Who wants to live forever?

      A few weeks ago I did a post on how your behaviour might change if you discovered you were going to die in the very near future, so today I'm going to look at what happens if the inverse is true: what if you will never die? Of course this is impossible as, ignoring any biological issues, it breaks some fundamental physical laws, in particular the law of increasing entropy. However this doesn't mean pondering this hypothetical is pointless, as by examining how our behaviour changes by the removal of death we can examine how the knowledge that we will die affects how we live. Oh, and I got the idea for this post from Radio 4, which might explain the use of painfully middle-class language.

      First let's set the ground rules: you don't age; there might be other immortals in the world but it's far from the norm and while injuries won't kill you you are not invulnerable to harm, i.e. if you get injured you heal at the usual rate (I could discuss amputations and decapitations, but I'll just get bogged down in details and occasional shouts of "There can only be one!", so I'll leave that as an exercise for you to decide). So with these rules in place, how would I live my never-ending life? Firstly, I'd never get married. Not even to another immortal. In fact, especially not to another immortal. The reason being that a marriage is supposed to be permanent and while I have no real moral issue with divorce, I don't see why I'd go into a marriage that is mathematically guaranteed to end in it. I would also probably not get any tattoos, as they create a level of permanence I'd rather not get. A design that might not necessarily be seen as trendy, but acceptable none-the-less right now, will almost certainly be out of place in a few millennia's time. If I were to get a tattoo it would be under my own understanding that I'd almost certainly get it removed at some point. So what do we learn from these two behaviour changes? That things intended to be permanent, such as marriage and tattoos, are much more bearable when we know they aren't really permanent. A decision that's going to be with you for the rest of your life is infinitely easier to make when the rest of your life is only about 60 years, as opposed to all of eternity.
      The other main change is that I might well become more lazy. At the moment I am a barely motivated person and most of that motivation comes from the fact I'm always working against the final deadline. Take away that incentive and I don't if I'd ever feel motivated to do much at all.
      I'd probably also drink more, knowing that there's always a new liver ready to grow. Then again, I don't really like the idea of spending my perpetual years hooked up on dialysis. I might also do a few bank jobs, as 10 years in the nick isn't really much of a deterrent to an immortal such as myself, but perhaps you'd act differently, what with that pesky conscience of yours.

24 hours

      People often ask me what I'd do if I found out I only had 24 hours left to live. Actually, that's a lie. No one has ever asked me that. But people ask each other that so it's believable that someone might have asked me at some point, so I felt it would be a nice opening, but it kind of fell apart.
      But yeah, 24 hours to live. I guess the first question is what time is it when you find out? Because if you got up at 5am and you find out at 11pm, you're going to want some sleep so you're not all grouchy on your last day. You've then got to decide the exact amount of time you feel is appropriate. Do you enjoy you last ever lie-in, or do you have a nap and stay up on coffee? You should probably plan this now, just in case it comes up. You've also got to decide on a last meal and a whole host of other technicalities, but let's ignore them for the moment. What people really want to know is what you'd actually do with your time and I honestly have no idea. So let's look at this another way: what would you do if you discovered that you had a week left to live? A month? A year? 10 years? At what point do you change your behaviour? Because if it's just a limit that's motivating you I can tell you right now you'll almost certainly be dead in 100 years, so why not live like you're going to die? I think maybe we'd all live a little more if there was a legal maximum age and then you get killed. Maybe 100 and that's it. That would at least remove some of the uncertainty, maybe we'd all be a little more motivated. But the fact is we all know we're going to die, we're just too cowardly too act like we know it. Which is good for the reclining chair industry, as if we all lived like there was no tomorrow they'd be out of business straight away.

Potentially changing this title. (But if you're reading this, I guess not)

      Okay, I have a vague idea for a post, but it's not really developed yet, so we'll see where it goes. Also, I don't have a title yet. Anyway, remember how I said I wasn't going to post about finishing school? Well, I lied. Kind of. I'm not actually going to write about leaving school, but it's going to be relevant to it. I think you're just going to have to bear with me for this one.

