I've Been Watching You...

The thing with the internet, is that it lets me come into your room. It lets me look at your lives and your friends, it lets me read your mind and your diary - it lets me sneak up behind you and watch what you're typing. You post on your blog, your forum, your space, your news site - maybe you're just changing your username on MSN. And you think that people can't see what you're doing. You're changing it because you want an effect, but really the only one who sees the desired effect is you. Everyone else - people like me - gets to see angles of you that I'm fairly sure you wouldn't usually show off. Exams are beginning to take their toll on people I know. MSN numbers seem high whenever I check in, MSN spaces are opening up either with a hasty excuse along the lines of 'everyone else is doing one' or with an explanation of overwork. People are emailing me with pain, sickness, fear and loathing. In general, you're not a bunch of happy bunnies right now. It's interesting to watch you change and evolve. We all go through mood swings, even the quiet kid who works with me on Saturdays, but when we're in one it's impossible to view ourselves objectively. It's too hard to see through the red haze (or the blues, depending on the swing) to view yourself from without. In my coat pocket I have the last article I will ever write for this blog, written during a particularly low period. It voices my fears, my failures and my shortcomings - but I know I will not post it until I leave this URL for good. Looking back at it now, I can see the emotion laid in the rivers of ink that twist and flow across the page. I can remember the surges of feeling and power that I felt as I grasped the pen and converted my thoughts into blue scars. But I can look at it with the calm paleness that I feel in my mind now, a whitewash of both The Sims 2 and Philosophy revision. And by looking at it with clarity and foresight, I can see that to publish it would be wrong. I was not in my right mind. Things were not on track. Nor are they with you, my friends. You are disjointed, out of place, askew in a world of exams that won't go away, no matter what you try to insulate the time in between with. It is a shame, and I wish there was something I could do. I thought about writing this article, an article designed to tell you to calm down, get your act together, and get out your damned textbooks. But I won't. Because it dawned on me as I saw the blogs and the posts and the usernames spring up and evolve that you're writing. You're allowing your expressions to burst out in a much safer way than, say, going on a rampage with a sawn-off shotgun. And let's face it, folks, that's a Good Thing. Life sucks, and then you die. That's the long and short of it. If you can learn to laugh at the absurdity of it all, though, that's the peach. Once you've got that sorted, you'll find that life kind of sorts itself out quite nicely. If the Sims 2 has taught me anything (which it hasn't) is that there's not much that a cup of coffee, the comedy channel and a night's sleep won't solve. Except fire. But we'll take it as read you don't go that far. So sit back and enjoy the ride. Time, unfortunately, goes just as frighteningly fast whether you ignore it or not. Take care, and remember - I'm watching over you.