I have no idea why I signed up to Twitter, and to this day I’m not really sure why I’m still using it. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoy spewing out little crap nuggets online, but I’m not so sure I should be doing it! I have gone through stages of not using it for months, and other stages of posting daily, even multiple times daily.

Of course the other side to Twitter is following other people, I follow few, but those I do, I love reading their 140 character or less messages.

I would like to say I’m going to try to post better to Twitter in the future, to post less often than I do now and to say more meaningful messages. But let’s face it that’s not going to happen! So here’s to another three years of spewing crap to Twitter!

Here’s some (not so) specially selected tweets from my 700+ archive:

Drunk. And oh so oh so oh so oh so tired….. please give me sleeeeeep!!! PLEASE!!! Falling asleep at my iBook at the moment! 10:54 PM Jun 29th, 2007 via Twitter Tools

I have written to Twitter  whilst drunk many, many times. I would do well to learn not to! Wish my iBook hadn’t broken a little while after this.

Watching six million balloons fly past my window. Very random if you ask me. 1:53 PM Sep 3rd, 2007 via web

Six million is a number I always use if I don’t actually know what the number is. Eg, if you asked me how many JD & cokes I’ve drunk in my life I’d say six million. Unfortunately, I probably have drunk six million JD & cokes!

Bet you can’t guess where I am! Empire State Building! Hell yeah! 12:04 AM Nov 6th, 2007 via txt

Yup. I’m that sad – standing at the top of the Empire State Building and posting to Twitter of all bloody things!

Want to see how small Pumpkin Princess really is? Just look: http://flickr.com/photos/hooofooey/2474605302/ 10:00 PM May 7th, 2008 via web

Gorgeous kitty eventually got to a fairly normal size. I was not happy. She’s  still gorgeous though!

YES! 27 days straight at work are over! Day off tomorrow, yippee! 11:20 PM Aug 28th, 2008 via web

I would never be stupid enough to work that many days ever again.

The best birthday present – being added on Facebook by my two cousins I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to be in contact with for over 13 years! 9:32 PM Mar 22nd, 2009 via web

It’s been lovely having contact with them. Facebook isn’t all bad I guess!

Something ab-sah-tootley awesome has just occurred! Effin’ hell I can hardly believe it! 5:52 PM Jun 11th, 2009 via txt

The tweet after this one showed my unconditional offer to go to uni. A very happy day for me.

http://twitpic.com/92noz – My short hair! Had 6 inches chopped off :-O not had it this length for about 5/6 years. Will take some getting used to. 9:09 PM Jul 2nd, 2009 via TwitPic

I had it cut again a little while after and it still didn’t look short!

Spent the evening painting donuts! Hands are covered in paint! 9:28 PM Jul 23rd, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

Hell yes I’m that cool! (Painting decorations for  a Donut Eating Nerds party – dress as nerds, eat donuts, not the other way round!).

Had a fun evening titled ‘Four Cheesestrings & Energy Nuts’ 10:51 PM Aug 25th, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

Went longboarding (not the surfing type) with my sister. I ate four (four!) Cheesestrings and she eat a bag of energy nuts. I told you, I’m cool (longboarding, not eating like a pig!).

Walking to work for my last ever shift! Unemployment here I come @ 5pm! 7:40 AM Sep 12th, 2009 via Twitter for iPhone

And I’m still unemployed today. Lazy ass student instead!

Rather enjoyed being Action Barbie at an Action Man vs Barbie event last night! Uni has some random themes sometimes… 11:18 AM Oct 21st, 2009 via Echofon

That was just the beginning of all the random fancy dress nights out I’d have!

I’ve been back in England less than 24 hours and I already miss #surfing in #Morocco. #Taghazout is an amazing village! 12:08 PM Mar 29th via mobile web

Went surfing in Morocco for my 21st birthday – the BEST week of my life. Ever.

Just got off the phone to my sister, we were chatting/laughing for over 2 & 1/2 hours and could have continued. I love her SO much! 9:00 PM Apr 29th via Twitter for iPhone from here

Just reading this tweet makes me smile. Sister cried when I told her that I’d written this!

Gotta <3 uni. Spent over 2hrs chatting with male best friend about the future (pretty deeply) WHILST playing with a balloon! Awesome stuff. 12:41 AM May 4th via Twitter for iPhone from here

Seriously, a balloon! Uni has given me many random yet beautiful moments like this one.

I wonder what I’ll be chirping about for the next three years?

Posted from Norwich, England, United Kingdom.

Sunday 25th of May 2008 was a day I knew would eventually come, but dearly wished it not to. You see I was fortunate (in some respects, in others unfortunate) that the deaths of people around me all happened before I turned 3 years old. So I had no memory of what it was, what it felt like and really rather sadly, who the people were that died. (The latter actually used to get me upset as a child). Last year changed all of that.

