Talk About Yourself (aka Narcissism 101)

I might be too nice for my own good, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Anything I post to the contrary is brash rhetoric or sarcasm. :p I live on praise; criticism completely disarms me (not so helpful when I'm going into journalism). I'm studying towards it but I'm still unsure as to where my future lies. I like games, but you don't earn much and it's widely considered a bit of a cop-out...I feel like I could be doing something better. My vocab is still a bit wanting, I place a certain amount of faith in spell checkers and I'm still learning to touch type, but I am at least proud of my slightly archaic and ever flamboyant writing style.

Anyway, part of the praise thing is in simple thank you's; I love making people happy (though who doesn't) - I've just taken money out of my savings to buy Christmas presents this year for a load of people who I barely see any more. I was popular in primary school, but none of my friends passed the entrance exams for my secondary school, and I headed off naive and alone. Honestly, it fucked me over. I was bullied for three years and roundly mocked for the rest of them, during which I sort of took solace in anime as a hobby and for the pure, restorative entertainment. The only people who I came to know/converted to like anime were eccentrics or very hush-hush about it, though, and my figurines and a thinly veiled interest in hentai only exacerbated the jesting insinuations by a lot of the lads (on account of being very tall with a slouching gait, and because I used to be very quiet) that I was a 'paedo'. Suffice it to say that I didn't much enjoy that.

There were a couple of girls who stuck up for me and who I talked to fairly often and comfortably, helping them out occasionally, but I desperately wanted to develop those relationships; not in a sexual way, but just to do more with them and be more heavily relied upon. I would have bought gifts for everyone in my year if I could have afforded it...I just wanted people to see beyond the /b/ crowd, geeky, highly critical/sarcastic niche that I had to cut for myself to get along. And I can count the number of people I have genuinely disliked on one hand. There have been complete cunts who have had qualities I nonetheless admired. No-one's a lost cause, in my opinion.

Things are looking up a bit, but being incredibly unmotivated and easily distracted, work is fucking me over. I love to catalogue knowledge, playing tonnes of games and aiming to watch or at least know a bit about loads of anime, and loads of general knowledge type-things. I have always held some dubious pride in knowing very little about a lot of different things, to the extent that people were always amazed when I could answer their speculative questions, or chip in with a stupidly random fact. I read loads of articles online, but I'm not a big fan of novels. Never know where to start reading, and it feels like a bad book read would be a bigger waste of time than a bad game played or film watched, seeing as there are so many books out there that no-one will have heard of nor care about in the same way, and I would be renting them rather than owning them (and thus wouldn't be able to share the experience). They're not a social thing per say, and while I appreciate a good bit of writing and have been absorbed by fantasy worlds, I tend to over-analyse things.

This was the life story thread, right? :) Sorry 'bout that. Carry on, mostly ladies. This does seem a bit like an extension of the girl's club if I'm honest.