Hitting keys with eyes closed.

It is strange how fatigued I feel when I clearly shouldn’t be. It is also shocking how half an hour’s sleep can make soo much difference.

This post is another stream of thought post, in that I haven’t started it with an agenda, more that I’ve started it with a view to writing about a couple of things. How I get them down is what’s going to make it interesting.

I’ve been watching the UK’s current Big Brother on a regular basis. I know, very sad / fabulous / weird / cool depending on what you like. I like it. Though it has made me muse a little. Currently, or last night specifically, there was a massive, massive bust up as a result of one house mate spilling another’s secrets to the rest of the house. It wasn’t a slip of tongue either. This girl swore that she’d keep the information secret, never tell it to anyone etc etc. In fact the guy she was talking to was refusing to tell her for that exact reason – he didn’t trust her to keep it. He should have stuck to his guns I guess.

The whole idea of telling people something you’ve been told in confidence is probably one of the cruellest things you can do to somebody. Well, cruellest things you can speak. I mean severing their right hand is probably much worse. But still, horrid.

People always say “you could have kept it to yourself!” as a justifiable reason for such infidelity. Which is just a straight up lie. People generally tell others confidential things because its literally eating them up inside. Telling someone reduces that strain – Problem shared is a problem halved and so on. But to then go on and pass the information on is just wrong. I’m not talking about “he fancies you” 10 year old type secrets. More the secrets that aren’t positive statements in any possible sense. Reusing that information can be really harsh, because that person may be venting frustration, or may even be telling you something that they actually feel, which could consequently mean that you’ve ruined any future interactions between those individuals. Allow people to seek counsel, but don’t turn it into a public debacle afterwards.

Rawr.

Moving on from that, I’m both really impressed with the current situation of the Rimmer map and completely tired of it already! I’m such a douche. I love that I’m getting responses from people, I just need to make my process for making contact and adding them a lot more efficient. Got to make it smoooooth. With the extra three os.

In other news, for those that don’t know yet from my Twitter, I’ve been conditionally accepted now for two different Master’s courses in Translation. This is fabulous news for a couple of reasons: (i) it shows (me) that others believe that I can complete them and (ii) it marks the beginning of my future. I’ve said before that I started teaching because I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. Well applying for translation positions and doing some pre interview translating has swung the scales. I want to become a translator. So, it really psyches me to know that the future is starting, I’m getting my work game on, so to speak.

I keep thinking back to the more depressing parts of the whole teaching experience and I realise that I was mostly responsible for it all. Although I wouldn’t have changed it -I’m much better equipped for so many things in life now that I’ve gone through it all. It even brings a smile to my face right now. Sometimes I do wonder what the people I left behind there think of me. Meh, who cares. I’m happy.

All I need now is patience, patience to get me from today to June 2010, when I’ll be a qualified translator, and ready to start my life off proper. Especially in the financial sense. My wife, bless her eternally, is shouldering my unemployed weight completely. I’m hoping some part time work will resolve that soon, but things the way they are, its difficult to get something that won’t end up making me a deficit on commuting costs!

Que sirrah sirrah and all that.

Finishing with the Big Brother that started all this off, it is eviction night tonight. That’s the difficult part of real life I guess. Knowing that there’s no way to “evict” all the people that let you down or betray you. Instead, when it happens, know that they have, to some extent, taken you further down the path that is life.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes” ~ Oscar Wilde

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ~ Ghandi

wrath mongrer

I’m writing this in a slightly worried frame of mind, as I think the very fabric of this blog as we know it may well be at risk.

Doesn’t that sound dramatic?

It seems that out of sheer coincidence, I share my name / handle “willbaforce” with a company. I discovered this after I’d created this place and started writing. I searched the name on google and it came up as a page under construction. I thought “meh” it’s all the same, albeit very coincidental. So I left it at that, and carried on writing and tweeting my ideas and thoughts on life etc.

Well, it seems that said company is rather in anguish with this predicament, which I have discovered through the power of Google search and Twitter:

I’m not trying to get myself into trouble here, so I’m treading very carefully. I am however very worried. I want to keep the name on the site(s) where it exists, and seeing tweets like these stir the very fibres of my being:

Something is coming towards me, but I can’t tell whether it’s going to hurt. I’m fairly sure as I’m not a competing business, that there’s no brand confusion or “Passing Off” here – I’m not vying to support any business. Ever.

I’m just a happy little blogger, writing about things that are occurring within my vicinity or in my head.

I contacted the company today, to see if there is any room for discussion, comment or resolution. I mean, I’m open to a name share – I really don’t mind. I would prefer to keep it, but if there’s potential financial burdens heading my direction, I might have to change it. Which truly is a sad thing. It means I’d have to change names on twitter, wordpress, facebook (which sucks because on fb you can’t change it), steam and, in the words of a nationally famous music album, many many more.

Legally, I have no idea where I stand. I came up with the name entirely on my own, by manipulating the nickname a sibling chose to endow me with.

In fact, let me explain how I came to use the nickname willbaforce.

In the year of our Lord 2004 or thereabouts, my brother started University, in which he gained a lot of things, but notably, a penchant for dishing out nicknames. He returned at Christmas and started calling me by a variety of names, including “Force”, “Forculon”, “Willba”, “Willbatron”, “Willbaforce” and “Monkey boy”. The last one was generally whilst we fought. These nicknames came out of a jest he made upon discovering that I shared first names with the famous politician “William Wilberforce“, who was formerly native to Hull, a town not too far from our home of the time. So year upon year of being called “Willbaforce” (variant spellings* “Wilberforce”, “Willberforce”, “Wilbaforce”) I kind of adopted it as something I would respond to. I started to enjoy the name. Having then not fully decided on a handle for Counter-Strike: Source, I decided to opt for “willbaforce”, which I still use to this day. It then became my handle for practically all of my online presences. I login as “willbaforce” for practically everything now. When the chance to username my facebook came along, I of course HAD to choose “willbaforce”. In January, upon inspiration from a friend I started blogging, both for fun and to help me organise and reflect on my then very crappy situation of being depressed. Naturally I went for http://willbaforce.wordpress.com. It was for me just another name, that made me relatively anonymous to strangers but yet very much known to my friends. I combined that with an image of Cheburaska, a Russian children’s TV program character and started typing, thinking nothing of it all.

Same with Twitter. On March 18th, I started an account there purely with the intention of writing the thoughts and nuances that were “too small” to make it as a blog. Same name, same picture (I’m a great fan of continuity).

(As an aside, looking at the older tweets, MY GOD I WAS BORING. I actually related the fact I was watching the Gilmore Girls to the internet. Sad times.)

…

So where does this leave me now? I haven’t got a clue. I’m sitting at my table shivering with the wrong kind of excitement, ie. fear, not knowing whether I’m to be hung by the castle wall, or dragged thirty kilometres by an enraged stallion. Clearly, my days “are numbered” as willbaforce. Or maybe not. I honestly have no idea

…

*I chose the spelling “willbaforce” with two Ls for the simple reason that my first name is Will with two Ls. That way my anonymous name was secretly and actually part of my known alias.

wordles

This used to be a page, but I got tired of seeing it there. So it’s now another updater-post. So there.

After seeing this used somewhere else, here’s some Wordles that I’ve created. Ho, there’s something special about some randomly assimilated words. Click on them, and it’ll take you to bigger versions of their mastery.

Here’s some taken from the blog post scribbled words:

Here’s some of my tweets combined:

I’ll add more if I make some tasty treats.

Oh, all Wordles are copyright licensed .

Make sure you credit http://www.wordle.net/ if you dabble.