A Failure at the School of Life

Well. I say that, but I haven't really had a day at all. For some unknown reason, that will probably stay that way, I went to sleep at 5.30am on Saturday night. I didn't go out. I stayed in and did nothing in particular, surprise surprise, but just didn't feel tired. In hindsight, it was an awful decision. In my previous experiences of, "not feeling tired", if I try and go to sleep, I don't. I just lay there. Looking up at the black ceiling or the pale blue wall for hours on end, before I start to feel tired.

But I couldn't sleep for the desired amount of hours because I had to get up for football at 9am. A task these days that I look forward to, mainly because there is nothing else to look forward to, but, needless to say, I didn't want to. There were a few reasons for this.

1) I had only had roughly 3 hours sleep, and seeing as I am 90% of the way to becoming a fully-fledged sleep monster, this isn't good.

2) I had gone to sleep, 3 hours previously, feeling fairly tired, knowing I was not going to be the best person to talk to in the morning. What I didn't know is that I'd wake up with a vicious earache and subsequent blockness of my whole head, making me feel far worse.

And 3) We were playing in an important cup quarter-final, against a team renound for their aggressive and needless ability to bully teams off the park.

We had lost to these bunch of rhinos 3-1 in the league earlier in the season, basically because we folded under their ability to kick the living shit out of us. Today, we won 5-4 after extra time, a result that delighted the whole team after a rough and tumble 120 minutes of hard graft. It was considered a, "great team performance, where everyone had put in the hard yards".

And then we come to me. I felt awful. I didn't want to be there. By the time we started at 10.30, my right ear was in dreadful pain, my head was spinning and I felt like I was going to throw up at any moment. For once, my enthusiasm for the game had not kicked in and for the first 20 minutes, in which we went 2-0 down, I resembled a stroppy child who had been forced to go in goal. I mean, I tried, but my ability to do anything was stretched. Knowing I was going to have to referee later made me feel worse, if at all possible, and I was nowhere. The first goal had me beaten at my near post, the cardinal sin for any goalkeeper, and the 2nd, I was beaten as I needlessly rushed out of goal. I have no idea why I did it, it just felt like the right thing to do. It clearly wasn't. We went into the half-time interval, (apologies for the Superbowl type talk), 2-1 down, as we scored a penalty just before the whistle. Needless to say, the Rhinos went spare at the decision, with the referee cowering under their complaints.

At half-time, I made a decision. The manager of the team I was refereeing was there watching, as he also plays for us, but was "cup-tied" today. I told him I couldn't possibly referee this afternoon, as standing in goal was making me exhausted. He had no choice but to accept it.

This made me feel a tiny bit better. I only had to survive an extra 45 minutes and then I could go home.. Sort of. I can't even remember what the sequence of goals were, but it ended up 3-3 at the full-time whistle. Their 3rd goal incidentally, resembled the Ronaldinho free-kick that strangely beat David Seaman in the Quarter-Final of the 2002 World Cup. Yeah, that one. It was just one of those days. So, I had to survive an extra 30 minutes, and despite thinking that I would give anything, even a loss, just to go home now, I did put in a slightly better performance in extra time. We went 5-3 up, and then I made a ridiculous double save, somehow, which had my team-mates looking at me in a way that suggested, "You've been shit all day, but where the HELL did that come from?!"

But, given I was having a dreadful morning, they scored from the resulting corner, so it ultimately meant nothing. So, 5-4, but the team we were playing were absolutely spent. They're called 'Old Boys', and despite being a good footballing side, their title of being "old", meant they're fitness wasn't up to ours. We got awarded a 3rd penalty of the match in the last minute, where the defender should really have been red-carded, but wasn't, and Arran, (on a hat-trick of penalties), hit the post. But it didn't matter. The final whistle went and I let out a sigh of relief.

So, I drove home. Thankfully knowing I could go straight to bed, but not until Mother Mitten had another go at me for, "giving up too easily", blahdy blahdy blah. I felt annoyed, but the feeling of my head exploding and tiredness meant I just didn't care. I went straight to sleep.

