Category: Other

I’ve recently been arguing with a dear friend about my decision to promote the fact that I’ve been trying to minimise the outrageous amounts of pure trash I have accumulated. I’d like to make it clear to him (because I know he will read this) that it doesn’t change who I am, or any of the things we have done together, I’m still the same person, it’s just that I’m not quite as lost in the things I own. I haven’t got rid of anything important and I never would. It’s just all the surplus. You’d be amazed how much you can skim off the surface without really denting the amount of things on display still. If it wasn’t for the sacks and boxes still collected on my floor I wouldn’t know I had sorted anything out.

That’s it basically. I haven’t changed at all. I’m still the same awkward nervous person you met four years ago in a lift, it’s just that I’m trying a lot harder to mediate myself, trying to find the way I work best, what makes me tick and that can only be done by trial and error. I’m not saying I’m going to become some fully realised being of light, just that I would like to free myself a little so I can create and work better. You can call that pretentious if you want, or say I’m like all the other cunts but I’m the only one of that ilk who is also your friend.

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I just had to run for my train. When you get up at half five to purposely go running in the rain and dark it really jars to have to pick up the pace an hour later to catch your train to work. That being said it does make me feel like I’m in Darjeeling Limited so I can’t really complain.

As I commented yesterday I’ve been getting rid of a lot of stuff over the weekend and this morning was my first real chance to revel in it. I didn’t have to rifle through thirty t-shirts to find one I could stand wearing, I didn’t have to throw everything from my desk to the floor just to find my house key and I feel like I’m walking taller. The last one is partly psychosomatic and partly because I finished the bumper hardback edition of 1Q84 part 1 & 2 and now have part three alone in paperback. When I am done with those they’ll be passed on for someone else to enjoy, that’s what I would hope happened to my novel. I like the idea of printing a hundred copies of it and just seeing how many people it can reach just from there, like a book tree. I’m getting distracted.

So far I’m reaping the benefits but I can’t help looking at everything and wondering what it’s purpose is.

I wouldn’t class myself as being a materialistic person. I do like films, I do like music, I do like books, I do like gadgetry but I’m not one for designer clothes and fads and things of that ilk which is why the last twenty-four hours has been a real surprise to me.
I decided to take the first step towards a minimalistic lifestyle, my reasons for this are as follows;
– I feel cluttered and loaded constantly.
– I needed to give myself more direction.
– It would help me avoid working on my short stories for yet another day.
So I read up on minimalism and the minimalistic lifestyle, and decided that I could only ever follow it to a point. They would put this down to my fear but I don’t think that is the case. I just wouldn’t be comfortable in a room that was just my desk and a laptop, I need a little something else.

I started by writing out what I wanted, how I wanted to be and where my focus should be directed. I then started working through the piles of everything I have collected in the last quarter of a century. With two bags of clothes, two bags of rubbish, a box of books, a box of DVDs and CDs to send off and a big pile of documents for shredding you would think I were typing this post from a stark Kubrickian landscape but my room still looks exactly the same, I’ve barely skimmed the top layer of stuff but already I can see where I could develop from there.
We all own a lot of things that serve no purpose whatsoever. That’s one of the few things that annoys me about Christmas, I enjoy giving people presents a lot more than I enjoy receiving them but I often wonder what becomes of the things I give to people, if they ever get any real use out of them or if it just becomes another thing to sit on their shelves or line their drawers. I’m going to try really hard this year to think about what happens beyond the time of giving, when the tinsel comes down and we are left with a stark January. I would like to hope that I can give people something that they will look after and cherish, rather than just assign a space and disregard for months at a time.

I just got in. I had a lovely couple of days away from it all, I had no Internet, no phone, no contact with the outside world for three days and it has done me the world of good.
I’m off to bed now but you can expect a series of updates on my adventures this week, I missed you a bit.
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The following is taken from one of my short stories, it’s set at a Halloween party on a University campus:

A black vampire, a white vampire and Spiderman walk into a bar. It sounds like a good setup for a joke. The only joke was the amount of tequila they then made me drink. I had insisted on not drinking Sambuca because of what it did to my constitution so they had Sambuca and I had tequila, but it didn’t make the pain on my throat, and stomach any less, and it didn’t make how I felt the next morning any better. All it did was build in me the idea that I was a terrific dancer, something that almost anyone including myself could tell you is definitely not the case, I can barely walk down a set of stairs without fucking it up, let alone move like Justin Timberlake. I truly went wild that night though. With my mask on I was sure that everyone would just approve of me, and want to dance with Spiderman, that they would gather round me for group photos and then we could all dance like a robot from 1984 together. It turned out that while they found it mildly amusing, there is something very disconcerting and sinister about someone dancing too close to you wearing what would be best described as a children’s gymnastics outfit.

For the last couple of months I’ve been working on a book of short stories, the following is the opening of the story that gives the collection its title:

It’s a question asked of me far too often, and one that I don’t really have a particular answer for, but in the impossible style that I was taught in my three years of higher education I will attempt to make a statement, give evidence, and then follow that all up with an explanation because four years since I graduated I’m still making monthly payments just to pay off the two student overdrafts I managed to completely rack up in my time as a student. In many ways it was the most reckless I have ever been, and I don’t just mean financially. I did things I never would have done, I took risks I never would have taken, I got hurt and I hurt others and I got drunk and I got high and I laughed and I cried… what an afternoon that was. The important thing to remember is that you shouldn’t judge students ever, or group them, because everyone has a different journey, and everyone has different adventures and deep down, you know if you are tutting at a group in a coffee shop or an individual dragging their coat in the dirt as they head to the library that really, deep down, underneath it all, you’re just jealous, or at least highly interested in how they conduct themselves, and that’s why you’re interested, and that’s why you’re still reading. There is a lot to be taken from it, but this is by no means a definitive recollection, this is just mine, all mine and I hope there’s some kind of mirroring aspect for you, because you should enjoy yourself sometimes.

This is going to be my last post for a couple of days, I’m going to get some fresh air, space and exercise. If I don’t then I worry I’m just going to disappear off in a different and horrible way. Do you ever reach that point where you just feel like you’re burning yourself completely? I’ve got there. I put too much pressure on myself and unless I’m able to just stand up and walk away from it all then I know it’s got too much.

What I really need is to just not have to deal with everything. It’s sort of like running away from a part of myself, I just hope I can drive fast enough.

I’m going to schedule some posts to pop up for your amusement while I’m away, just to make sure you don’t forget about me, I know it’s easily done.

Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to work when every month I struggle to make the money last. It isn’t even as if I’m living a lavish lifestyle, I’m a man of very simple means and very few wants, I just have too many outgoings at the moment.

Last night I had to embarrassingly tell my girlfriend that I didn’t have £2 to get the bus home, and that we would have to walk. Stuff like that pisses me off but there’s no way around it. In other ways I like being the poor oppressed writer though so I can’t really say anything. It feels like everything I own is coming apart at the seams, nothing really works in the way it should, and I always have to double think any purchases I do want to make. In a way this frugal lifestyle will be good for me when I do strike it rich because I’ll truly appreciate what I do have.

In the meantime I should probably just shut up, it could be a lot worse.

Goddamn money, it always ends up making you blue as hell

What business of yours is it how I choose to conduct myself. Maybe you should just take a good hard look in the mirror you little TOWIE haired cunt. Go about your day and leave me to mine. What’s the problem here?