a break?

I’m going to take a break from my novel to write this. I’m doing well with the NaNoWriMo challenge, I’m on target for my 100,000 word personal target, so I’m more than able to hit the standard 50,000 word mark. I’m not stressing too much about it because I know that whatever I get out of it is something in the right direction.

At least I’m putting pen to paper with an aim in mind and I can stick at it. In the past I’ve been distracted by lots of things, but this time I have a focus that I can really only put down to maturity and real determination.

It is a while since I’ve blogged and I feel like I need to, to get some stuff out.

I got a job! I’m working at Waterstones and I have met new friends and everything on that side of things is great! I’m pretty good at selling books and helping people out. I’m very well read, so whenever people come to the till and ask about something I’m like… ‘oh you mean X, sure – just follow me’ or I’m like ‘I’ve read that actually, can I recommend this?’ Its lovely to have a job where being who you are really makes you good at it.

I’ve more calmness now, my character has altered and I’m able to see it clearly now for one particular reason.

I’ve quit my medication, both the fluoxetine and the sleeping pills.

I’m in a better place, so I don’t need them to keep me still anymore.

I’m starting to get back some of the old feelings again, but that makes me feel more like myself. There is the old nostalgic sense of a lost life and a part of myself that has fallen away. That had been hidden from me by the pills, they sort of alter you into a more carefree and less concerned creature. That’s not me, I know who I am and it is okay for me to dwell slightly. It is where I get a lot of my strength from.

I’m more focused, have more regard for people. I’ve done well. It’s almost like enlightenment, but not as sudden or significant really.

I’m getting back into the swing of being okay with being me again.

And just in time for new year.

Filed under: Friends, Happy, Training, about me, anxiety, hopes, influences, work, writing, writing the novel

My Hour as Art: The calculations of a Soft Machine.

One must always bare in mind the often overlooked power of a single thoughtful person. Though we are often unaware of the impact we can potentially make, we must attempt to prepare ourselves. This thought was brought to me from my recent experience as a plinther. That is, being a lucky participant in One and Other, Antony Gormley’s new art installation.

Being up on the Forth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was one of the most unprepared moments of my life. It was like approaching one of the seven wonders, or the peak of a mountain; there is simply no way of knowing how you will react.

When confronted by such opportunities, a more refined soul might have gone up with a speech prepared. I might have preached, screamed, recited or otherwise constructed some form of sentiment that would have undoubtedly taken the moment away from me. I might well have run for an hour like a robot, speaking words that I’d pawed over for weeks in advance. Not so for the willful creature that I am.

Instead I listened a little too intently to a small voice from within that said ‘you need only ‘be’!’ I decided to go up, no props, no gimmicks – just a lone soft machine, held aloft for an hour.

I would say even now, that was/is enough.

Art itself (for the most part) cannot alter its form to better suit the audience before it. Once it is produced it is cast in that form. The painting cannot gain another few brushstrokes, to add more colour here or focus the eye there, just because the person seeing it would find it easier to understand. It can but assume a lasting posture and only stand by and weather the praise and criticism it receives with equal solemnity.

I went up there to ask the world questions more directly than most art does, to be a mirror that might allow people to see something of themselves whilst speaking a language they themselves spoke in. I went up there to do what art does, not interact with the audience around me, but to get the audience to engage with itself.

The truth is we make art to remind us of what will always remain important. We don’t make it as a target for our insults, or produce it so that it will locked away. We want it to be shown to an audience, to tell a story, to make a point, to request more of ourselves than is polite to ask in person. We use art to crack open the human spirit.

Of course I am referring to art as generalized art, that of the gallery displays (paintings primarily, or perhaps music also, certainly the photograph), rather than the more innovative methods that artists now engage in. I know full well that art does not stick to its definitions, by definition it is endlessly re-educating us of limitless features.

So, I got up on that stone pillar with the idea that I’d more clearly do what art does. So that I might connect more directly with people and get the message across. My mission was to Raise Awareness for Awareness. I wanted people simply to start asking themselves questions.

Back to the experience itself, once up there I lost my words and almost my balance.

We cannot know our qualities until we have been tested to our limit. So all I could comfortably expect of myself was that I would continue to breathe and that my heart would beat (albeit madly).

When I got up there I had no idea that I would lose much of myself to nerves. There is a lot to be said for the written language (and much has been); however, I more admire anyone who can stand to speak and explain their message with clarity. I do not have the ability to speak easily in public, though I do now intend to improve.

