Series: ‘After Life’ (2019)

Synopsis: Tony, an editor of a small local newspaper, becomes suicidal and stops giving a shit after his wife dies of cancer to great annoyance of his co-workers and acquaintances.

This is a series by Ricky Gervais with him as the main character Tony. The first season consists of 6 episodes each about 30 minutes long and was released on Netflix.

If you are expecting a comedy from Ricky Gervais then I hate to disappoint. Although it has some more comedic bits it is all but a comedy. It starts off with the main character, Tony, already being in a state where he wants to kill himself and maybe this is a good thing. It probably doesn’t need to go into the details on how he got from being sad because his wife died to wanting to commit suicide. I don’t think it would be very beneficial for people in the same situation as they might take that as something normal.

He’s being an asshole to everyone, to his colleagues, the nurse taking care of his demented father, random people on the street. In my opinion the series explains very well why he does this and I think some people who went through a depression might be able to empathize with the main character. Because he has no more reason to live and could take his own life at any time, he feels like he can do whatever he wants.

At first the people are annoyed at his behavior but more or less shrug it off as he has just lost his wife. They still have faith that it’s just a phase and don’t lash out on him. His brother in law, Matt, tries to cheer him up by taking him to a stand up comedy show, setting up a date and getting him to go to the pub. I think the reactions of the people towards his behavior is very important, they don’t really punish him for it but instead either act passively or attempt to make him happy. These are reactions to his grief and not to his arrogant, negative way of talking.

After some time everyone seems to have had enough and the Scottish nurse who takes care of his father gives him a speech which I believe is the tipping point in the series. She points out that he is being selfish, that it’s not because he is upset that everyone else must feel upset. He tries to ignore her words saying she is probably wrong but I believe he feels she is probably right. He does not change immediately but the words of the nurse does put things in perspective in the following conversations. What if she is telling the truth? What if other people have problems as well?

Throughout the series the main character talks to different kinds of people. For example Julian who carries the newspapers around but is really a drug addict. Since he is not afraid of dying he is no longer scared of doing drugs and so asks Julian for some heroin. He figures out he has more in common with Julian than he had anticipated, they both lost their wives and are depressed. Even then, by the end of the third episode Tony gives Julian enough money to buy an overdose of heroin and to my surprise he does do exactly that. Julian’s death was curious to me, in subsequent episodes it is talked about and Tony even attempts to attend Julian’s funeral but Tony never seems to feel guilty about being a part of Julian’s death even though he could have clearly prevented it. He even lies that he had no part in it and never talks about it again. It also didn’t really play a part into the main character’s arc, where he goes from being an asshole to being nice.

There was no absolute defining moment where he decides he wants to continue living and thus must be friendly to other people. It’s just that he starts listening to what other people have to say and slowly realizes he is not the only person who has to deal with problems.

I could empathize with a lot of the series and I think people who went through a depression can empathize with it as well. By no means do I believe all people with depression go through the same thing but some might. The conversations laid out in this series could certainly benefit the depressed bunch out there.

Since I could empathize with it my opinion might be a bit biased, I would rate this series a solid 9/10.

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Turning 22

No, it’s not my birthday today: in my last blog post I mentioned I wanted to write about the things that happened in the past 6+ years. My last blog post was from January 2013 and at that time I was 21, I had just left college and started working. When reading this I would like you to keep in mind that I learnt nothing from this and I’m really just trying to write down what happened.

Seeing I didn’t have a car (and still don’t) my commute to work consists of sitting on a train. It wasn’t what I was used to; to school I had always taken the bus which is a little bit different because we had 2 kinds of buses: a public one and a bus hired by the school to take students from a specific place to school (a school bus kind of, but the bus and bus driver were not property of the school). The school bus always had the same kids on it and the public bus mostly had old people on it or one time travelers.

The people on train would be there every single day, and there were a lot more of them. One day the train arrives and I take a seat, while I waited for the train to leave the most beautiful girl suddenly came to sit across from me. The entirety of the train ride the love chemicals were dancing around my brain, it was something I had not felt in a long time. I had not seen her before so I thought she’d be a one time sight to see. But lo and behold the next day there she was again in all her beauty.

This went on for a couple of months, I tried getting somewhat close to her to catch a glimpse which would make my day but never talked to her as I was way too shy. That hasn’t changed; give me the same opportunity today and I still wouldn’t talk to her because of the aforementioned reason. One day I promised myself I would talk to her, I put on my best pieces of clothing and went to the station. I don’t think I would’ve pulled it off and that anything would come from it but I would try anyway. So I walk down the track and find her talking to some other guy, she was smiling and laughing. I don’t know if he knew him or not but she seemed very in love with this person, you could see it in her eyes.

