I’m no longer allowed near the Cardiff School of Journalism.

I've spent a lot of time on a treadmill recently. I'm actually writing this right now on a treadmill at Puregym in Cardiff city centre. I'm not saying this to boast, I just have a sneaking suspicion the person next to me is watching me type and im trying to to reassure them I know where I am and I'm not in a DMT induced adventure thinking I'm sat at my desk. 

I find myself most mornings stumbling out the gym and walking to the Tesco opposite the train station, passing the school of journalism where they have a board in the window showing the lecturers there, a wall of faces half smiling at commuters there, apart from one who I am always surprised by a quasi-angelic beaming smile. I'm not going to name the person because this is already getting off to an insane start and I don't want to test my theory that if you're weird enough you can get a restraining order against a headshot (I reckon you absolutely can.)

It took me a while to realise that I wasn't going crazy and being totally captivated by a picture of a smiling woman like it was some sort message sent from a chemical-addled god, and that due to how my brain works one of the few times I get dopamine Is during and just after I leave the gym and this coincides with the only time I ever see this picture. It took me a little too long to realise that, whilst I was being utterly confused that I was slipping into some sort of psychosis being utterly drawn to a headshot image of a journalist on a window and being labeled Man Who Got A Restraining Order Against A Window. 

I felt for such a brief moment that I sort of got what those people who are obsessive over someone or something were on about. If I had a little less self awareness and maybe some different views on the world and a slightly different chemical unbalance behind my face,  there is absolutely nothing distinguishing that feeling from one where some spiritual entity was subtly telling me something, putting me on some sort of adventure. 

I often wonder what my life would be like if I had a much harder time distinguishing what reality is. I think it’d probably be a little more interesting and I’d be better at parties and paradoxically I’d probably be better at dating (if the classic line ‘we should date because a God said so’ still works as well as it used to). I spend a lot of time at parties talking to people I already know, or doing drugs in a bathroom, or talking to strangers whilst I do drugs in a bathroom with people I already know - this gives very little opportunity to meet new people outside of bathrooms. If I spent more time standing on a sofa yelling at people that a god told me that a journalist in a window meant something to me but I didn’t know what, I’d def make a name for myself although I suspect that name wouldn’t be very nice. 

If you’re currently digesting this article for the first time whilst it is being read out in a courtroom I can only apologise and I am further down the rabbit hole than I thought.