In any case I am happy that, with that small sight of my limits, I was inspired.

I’ve come off the plinth with a renewed acknowledgment of myself, but also of the influence and inspiration I have to offer. I met and spoke with many people and the reactions have been incredible.

People do want to talk, people do want to learn why things are the way they are. Even those who initially became hostile in the face of art, grew later (after conversation/explanation) to understand. They too added their own voice and perspective to the endeavor.

I may have been alone, an example of a young man with a lot (perhaps too much) on his mind; but no-one was unworthy of a place there on that plinth and those who asked questions took their place alongside me.

Now uniquely aware of how much impact a single soft machine can make when placed in the right location. My plan is to go on putting myself in challenging places, to do what I think is good and right and just. To ignore the voices that want me down on their level and to use my own to lift others out of the flood of indifference.

I’ve shaken a dozen hands, hugged people who were strangers, dealt with the irrepressible masses and I have come out of the experience; not better, nor worse, but different.

Filed under: Existence, Future, Happy, Lonely, Love, Sad, Strangers, about me, anxiety, art, hopes, influences, other people's lives, solitary , 4th plinth, afternoon, art, desire for change, escape, Happy, idea, interviews, liverpool, one and other, oneandother, photography, quest, sorry, stylized, sustenance, twitter, writing

oneward and upward

Okay. RIght. Testing, testing. Hope this is working.

It is.

Right.

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this whole One and Other thing. I’ve done my smart thinking now, I’m over that. I’ve reasoned out things and I think I’m going to be okay. Just going to get up there, pose my ideas and then breathe it all in.

Been having a few emotional tantrums recently – my heart all a flutter.. ex-cetera … It all comes from me putting too much stock in this thing.

The truth is, I don’t need to get it ‘right’ or do anything to ‘please’ anyone. I’m smarter than needing to take my level from other people’s figures.

I wrote a little piece last night for my novel – “Feel bitter, feel like you want to hit me; but don’t deny the fact we made each other pretty happy. In the time we had.”

That’s what all this means, it is getting up there and just saying ‘This is me. What are you?

I am the art that can ask questions of itself, as much as of the observer. Now that is a revolution!

This morning I got a call from a mental health team member and they have invited me over to get checked over on Wednesday. I’m going to go along and tell them everything. I will write a little something for them first. A little history maybe. Something to explain better than I might be able to.

Oneward and upwards with things.

Filed under: Competition, Day-to-day, Depression, Existence, Family, Friends, Future, Happy, Re-Genesis, Reality, Sad, Training, about me, anxiety, connection, genius, genus, hopes, influences, news, novel, other people's lives, sermon, solitary, writing, writing the novel , 4th plinth, art, desire for change, escape, greet, Happy, heart, idea, london, mental health, novel, one and other, oneandother, quest, questions, revolution, truth, twitter, writing

what is the point of change?

What is the point of change? Is it for yourself? Or for others?
At what point do we change? When we learn our lessons? Or when we act on them?

I’m growing. As ever, I’ve been reflecting on self again, but in way of a preface to this post I will say something.

I believe, or am coming to believe, that a major reason for my ongoing difficulty lies in my inability to resolve myself to myself. I have been brainwashed by a religion, and by relationships I have had, into thinking that I care only for myself and no one else. That to do what is best for you is to act out of self-interest and that is inherently a bad road to take. This is a hard thing to wriggle free from. However I think I have reasoned toward an explanation.

I am aware of myself and my impact on the world. That does not make me egotistical. I am not self-interested as much as I am interested in myself and what I am. I am capable of love and adoration for people around me. I close myself off to those around me so that I do not infect them with my sadness. That is a selfless move. I am normal.

So many things are driving my change. As ever the continued focus is self-development, whether I should consider myself egotistical, or if I am not unreasonable to assume that I must be aware of myself. Is it really egotism or just an important self-awareness?

To that end I’ve started a new blog askyourselfaquestion in which I will pipe my enquiries and ask questions and see through the investigation.

Very quickly here I will explain two main inspirations. The first being Socrates ideas. 

Socrates theory is that the soul is ‘mutilated by wrong actions and benefited by right ones.’ He means those actions undertaken by the self, rather than those undertaken by others.

One striking thing about it is that it doesn’t appeal to the altruistic, but rather to the germ of self-interest.

