Getting Along Fine Without It

a few hours finding the book interesting.

  ‘You have to work if you want money for a girlfriend,’ is the old adage. Thus enamored my computer was the way to restart my studies assiduously and have some gauge of the hours spent studying.

  The application of learning to type faster to take less time on typing whilst typing up notes before I could type that fast and well left me again dejected. Well-formatted typed up notes were an improvement however on handwritten ones. And whilst I learned to format my notes better, this could not be tested now I was too tired to see if the reading of them was improved. The euphoria of starting this task had ended in disappointment.

  For the rest of the day I watched TV and flipped the channels writing as the last thing I did before I went to bed: ‘WTV, 8pm, 10pm’.

  Morning is a good time to start things but start in a good way by going out and buying breakfast. On returning, I switched on my computer and printed my two forms. Having done so, I studied all morning reading page after page of a thick tome. Black ink like some old fashioned antique in my grandparents' house filled my senses again like as a young child when I looked forward to visiting them. For years, my parents had sent me to school on a cup of tea, my mother not wanting to cook. I had passed all my exams. But some things you can change if they make more sense to you now, they will work now and change your circumstances now if the past cannot be.

  A week passed and I could know as I returned on that Monday afternoon that I had a week to type up and view. From the park, I had bought a snack for the afternoon with my spare money. My chat with M, who though she had kissed me again, let me recognize for myself that we could only be friends because I did perhaps lack something of some sort. This was a conversational piece, topics of conversation and an ability to interest to her in that way. Coming back, however, I did not feel deflated but had some task still to do that day and for some time to come.

  To know now that I a lot of time chatting, when not studying or reading, to the man who lived downstairs and whom I met in the shared area of the house. He was a man with a bad back who could not find work. And he listened always to what I said, had an interest in history and reserved any political opinion however. Also, he spoke of pretty girls he saw whilst out as if they might fall for a man is his forties with a balding pate, and conservative dress sense made only passable by a choice of a designer shirt. He gave me quite a lot of advice on women, such as it was though I do not fully recall. One thing he did say was that woman liked to be treated to flowers, to avoid women with husbands and he said as well how I might tell if they had one. To my chagrin he said women who were older and looked like that had a few bob were quite likely to married. Once he talked about a girl he had nearly married, but she had been seeing someone else the whole time. He answered patiently all my questions and I marveled at his ability not to have to start any conversations himself. Also, he spoke of his interest in history that went something along the lines of how social disadvantage was a bad thing as he movingly spoke of conditions in the industrial revolution and then giving an economic history of department stores. I couldn’t match in particulars though I did try and talk about what interested me on my trips to the library of which he was intensely attentive. Talking about books is good I thought to increase your scope of reading and your understanding of them but he rarely asked any questions and bored quickly. His own books were a mystery and whilst he owned many, he did not seem to have read them. Maintaining he had read them all he would disappear for a few hours and come down ready to converse on this or that obscure and not quite fashionable matter. A problem with all these conversations was that during all of them the TV was on and I could not pay attention to both at the same time so felt cheated of if not one than the other.

  My spreadsheet this first week to my surprise put my time for ‘chat’ at such a large number of hours that I spent most of my everyday downstairs on the ground floor when I could do better if I stayed in my room. I had stayed in my room and read for some time in the past mainly because I knew I had not one friend or acquaintance that would mean I ever left my room. After six months or so of this, I had no girlfriend and a slightly better understanding of some hobbies and studies.

  Perhaps, the TV being on all the time accounted for most of this. But clearly, the TV on most of the week against the dozen hours spent on studying and reading my novel meant that I would have to change it. Though now, I considered I knew this without a spreadsheet.

  On the page in front of me, I wrote (and later typed up as a Task list to edit):

  DO DON’T

  Read novel Write essays nobody will read

  Study Chat

  Read newspaper Watch TV

  Have a breakfast

  Stay in room and read

  Go out occasionally

  PLAN

  Study to get skills

  Read more to get better conversation

  Exercise to improve looks

  Better looks, conversation, and skills will get me a job

  Also, better looks, conversation and job will get me girlfriend

  On my visit to the library, I spoke to a young librarian because I wanted a book on statistics to use my data from the spreadsheet. Seeing her pack some books on the shelves near the section she had shown me, I spoke to her a bit about what I had done. She was young and whilst I had seen her before in the summer holidays helping from school, her familiarity with her work and her keenness to learn by her regular trips up to the desk to ask questions showed she had chosen this as a career move to my eyes. She was in fact studying a non-library course at college she revealed so my preconceptions may have been all wrong. I knew that I could not prejudge someone by what I could see of them and nor what little I knew of them. So, I asked her if she knew about stats and she told me indeed she did though seemed mute when I asked her if she had done a course in it. Having found the newest book on the shelf and ignoring the rest, I took a few books that I wanted for revision and bade my leave having talked for quite long enough.

  For the next few weeks, I studied stats at my desk most days and by the end of this period felt confident to use it. For the most part the book reinforced my understanding and I was grateful for such a well-written book. Whilst this may not make sense and I do not know if it does for you dear reader, a positive relationship is one where if the one thing increases then so does something else. And this is shown on a line graph because the line will go up and down between each point the same as for something else it's positively related to. If it’s negatively related then one line goes up when the other falls. Thus, an increase in one is associated with a decrease in another for negative relationships and in positive relationships, they both increase. One may cause the increase or decrease in the other but you do not know which one or if a third factor causes both.

  For the first month,

  Watching TV is negatively related to chat weekends but positive weekdays

  Reading novels is positively related to chat week to week but negatively weekends

  Positive to study is reading the paper

  Reading novels is negatively related to study

  I felt euphoric that I had actually worked this out – I has set out to do something and seen the result. What it told me was that I should study and read the paper weekdays, read novels towards the weekend, and that I did more in the morning than the afternoon on those days I had breakfast whilst the reverse was true on those days that I didn’t.

  In all I has spent a few score hours analyzing the data to come up with this. Over the next few weeks, I would spend a few score more. Not all the relationships were maintained if any but when I divided up what my goals were (reading, study, going out to the cinema) against what my avoidance goals were (chat, watching TV…) the relationship was always negative.

  Unfortunately, after a few months of this I did not have a girlfriend or a job. Why might this be? First, the hours spent on my goals were not so great. I had learnt a lot about the computer
for this project, really a surprising amount, but book learning was not so much in total. Nor was reading novels and I had not read many novels if you want to take number of novels as measure. Though, I had not recorded them and could not remember now all the titles. My studies however were encouraging and I had done more over the time than at the start. Reading novels if anything was worse than before.

  I went to the library to return my book on stats, met C again, and told her that I had found the book useful. But I spoke again quickly when I seemed to get nothing except surprise for revealing this fact. I told her of my positive and negative relationships and she nodded and said that no, she did not plan to do that herself but she was interested to hear that I had done it. Instead, she talked about her hobbies, going to college and wanting to find a job in her chosen field when she left. This was although she wasn’t that bothered if the chances of finding work in it that she explained to me were slim. I may be wrong on this when I did not actually ask her this question directly.

  “How do you do?”

  “All right,” said the girl laughing.

  “You expect me to give you lessons?

  “I have a life. And I've recorded what you want on your form, what else do you expect me to do?”

  “Has it been explained to you that I have spent some time looking at