A Note To Mum

It’s probably a good sign when you’re so busy you forget to blog, right?

But then, what happens when the work runs out…

Yes, the pace slows down to a crawl, and I get some time to think. And catch up.

Not too much time though, I hope. Cos lately, I’ve actually been earning enough to sustain living here and start to pay back some of the money I’ve borrowed (off myself) to finance the move.

This is good, and it’s real progress. Lately I’ve felt pretty good about myself. Well, part of me, anyway. I’m never truly happy, it seems. Largely because of my lack of social interaction with anything. And of the things I am interested in, politics, singing, computers, education… they tend not to get me involved with people my own age. Especially women.

But I can’t really complain. I now have short-term targets to ensure I’m earning £125 net profit a week. That’s not much, but believe me it’s a start, and right now it’s exactly what I need. Moving house has been an expensive business, and I really need to be earning double that per week if I’m to have a half-decent life… but even that is not sufficient. That would never pay off the student debt!

Meanwhile, today is my mum’s birthday. I have sent her a present, which thankfully arrived in time. But still it doesn’t feel right not to be there… even though I must have missed her birthday every year out of the four I was away at university. Still, I suppose it’s one less person to get in the way. My mum and dad get no time to themselves, so maybe they’ll be able to go out for a meal tonight without having to worry about paying for everyone else, as invariably happens.

It’s nice though to say thanks to your mum, and I really don’t do it often enough. She’s under so much pressure and stress from my family it’s untrue. I try my best not to contribute, but I know she worries about me anyway. Not as much as she does about my elder sister and her son (my nephew) – but she never complains. Well, only a little.

But who wouldn’t. She had my sister when she was 16 and has been a mother ever since, and is now a grandmother too. That’s quite a shift to be putting in. I think it helps keep her young, but soon enough we all need to be big enough to stand on our own two feet. I’m trying to do that, but no one else helps.

I feel sorry for her. She says she has no time to do anything for herself. And she’s probably right. The best she manages is maybe to sit down on FarmVille for half an hour each night. She doesn’t read. She hardly goes out. She doesn’t listen to music any more. She doesn’t play games, and hardly ever sees her friends.

Now I’ve managed to shame myself into thinking I need to be more appreciative. But that was my goal. I think I’ll take her for a meal when I’m next back. That would be a nice extra present, I think.

Thanks, Mum. Happy birthday too!

The Worst Winter In My Life

I write this post as it seems like – at the moment anyway – that winter is possibly starting to ease off.

But maybe it’s not such a good idea to tempt fate.

Today, at long last, the temperature reached a balmy 4 or 5 C. This got rid of a large amount of the snow that has been lying on the ground for some time. Which is good, as I think everyone was pretty fed up with it by now.

It’s been about four weeks solid of freezing temperatures. Day after day of snow and ice, and probably the coldest I can ever remember it in my life.

But it has been the snow that has been the most significant. I love snow. Usually. And that’s normally because every other time I can remember it it disappears the next day.

Genuinely, this is the first time ever that I’ve seen it snow and stick around for so long.

That’s why I started to get tired of it. The snow turned to ice, and made it impossible to get around. Luckily I managed to avoid falling on my arse by slipping, but there were many close calls.

Nevertheless, it has made for some great pictures. I went out for a stroll the other day – as I’m back in my house down South now – and crossed a very big field absolutely covered in snow. An absolutely unbelievable sight; never witnessed in my life

That was good. It’s made some of this suffering worth it. But otherwise, this has been a bit of a disaster. And unprecedented.

Maybe that means it’s not going to happen again. Or, at least, not going to happen for quite some time. But I can’t help but feel that there is a trend. Worse summers. Worse winters. It’s very worrying. I don’t really remember the weather being all that extraordinary during my childhood. There was one really hot summer. But otherwise, there was plenty of rain, some sun, and fairly mild winters in comparison to the one we just had.

Of course, anecdotes don’t equal evidence. And my memory may be faulty.

But if this is what summers and winters are going to be like from now on, I’m definitely going to be looking for a new country to live in!

2010

Here we are in the dawn of a new age. A new decade. Just like the last one.

First of all, I simply can’t believe that it’s now 10 years since the millennium. And yes, 2000 will always be the millennium to me. It just looks nicer. It only seems like yesterday that I was a fresh faced youth wondering what the decade just ended would hold. Now I wonder what actually happened in it.