      So it recently dawned on me that as you go through life you lose contact with a lot of people, but you know about the same amount of people throughout. So this means that at some point there will be more people who remember you than people who still know you. Now this would probably be a mildly passable post if I had actually thought of a reason why this is significant, but alas I haven't, so I'll just throw together some rubbish.

      The significance of this is clear, as we exist as a collective conscious entity the way we are perceived to exist is connected to how we actually exist. In much the same way someone who has died is often considered to still live in the minds of those they knew, we live in the minds of those who knew us, even when we are actually still alive.

      Okay, that was just poor. It sounds a little like I'm trying to start a cult. Anyway, it's summer now and I have nothing to do for six weeks, so I might be able to write some good posts. I wouldn't hold your breath though.

Characters

"All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players"

William Shakespeare, As You Like It 


      Quotes at the beginning of my posts make me look cultured, right? Even if it is one of the most quoted lines from any play.
      Either way I'm keeping the quote there as it relates to what I'm going to write about and I never know how to write the intros to these things. As old Bill says, the world is a stage, but what he fails to say is who the main character is. Think about your life and who you think the main character is. It's probably pretty obvious, even if you deny thinking it. The main character is you. Of course it's you, why else would you bother being you? You are the single most important person in the universe, everything that happens is either part of your story or part of the background. You probably don't truly believe this (because that would make you a megalomaniac) but there's a good chance you have at some point, on some level, suspected that it might be the case. And if you've watched The Truman Show it's almost a guarantee that you've wondered if you were part of your own little "Your Name Here Show".
      If you're like me you might occasionally take this wonderment a bit further and start to live your life like it's an American sitcom, making jokes that would only ever be funny to an external observer and occasionally pausing after saying something funny to let the imaginary laugh track die down. But enough about my somewhat concerning delusions, that's not what this post is about. It's about, like everything else in this universe, you. The thing is, as amazing and complex as you are, you probably aren't the most important thing in the lives of everyone you know. They are too busy being their own main characters.
      This brings me to quote number two, "You'll worry less about what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do." said by David Foster Wallace. (Maybe. It's hard to find out exactly who said this, but he'll do. I've found about four other possible people who might have said this.) You see, when you are from your own perspective the main person in the universe it means there is little time for thinking about other people. That's not to say people don't see you as important, it just means they probably won't analyse you anywhere near as much as you think they would.
      As my deadline comes close I'd like to leave you with an exercise: talk to someone as though they are the main character in a play, as though everything was about them. You might be surprised at the insight you get into them, and people in general.

2010

So another year has come to an end, the globe has returned to the same position it was at the start (relative to the sun at least), the seasons have looped around and a large number of people have bought 12 pictures of Cliff Richard with 365 boxes and numbers. So what has 2010 brought to me? Let's have a look, in categorised list form. To be honest I haven't really thought about how dull this will be to read, but that doesn't matter. Because I'm not the one reading it.

1. Music
   In the last year I have become much more open to a large number of genres, including jazz, techno, dance, trance, classical, folk, indie and a whole bunch of other stuff. I've also been to several gigs, the two which stand out to me being Gogol Bordello and the Rage Against The Machine free concert in June, which was the night before a maths exam, which brings me to my next point:
   
2. Academics
   I completed most of my GCSE's and started a couple of A Levels this year, as well as leaving compulsory education. During the year I also spent most the year being an all round smart guy. As well as pretentious.
   
3. Appearance
   This year has also seen a general move in the ridiculousness of my appearance away from my clothes (stopped the whole four jackets at once with a tie thing) into a concentrated look of idiocy growing from my face in the form of a slightly ginger beard and moustache which practically screams "I'm 16 but I think my facial hair makes me look like I'm 25, but it actually just makes me look like I'm practising to be a crazy homeless guy". I've also got glasses and to quote one of my critics "Most people look smarter in glasses, but you look less intelligent in them." In one of my slightly stranger days I dressed fully as a woman and went to prom. I totally looked fabulous.
   
