Hello internet. I wonder if anyone will read this (but obviously on some level I hope that someone will, since otherwise I would just have written this into a Word document and deleted it. I would apologise for boring the hypothetical reader with my rubbish, but what? No-one’s getting forced to read it.)…. What I wanted to say is this: I am almost at the end of a very bad year. Actually, in some respects it’s a good year: I started a PhD which I mostly find interesting, and which I definitely prefer to what I was doing before: I like having a task which will lead to something, something definite, and I like increasing my knowledge…. but the problem is my living situation. This is hard to explain, because actually there is nothing seriously wrong with it. I had been living with my parents before this year which actually wasn’t too bad (in itself it was okay: what got to me was the idea that people treated me like a loser because of it… but I’m not even that old (25)…)…but last September I moved into a shared house, with people I hadn’t known before. The house itself is okay. I dislike my room, mainly because it’s a single room and too small. I don’t feel that I can respect myself as a person, being 25 and living in a crappy shared house with people I don’t like in a little single room which isn’t even big enough for all my things…. yes, I am of course aware that other people have it much worse than I do…. But the main problem about the living situation is the people I live with. Now, I am going to appear like a total wanker here, since I have no good reason for disliking them. They have no particularly bad habits – I just find them ‘spiritually’ offputting for me, not in a religious sense, as I am not religious, but in the sense that I feel that their personalities are entirely contrary to mine. They are grey people; they consume, and don’t create. In fact they are more or less like the living dead. Every time I talk to them, it grates on me. They show no enthusiasm for anything… worse, one of them speaks in a very vulgar manner – it is not just that he swears, but it’s the way in which he does it, exclaiming the word ‘f***!’ on its own at the slightest annoyance in his stupid voice (which I’m sure he’s putting on to look ‘cool’: he listens to rap music, smokes weed and dresses ‘gangster’, but he went to boarding school and his parents are doctors…..). I can understand using swearwords to emphasise things, but someone who just uses them on their own, and all the time – is it so difficult to form coherent sentences? Worse, he doesn’t even swear imaginatively – all I hear from him is the word ‘f***’….. So, it was difficult for me living in close proximity to such people. I am aware how much of an arse I must sound like with my judgements passed on ‘such people’, but I am trying to be honest, and really it was them, and it was draining for me to have to be around them. However, the 12 month tenancy which I was stupid enough to sign on this s***hole is up soon, and in less than two weeks I will be moving into a flat, a big flat which will be all to myself… finally, I will be able to feel like I have my own space, which is really my own. Here I can here everything which my housemates are doing – and they can hear me….. so I wait. I’ve been trying to make the time pass more quickly by working a lot, and that seems to be helping, and it is always good to get work done. I feel like when I have a place to myself, I will be able to respect myself, and I will be able to live how I want to live – also, I feel that I will be able to make new friends (something which I have failed to do this first year of my PhD)… as I don’t respect myself now, how can I expect other people to respect me? And how can people who don’t respect me like me?…… maybe I will even meet a nice girl – I probably should have told you before that I am a 25 year-old virgin, that is, more or less the lowest of the low as far as our society is concerned. There is nothing wrong with me: people say I am good-looking, I’m fairly intelligent, and my personality probably isn’t that bad…. and I see a lot of people who seem to have absolutely nothing going for them enjoying very full sex lives… maybe I am too shy, or maybe I was just unlucky… Well, that’s more or less all I had to say – probably I’ve said far too much and it won’t post anyway, which is just as well, not that it matters if anyone reads this – what do I care if people I’ve never met hold me in contempt? (normally I don’t talk to people about my problems – probably I come across as confident, maybe even successful and happy) And that’s the end of that stream of rubbish………