Anyway, the year hasn’t really started well. Our now traditional family party turned into major disaster because of incidents involving way too much alcohol in my brothers and elder sister, and everyone else in general. Oh, and dogs and first cousins once removed. Not worth repeating here, but this will be enough to remind me!

This morning there is much alcohol haze and annoyance. Arguments from last night will either be continued today when my sister emerges, or sorted out. It’s hard to know. But this was a pretty bad one.

I suspect it won’t, and it will fester for another few months. Basically, my sister wheeled out a whole decade of greatest hits, insulting my parents and most of the family in the process. Fuelled by Southern Comfort, no less. And my sister doesn’t really drink. Yet she really did last night!

Anyway, let’s look at what this year holds.

You know what, I’m not going to make any predictions. For the first time in my whole life, I have absolutely nothing ahead. That is appalling, of course. All I see is bills stretching to infinity. I could set myself some targets or some arbitrary deadlines, but I know I’ll miss all of them, so why should I bother?

I’m going to try my best though. I’m going to try and sort out this horrendous mess I’m in. One way or another, I will not be ending this year in the same position as I started it. I am determined about that.

So, OK, I’ve set one goal. But there are no specifics. I think that’s a total waste of time now. I’m going to take each day as it comes and see what happens.

I know one thing though. I simply have to have more fun than last year. How that happens, I don’t know. But it’s got to. I can’t carry on living such a boring existence.

As for everyone else, I just hope and sort of pray that we all get through the year unscathed. I also hope at least one of my family gets a lucky break they have long deserved. We shall see.

Here’s to a better year!

Where Did It Go?

Looking back at my start of year expectations setter, I appear to have been a miserable failure. I knew that anyway, but since this is the first time I’ve considered what I wrote in January of this year, it’s actually quite a shock to me.

First of all though, the formal business. Each year I label the previous year with a verdict on how it went. 2008 was a Neutral Year. 2009 is most definitely a Bad Year.

That’s a major disappointment to me. I had said I wanted to sort my life out by the end of February. Didn’t happen. Still hasn’t happened. I’m still fucking about trying to see where it goes.

The big event of the year on a personal level, possibly the only one, was that I moved out. Sort of. It’s the most ridiculous moving out in history. So far it’s cost me nearly two grand, and it has been an outstanding disaster. I’m currently sitting in my parents house, and will be for another 12 days, having already spent the past two weeks here. I should never have let myself be convinced by my stupid housemate that moving out would bring the successful growth of my business that I thought.

I really don’t know why I fell for it either, because he has said many things in the past that have never come to pass, usually involving job offers, business leads and so-called joint ventures. Argh. What an idiot I am.

I made a prediction at the start of the year that something big would happen. That sort of happened. But I said it in a good way, like it would finally be the clicking into place of my life.

And as I know all too well, it hasn’t, and I don’t see any prospects for it in future. But that’s for tomorrow.

So my life has been a travesty this year. Some money earned, though not enough. Lots of time wasted. No life’s ambitions achieved. No progress. At all. Fuck.

Meanwhile, my family are getting on OK. One of my brothers is in uni, messing around. I don’t know if he’ll make it to the end, but good luck to him anyway. My other brother is in his last year of school, suffering the GCSE curse, and not really doing enough revision. I offer my help, but no one wants it. I get on a bit better with both of them than I did at the start of the year, which was one of my hopes for the year. At least something has gone right.

My younger sister is funny, and we get on very well. That’s very nice. My elder sister is doing OK, but she’s in a constant battle with the father of my nephew regarding access to him. Even though my nephew now wants nothing to do with his useless father. Court involvement will continue. Either way, it’s not been good for my nephew, who is now very different to what he was even three years ago.

As for my parents, they still seem fine, and we all get on well. I just wish my poor dad would get a lucky break and find a new job. He hates his current one, and has been applying for promotion for years in all manner of departments. Gets nowhere. I feel really sorry for him.

My mum continues to enjoy her job working as a teaching assistant, and has no ambitions to do any more. Though she isn’t that content about her life. Maybe no one ever is.

Goodbye 2009. It hasn’t been nice knowing you.

The Five Year Itch

Five years ago today, and almost to the hour, I began my blogging journey.

Five years of misery. Five years of false dawns. Five years of some success, much to my surprise.