His idea cannot be realized by the greedy and self-interested alone; but instead putting self-improvement above all other motive. Neither does this unusual ethics rest on any hope of heavenly reward or the fear of its opposite conclusion.

The benefits of virtue are reaped more or less immediately, for ‘to live well means the same thing as to live honorably’ and ‘the just [man] is happy and the unjust miserable.’

Tough idea to swallow. It doesn’t hold water in the way you think. He is highlighting the idea of the health of the soul being paramount, above the importance of the body.

His idea is of practicing moderation to secure a future of good health, instead of hedonism to secure a few more immediate ones.

This strikes me and asks fundamental questions of me. Namely my own motivation of change – do I act solely for myself? Or does it bring a greater good? By being more aware of myself and my impact on the world, will that make me more sympathetic to others. I think it has so far. I feel a lot more in tune with things by being more comparative in my reasoning.

The next point is to talk about how I will develop myself. I think it is not nearly enough to tone one part of the self. So… Frank Harris puts it like this.

I made up my mind to train my will by exercise as I would train a muscle, and each day I proposed to myself a new test. For example, I liked potatoes, so I resolved not to eat one for a week, or again I foreswore coffee that I loved for a month, and I was careful to keep to my determination.

Celui qui vuet, celui-là peut: ‘He who wills, can.”

To explain this in its effect on me is to say, ‘I have realised pretty late that I need not punish myself for not being immediately able to control myself. I need to train myself to be slowly and accumulatively better.’


So I’ve set myself the aim of exercising my mind first, as it is the part of me that is most refined to this point. Hopefully the change and development will be reward enough to insist that I continue with my project. Next will be the body. I feel it is something I take for granted. I’m not sure I can say I’m healthy now, certainly more so than I was, but I do want to be more of a temple and treat myself with more care.

So ‘mind.’

Indeed – questions i’m wrestling with are… 

Why do I sway toward the conclusion of a divine creation/will? – Is it childhood teaching; or a force-infomed conclusion, like gravity?

What does a creator mean? Does it require worship? Does it define goodness inherently?

My question for today – why do i want there to be a god?? To relinquish responsibility for my existence? or to have an explaination for it??

Does my wish for there to be a rule or order to things come from a spirit of self-interest? Do i wish for rules so i can learn/utilise them?

Filed under: Depression, Existence, Future, Happy, Lonely, Reality, Sad, Training, Youth, about me, anxiety, hopes, influences, prose, solitary, writing , desire for change, escape, Happy, idea, oneandother, prose, writing

apologies

Okay. So after putting it off for a lifetime I’ve sent the last letter of apology out to my exes. I’ve already gotten two replies before now. One is NOW MARRIED! Another is getting married.



Even women I have just known casually are getting married!

How are those for updates. Nevermind. Anyway.

It is part of putting things to rest, but it is also genuinely about being sorry. Also though, there is curiosity behind it.

I like the fact that lives keep going without me and I can catch up with people later on down their road.

I’ve also meditated quite a bit on the things they have given. Some have really impacted me, not least one who is pretty much an inspiration.



The thing is, a lot of the problems I have with others comes from the fact I don’t deal with envy well.

I get really annoyed when they are able to fullfill dreams and ambition and I’ve not got the guts to do it.



Which is why these last few months have been so fantastic. I’ve gotten a chance to make money from art and live for myself and my ambition.



So they are letters, written in 10mins, that say thank you and sorry.



Now we’ll see how many of them get really pissed at me for getting in touch.

Filed under: Future, Girls, Women, about me, anxiety, connection , desire for change, writing

me.me.me.me.me.me.me…

Out comes The Guardian to adapt my thinking yet again. [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/brain-society-politics]

Perhaps my sadness is a reflection of the sort of ebb and flow of human feeling?

Perhaps I’m unduly effected by others?

Perhaps I’m not selfish. Perhaps I am. Perhaps by thinking I’m not, I am.

Nevertheless, I’m dragging myself out of this.

I don’t care if i’m thinking about myself. I don’t care about this, I just want to be okay.

Shove your head up your ass everyone who is sending me their negative god-damned energy.

Fuck it, my parents will let me go off sailing – that’ll wash out the cobwebs.

Roll on the tide.

Right, time to pull myself up. I’ve 9 books to read from winning the Waterstones competition, which I want to read before they get published.