4. Social Life
   Urm, no.
   
5. Useful Contributions to the World
   Nothing to see here, move along.
   
6. World Sporting Championships Won
   Oh come on, this one's just not fair. Why the hell would I have won any world sporting championships?
   
7. Evil Villains Defeated
   Ah, screw it. Yeah, sure, I defeated loads of evil villains this year.
   
8. Trees Swallowed
   What? This one doesn't even make sense.
   
9. Pointless Pursuits
   Finally, something I excel at. This year has claim to be my most pointless yet, especially since I discovered Reddit and losing several whole days to it. I went 61 hours without sleep followed by 27 hours in bed, I spent about an hour trying to tear a small phone book in two (I succeeded, because I'm just that manly. Well, I'm that manly if you wait for an hour. I guess that's not manly at all), I spent a large amount of time considering the philosophy of pac-man (must write a sequel at some point), spent days playing a repetitive game until I got on the leader board (play here and try to beat me, currently at 18) and generally wasting time. On the subject of pointless pursuits let's look at the final category.
   
10. Blogging
    Yes, my blog is in the top 10 things I did this year, which is kind of depressing. More importantly though is the fact that, at the end of this sentence, I will have completed my New Year's resolution of a blog post a week, though this has kind of decreased the average quality of my blog which I will address next week, but anyway, see you in 2011, bye.

The point of careers

In less than a month I shall be 17. This comes as quite a shock to me, as I am sure I am yet to become a 12 year old but soon I shall be old enough to drive.
As a slightly different way of looking at my current age I worked out that based on the percentage of my life I've got through (based on average life expectancy) if my life was Die Hard I would be about 26 minutes into it, just where Hans is listing facts about Mr.Takagi. This means I've got quite a bit of the film left to go, with all the best bits still to come. And, if Die Hard is anything to go by, there's still a lot of shooting and blowing stuff up left in my life.
And, just as John McClane had to decide how best to rid the Nakatomi Plaza of terrorists, I have to decide what I want to do with my life (I'm not sure how long I'm going to run with the Die Hard metaphor). Specifically at this time I'm looking at the different possible careers I might go into. Instead of boring you with the details of all possible career paths (if you want that you can read the 3 posts I did on the arts, the sciences and philosophy. It should be noted my feelings towards these fields change with time), instead I'm going to look at what the drive behind a career choice should be.
Of course most people already know that they should try and do something they want to do and not something they need to do and that their career choices should be motivated by passion, not money. However, it normally doesn't turn out this way. You might try and rob a large corporation, but in the end you just get shot out of building by some cop (you probably thought I'd stopped that metaphor, didn't you?). What went wrong? Life. When you come out of university and you've got very little money that dream of being an artist seems like something you'll just wait for a few months to do while you get enough money together by doing some more steady work. Then one day you realise it's 20 years later and your easel is gathering dust in the garage.
The thing is, people spend so long making sure that they stay alive that they often forget to live. Perhaps living with the jungle people in South America isn't a practical idea for you (it might be, depending on how many jungle people you know) but if you can get a job that you're passionate about then you can at least know that when it comes to the end you'll be able to look back and think that you did it your way.

Or not, you know. I'm not really in a position to judge as I'll probably end up being like that artist with the dusty canvas. But hey, at least when I'm older I'll be able to look back on my blog and think "What an idealist moron, such a cliché teenager." in the brief minutes I get to think in my soulless, life-sucking corporate career.
For further musings on this subject listen to Time by Pink Floyd. It gave me a mid-life crisis when I was 12. In fact, listen to all of Dark Side of the Moon.