I say this every year, often many times, but the reason why I blog is because it is such an awesome record of my life. It isn’t complete, far from it, but it gets across most of the important events.

In the last year, I feel it’s become a non-stop bitch-a-thon though. I guess it’s the nature of sitting around waiting for something to happen. But that’s no good.

I feel like I used to write about different subjects, because all manner of different things were going on in my life. But that may just be a shade of rose-tint on the old spectacles, which one day I’ll need due to continuing failing eyesight.

Because I’m pretty sure I’ve always been very passive about my life. I sit back and wait for things to happen, and let everything wash over me. I never usually have more than a handful of things on the go at any one time, and don’t do anything to upset that balance. That’s me all over.

And that is how my life is slipping away.

I genuinely cannot believe that it was five years ago I was sitting no more than two metres from my current spot, in an equally depressed state, thinking about what had gone and what was to come. Watching my own transition to an adult life, not knowing where the hell it was going. Back then it was disturbing; now my listlessness is almost par for the course.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Five years of whinging. Of waiting. Of hoping some break will occur for me, and never getting it.

They always say that it’s no surprise that the “luckiest” people in life are invariably the ones who take the most risks.

That is probably why it’s been almost five years of ceaseless boredom. I don’t take risks. Well, I do take the odd one. Moving away this year was a serious one.

Except it hasn’t paid off. I’m almost resigned to that now, and beginning to think of what the exit strategy is.

Fortunately, there are some things I life I still enjoy. One of these is happening right now, as I’m trying to type while holding one of my usual nonsense conversations with my younger sister.

The subject, what else, is doom and gloom. The end of the earth, which is due in 2012 according to her supervolcano theory, influenced by a current film. It’s providing plenty of banter. All good stuff.

At least there are people worth living for, even if life itself is a load of rubbish.

But anyway, as Shakin’ Stevens sang: Merry Christmas, Everyone!

The Line In The Sand

Last week I decided that the end would happen in March. The end being defined as the point at which my patience for business, and my new house, will run out.

I told this to my housemate, who was understanding. He tried to say that if I do get to a point of giving up in March, I should instead look to find a job in my new house down south. But I don’t think it’ll work.

The reason being is that the whole purpose of the move was to do a joint business venture with him. None of that has happened. We were supposed to be working on various websites, and a website design and construction business. Hasn’t happened. He has no interest in it, despite insisting he does every time. He also claims that he does have time to do it, but I’ve pointed out to him and told him many times that he simply doesn’t, and I understand.

Otherwise, every time we come up with an idea, it falls on its arse within minutes because of a lack of time on his part.

I knew this would happen, but I hoped it wouldn’t. I don’t know how many times I’ve fallen for him suggesting an idea, or saying he has something ready for me, which never actually happens.

And it has happened again lately. He’s been banging on for ages about forming a partnership with a shop in town which sells printer cartridges but doesn’t do PC repairs. He finally got round to approaching them, and told me he sounded very positive and drafted a suggested e-mail for me to send to the owner.

I did.

And nothing has happened.

Nothing ever happens. Every time I try something, the response is poor. 150 leaflets, four customers, two of which did not even receive the leaflet but had passed it on. There just seems to be no way in.

I’m not really sure what I can do any more. Short of wasting vast sums of cash on advertising, most of which will be wasted, I don’t know how anyone breaks into any sector in business.

Anyway, this disaster is why I don’t want to stay living with the current housemate if the business venture doesn’t take off. I have no intention of just having a normal life living there. It’s too weird. It was meant to be a stepping stone to something bigger. None of that has happened.

So three months to go before I decide whether to join the real world, accept that I’m just another tedious, boring person with nothing special to offer, and clog up the arteries of the world in yet another office.

Bloody hell. What a shit year I’ve had.

Where Did It Go Wrong?

I spent yesterday travelling North, as I’m going to stay home for Christmas now. And beyond into the New Year.

During the trip, I had a little chat with my housemate. One in which I disclosed a number of the depressing issues I’ve been battling with over the past few weeks.

Key amongst them is my brain is plagued with regret. It’s all rubbish, of course, and my rational brain knows it. For all I know, I could have taken a different course and still been miserable. Still been wishing I had done something else.

