I just gotta cut loose

the opposite of this would be high school. I was miserable there, but I didn't realize how lucky I was to have a lot of people care about how miserable I was! Moving to NYC by my lonesome afterwards at 18 was a real shocker!

Mostly I get sad and angry and want to cry, though. I wish this happened more often.

Martin why did you leave Cambridge? (if you don't mind my asking)

Still, even if everyone there had been lovely, a big part of it is that self-discipline thing. I'd had it easy up till then (academically and in life generally, really), and I didn't have the personal strength or will required. I should add that I have really never regretted leaving at all. I went back to uni much later to get what I thought of as retraining in computing: this was after years of full-time work, so the small amount of work uni required was easy then, and academically De Montfort was a hell of a lot easier than Cambridge, obviously, despite it being a subject about which I knew nothing and for which I still think I have no special affinity.

You betcha. Jobs, relationships, friendships, creative affiliations that turned sour...

Oh, you want SPECIFICS. I'm debating whether to put my real name on this. Yes. Yes, damn the torpedoes.

Mmm... at this time last year I was an editor at a reasonably well-known web publication. The editor-in-chief at the time was someone I was dating, and his, um, ex-girlfriend was the general manager.

They started the project as a couple, broke up a few months in, and both were too stubborn to bite the bullet and walk away. The e-i-c asked me out, and despite the utter WRONGNESS of the situation I said yes and we became involved and the ex-girlfriend, who's a little off her rocker anyway, turned into a psycho hosebeast when she found out, turning her friends against me, getting nicey-nicey with my friends in an attempt to turn them against me (didn't work). She would scrutinize my work, looking for any errors or oversights, and instead of alerting me of these mistakes directly, she'd write the e-i-c several lengthy, impassioned anti-Jody missives (and hey, sometimes she'd call him up at work, too!). I hated her, she hated me; it was a bad bad bad bad brutal vicious scene that I'm still a little scarred from.

When the end of the year rolled around, my nerves were shot, and I resigned. Soon, the e-i-c gave his title to someone else in the organization, and resigned as well. When the general-manager ex learned of my resignation, she kinda snidely said "Well, it's for the best," and she and her friends all rejoiced. When she learned of his, she went apeshit -- called him up, sobbing like an Italian grandmother, obviously very upset that he'd ultimately chosen me over her and had walked away from his pet project to prove it.

That's not the end, though... her friend the webmaster despised me too, and came up with a 100%-bullshit story about the amount of editing work her referrer log showed I'd actually done (she didn't, ya know, show the former e-i-c the log, she just threw out some technical-sounding figures that she thought would make her claim sound all technical-like and authoritative). (This was after I quit; there was no reason for what she did except for pure malice.)

Anyway... the guy and I eventually did break up, and once I got over THAT (it didn't take long), I felt like I'd completely walked away from the scene. I still hate what's-her-name with a venom I can't even begin to describe, but at least I don't have to deal with her anymore.