Even though I never talked to her, didn’t even know her name, it broke something inside of me. It ended up damaging my self-esteem. The next week or so I cried a little bit and started questioning what the hell I was doing with my life. I was turning 22 soon…

Picking Up Where I Left Off?

I seem to have left my blog untouched ever since I started working but today I got the bright idea to start making blog posts again. I’m hoping to make blog posts more regularly but of course I won’t guarantee it.

Looking back and going over my old blog posts they were a good representation of what was going on in my head at the time which can be summarized in one word as: anxiety. It’s the thing that drove me back to blog posting as well, I’m a bit nervous for a meeting somewhere this week even though it’s not that important. The anxiety reminded me of those days in school where I would try to make a blog post each time I was nervous for a thing happening in school (exams and what have you). The later blog posts became quite boring and repeatable, having nothing to talk about but the anxiety.

If I were to pick this up again I will try to make the subjects a little more interesting. Some ideas that pop to mind are writing about things that I have learnt, seen, or things I’m curious about. I might start with a few posts catching up on what happened to me last year.

I’m going to cut this blog post short as I had this bright idea only 15 minutes before having to go to bed. Anyway, I will try to think of something to write about.

It’s Exam Time

I haven’t written yet this new semester and with good reason. I still have a post which I was working on right before the end of the year but I’m not sure if I’m even gonna finish it.

This semester has been extremely busy and that’s part of the reason I haven’t been able to write. Because I’ve been busy I also haven’t done anything to write about except work for school which, believe me, isn’t very entertaining. So, I’ve been working my ass off the last semester and I’m not sure if it just feels like I’ve been working my ass off because I’m procrastinating or actually working.

It’s a certainty I had a lot to do compared to the year before where I thought this would’ve been the worst and the last year would be a lot more relaxed. I tried to come into the semester even more prepared than I tried the year before but to no avail. It was just too much and I’m afraid it’ll show in my results. I went through my exams often with only sleeping a few hours a day because I had to wake up in the morning to at least try to study. Then when I came home I had to jump straight back into studying because I had so few time before the next exam. I think I could’ve passed all my exams with the time given but that would require me to study every hour of the day and honestly, nobody does that really.

Aside from lack of time I really don’t really care that much about it any more and I really feel I should because this is still important. I’ve had a serious lack of motivation throughout the exams and the semester and I think that will play a big role in what I performed.

So here I am today waiting for my results which I will receive tomorrow. I’m not stressed out about it even though these were like the worst exams I’ve ever done going into some with little to no knowledge about the subject and hoping to get lucky with the questions. I’m only certain of a few that I’ll pass them, but most are still a big question mark with an edge towards fail.

I know I should write more about more interesting stuff but my thought are never coherent and there’s really not that much to talk about. It’s feels like it’s tradition to only just write when I have my exams and I’m a bit stressed out. Anyway, wish me luck even though it’s a bit too late for that now 😦

Final Year

To start this post off I’d like to talk about how the results of my re-examinations were. I surprisingly passed the subject I was thinking I was going to fail but failed the subject I thought I might fail. Luckily for my that subject was part of a combination of two subjects so I still passed.

Just like all other years I will talk about my worries for the next year. And as it is the last year there are quite a few. Different from last year I still seem to be mostly in the same class. Some people got switched but I seem to have gotten pretty good confirmation that a lot of people from last year are still in it. I do not know about new people though. Another thing that’s probably good is that I already had most teachers in other subjects so there’s nothing really new there either.

As for the subjects I’m saddened that I have French on the first semester together with some shady subjects that might have something to do with communicating. I also don’t really know the teacher I have for French but from what I’ve heard she’s kind of hardass.

What worries me most is that it’s the final year and I’m probably going to have write and of course (sigh) present a thesis. I’m not sure if I specifically get a subject or if I have find a subject myself but I’m hoping it’s the first ’cause I seriously have no creativity or any idea on it. I’m actually just assuming I have to write a thesis because every one just talks about it but none of the teacher actually even said a word about it.

The second thing I will only try to briefly touch on because it will be for the second semester, is my intern ship. As with my first worry I hope I don’t have to find my own intern ship, I hope we just get placed somewhere preferably with some other people of my school.

As it is the last year it’s now too late to get out of it, like there’s really no possibility to bail out now. I just hope everything works out so I can get to work and live on my own and do (at least that’s what I think) whatever I want.

