Now around that time my work life was collapsing in around me, that’s not to say that I was made unemployed, that simply was not the case. In fact it was considerably worse than that, I was spending too much time at work, because I liked it.
Now I’m aware that is not a phrase that will endear me to you with a great deal of sympathy. In no way was I being bullied, pressured or abused, nor was I stressed, working massively outside my comfort zone, or crucially using work as an excuse to make up for any sort of physical deficiency. Far from it. I was in work because I enjoyed it and it facinated me.
When I say my work life was collapsing around me, I perhaps mean that I had collapsed into my work like a hound desperately trying to get at a fox or a 50 year old bald man desperately trying to get the pants of a hopelessly unachieveable 18 year old. It was all of my own doing and was, in one way or another a little tragic.
Unfortunately this of course it worked in quite horrendous combination with the evil of facebook and a couple of other events happening in my life to cataclysmic relationship meltdown.
Now what i said at the time is that it was a mutual breakup, and it was in a way, and what I kidded myself after was that it was something I needed. I said it was my decision, it wasn’t, but again a useful tool to avoid going stir crazy. Now what i realise is that i was dumped gently and although painful at the time it was entirely necessary as I was essentially a pretty appalling boyfriend.
Now this break up was terrible and lingered over me with a suffocating effect for nearly two years, two years of soul searching, regret and the typing of messages begging for forgiveness but never sent, until, thankfully I escaped it by fleeing cities and meeting a girl. However a positive came out of it, as it gave me some time to assess myself and my place in the world and also evaluate how this had happened. How had I moved from a position where to the outside eye I had been in the perfect position to one where I found myself curled on the sofa clinging a tub of chocolate ice cream and sobbing along toLove Actually?
And my conclusion was that it had been facebook.
Facebook had been the catalyst. Facebook had done the damage. Facebook needed to go.
I started to look my closely and cynically at it’s blue crusted pages to see what the truth was behind the perfectly designed ergonomic lines? What was the state of my life? Had I done well or badly in my 25 years? Was I really as happy and well connected as my profile suggested? My profile seems to say I spend my time having fun and partying, so why did I feel quite so hollow?
And so I took my 550+ facebook friends and started analysing…
(To be continued in part 4…)