I’d had a couple of beers Saturday night so woke up on Sunday morning pretty late (10am I think). I hadn’t checked my email since early Saturday evening and so when I checked some time around 11am I had a real shock.

A message from one of my friends who lives down London way (where I used to live) messaged me on Facebook to say that one of our friends had died on Saturday and she wanted me to know.

I’d been terrible at keeping in contact and no one had my mobile number or email address so Facebook was the only possible means of contact at the time. Something I’m not proud of but have changed since.

As anyone would I was… I don’t know, lost? Everyone was writing R.I.P. in their statuses so I did too but then it started to settle in my brain a bit more. That and I was desperate to talk to someone about it, to question it and there just wasn’t anyone there!

Late afternoon-ish time I couldn’t stand to be at home. I couldn’t listen to music. I couldn’t sit down. I couldn’t eat. Nothing felt right. So I went for a walk and looked for anywhere remote enough for me to be left alone. I eventually did find somewhere but it didn’t help. I honestly thought perhaps the whole thing was a joke, how could it be possible? Really?

Anyway I walked home and drank many many beers. When it was 11pm the only phone number I had been able to find on Facebook was rather cruelly, the one belonging to the friend who’d died. I didn’t hesitate. I thought if anyone can tell me the truth surely it’s the friend in question?

I rang but when the other end picked up there was silence. Calling out ‘hello? Hello’ repeatedly to no answer left me to hang up.

Then the number rang me. It was my friend’s mother asking me if I knew the number I was ringing and I said ‘yes… I’ve been told [name here] died… I just didn’t believe it.’ At which point she had to tell me it’s true, bursts out into tears which causes me to do the same. I stammered countless apologies because I felt like a complete and utter fool to make her go through doing that.

I somehow managed to sleep and the next morning the friend that messaged me originally rang me and we chatted for well over an hour. A strange conversation like I’ve never had.

Thankfully I wasn’t due in to go to college that Monday as (rather unthankfully) my final exams had started. At which point I didn’t care about my exams anymore. What did a piece of paper mean compared to the loss of a friend’s life? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Her funeral was two weeks later, on the day of one of my maths exams and I had to fight my college to let me off the exam and travel down to near London. I knew that if I was to have any chance of being able to get through this strangeness, it would have to start with the funeral.

The day of her funeral and wake was… unbelievable. Horrible. Terrifying. Just so effin’ wrong. Just seeing a wooden box being carried… in the hearse… at the crematorium. Uh. Really really awful.

Although technically yesterday was the 1st anniversary, I think today and for the next coming years will be the hardest because it was the day I found out and my feelings and thoughts towards so many things dramatically changed.

I realised that for the whole of my life I had always put education first, before anything. Including before friends. When you’ve had a childhood and teenagehood like mine it’s easily done. But for the past year I’ve switched my priorities. Putting all your efforts into education means nothing if you have no one to share your life with.

The next step for me is to waken up to the fact that her death was suicide. Currently in my head I view it that my friend was taken from this world and not that she took her own life. To think about just what she did do, is something I really can’t face. It would mean being so effin’ angry with her, and angry is not something I do. Especially not on my own.

Will I ever face up to the reality of it? I’m tempted to say I doubt it, but who knows. I have huge difficulties in dealing and realising things that happen around me, as I’ve grown into just accepting whatever happens. I still have yet to face the fact that I moved out of my childhood home and my parents divorced which was some 7/8 years ago.

Maybe someday I’ll find the right guy to spend my life with who’ll be the one to help deal with all of the crap. And if no guy turns up I’ll be more than happy with a cat or two.

Twitter posts from a year ago:

Oh. My. God. Just found out one of my friends committed suicide. I don’t know how to think/feel/act.Should I be doing something?4:25 PM May 25th, 2008 from web

I’m drunk and a mess. I rang my friend’s phone to be told that she did indeed overdose yesterday. I can’t deal with this right now. :’(11:18 PM May 25th, 2008 from web

desperately wishing to be with my friends right now. Why do I live 75 miles away?4:51 PM May 26th, 2008 from web

I can’t do it. I can’t blog about how I’m feeling. This is just too hard.12:06 AM May 28th, 2008 from web

Huge kudos goes to Vixx & Sarah. And Pumpkin Princess of course! (Kitty, Dita).