I’m going to end this post and I’ll try to talk about whatever comes up and it’ll be mostly worries 😦 😉

Re-examination Results

Since I haven’t written about my finals for my second year in college I shall do this together with talking about the results of my re-examinations which finished a week ago. My finals turned out to be not as bad however I did fail 2 exams, which gave me a total of 3 exams to redo over the vacation.

In a few hours I will get my results for those 3 exams and I’m a bit stressed because if I fail a subject it will mess up my schedule for next year where the second semester consists of an internship. I’ll try talking about next year in another post.

I think my re-examinations went surprisingly well apart from one which I think is going to be the trouble maker. I already know I passed the second one but my last re-exam could still go either way I think. My oral part of that exam was kind of stressful ’cause I forgot a lot of simple things and my explanations of what I thought would be the answer weren’t always crystal clear. Again if I fail that one it will mess up my schedule for next year since a subject depends on it. So I hope I don’t have to do a fourth year just to do that subject.

What worries me most though is that first subject because I had a good enough score to have it tolerated at the loss of some credit. I’m wondering if I could still do that if I get a worse score than I had before.

Anyway I will try to write about it when in one of my following posts stating all my worries for next year. I’m also sorry for not writing anything during my vacation but it’s simply because nothing happened. I’m thinking about keeping notes on idea’s I have for blog posts but I always tend to forget.

Very Long and Bad Semester

I haven’t written in a very very long time but here I am again and I feel like I need it more than ever. I’ll first go into the reason why I haven’t written yet, it’s quite simple, time. It was so bad this semester I literally felt a little depressed after seeing all the work still ahead.

I can’t fully blame it on all the work alone but it just overwhelmed me. When starting off the semester I really wanted to be prepared for it this time since last semester I kinda just went with it in a rush without properly preparing myself. Little did I know this semester would be sooo much worse. I probably could’ve written but still, I rather spend my free time on something less useful and more relaxing unless I really had something important to talk about.

I think I also have partially myself to blame. Mostly myself probably cause I have never felt so demotivated in my entire life. I think this is also the part of the reason why I’m did so bad. It doesn’t make sense that a lot of work makes you feel demotivated, when that’s exactly the time you need the motivation.

All the subjects I was worried about where there would be a lot of speaking in front of class were a bit of a problem, but paled in comparison to all the other work I had to do. I guess I just pulled myself through those, even if they were horrible. One of the subjects dealing with communication was supposed to only be for the first two years of college, but guess what, teachers decided to do this the third year as well now. Really looking forward to that *sarcastic undertone*.

When you have this much work you really get tunnel vision, the only thing that starts to matter is the work. Because of this you actually start to lose focus on other things that seem less important. A subject gets shoved back so much you don’t even know what they’re talking about any more and you really don’t care. A lot of work really creates a lot of noise in your head, all the things to remember and to still do. I’m certainly saying it’s not possible, a lot of people worked very hard this semester and I’m a bit jealous of those people. Working a lot is just not for me, my only real motivation is not to get hassled.

I’m actually writing ’cause I just got finished with my finals (actually a few days ago) and tomorrow I’m getting the results. As I said I didn’t feel motivated this semester and I feel like it’ll have a great impact on the results of these finals. I already know I got one subject which I failed horribly, the other one’s were at about the same level of answers. The only thing I can really say that these are the worst exams I have ever been through. My only real motivation when taking them was just to get through them, pass or no pass. Of course thinking of it now it has been a mistake, ’cause when you think that way a no-pass is easier to get. So I already know I got one, so I’m going to take a bold guess here and say worst case scenario is 4/7 failed.

I just don’t want it to be like a few years back when I last failed an entire year miserably. I believe this was a big factor in setting up my social anxiety. Which makes me wonder what my next trauma will be and what I will get from it this time. The most annoying thing when dealing with bad outcomes is to answer the question ‘why?’, whatever you say it’s always bad. You say you didn’t study enough, it’s your own fault and something that you do needs to be blamed (even though sometimes it’s irrelevant). You say it was very hard, you get blamed for not spending enough time on the matter and too much on something else. You say you don’t know and you get the same. I suppose it probably is your fault because you took the exam but there’s really more to it.

Tomorrow at one is the moment I die. If I’m very lucky the one insufficient result, but I’m seriously not hoping for it. A frikkin’ miracle needs to happen. Still, if you get to this section of the post, please wish me luck, it’s probably the only thing I got.