I like to look back and think that maybe I should have done something musical as a career. I enjoy performance, and I like being involved in group efforts. Perhaps I should have stuck to one of my very first plans, which was to do TV, music, film, theatre, whatever production. In my school career I did a lot of backstage work on a number of plays, and I loved them all. I did it again earlier this year, and loved it.

But I still don’t know whether it would have satisfied me. I would no doubt have been still thinking about the political side of me, and thinking I should have done that as a career, since, I wouldn’t have had the joy of the hindsight I currently experience, that there is no way I could do or even survive politics for very long. I find it interesting, but more as a hobby than as a way of life, which is what you need to be in public affairs.

What else could I have done? Science, yes. I abandoned that aspect of me at the end of GCSEs, for no good reason really. I enjoyed the sciences. But I wanted to pursue something else.

Mathematics? That might have been more me. I did do a Maths A-Level, though I found it difficult and feared I wouldn’t make the grade in university. i probably would have, as I normally succeed academically once I put my mind to it. Who knows. It’s all academic now.

That’s what depresses me, though. I look back at all these choices I made, and I made every single one without any real consideration of where I was going. Big mistake. Back then life seemed so full of promise in every angle, and to me my mind was simply saying, “no matter what you pick you will make it work”. I used to be filled with optimism, endless glowing teacher reports, so much confidence that I really did have the raw talent to succeed no matter what I turned to. I wrote something about this last year.

Totally wrong. And none of these decisions can be revisited now. My friend suggested maybe doing music qualifications to see. But it’s just not worth it. I’d only be doing them because I wanted to prove I could. It wouldn’t go anywhere. I wouldn’t suddenly emerge in a new career. Life isn’t like that.

The problem is that I thought it was. Maybe I grew up in an innocent age where it seemed like everything was succeeding and I would be immediately spotted and plucked out to rise to greatness. Now, with the disastrous economy and closing of opportunities, everything seems so much darker and unachievable.

I like to think that maybe if I had grown up in a middle class family, with the right contacts and connections, and the money, I would have got the breaks I needed.

But that just sounds so awful. I have nothing but love for my family. They did their very best with me. The rest I have to do myself.

I just don’t feel like I can do it any more. Confidence, zapped.

Happy Christmas.

Where Did The Year Go?

It’s hard for me to look back on this year. 2009 has turned out to be a year of real change for me. Yet nothing has really changed all that much.

For instance, right now I’m writing this post while sitting in my parents’ house. All this in spite of the fact that I allegedly moved out of the parental home in October. I think, with hindsight, this was a bad move. So far the transition to living away and trying to make a living of my own has been a total failure.

Hence why I’m here. Indeed, the main reason why I’m back in the old home right now is that I’ve had loads of work to do this week. Work that has paid me some cash and will definitely see me through Christmas. I could have had a lot more if I’d stayed here, I’m sure.

But on the other hand, I had to go. I needed change. I needed a break. I just wish I hadn’t move somewhere so far away and so inaccessible.

This has been the biggest change this year. My life is now on its head. Split across a couple of hundred miles. Travelling all the bloody time.

And yet, I don’t really know why the year has gone so quickly. In truth, it has been a year of inactivity. With so much time to spare, and so little actually done in it, I should have been bored out of my mind, sitting here watching the clock.

There has been a bit of that, but broadly speaking time has flown by. It has been frustrating and immensely depressing, but it hasn’t mattered. Time has gone.

At the start of the year I knew it would be important. I remember saying as much to my fellow New Year revellers. But I don’t think I’ll truly know the significance of this year until I can look back on it in a few years time. Whether this was a false start, and a waste of money. Or whether it was the stepping stone to turning myself into the entrepreneur that right now exists in my dreams only.

I keep setting myself deadlines at which I need to have achieved X. They come and go, without me achieving anything. But I still don’t feel brave enough to scrap the current gamble and accept I really ought to live an ordinary life like other people, rather than sitting, waiting for customers.

It depresses me too much. That alone should make me reconsider. I once thought I was a fan of change, exciting, different things happening each day. But I also long for a bit of stability and predictability. And more predictability than being able to confidently predict that today would, yet again, be a lost day.

There’s something seriously wrong with me. I have no motivation any more. I am filled with depressing thoughts constantly. A feeling of total inadequacy.

And I don’t want to do anything about it.

2009 has been a great let down. Maybe it was for the best that it’s gone so quickly.

Now all that’s left is to hope that I’m not too down over Christmas. That would be extremely difficult for me.