reshuffle.

The age-old philosophy of 'you can't change the past' is embedded into our subconscious. This is nonsense, however. Of course you can re-write history, but only if you're willing to, and capable of, adapting the past to move it into the present, and subsequently the future. Perhaps your average joe finds it comforting to resign himself to the fact that what's happened, happened; there's nothing he can do about it. I refute the idea that taking solace in such resignation is constructive, or legitimate even. Instead, it encourages a lack of responsibility. If something has occurred and is now over-and-done-with, what's the use of a retrospective outlook? What's the point in 'history', if it's history? But surely, if your past can't influence your future, then why did it happen in the first place? Not that I'm a fully paid up member of the Everything Happens For A Reason fanclub. Nevetheless, a sense of purpose has its place.

Besides, retro seems to be having its day. Maybe it would do us all some good to look back a little bit more.

Cloud Nine.

I had a dream last night. A really, really good one. The kind that you try to force yourself back into the drowsy confines for.

Nightmares are not so hot. I've succumbed to a particularly lucid and recurring one of late which actually resulted in my waking up to a tear-soaked pillow the following morning. Scary stuff. But not really. More the fact that I genuinely felt this episode could finally manifest itself in reality.

And there's nothing you can do about anything that happens during the irritatingly intangible R.E.M state. Annoyingly. Otherwise I might have managed to bag myself that fantastically talented sugar-daddy-come-silver-fox I envisaged last night.

I want the fantasy, dammit.

guilty pleasures

I've started to notice that I have an extremely irrational relationship with the concept of guilt.

I'm not quite sure if I'd be classified as a worrier, but I do seem to feel the effects of stress easily. I also chastise myself for the strangest things. I set myself unorthodox 'goals', and if these are not achieved, I get upset. Sometimes I might even weep at my ineptitude.

When it comes to feeling guilty, any sense of rationality goes right out the proverbial window.

Some people are wracked with unquantifiable amounts of self-reproach if they cheat on their partner; others when they've 'somehow' managed to devour a family-sized chocolate bar in its entirety, in one sitting.

Alcohol consumption has become a recent source of shame on my part. Not because I should be attending AA sessions or anything. But, rather than being innocently rose-tinted, my beer goggles have developed an increasingly green hue. This means that I turn into a jealous, paranoid, generally-not-oh-so-nice individual, with the subsequent effect of feeling like a complete turd the day after the night before.

Finance is also a major source of remorse: those strings can always be tighter on that purse. So much so, that I impose ridiculous spending regulations on myself that are, on occasions, completely unwarranted. And then I'll go and splurge fifty quid on utter crap in some online 'flash sale'. Go figure.

And so it continues. Until I find that spider spinning its web.