Steve McQueen - The Automatic

I'm just loving this song at the moment, yet this isn't the sort of music I'm usually interested in. It's so catchy, but makes me think about so much, and I can strangely relate to it, not to being the teenage Steve McQueen (I wasn't exactly an actor or action person in any way), but in a different way.

It's more the fact that it's about what happens when you leave home for a while and then come back and feeling like you don't belong there any more. That's exactly how I felt when I returned back in Birmingham during the university holidays. I spent most of the time during that period either in London working and having social obligations or going to Bloodstock and Edinburgh festivals.

When I was in Birmingham for the short periods that I there for (the longest period I was there for was two weeks), I spent the entire time mostly in my house, being bored out of my mind whilst either working or having to put up with a complete idiot of a chav, or if I want to be nice, my brother.

On the very few times I went out, I was shopping in town or that god-awful chav haven known as Northfield (the latter not willingly of course, but because I had an obligation to). If it wasn't for work, I could probably have gone out with friends who live in the area, but it wouldn't have mattered much anyway, my view of that city would not have changed much anyway.

To me, there's not much interesting to do there anymore. I can't even be bothered to ask people to do stuff, because I've been away for so long that people probably couldn't care less what I do anymore because it doesn't involve them most of the time, and they've most likely got much more interesting stuff to do than see me.

Yes, admittedly I miss people who I know who live there, but that's the problem, the people who are still there haven't moved on and gained enough experience, or they have moved on and are in the same situation as me and are usually too busy. I definitely needed to move away to go to university because I knew it would be an experience and help me to grow up. I would have gone crazy if I'd have stayed where I was.

However, I've made so many friends at university (mostly through my societies) that when I get back, I feel lonely because I know less than half the amount of people there than I do at uni. I become a hikkikomori, and I don't like that. I'm a social person, I need to be with people I like and enjoy being with. I suppose I could have asked people to hang out, but then I'd probably have either had work come up, or my mum slapping a 'last bus' curfew on me (at the age of 20!!!).

I guess what I'm truly trying to say is that I don't want to go back if I'm going to be ignored, lonely and get the feeling like I don't fit in there. Here are some of the lyrics that prove my case in point, and thanks for reading (if you did ).

Can't put my finger on what's changed
To my surprise I found everything the same
In a house that's not quite home
Nothing was missing but something had gone

Everything just as I left it
But it wasn't me who left it
The position had been filled