Anyway, it's less than a week until Christmas and my last post of the year, which might be on Christmas Eve, if I get round to it. Of course I do have to watch the film I watch the every Christmas Eve, the greatest Christmas film ever made. I speak, of course, of Die Hard.

Summer's end

So summer has finished. You may remember me writing a post at the beginning of summer, which went a little something like this.
So what have I accomplished this summer? Well I went 61 hours without sleep, followed by 27 hours with just sleep, I got my GCSE results and I wrote about shoelaces (which, by the way, lead to a response from the worlds' leading expert on the subject, Ian Fieggen. Contrary to the impression you might have got from my post, Ian actually seems like a pretty cool guy. If you do need any information about shoelaces then his website is the definitive resource on the subject. Anyway, I'll move on now, before I start seeming creepy.)
Anyway, I basically did nothing with my summer, as I expected. You might notice that I'm posting this on Saturday instead of Sunday. The reason for this is that I don't want to have to be doing my blog tomorrow night as I have English coursework due in on Monday. Yes, I've done so little these last six weeks that I haven't even managed to start work on my coursework. I hope my English teacher doesn't read my blog (it seems unlikely that she does.). It shouldn't be hard though, I've only got to write about 6 pages on some poems that I mostly haven't read. But when I put my mind to something like this, it shouldn't take me too long. Though it has taken me nearly an hour to write this post so far.
Wow, that was a bit of a pointless ramble, wasn't it?
What I have done is watch the first season of How I Met Your Mother about 5 times. Of course I don't like it, much too produced and American sit-comy for me. *cough*
On the social side of things, I failed to do almost anything social. In total I did one thing which could definitely be considered social. I haven't had a proper conversation with anyone outside of my family for over two weeks. Though I did talk to someone since then, in a a "Hi, how have you been?" "Fine" capacity. This was at a small, one day music festival, which is something else I did. I went.
So that was my summer, at least most of it. Now school again.

Also, did anyone else find this post really boring? I hate personal blogs. Hopefully I'll have a more interesting blog post up next week.

Perception

You might notice that I'm writing this on Thursday (Friday morning actually. And that's only if I finish it now, otherwise ignore this intro. Because I can't remove it as I still can't find an internet rubber.) instead of the regular Sunday, with 3 minutes to midnight. This is because I won't be able to blog on Sunday as I will be in London (heading to Luton) having watched rage against the machine play their celebration gig. Not to rub it in if you didn't get tickets. The flipside of this is that the next day I have a maths exam, so must drive from Luton to Norfolk. Mercifully the exam is in the afternoon, so I should have some time to get my head together first.

I've kind of forgotten what the post is to be about.

Ah yes, perception. Specifically why you sometimes don't notice something or someone that you see everyday until one day that suddenly changes. For example I am driven to school each day. As I have mentioned in a previous blog post that I posted a long long time ago, I went to a mainstream high school for year 7, before changing school. Since year 10 my driver has picked up a girl who lives very close to the school I used to go to. After a bit over a year of going this way I saw someone standing on a traffic island who I was sure went to my old school. Sure enough (sure enough? That must be the first time anyone under 40 has used that phrase) she had left me a message on facebook (do you really leave messages on facebook? It just feels much more of a real world thing. I should stop abusing brackets, perhaps start using footnotes) asking whether or not she had seen me drive past a traffic island. It transpires (I could just be using an internet thesaurus to make myself sound smart and you'd never know. I'm actually going to do that for the rest of the sentence) that ourselves had twain been appearing in affecting xerox abode by breathtaking aforementioned age each one academy astronomical day as a age after realising. (Or, in English "that we had both been at the same place at the same time every school day for a year without realising". Remind me to never do that again) The interesting thing here is that we both noticed each other on the exact same day.

Another less interesting but shorter example is that I never noticed that we had curtains in our toilet room until they were shut.

