Ruminations caused by sleep deprivations...

I can't sleep.

And it's not just a 'not tired' kinda feeling, because goodness knows I am tired. It's just, for some reason, my mind has started racing backwards. I always know I'm in trouble when I get like this. Generally speaking, my mind doesn't race to the happy times, it always starts to remember people and times that weren't when I was happiest. It's not that I have loads of regrets, don't get me wrong. As a general rule, I've lived a relatively happy life. A family and a partner that continue to love me, despite, well, me being me. I've achieved a lot that I'm proud of - graduating both college and university, a selection of jobs that I have enjoyed (albeit there are ones I've enjoyed less). I've never really gone hungry, and I've met some great friends along the way and had some really good times with them. I've packed a lot in my nearly 30 years, and I still have a lot to go and a lot to look forward to.

Still...

When I think back, generally it's the mistakes I've made, the friends I've let fade away, those that I've (admittedly inadvertently) hurt and those that I've let hurt me that come flooding back. It's the feelings that generally one doesn't really want to remember, the experiences one wishes one could forget. There were a few years that I remember weren't the happiest days of my life, in fact to be honest I was pretty messed up - I didn't really know how to deal with people or relationships, and I may have hurt people without ever meaning to. I don't blame anyone or anything except myself for this, I think it really was just a learning experience. I also met some people then that I still consider friends, and I am very lucky they are still in my life.

I prefix the following with the understanding that I am doing this to make myself feel better, to perhaps get rid of some past demons that are haunting me rather than to make those that I am referring to feel better. With that said, if there are those who read this who do take this to heart, I do mean every word of it.

I know that the likelihood of these people actually reading this post being amongst those I'm addressing is ridiculously slim, but nonetheless I now put out there to anyone out there who I may have wronged in the past, to those who I have let slip out of my life without a proper goodbye, to those I may have unthinkingly offended, to those who tried to support me that I may not have thanked sincerely enough, I never meant to be an arse. If I've offended you I am truly, truly sorry. I can assure you that it really was a misunderstanding, that I was really just trying to get through from a place I don't think I really ever understood properly and, to this day, still partially don't.


Strangely enough, that does feel a lot better.

P.S. To those who are reading this who know me now, don't worry, there's nothing to fear, I'm not going to slip into a melancholy funk from which I will never escape from. I am over it, I assure you.

Re. ACT party inner turmoil, what will be the outcome?

I've just read a piece by Michael Laws on the internal argument of the ACT party (you can read the opinion piece here). On a side note, while I find it rather amusing the irony of Laws using the analogy of a disintegrating marriage to prove his point given all that he's been through recently, I find his conclusions rather shortsighted.

As he points out, short of a stint in prison you can't really rule out anyone out of power. I fail to see how, a year out from the general election, he can announce the ACT party dead in the water, and the National party in danger of flailing in the same pond.

The advantage of MMP is that your party doesn't have to rely solely on electorate seats. Rewrite your member list before the election and you can ensure that those who created the problem in this term don't even have to feature in the next - a tool that both National and Labour have used to their advantage in the past. Hyde could theoretically continue to hold on to his Epsom seat (which I'm not arguing is guaranteed) by clever campaigning, or failing that ACT could put up another worthy candidate in another electorate, the ACT party could come back in the next election with an entirely different set of MPs.

Failing that, National may not even necessarily need ACT come 2011. Many of the political polls aren't too short from having National gaining over a 50% share of seats. Even slightly short they can always rely on Dunne to back them up. And, should ACT fail to gain the support required to get into power, the conservative vote will have to go somewhere - ACT not being in the picture might actually work to National's advantage.