I feel like a smart little guy for having all these advance copies. Despite the fact that the waterstones people get them for free.

I want to get better, I don’t care who else aches for me – I’m going to be selfish if it means getting better because without me being selfish, I can’t give more of myself when I’m better. Without being selfish I wont get better.

Please everyone forgive me for being self-involved. Just for now. I promise it is just the normal rhythm. I’ve lost so many people because of self-presevation. Sometimes we have to live for ourselves, because no one else will do it for us.

Filed under: Day-to-day, Depression, about me, anxiety

ignore this post, it is the same as the others

‘I’m in a winter cave of blankets. I haven’t eaten in days. I feel defeated, because I have been. I’m lying in bed looking at a white ceiling. I’ve been lying here for 72 hours, I’ve slept for the usual 22 hours but I have no energy. I’m thinking about so many things, most of all I’m wishing I had the courage to drown myself in the lake down the hill.’ – Scribbled on a scrap of paper.

This was me after my first year of university. This was me during my first break down and I’ve lasted this long. Five years later and I’m still in the grips of this god-awful pattern of rise and fall.

I’ve measured it out in poetry and so many pages of notes and writing. I’ve tried to explain something of it. I’ve tried exercising, eating well, not drinking, being around friends and now pills and it isn’t working. I’ve tried thinking of it as ‘who I am’, ‘what I have to endure’ and the ‘price of genius’. I’ve attempted to seal it away with so many vices and then tried virtues when it came to nothing. I have my ups and I have my downs. I’m currently in the swell.

I think the thing that bothers me most is how I already know life wont get better/easier for me. Save for me rising from this pit, I’ll only wander helplessly toward another. If anything I’m worse than I was, but I’m in a better place to be ill. I’m not putting up as much of a fight against it as I usually would. I’d usually skate by one or two bouts of depression before a third managed to floor me. I think that this is a little less severe than my usual episodes. With my parents I don’t have the added stress of having to pay rent and all the other wonderful things that come from being alive in these times, but I also don’t need to pretend. I think I already know that the best I can do is get on with things. Except that this resignation in itself is a source of disparagement.

‘It is all in the mind.’ – Who said that? I’ve no idea, but it is painfully apt.

I’m desperately in need of passion and direction. Then again, when have I not been?

I think about what I want to do with my life and I decide that I’m going to use it to [insert anything here]. Except that there comes out of my own logic a painful futility.

I don’t seem able to exist alongside the idea that I might one day perish and that has given me the lazy and pathetic outlook that perhaps it isn’t worth my effort. I’m a boat afraid to sail for the fact that I’ll one day sink. No matter how ridiculous it seems, I can’t do anything except float through life on whatever wave picks me up. When I’m happy there are things that make me do other things and I just get swept along with those little whims. I want an aim/heading, except that the fact it will accomplish nothing is too unfathomably bleak a truth.

That is what gets most of us, I think. The depression takes the sparkle out of life and it is only that sparkle that keeps us on track in the hard times. It is the horizon, the painting, the music, the soul, the god. It’s what we need. It sustains us because it cannot be captured. It is desire to capture that which cannot be captured that grabs us. I want to be grabbed.

Now I’m roundabout thinking about the devil and if he were a real being, how it would be a perfect way to get rid of us. Just as hell is separation from God, rather than fire and brimstone. So too suicide comes as a result of hopelessness.

I turn my attention to the idea of enduring the bad to get to the good. Of working out some way to keep my awe alive whilst I am in turmoil. I know that I’ll be defeated by my own hopelessness one day. That if I waited some days past the unbearable day, I might have turned my luck around.

If I believed in God then I would view this as a punishment for something.

If I were the character in a book I would be the tragic example of man’s mind becoming the noose with which he hangs himself.

I made a comment to my mother this evening that I’d love to be insane. She found it strange, but you all know what I mean. You can believe what you tell yourself rather than what is empirically true. We, to some extent, are rather insane already – believing all manner of falsehoods. What I want for, is a lot more acute. I want to convince myself that my life’s purpose is this or that and go at it, blind to the fact that I am mortal and that my efforts to achieve anything will start to be eroded the moment I die.

So many more people are better at casting aside their uncertainties. Everyone I have met has managed to keep up their masks. I’ve never been in a room with anyone so sick and slack-spirited as I was in that room five years ago. So that gives me the impression that I’m unique, though I know it not to be the case. Nevertheless it leads me to self-delusion. That the whole world is a disney movie, whilst I’m feeling my very spirit being drained out of me to feed it.

