slither of who we are and what we do (added to which; Sazz - IT'S FUCKING FACEBOOK) is probably not the way forward. Especially as I felt a bit lacking. The funny thing was though that I found once you race through a chunk of your life in snapshot form enough times you start to be able to look at yourself dispassionately. The times where I know how miserable I was, or uncomfortable in the situation, or I was thinking 'bad thoughts' and yet there I am smiling my dumbass 'sideways-D' shaped smile looking to all the world the very essence of all that is fun and frolic-y. Having said that, the only profound thing I discovered was that it seemed like the happier I know I was at certain points, the thinner my face looks. Whether this is due to my predilectation for eating my pain away or my head just naturally bloats the more unhappiness I carry around I'm not sure (although I secretly suspect option B may be it) but either way, it surely warrants at least some scientific investigation.

Finally, I have a little plea to make. I had a very interesting conversation with a person yesterday who is a 'relationshipper' and confirmed a little about what I already knew about how very differently we view the world. If you are staunchly single or love to be in love I would really like to interview you... I'm just intrigued by how differently these types of people tick; do you stick it out in a toxic relationship just so you have someone warm to cuddle at night or do you run screaming through the front door at the first sign of trouble (my preferred method of dealing with issues)? What do you think of the people who inhabit the world on the other side of the fence from you? Pity, curiosity, jealousy, disgust? Are relationshippers too afraid of being alone? Are singletons just kidding themselves that they can be happy without a partner? How do you feel people view you and your relationship status? If you're happy to discuss these intensely private topics and fancy a thorough mind probing from a sarcastic, slightly deficient writer, then please email me. This will either be used for a short story I'm working on or for a magazine article I may try and tout around to get myself published; either way, rest assured names will be changed and all distinguishing features will be blurred.