For the first hour, I just lay there. Thinking about if I was going to be a failure at the school of life. I thought about it. When you're from the ages of 0 to 16, life is fine. Easy. After 16 though, life is just one big problem. From 16 to 18, you get majorly stressed out by "life-changing" exams and what you think your peers think of you, whilst spending hours draped over mountains of books as you try and work towards your desired future. From 18-22, you're either at work, being looked down upon because of your age, and earning a crap wage to work your way up the ladder or you're at university, slaving over more books, trying to scrape enough money to buy your food whilst also trying to be sociable enough to not be seen as a social outcast, still working towards the "Golden Future". When you leave university, at 22 or 23, you spend the next few years trying to find work, which at the moment is nion impossible, and trying to earn enough money to pay rent on your newly-acquired flat, (because your parents want freedom) plus the bills, food, probably a car and possibly the girl or guy you've met in a bar somewhere, whilst also contemplating that you've got to pay back the student debts, (which most people that age, are), leaving no money for yourself to do the things you want unless you want even more debt to pay back in the future. The only thing you do is constantly work, work, work, so you can keep your head above water. A few years down the line, you've possibly spent more money on the flash wedding your partner wants and there is also a couple of kids on the way. Either that, or you're on your own, with no one to talk and sitting on your laptop, looking at Eastern European girls. This means, you've still got to pay rent on the flat, or if you've got a house, the mortgage, the food, bills, car and now the expensive necessities for a baby or 2, and you're having to start paying back the student debts because you're now old enough, and therefore earn enough, to start paying back Cameron and his cronies. At 30, the kids are old enough to start asking for sweets and toys and birthdays and Christmas and money to go to a party, so any spare money you have has gone to them, leaving you stuck indoors watching 'Silent Witness'. At 40, the kids are 15, 16, 17 and are complaining to you that they are not liked by anyone and you can't get a moments rest because they are always fighting or passing out in the street because of gang crime or alcohol, and, despite paying back all of the student debts, you are still paying for a mortgage, the car, a holiday, food and bills. By the time, you're 45, your life looks as if it may be turning out good. The kids have gone, the mortgage is paid off, despite needing food and paying ever-increasing bills and the car to pay for, but suddenly your Mum is now too old to look after herself, so you are now implied to look after them, so you are back at square one. By the time you're free of everything, you're the darker side of 50 and you are starting to think about getting old yourself, although I concede, you are probably still young enough to start enjoying life a bit more. This is until you reach 70 plus, where you start to feel the effects of age, and you are starting to need the help of your own children, bossing you around and feeling like they have to look after you, enduring the joint-ruining, bone-disappearing, mind-numbing diseases that usually accompany old age, until you eventually die in a badly-run NHS hospital with tubes in your nose and a grey face.

Sorry. It's true. Most of your life is spent worrying and being in money trouble and what's the point in that? The only times I can see where your life is good is from the ages of 0 to 16, (where the first 10 years of that, you are too young to realise that you are eventually going to get old), and from the ages of 50 to 70, where life could be concieved as good, if you are lucky enough to stay out of trouble, and you have been very, very, very wise with your spending. Otherwise, it's just spent being stressed. People even admit that good things, like going on holiday, is stressful, so why do it?! This morning, after being shouted at by Mother Mitten, and her subsequent favourite phrase, "Well, that's life!" I just thought, "Why am I even bothering with it?" Even if I do get out of the mess I'm in at the moment, chances are, I'm just going to walk in to many more problems, until I reach, what I call, the "Golden Years", until I get too old to enjoy anything and die with half of your mind missing. If this is indeed life, then why bother living it?

You know that thing. The thing about whether you see a half-full glass or a half-empty one? You know what I see at the moment? An empty one.

You're all going to say, "but you've got university coming up", and I do. You're right. But, despite trying to convince myself that I am 100% certain I want to go. I'm not. Sorry, I'm not. I'm fairly convinced that this is what I want to do, and I imagine that I will be a changed man when I go, but, in reality, I might not be. I may just go there, end up like I always have been, except with nothing to fall back on. I feel like I have no other choice but to take the massive gamble. And if that fails, do you know what I'm going to do? Take the first plane to Switzerland.

It might be seen as being extremely pessmistic, and yes, maybe it is. But I'm sitting here at 3.30am, completely awake, wondering how the hell I'm going to survive all of the above if my Mum is right.

And remember, your parents are always right.



P.S: This blog will soon have a few adverts lighting up the right hand side of the screen. If you click on them, I get money. Simples. And if I have money, I will be able to do things, and you won't have to read my moaning hardly at all! Incentive surely?