When I am high I am drawing power out of the world, when I am sad I am the battery which feeds it.

I’m not sure what to do, I can’t hold on to the theories I’m being taught by the great thinkers of our world. I’m a victim of what I make myself believe and I seem unable to control what I think. What a kick in the nuts, hey?!?

I’m really sick of this.

Filed under: Depression, Existence, Reality, Sad, about me, anxiety

absurdity revised…

This has always been a place for honesty, it remains that way.

The pills stopped working 3-4 weeks ago. I’ve been running up-hill ever since. Every day is a new effort to stay on top of my mood.

The doctor has doubled my dose. Little effect has been felt over the past 3 weeks, not even a superficial improvement.

I can’t tell if I’m getting worse, or if I’ve been sad all along and it has been buried. It could just as well mean that the pills never helped and I had just gone back to my default again. Just as many times before; I have recovered from a bout of depression after a month or two of rest. I sail through the storm, rather than calming it in any real sense. Calm water mistaken for a persistent force.

Now I’m back to the stage I was at before, that black hole of sadness to the side of me – stretching to swallow me, but for now just remaining a peripheral threat.

I can be intensely happy, I can run about and scream and make noises. I can read for hours and hours, keeping focus. I can play stupid little games on the Wii with a semblance of satisfaction. It seems that when I am around people I can just forget it all. Except, when it comes to trying to sleep I just lie there getting stressed. I have to take my sleeping pills to make any attempt at sleep. Otherwise I’ll lay awake and my head will just endlessly play out encounters and projects and then start to hurt.

Headaches. I’ve never had them before and now I get one a day, usually around 5-6pm. It isn’t unwelcome. It keeps me focused on physical pain rather than the inertia of melancholia. At times it will feel like my brain is breathing with the same futile effort of a bulldog.

I’m still not any nearer, thanks to this slug-like NHS, to getting any real help. The consensus is ’swallow these and wait.’

To begin with you always take the options handed to you, because you’ll try anything to climb out of where you are. You’ll clutch at the straws of wishful thinking and convince yourself you are getting better, when really you are just subtly forgetting your fault lines run where they do.

I’m still reading. I’m still writing. I’m still taking photos. I’m sailing. I’m managing to eat a little when I can. I’m exercising. I’m alive.

None of it gives me real lasting pleasure. I’m trapped in the talons of this sickness. There is no reasoning with myself, I will just find myself sad and wishing that life would stop. It feels like I’m wired up to the taproot of human misery, I’d give anything for a little of my usual apathy. I’d give anything to have my ego reclaim me. The thing is that I just don’t care.

Selfishness, I guess. Therein lies the dilemma.

Am I so self-involved that a perceived misery is unconquerable in the face of all the joys laid out ahead of me?

In the light of all the misery in the world, what makes mine seem acute in comparison? Do I have a right to ache?

Is pain relative or is that egotistical? Is pain in fact on a scale from one extreme to a far greater one?

Is comparison to other perceived ‘greater pain’ helpful? Or does it just make one wallow even more in your own limitations and self-centered attitude?

Most recently my life has been especially given over to other people. I have put myself second in the greatest of my efforts and helped (often beyond my means). I have not done so for gain. Except that I have gained friendships that I value and make me regretful for not establishing with similar candidates in my history. I have not lied. I’m not even proud, I care very little about what people get from me. My misanthropy has now been turned on myself only. I retain my skill of apathy as a challenge to myself, making more and more elaborate efforts to assist people. I suppress my selfishness when it rears up, forcing myself to do more and more beyond my comfortable inclination. I feel I am better for reducing those unpalatable parts of myself.

It gives me a question… can you be a good person by suppressing your sinful attitudes?

Can you be human and be free from selfishness? Or is it just a quieter voice over time?

These are all questions that mean very little to me. Before they’d have driven me to madness, but now (with a little help from Camus) I have seen that they are all absurd questions. They will never be answered to any great or helpful point. What matters is that I ask them and continue to act in a way that comforts me. It comforts me to ask these pointless questions because it focuses my aims. I am content to be a good force in the world where previously I have been a negative force.

