Diary of an up and coming sociopath

So. I guess a retrospective thing would fit nicely here. I’m going to be honest, I don’t generally care about the changing of years, I don’t get sentinmental about a date changing, nor about the beginning of anything new, today is only slightly different from tomorrow, which is only slightly different from yesterday. The fact that the day, month AND year are changing is nothing but maths. However, it does break your life up into nice little segments.

Ergo, a list, of what 2003 will be remembered for.

Starting a blog. It was something of a whim at the time, as much a challenge as anyhing, because I’ve always been hideously bad at keeping any kind of journal. However, lots of my friends had livejournals and being the geek that I am I wanted a slightly less off-the-shelf solution. Not so much that I went ad wrote my own like some people, but enough to download an opensource blog and use it to justify my purchasing of webhosting. Blogging has become a relatively significant part of my life, but I’ll probably talk more about that in a couple of weeks.

Those accursed Job Interviews. I’d almost forgotten, but the job interviews for Kraft spanned a good few weeks of the start of 2003. I’ll always remember leaving the Kraft offices and wondering just how the hell I was going to get back, when I hadn’t noted down the phone number of the Taxi firm. I became grateful for teflon on that day, walking back towards Banbury town centre in the drizzle, the kind of rain that floats in the air and sticks to your face in a fine sheen, that sneaks up on you and suddenly you’re soaking wet without realising how.

3CR in Leicester with Josh and Sam.I wrestled with it, but I choose this gig as my best of the year, and in a year that includes both Radiohead and Placebo, that’s not something to be sniffed at.

Paul and Relly. While I met Paul and Relly in 2002, I will probably remember 2003 as the year that I became friends with them on a proper level. It takes time to form friendships, I’m not the kind of person who’ll meet you once and be taking bullets for you next time we see each other, but Paul and Relly have become, in 2003, some of my favourite people. Even if Paul did send me a video once which contained the most painful and frankly, mentally scarring thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Many times I have abused their hospitality and to be totally honest, the only times I can think that I enjoy and actively assent to being taken away from my computers and DVDs for longer than a day are when Paul and Relly are on the other end of it.

Ian, Rachel, Debbie and Claire. Likewise, I will remember 2003 as the time when living in Oxford got really good. That’s not to say I hadn’t enjoyed it before, but between getting rid of Claire (Who I hated so much I was unable to even find a link to an example where I dwelled on that hatred.) and Debbie, having Ian move in and Rachel move to Oxford, it finally felt like being in Oxford was actually part of my life, rather than somewhere I went to school. That’s not to say Nikki and Tom weren’t good companions previously, it was just nice to be able to operate witha social circle as big as the one back home, for a change.

Seeing Douglas Coupland. He was just a really cool guy. I hope that should I ever become a successful author, I will one day get to do Readings and make Simpsons jokes in front of a room full of adoring fans.

Terminator 3 at Star City. A very cool evening out where me and some of my oldest, best friends went to Nandos, watched the long-anticipated (if underwhelming) Terminator 3 and then shot some pool, and played some arcade games. I don’t get especially excited at the thought of like, a “lad’s night out” but this is the closest I’ll get to that, and it was cool. It’s always funny to make something small like the release of Terminator 3 into a huge event like that.

That Muse Post. Yes friends, it’s always fun to take shots at the internet, but when the internet fights back it does so in the form of death threats and impeachment of my sexual orientation. Still, it’s always good for a few laughs, and months later it’s still receiving comments.

Gamestesting at Aqua. I avoid paid employment if I can, and occasionally, I find it hard to get. This gamestesting job literally fell into my lap and it’s simultaneously eased my life and made it a bit more interesting.

The Networking Poster. Well, we spat in the face of convention. Not just spat, in fact. We were given free reign to create a poster, and create we did! It was alla good idea until everyone turned up with professionally-printed sheets about Bluetooth, and suddenly our comedy Sneakernet option with fluorescent card, data elephant, and CD stuck to the front seemed like we might’ve gone too far. But no! We passed the module, in a flaming plummet of success! And, as a bonus, shown here on public display for the first time ever - the poster itself, both left (Ian top, Tom bottom) and right! (James Top, George bottom)

37 months of romantic union. Though…romantic is a charitable description of how my affection is displayed. Who of the rest of you has managed so long, huh? Losers.

And that’s 2003 for James. Still, most of you know this already, having had everything transcribed dutifully from day to day. The upshot, of course, is that I’d be hard pressed to tell you what happened in 2002, but I remember 2003 like it was yesterday (and some of it was.)

Coming in 2004? I can’t lie, it’s going to be more of the same. You can, of course, expect highlights to be: Graduation, the necessity of getting a job, and moving into a new house, in an as yet unchosen city. Beyond that, I don’t know. I can’t predict the future with a high degree of certainty. There’s only one way to figure out what the future holds, and that’s to go there. Often in some kind of giant time machine, but in the absence of that option, we’ll just have to take the scenic route and go one millisecond at a time. See you people on the other side.