1. You can start, by failing to think of something for your series entitled Wednesday Weevils, and post some half-nonsense poop about FooFoo’s. Although you did wonder if anyone knew about any cool photos sites besides Flickr, it really wasn’t a real Wednesday Weevil. In the end, you managed to upgrade your Flickr account so the 200 photos maximum has vamooshed.
2. You can then follow up that post, with a completely pointless and stupid entry written in a pirate accent, that simply celebrates the smiley on the Internet.
3. A few posts fall in, apologizing for lack of time. Even some fiction-sounding material works it’s way in.
4. Then you jet off to the grand US of A.
5. Whilst you manage two twitter updates (1, 2) during this trip, they mark the true beginning of the full-on Hibernation Period.

What happened, you ask, during this Hibernation? The gathering of acorns? The deep-sleep slowly fueled by thick layers of insulating fat? Well… here’s what might have taken place, immediately after the return to gloomy England.

1. You’ve had such a brilliant time abroad, your last night was filled with tears. You yearn to stay and live there, once again. Your life in England cannot compete with the hope the two week vacation put unknowingly in your heart. You, along with your sister and father all get drunk on delicious wine, wiping away the tears, but fail to ease the constriction of your chest muscles.
2. Upon returning to your home country, and the building you call ‘home’ you feel empty. You want to be back with your father, and the little lion dude. At least you have the pumpkin princess to snuggle with.

3. In the next month, you wake up to reality, and realise things aren’t that bad. Yes, you want to live there, but actually, your home country is better to study in for your chosen degree. One day you will live there again, just not as soon as your heart wishes for it to be so.
4. You apply for university, to start in autumn 2008. Your at-the-time first choice offers you a place three days before Christmas. It is your first offer out of four to come. You smile, laugh, and jump around the house like you’ve never done so before in your life.
5. Christmas 2007 is spent is your own company, and that of the snuggly one. Your one present is that of your university offer, but nothing else could have been sweeter to receive.
6. Back at college in January, your closest friend, who happens to be male and three years older, turns into your own private stalker.
7. January also takes you to see one of your favourite bands you’ve loved for the longest of times.
8. For the next couple of months he is chasing you to the train station, getting on your train home, and demanding your attention and time in a completely obsessive and entirely non-friendly way.
9. When your father comes to visit from the USA to take you to a visit day at your first-offered university, you are glad for the break away from the stalker. You hope the distance and time apart will soothe difficulties.
10. Things get worse. Your stalker ‘attempts’ to commit suicide three times at your town’s train station. He never jumps. He just sits there until the police are called out to pull him off the bridge and arrest him.
11. You have been followed and chased down that many times, you no longer feel safe in your home town, or the city of your college to walk alone. Although you do it anyway, constant looking over your shoulder, and panic attacks start setting in.
12. Finding comfort in a female friend, one year older than yourself, and your course tutor at college, things improve as the stalker has to leave you alone, else feel the wrath of those silently supporting you.
13. During this time you have received all four university offers. You visited one uni and hated it. You visited another and decided this one would be your first choice, over your previously preferred university. The long term benefits of this one outweigh the short term desires of the previous one.
14. You turn nineteen.
15. A couple of weeks into April, you manage to resolve things with your stalker, but you lay down ground rules for the newly-forged friendship.

So there’s the basics of it. The possibilities that may have occurred to render a website owner in a hibernative state. Of course there’s no reason to think they did happen, they just might have…

OK guys and gals, here’s the point of this post. I was pretty much in hibernation from the internet for a good number of months. It’s not the first time it’s happened, and I would bet that it isn’t going to be the last.

Everything listed above did happen to me, amongst other non-interesting things. Whilst some of it may sound… undesirable, it inadvertently strengthened other parts of my life. Some of the things that happened during the stalkerish stage were enjoyable in the sense that I had huge adrenaline rushes and for once in my life I could be loud and shout and swear at someone at the top of my lungs. It was great! I’m normally rather calm, quiet and content and so this experience let me break out of that mold a little bit!

I plan on writing about particular things listed above in their own sanctity of individual posts in the coming weeks. I thought it may be an idea to sketch out a basic ‘outline’ of what life has been like for me since November ’07.

Rather interesting, eh? Actually, not really. I’m sure there are more interesting things six months could have been filled with! But it has been one hell of a ride, for me, that’s for sure!

I’m slowly crawling back into the world of online things.

Some things that have changed regarding online things:

• My oceanus-anima.com email addresses have been spammed to death. I no longer use them, and now enjoy the comforts of Gmail. (englishocean at gmail.com is my email address).
• I am using someone else’s theme for oceanus-anima.com. This is a first ever in my history of website owning since 2003.
• My iBook broke. Then my computer broke. Then my website broke. My iBook is forever broken. My computer just about usable. My website back up and waiting for me to use it again.

If there is not one thing you can possibly comment upon, and/or relate to then… well… that really can’t be the case, surely? If so, can you explain? At least welcome me back into the online world.