I understand that it is in my nature to be sad. That is who I am. For a reason unknown, I must ache. It is not an obstacle, merely a feature of my landscape. Just as a mountain is not an obstacle to a mountaineer, but a victory he attempts to claim. The man seeks not to climb over it, but to conquer it in the name of joy. Just as to a fisherman a sea is not an obstacle, but a landscape of harvest. Not to be skipped, but endured to obtain a bounty.

Still this truth brings no real conclusion. I am a captive of myself and to myself I must bear witness.

I continue to grow, even if there are pains in doing so.

Filed under: Depression, Drugs, Existence, Food, Friends, Future, Happy, Home, Lonely, Reality, Strangers, about me, anxiety, cracks, hopes, news, sleep, solitary, vacuum

Grab your Côte you’ve pulled

Sailing

.

There is hardly a feeling like that of steering the tiller as you lead a wayfarer on its way through the water. Sails are filled lungs, as they drag the blade of the keel and send us clipping along. Ropes are released, grasped tightly and then tied off with what I must describe as ‘passion’ rather than ‘precision’. Likewise the effort of ducking the boom during tacking is one of increasingly comedic value.

Me: “Ready about?”

Father: “Ready.”

Me: “Lee-Ho!”

*THUMP*

We’d lashed the sheets on land, pulled the sail to a snare-drum tightness, checked and rechecked the brace for the rudder and tiller. Dad ran around the vessel, mentally collating the tools needed for a successful launch. Finally connected to the back of the Land Rover, we were away.

We reversed down a heavily crowded slipway and halted the car as the back trolley wheels dipped themselves into the water. Unfixing it was completed after the winch had been secured. We then lowered the boat backwards, click by click into the water.

Once in, there was nothing to stop the stern from drifting and it took a swift mind to wet the feet in time and brace it against the impending calamity. Removing the trolley we negotiated the boat round the slipway wall to the docking area and each climbed in.

The Kingfisher was away, but not quite sailing, as we pushed off from the shore. We hugged the coast unable to catch the wind. Drifting with the current we made our way through fishing wires, cast out by leather-skinned men with angry faces. The lines freed themselves without piercing the sail and we soon caught breeze enough to put some distance between us and the sea wall.

Entering the wider sea we lined up and started sailing beautifully. That is that really. My first self-reliant voyage in a boat. What a blissful afternoon.

-

In other news.

.

My mind is still reeling (excuse the pun). I can’t get it to stop. I’m reading books and books and books. Which isn’t a bad thing! However the ideas they are stirring up are beyond my ability to pace.

In Glyph by Percival Everett there is a quote that runs to explain my current condition.

.

“I cannot even say that I am smart, only that my brain is engaged in constant frantic activity.”

.

It is a euphoric state you can enter after a while. It is a state that I’m trying to steer away from. Heck, I’d even anchor myself on the idea of brain-numbing medication to avoid the level that theses ups can lead me to.

See, having a brain that is running quickly is a wonderful feeling. Except that after a while you lose yourself slightly at the back of your own mind. Ideas that raced, now flood your brain – which itself is less of a buoy floating on top of this deluge, but rather it is a shipping container dropped overboard – straining against the pressure as it sinks to the seabed.

It will hold out. It will perceiver against the enormous forces met out against its sides. Except there will come a moment when its integrity fails. The surrender is made between the atmosphere inside and the tons of sea-water that seek to replace it. At this point, it is fair to say, I lose touch with reality.

It is a very temporary thing. It might only last a few hours, but I become drunk and irresponsible. I’ll most likely be alone, but if I am with someone then the connections start being verbally translated.

I can remember a very good example of this and it was while on a car journey to Falmouth. I was in the back of the car and talking to the two people beside me. After a few moments of talking about poetry I was flung onto a circuit. I looped over many subjects and began making connections (mostly coincidental) about the people involved. Subjects and dates and ideas flung at them as they came to me. After 20mins I came back to my senses. The rest of the journey I tried to stay as quiet as I could.

It’s a balancing act this. Making sure I can harness the energy that is generated by the reeling (sorry, I love the word) of my mind and also that I don’t fall into the realm of possession. That I’m not abstracted from the capability to see how useful my observations are. That I don’t lose sight of the fact that sometimes a coincidence is exactly that. That sometimes people don’t mean to be distance, they just have their own things to deal with. That there is no logical reason why a person should be privy to the same knowledge that I am. That they are not less valuable for not understanding what I am talking about, because what I am talking about in this state is mostly just irreverent crap.

-

I am reading.

(click books for descriptions).