So let's examine the reasons for suddenly noticing something. To do this I'm going to break it down and simplify the question (though it probably won't come out as simple). First lets make the assumption that an outcome will remain the same unless one of its contributors changes. The contributors here are the item, person, journey or other being observed and you the observer. In the case of the toilet curtains the item changed. Normally the curtains are always open so I can continue my day without noticing them as I have no need to interact with them and they are always the same, so fit with the image of the toilet room that I have subconsciously built so that I know where I am (incidentally this is the same image in your head that means if you opened the door and narnia was there you'd find it odd). One day the curtains are closed, the room no longer fits in with the image in my head so I notice it. This is one of the ways you can notice something you've never noticed before and to be honest is a tad dull.

So onto the more interesting way. If we go back to the contributors to the outcome we can see we've already covered the item changing. So we can now move onto the observer, you, changing. We are all changing all the time, even reading this post will irreversibly change who you are. As you change the way you perceive the world around you changes too. So when you change you notice new things, things that have been staring you in the face for years but you've never noticed.

Noticing new things can change you, again giving you new perception. This new perception will allow you to notice more things you've never noticed, which will change you, offering new perception on the world, etcetera, slowly changing the world you know, but not by replacing the things you are aware of, but by adding new things, expanding the way you see the world.

However, if you fall into a routine of doing the same thing every day, although you will continue to change it will be much slower than if you vary your life, doing things you haven't done before and seeing things you haven't seen before.

So take a different route occasionally, catch the wrong bus and most importantly, pay attention to the world around you.


Forgot to mention, props to Madeleine (aka traffic island girl) for helping me come up with this idea

Changes

Everyone changes. It's a fact of life. Experiences, thoughts, dreams, lessons and just time alone will change anyone. But I've changed quite a lot, which I guess is a tad ironic considering that one of the key points of autism is a dislike of change. I'd guess that anyone from any one stage of my life, such as primary school, my first secondary school or my current school, wouldn't be able to recognise me from any other stage.

So I thought I'd see exactly how and how much I've changed and give everyone else a glimpse at the person I once was and the person I am today. I'm going to do this by interviewing people from the various schools and providing the answers highlights and summaries. I may edit some quotes for the sake of privacy but I will at no point edit anything to distort peoples opinions or thoughts about me.

It only makes sense to start with people from my primary school. So I'll do that.
The first person I ask surprises me with his answer. His response was "you were the funny one, who did all the crazzy (sic) stuff". This was surprising because the way I remember it I was a tad more psychotic than that. Intrigued I ask for examples and he comes up with "throwing a chair at [Name]" and "pushing a table at mrs [Name, my head teacher]" and here I was thinking that I was just mistaken about my past. I may just have been mistaken about the sanity of the interviewee.
The second person I asked came up with "umm well you threw a chair at me , soo.. i found you quite scary?". Just as a point this isn't the same person mentioned by the first person. It's going well, I've asked two people and already got two references to throwing chairs.

Now seems like a good time to introduce a new source, my statement of special educational needs from 2005. This is a confidential, private and highly personal official document outlining my needs and is only to be shown to officials of schools and councils. Let's take a look.

Starts off well: "Algar's verbal reasoning and thinking skills far exceed his chronological age.", "has a good grasp of numbers", " has a good understanding of general knowledge" and "His auditory short-term memory skills are two years above his chronological age". So I was smart. Things take a little dip with "Spelling and sight vocabulary are poor and there are indications of specific literacy difficulties". After this was written I was diagnosed with dyslexia.

Anyway, it then goes onto emotional, behaviour and social, the real dirt. It starts "Algar presents as a tough, unsympathetic child, but internally he is a child who finds it extremely hard to understand others.". Wow, I was pretty messed up it would seem. It continues "Algar has expressed suicidal thoughts at home", "Algar is verbally bullied at school" and "Algar is aware of his social difficulties and will compound these by isolating himself from other children." so yeah, pretty messed up is the feeling I'm getting. It also says about my independence "Algar relies on adults to ensure his safety and help him cope both at school and home".

