These last few days seem to have been going quite… painfully.

Exams are approaching fast, and it’s no secret that they are an incredibly important aspect of school life.  Essentially you’re controlling your own future in employment opportunities.  So it comes as no surprise that I find it highly suspicious that the closer we get to exams, the more attacked and damaged I seem to become.

I mentioned in one of my previous posts that I was not thinking clearly, like my brain had been clouded up by some evil mastermind’s “Ben’s Brain Destroy-O-Nater 2000” – I even assumed that confectionery was to blame, laced with thought-deterring chemicals by a spiteful arch-nemesis.

But this week, it seems to be getting worse…  On Saturday I was feeling very unmotivated, I was just… ‘bleh’ – I felt very lacking in the inspiration department.   It’s Sunday that decided to kick me right where it hurts… (Uh, not there. A bit higher) – The stomach.
Late Saturday night some mongrel of a virus clambered into my body and started urinating on all of my walls.  I awoke on Sunday and was incredibly ill.  The ‘bleh’ that I had felt on Saturday was now replaced by a ‘BLEEAIHWODIHOGIWEEEEH!’
Then a few minutes later, ‘BLAWJOUAOWUGHGHGHOUGH… *Gasp* …BAUGH BAUGH BAUGH.’

I was restrained to rest for the entirety of the day, not able to eat anything. My drink bottle was my only hunger-soothing friend.  I slowly got better, then on Monday I took a day off school to regain strength and to try and catch up on homework I hadn’t been able to do on the weekend.  This plan didn’t work all too well.

Late Monday night, I felt great.  As good as new, I could have taken on Chuck Norris… Though I wouldn’t have gotten far.  I lay down in bed, took a drink from my drink bottle and lay down to mentally prepare a to-do list for school tomorrow.
My stomach rumbled for the first time in several hours…  It began to ache.  I began to get very, very annoyed.  Because as it turns out, I somehow re-infected myself with the stomach virus I had on Sunday by drinking from the same water bottle.  How the hell is that even possible?  Surely my body would have built up an immunity by now?  If you see that same shifty guy in the dark sunglasses with the words “I’m a Stomach Virus Bastard”  written across his chest YOU DON’T LET HIM IN! I mean come on!

Ah, I’m now feeling rubbish again… and what’s even better, is that today some bright spark kicked a soccer ball straight into my eye.  Now it’s bruised, painful… and a conversation starter for basically every moron known to man.

“Hey nice eye, haha haha.”

Yeah, that’s great, the same thing that the last fourteen people said.

“Hey nice eye, haha, been fightin’ cuz?”

Wow, the addition of those few words really made it original, well bloody done.

I’m leaving now,

See you later.

“Hey nice eye, haha haha.”

“Piss off”

AHGIHAWIbla!hblhioahwlabalwhi!

Translation: Hey guys! Won’t be a very long post.

I was a bit reluctant to start writing this post, as I think my brain is actually on the verge of a full meltdown.  Despite the fact I seem to be stringing words together pretty flawlessly… for now… anyhow, last Friday I noticed that my focus seemed to have degraded.  While sitting in maths looking at the trigonometry work we’d been doing for weeks, I was blank.  My brain pulled up a white flag and said:

“Maaan, I don’t want to do this any more, you’re on your own.”

Then he buggered off, leaving my body sitting there staring down mindlessly onto the maths problems.  I feel cloudy in the head – which isn’t something you necessarily want.  Especially since exams are quickly approaching, it all seems like a crude joke to suddenly lose all focus and concentration at this time…  Perhaps my subconscious has a grudge.

But after attempting to analyse possible causes of this cloudiness. Which included blaming my friends for their chemically contaminated confectionery. Which they’d obviously given me throughout the week not as a sign of good will – but more a move of evil saboteur-like tomfoolery.

As it happens, it isn’t the lollies. (Dammit)

It is possibly a combination of these things:

• Sleep deprivation
• Dehydration
• Hiding dead bodies

What is this place?

Oh yes! Of course, it’s my blog, website, portfolio… HOW ARE YOU? Haven’t seen you in ages!  Truth be told, I haven’t exactly been here for you, Blog.  I’ve been busy working on other projects you see Blog, so unfortunately I have neglected you to an extent.  Oh no, no, no… Don’t cry Blog! I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.  Important thing is, I’m here now… I guess before this gets any weirder I should move on.

Hey there folks, Ben ‘ere.  Needless to say, this post is a bit of an apology, with a touch of excuse and a slight dash of ‘give me a break’ on the side.  Recently of course this blog, this site, hasn’t been producing much in the terms of postly goodness.  Now my website stats tell me that this year I’ve had 700,000 hits to the site… most of them inevitably are probably my own… but nonetheless… it’s a number nearing a million.  Which is very exciting, I like big numbers, despite my lack of linguistic ability to actually say them correctly.  No matter how many people there are reading the site, not having any new posts out is rather annoying…

The truth is I’ve had an awful lot on recently.  Then again, I’m a bit ECD (see title) so it results in a lot of ambitious projects being started without any thought beforehand about STRESS.

But what’s been worrying me recently, is that is seems like all these creative projects are diminishing my imagination.  I’m probably just dreaming, (that’d be nice actually, haven’t dreamt in a while) however, it’s when I’m sitting there trying to think about new ideas for the many projects that are on the way that I stop and wonder how on Earth I used to do it.  It seems like I would just come up with idea after idea… but now it seems like a much more tedious task.  I figured I’d give my creative condition a proper write-up:

Excessive Creation Disorder

An illness that results in a massive ambition to create as many things as possible.

Side effects

• Lack of original ideas
• Idea staleness
• Repetitiveness
• Self questioning blog posts

That first side effect is another one of my issues.  I’ve heard it before, there’s a saying that no idea is ever purely new. If you ever have an idea, it’s an adaptation of another idea.  It will never be original, you’ve stolen it from somewhere, whether subconsciously or completely aware.  That idea is some stolen thing that you never actually came up with.  But then it’s about changing that idea, where you take that idea to.

The thoughts behind this post?  Not original, in fact, according to this concept, nothing I’ve ever made is original.  How does knowing this help my creative process?  Not at all.  It’s climbed in like some parasite and has attached itself tightly.  Whenever I’m thinking of ideas I’m turning so many down because they’re not original, they don’t seem unique.  It’s irritating beyond measure, especially since I always have attributed myself to the abstract noun that is ‘imagination.’

So, it’s back to the drawing board… at least until I can convince myself that it was me who made these new and improved compound ideas, that they are original.

I thought I might take the time now just to tell you some of the things I’m working on, as well as some things I have planned for the near future.  It’s exciting but at the same time daunting thinking about how I’m going to get them all done by the end of the year. (Dammit, I feel like I should be writing scripts right now instead of writing this pos… oh, 630 words eh? Whoops. Must have got carried away there)

Ben’s Projects List (De-personalized for security reasons)

• NeWs! – Film Series – DUE August 23rd
• John John – Film Series – DUE August 23rd
• SECRET- Short Film – DUE October
• SECRET – Short Film – DUE October
• SECRET – Short Film – DUE October
• Love Is Loss – Music Video – Due August
• YouTube Videos (Quite a few)
• Scribble’s Notepad 2.1/3.0
• SECRET – YouTube – Sometime September
• Upcoming Essays
• Any Homework Tasks
• Sports Video Montage – DUE August
• Website Coding