I have massive issues with feeling powerless, I’m not sure if it is something that everyone suffers with but I’m sure it’s more than just me. I think the problem stems from being a child, it wasn’t adults who made me feel that way though, it was other children. Adults quickly cottoned on to the fact that I was a reasonably bright child and could be talked to as such, I’m sure there were the usual levels of condescension but I was too young to recognise or acknowledge those. The problem I had as a child was that I was physically weak, which is something that matters a lot when you’re a child, I’m not physically strong now by any means but I’m better than I was, and I’m mentally prepared for things I couldn’t comprehend or block as a child. I was always picked last for teams, or ridiculed for being thin but I didn’t classify it as bullying because it wasn’t about me being a different gender, race or creed which is all I knew of bullying. The power that is taken away from a child by being told that they are weak is pretty brutal, and a complex that I still deal with on a day to day basis. If I don’t get my way I consider that to be as the result of me not being seen as a man, or for seeming weak and that people can take from me without any reaction. Now it makes me angry, that’s the difference.

I’m currently in a position where a big decision could be made for me and I’m fuming about it because it’s not on my terms, I can’t even state what it is because it’s just a heavily circulated rumour at the moment but it could effectively fuck me over quite a bit.

So the important thing to remember is that when I get bent out of shape about things, it’s because they aren’t on my terms. Keep on that straight and narrow and we’ll be fine.

There come times in every one of our lives where we just have to give up to our primal urges, tonight my urge is dance and drink. This year I have pretty much evaporated my alcohol intake for a number of reasons. It feels good to be going to my favourite night spot for the first time in 2012 this evening, it also happens to coincide with the birthdays of two of my dearest friends (neither of which it should be noted are the Queen). 

From writing my novel about silly post teen excesses I’d nearly managed to turn myself off to the concept entirely but there is still that tiny little voice that says ‘come on Paul, don’t be such a boring old cranky bastard already, plenty of time for that, come and show us your moves’, and I listen to that little voice because on the odd occasion it’s the best thing for me to do. Tonight I shall drink and tomorrow I will regret it but human are characters of error and I will do it again sometime in the no too distant future, the thing to remember is that you make good with the time in between. 

Be safe.

I’ve always struggled to focus on a task, I can’t put that down to any singular reason though because it covers both things I want to do and things I have to do, so it’s not just that I get bored as I previously thought because I procrastinate when I’m writing and that is purely what I want to do. I think that procrastination is key to being able to do, it’s the other side of the coin, the truth is that you can’t be ‘on’ all the time, if you try then you just end up wasting time and this is procrastination.

The important thing to recognise is that it is all part of the creative process and should be embraced. I try to use my procrastination from one task to propel me into another one, or to achieve or learn something. Even sitting and watching a film is something, as long as you’re not sat staring at the wall then you’re into something.

Keep at it.

Today is statistically a terrible day for me, every nineteenth of every month for the last three years is just a dumping ground for negative feelings in my body. Today is the day before payday.

I’m not a materialistic person (as I’m quite sure I’ve mentioned before) but money sure as hell makes me blue, mostly because I never seem to have any of it. I don’t know how I’ll ever survive if I do buy my own place (as intended) in the next couple of years. I think what really gets me about it is the fact that I don’t get to enjoy the fruits of my labour, I’ve pretty much stopped ‘going out’ of a weekend and I don’t waste money on clothes or DVDS really, it just leaves my account in repayments and direct debits from my previous life, and it’s hard to see a silver lining. I guess I should be thankful that on the whole my job doesn’t cause me that many problems, in fact I’m lucky to have a job and a wage, I completely understand that, but it’s natural to never be happy with your lot on life. What I really need to do is finish my redraft and send off my novel, it’s very much viewed as being my golden ticket, and I have total faith in it, so it’s just a waiting game for something to happen, but at least I’m trying, at least I’m trying.

I’ve been with my girlfriend for a year and a half now and I’m beginning to get the push. That’s the term I’m going to use to describe it. It covers occasions where friends and family say things along the lines of ‘so errr….you’ve been together for quite a while now…errrrr when are you errrr gonna pop you know, the errr, the question’. It first came up at my cousins bar mitzvah when me and Kate had been dating for less than six months and my mothers cousin (oh, bless him) asked if we were engaged. What a question. Oh brother. It meant that we had to have a chat about it, to work out what we both thought of his ridiculous outburst and what it meant. Luckily for me Kate is very much on the same page as me for most things but I imagine there are a number of young men who do get engaged because people keep asking them when they are going to do it, after a while if you’re of a particular mindset/temperament/thin skin then those things start to burrow and grow.

I don’t have any issues with getting engaged or the sanctity of marriage, one day I would love to get wrapped up in all that but for the time being I still feel very young and I’m not going to let other people influence when I change my life. I have friends who are happily engaged or even married who orchestrated the thing entirely under their own steam and not as a result of the push and it seems to be working for them. The important thing to remember is that like most things there is a choice, and for the time being I am perfectly happy with what I’ve got going on.

I can’t help the feeling that I waste an awful lot of time, and I don’t mean that in the terrible habit of procrastination sense. What I mean is that there are around twelve hours every week day when I am out of the house and unable to work. This is because I am at my job, which I must tell you is far different to my work. My work is writing, something I’ve wanted to do since I was about five years old, and have done with guiltless abandon since. My job is a different matter altogether.

When I was at university I wondered where I would end up, how I’d earn my way in the world, how I’d start paying back those damn student loan cats and here we are, I work in an office in London. It’s a far cry from the boy who wanted to be C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien. I know it has to be done, I know we all do it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t think it’s fair and that it just seems to detract from what I want to do and what I now appreciate I am capable of doing. I know writing will probably never be stable enough for me to rely on it as a steady form of income but I know I’ll keep doing it as long as I’ve got ink and fingers (and even if either of those should go I’ll find a way).

The fun of writing is therefore restrained to weekends, a time when I can’t really face doing anything a lot of the time because I’m trying to get over my job. Oh woe is me, stop it this instant, you’ve got a job, you’ve just finished your first novel, you’re young and in love and there’s plenty more of all that (wherever it came from).

I’m sorry, sometimes it is just hard to remember the track you are on, and you have to just scream into the abyss.

It’s such an underrated day, anything can happen on a Sunday. Today I’m going to visit my Mum to watch some home videos of when I was five that I haven’t seen forever and then me and the girlf are going to hers to see her cousin (and her baby) and then I’m going to see my friends from Improv perform, what a mixed bag of a day, no other day could get that combination going on.

The important thing to remember is you can do anything today. Go.