The Winter Vault by Anne Michaels

Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon

Glyph by Percival Everett

Filed under: Existence, Family, Reality, Travel, about me, anxiety, books , afternoon, brain, drifting, fishing, land rover, mind, ocean, reading, rudder, sailing, sails, sea, sheets, tiller, voyage, wayfarer, wind

songs about me

So I’m still not feeling fulfilled.

I have a great life. No need to work. No deadlines. No stress. But I still don’t feel like I actually can be bothered breathing.

That isn’t anyone’s fault. I’m very happy at a lot of things in my life. Great relationships with people, great deal of success already with my projects.

I’ve taken to making jewellery and that is going really well.

I can now juggle. I can make my funky art. I can write (i’m really producing some amazing work). I can make clothes. Upholster chairs. Sail the family boat. Travel when i like.

I have a 32inch hd tv in my room. Surround sound. Dvd player. Laptop. Camera. Camcorder. Guitar. Typewriter. Sewing Machine. Mountains of books and dvds. I have material things to make one tear your own material to pieces in lamentation.

I’ve taken up photography and that is going really really well – as i’ve been offered a fair few opportunities of late to take photos of all sorts of events etc.

Just to touch on writing again. I’ve written the most exciting pieces of fiction ever recently!

I’ve not gotten drunk in weeks and weeks and weeks. So i know i’m not an alcoholic. I’m just a bit of twat when it comes to knowing my limit. So i learnt that lesson! lol – (On the flip side, due to not drinking i’ve picked up on inherent social anxiety, so i think that is why i drank a lot – to lubricate the old personality and push away the fact i get scared in big groups. I draw a lot of energy from people, but crowds really upset me and get me timid. Hence many times leaving parties and street festivals and declining to go on trips off to outdoor festivals too..  when i then lied and came up with some lame excuse. Least now i’m honest enough to admit i’m just a pussy when it comes to large groups.)

But it all amounts to a hill of beans when even on these bloody pills I still can’t seem the conjure up a will to live.

I had a song written about me a while back and the idea of it was – that Much came “to realise that it is life that you (I) despise.“

I’m sure that isn’t true, as much as it is too strong a thing for me to feel toward life. I’m not crying out for help, nor even really making much of an assertion past the simple honest truth.

I don’t care.

I really couldn’t care less.

With that is freedom and oblivion – but i really have no opinion on the matter of life and its vice and virtue.

The last relationship fell on a sword of my uncaring. I’d given up hiding behind a mask made of smiles. Showed a little too much of what it means to live near me. That there is very little that can stir up a case of genuine joy.

Maybe pills are making me apathetic and i’m looking back on life through these eyes, but i think i’ve pretty much always had this outlook.

She goes on to ask why I “must be so blue.” – It used to be up on last.fm, but it has been taken off now – but it is still a damn good song, despite the personal nature of it.

I really don’t try to be. I’m the life and soul. I’m happy and moving like a blur and i still can’t seem to shake this apathy.

Perhaps it is to give me a little wall between my mind and the worry of death? I used to worry about that a lot as a kid. Death became a sort of monster to me, stalking the land, killing indiscriminately, no proof of hereafter, of continuation. I feared a lack of a thereafter more than anything else. Here i am, several years later – not caring.

Perhaps i got bored of the question.

Unsolved questions will drive you mad – unless you temper it with some disinterest.

I’m quite able to hold myself out of the top floor window in my house and not fear the fall. Is that scary? Should i have vertigo to prove i mean to continue?

I’m not sure. I just get the sense that all these wonderful opportunities and skills and talents etc… are just wasted on me. I’m too ambivalent about them all.

Or maybe that isn’t true, maybe what i mean to say is that i can’t hold on to the joy of it for long? I have short bursts of intense happiness and then bam, nothing.

I don’t know, fuck it. At the end of the day it isn’t important. Except i do ache for a little purpose. I’m considering making up a god and just following that blindly. I’ve already taken up Buddhist meditation. That is too much the absence of God, but it meets with the fact i don’t care a stitch for all this junk in my room.

p.s. I’m still pretty lonely and need to meet more people to keep me entertained and motivated.

Filed under: Bath, Depression, Drinking, Existence, Friends, Future, Girls, Happy, Lonely, Travel, Women, Youth, about me, anxiety, childhood, cracks, hopes, much, prose, the novel, undervalued, vacuum, work, writing, writing the novel