So that's what I was like at primary school, now for what I was like for the year I spent in mainstream high school.

The first interviewee said "I think from what i knew, you were fairly quite (sic), but funny aswell (sic). Spent lots of times having good random conversations about things which is always a good thing, so generally a cool person [smiley]" so I seem to be doing quite well. I then ask for any other thoughts, to which he replies "you were quite scary when you got angry....your attempt to hack [Name] with your fountain pen springs to mind [smiley]" OK, so not quite as good. But I think I've found a small trend of people laughing or smiling after describing my acts of violence.

The next person I asked gave very good insight. His answer was "You were eccentric. You also seemed really intelligent and you were always good at arguments. You also fought very well [smiley] You were also quite lonely sometimes, but it was almost as if it were by choice.". Wow. That's pretty good especially that last sentence. I should point out that the fighting wasn't just random acts of aggression, we had little boxing matches at breaktime sometimes. I remember one time when I took on two people at once only using one hand and won. But I think that the statement about being lonely by choice echoes the general feeling I'm getting from these interviews of people from this school about being a withdrawn loner. He went on to say that I was "very strong headed".

The third person I asked said "you seemed to be always plotting yet unique And you always used to be looking suspicious But you always had something interesting to say". Again it feels like he was an observer of me more than someone who hanged out with me. This just strengthens the outsider loner image, like I was in a world of my own.

The fourth person described it the most like how I remember it so far with "Hmm, I'd say violently, slightly psychotic but likeable (sic) and friendly [smiley]", OK so a bit of a strange combination, but strange seems to have been my largest export back then. He went on to say "You seem'd to be fairly intelligent". I'm getting a lot of people saying I'm smart. Yay me.

The fifth person, who I didn't like much and I don't think he thought much of himself as when I first talked to him on MSN a couple of years later the first thing he said was "I'm not a dick anymore :)", said of me "You were a (sic) quite quiet, a bit off (sic) an odd one to be honest. and got angry easily" which fits in with what we've heard so far. He then said I was "quite clever, you were pretty cool most of the time". See, I really am smart. Even if he only said I was quite clever.

So the students views of me here seems to be simultaneously cool/funny/smart/loner/psychotic madman. So that's a nice combination. So let's see what the staff thought of me.

I have the views of the head of the Learning support. They're quite colourful. Just some background information on this, when this was written my parents and the school had both agreed that the school wasn't right for me, and this document was used to try and convince authorities to move me. Whether this means that she exaggerated I can't say for sure. But regardless the things she said are still of value here. She starts off with "Initially Algar presents as a very anxious child who constantly looks towards the adults around him for direction and support.", "He can be very rude and confrontational" (most of this was actually their misunderstandings, I was never as they claimed purposefully rude. Well, at least not most of the time.), "I think Algar manipulates situations he is in, for example if he does something wrong that he knows that he should be punished for he is starting to initiate evasive action by sulking, becoming physical towards property and then bursting into tears". This is actually total crap. In fact, it was this kind of misunderstanding that lead me to try and kill myself. I can remember on one occasion being really stressed out about something, I can't remember what, and got really upset eventually going in to a sort of catatonic state, not moving for what I think was about half an hour. During this time I heard two LSA's (Learning Support Assistants, you know, the people who are supposed to help me) talking about me, with no regard for the fact that I was there. They said something to the effect of "He was acting really upset earlier, now he seems fine. It's just an act.". Yeah. I was fine. Except for the not moving. The worst thing you can do in a situation with an emotionally unstable person is accuse them of lying. Just so we have some perspective on this keep in mind that this kind of thing very nearly killed me. Because of things like this I might not have been alive today. It's important to remember that the reason I'm alive today is not that I never tried to commit suicide, I did, but because on the occasion that I got closest to doing so my brother saved me. In a way, the staff were partly responsible for me coming within minutes of death. But I don't blame them. I blame their misunderstanding and ignorance to my needs, which they couldn't really be expected to understand.

