Dice Life - a new hope?
Dice Life - a new hope?
I read the Diceman about five years ago, right before the start of my A-level exams. It was a time in my teenage life that I was beginning to feel bored, and was also faced with a major turning point in my life. I was due to choose the potential universities that I would go to, and therefore, open up paths that could dictate my entire future. So for an 18-year-old beginning to dice live, I couldn't have picked a more significant time in my life. That dice-ision was certainly not one that I chose to make straight away. I began by playing with emotions and personalities, which I found frighteningly easy. It was a game to play at parties, changing personality every half an hour, or simply dice-iding what concoction of weed and alcohol to have that night. All the while I never told my friends why I was acting strangely. To this day there are people who think that I actually thought I was god one night. No amount of explaining will change their memories ("excuses, excuses"). One of the first major dice-isions I made was actually whether to try weed or not. I had done enough research into the matter to be slightly curious about the whole thing, and figured a 50/50 chance was in order. That night I smoked my first spliff, and Second, and third, and more. I continued to smoke for three and a half years. If I had dice-cided not to do anything that night, who knows where I would be now….
After many a random dice-ision during school, I soon came to choose what University I should go to. Strangely enough, there were only six universities that did the course I wanted, and after getting five straight offers with no interviews, it seemed to scream at me dice-ision. So quickly, and stress free, I soon found myself going to Glasgow for an MA in English and psychology (very apt, I thought). Things started going rather strangely at this point, I was away from home for the first time, and after a lot of my old friends had fallen out with me due to my recent 'weird attitude' I was unsure as to whether to carry on the dice-ing so full on. But it was at Uni. that the fun really started. Not wanting to risk any new friendships so early in my student life, I laid off the personality changing, and emotion roller-coaster, but started using the dice more secretly, to decide when and who to pull, who to become best mates with, who to have problems with. I ended up being mates with a drug dealer, someone who to this day is one of my closest friends. Sometimes I was told to pull the pissed bird in the corner of a club (the guilt of this was overridden by the need to obey the dice) sometimes I was told to come onto a close friend of mine, or even a mates girlfriend. I was not always successful, not always happy to oblige, but thy will be done. It soon became second nature to consult the dice for a lot of decisions. Should I get up or not, should I write that essay, or go on a three-day bender. I always knew what I wanted to do, what I should be doing, but found it easy to do whatever was told of me. I felt less guilty if I went out the night before an essay was due in, because the decision was out of my hands. On the other hand, I would happily stay in and write an essay when my favourite DJ was in town because that was told of me.
As time went on some changes to my random life occurred. I became less obliged to consult the dice on every decision and soon found the random signs and coincidences that life threw at me would help my random life. Chance meetings would send me to strange parties, where I found myself pretending to be whoever I felt like being that night. I began to realise that in a paradoxical way, using the dice was a very structured way of being random, and that so long as the dice were involved, you could never be truly random. That is not to say I stopped using the dice altogether, but found my instincts taking over, and using unknown chance effects to dictate my future actions ("If the next traffic light we see is red, then we are getting steaming drunk. If it is green, then we have to try and get jobs").
Soon I became bored of using the dice. Personality swapping had become pointless. I began to change my opinions at my own whim, rather than the dices. I found it all to easy to see both sides of an argument, and in the middle of a heated debate, suddenly begin agreeing with the other party, much to their satisfaction (and confusion). On other occasions I would take an opinion that I didn't agree with and argue for it. I soon came to realise that one mans opinion is another mans nonsense, so what difference does it make which side you are on. There is no right and wrong, only different parts of the whole truth. It was at this point that I began to feel freer to control my own destiny than ever before. No longer was I stuck in a rut, or struggling to cope, but the possibilities of my own future suddenly seemed endless. All I had to do was believe I could do something and it was done. I began to realise that with a positive attitude, and a spot of bullshitting, you could achieve just about anything you wanted and be whoever you wanted.
My dice use became minimised to dice-isions based on travelling. I have woken up on trains hundreds of miles away from my last memory, that of a green die and the dice-ision to get on the next train that leaves. Quite often I had tickets to places in the exact opposite direction. But the ultimate in Dice travelling had to be my European travels. I picked destinations, methods of travel (dependant on cash flow), and places to stay. I found myself once squatting in an anarchist commune in Amsterdam, going to protests against fascist 'White Power', and found it unbelievably easy to play the part of a protester. I later ended up in the south of France, with no money, no food and nowhere to stay. I hadn't slept in four days, and was getting bored of dozing on the hot, tourist beach. The dice told me to hitch hike my way to Sweden, and so that is what I did. As luck would have it I ended up getting half way there in the back of a VW camper van, with a bed and a fridge full of food. The two travellers in there were very friendly, and I still stay in touch with them now. After being dropped off near Paris, and hitchhiking to no avail, I new dice decsion told me to get a job, or at least try. It wasn't long before I found and Irish bar that I could work in ("Of course I'm Irish" I told them in my Northern English accent). It took me about a month to save enough money to get a ticket north, and carry on travelling. And so for five months I carried on like this, getting jobs in Eindhoven, Munchen and travelling by train, plane, hitchhiking and ferry, dicing where to go all the time. A highly recommended form of travelling.
And so after returning home I felt a much stronger person than ever before. Playing with fate and chaos as life thows it at you, living on my own whim, and pulling myself out of the machine. I have broken free of the 9-5 cog in the works member of 'polite society'. Away from the corruption, away from boredom, and free to live as and individual controlling my own future. And yes, I still carry a couple of dice with me in my pocket, just in case…