Anyway the rest of the document is mostly the same but a couple of key points include where she describes my mind as "disturbed" and where she says "I am also concerned that Algar may be manifesting some signs of paranoia or psychosis.". They checked. I wasn't. Not only did I not have either of these conditions, I also had none of the symptoms. Which kind of shows how much she knew what she was talking about.

The rest of the document includes a school GREENIE (a slip sent from one member of staff to another, generally about a students behaviour) about the time I had seriously blood shot eyes following a suicide attempt, a message from my textiles teacher (where she totally misunderstood my whimsical comments for horrific, brutal and psychotic ramblings of a madman. It happens to us all at some point or other.), notes from both my one to one's, my thoughts of the situation scribed by an LSA, highlights from my home school book (with five references to stress related illness, four mentions of wanting to die and two mentions of attempted suicide. It should be remembered that this is only from five months and doesn't even include all of the instances from those five months. It also includes my favourite entry "26/09/05 - Agitated and talking about wanting to die. Had to be removed from history." When they resort to time travel to completely remove your presence from history, you can tell they don't want you there) and a point-by-point explanation of how I fit in with the every child matters agenda.

So that's what I was like at my second school. Now for my current school, and what I'm like today.

I've been at my current school for nearly three years and I've changed a lot in that time, but It's been a slow change and virtually everyone who knew me at the beginning of it still knows me now, so it makes sense to focus on what I'm like today. However because there aren't many people who know me at my current school it may be more difficult getting interviews, but I'll try.

The first person I ask says that I'm "Very intelligent, you've got quite a hard exterior - as in, you don't seem to be affected by much, you think you're right at lot of the time (although to be fair, you usually are) you seem to be really moody when you come into school in the morning, but you're usually not actually moody at all." "You're good at containing your emotions, i.e things like, er, not liking [Name, I wonder if he'll work out who I'm talking about] for example...you've not really had any proper arguments or falling outs with him" "you're tolerant" "A bit weird, in the good way" "You seem to have a lot of self confidence, which is good" "and you can be very interesting". So what appears to be a positive opinion of me by someone who actually knows me. Things like "You seem to have a lot of self confidence", You're good at containing your emotions" and "you're tolerant" are a far cry from what we've seen so far. In fact, they're the exact opposite.

The second person was slightly less positive with "At time's you can be like really nice to get along with and be really sociable and at other times you can be like a knob! by talking way to much and getting on peoples nerves! alot! and you talk way to much! and i personaly (sic) think u should have your hair cut" and "you should learn to play the guitar". Well, he seems nice. Just in case you're wondering, this is the person mentioned by the previous interviewee (you know, not liking [Name]), so yeah, tolerant is probably a good way of describing it.

The next source is my annual review from March 2008, the one from last year. I would have included my most recent review, but I couldn't find it. So just remember that this is excluding a year of change, but it should still be relevant.

It includes a review of me by my teacher, saying "He is fully aware that he easily becomes stressed and will listen when he needs guidance. He is a positive role model in the class", "There are still occasions when he can become argumentative but this is decreasing as he takes more time to consider the whole situation or problem and not just one point. He demonstrates consistently good behaviour and is a pleasure to teach.". So that's good. Consistently good behaviour. There aren't that many people who can boast that, and even fewer who used to be violent psychopaths. I can't fully remember what my last review said, but I think it was completely positive. Just so we're clear this doesn't mean I'm any saner. I'm completely crazy. But in a nice, charming sort of way.

So that's that. How I've changed over the course of my life. What started out as a simple blog post, albeit an ambitious one, has turned into the best insight into my mind anyone has ever had. You must draw your own conclusions from this. All I can say is that if you think you knew me, if you think you know me, if you think you know what I've been through or if you think you know the first thing about me, I can only leave you with one final statement.

You're wrong.