Twelve

Let me give you an example of a typical week in my life:

Monday to Friday I wake up between 5.30 and 7.30 and start to write, which I generally do till around lunchtime.

Except on Thursdays and Fridays, when I have classes at 9 and ten respectively. The classes are two hours long. The Thursday class I go to about fifty percent of the time.

In the afternoon I do various tasks. These will include: errands and shopping; napping; watching comedy DVDs; working at Oxfam, one or two days a week; having a two or three hour session of Risk, one or two days a week; sorting out email; and various other online procrastinations.

On Thursdays I play football at noon in a 5-a-side competition.

On Mondays I have a game of squash with my friend Matt, and then we usually have a sauna, come home and eat lots, and play (and record) music together.

My girlfriend is home around six. Sometimes I cook for her. Sometimes we hang out.

Saturday morning is football morning - two full games fill my time between 9.30 and 1. Then I'm gloriously knackered and don't do much else.

Sunday I'll probably write some, or occasionally get together with some people for food.

Among all that there might be one or two movies, and a walk (though probably not a walk, as of late), and perhaps one or two episodes of sex. I sometimes do some work for uni too, but not very often.

And that's about it. Not very exciting, I suppose. And not a very socially-full calendar - certainly, these past few months I've come to spend more and more time alone, and I'm starting to get a liking for it. I'm even getting a liking for spending time apart from my girlfriend. This book thing is coming to possess me - it's in my head all the time, always being written and tinkered with, whether I'm on a computer or not. The only time it's not there is when I'm on a football field (or on the computer playing some ridiculous game of Risk). I long for the day when it will be done, and the monkey will be off my back. It's hard to imagine how I'll feel then. Free, I suppose. Free and happy and light, in the way that I feel free and happy and light - and ecstatic, even - when I get an essay done, only times a million. That's something to look forward to.

Eleven

I've been revisiting Charlottesville these past few weeks, concentrating on part one of my writing project/dream. It seems like it's going well, but it's hard for me to tell. I feel like I'm down in the engine room, messing about with the nuts and bolts, and it's impossible for me to get an outside perspective of the thing as a whole. I'm gonna need some help in that regard sometime soon.
     I'd really like to feel that this thing is publishable. I can't tell whether it's great, and will be good for people, or whether it's just a monumental waste of time, one great big so-what. I do know, however, that there's no letting go of this, that I'll never forgive myself if I don't do it, and that I will somehow be stuck here at this place forever, unless I get it over and done with.
     I wonder, too, whether it just might be my 'Divine Duty', as Shawn's angel once told me. In that case, I really shouldn't worry about quality or presentation, because it's not mine, and it's out of my hands. That's kind of freeing in a way. And if it is my 'Divine Duty', it would also explain why I can't let it go, and don't seem to have progressed in my growth of late (aside from getting back down to Earth). I guess, like Jonah, there really is no escape, and no way past but through.

I find writing about Charlottesville, and thinking again about my less than glorious past, on the whole, quite a titillating experience. I'm amused by what I was and what I did in my youth - and it seems so far removed from what I am, and what I have been for some time, that it's hard to believe it was me. Even reading Gus's less than flattering opinions of the old Rory doesn't really bother me - even when they're not even based on truth - but rather, in most cases, makes me laugh. Sometimes, though, I must admit I'm a bit disturbed.
     I read today an entry I don't think I've come across before - and a piece of information that I definitely haven't. Basically, it said that Tyler, my old housemate, was offered money by the owner of the restaurant where we both worked to evict me from the house we shared. Two days after Gus reported this, I was evicted. I'd always wondered why Tyler had done this, and why he hadn't talked to me about it, or given me any warning, and now I guess I know. It seems to have disturbed me somewhat, and I'm not sure why, but I guess I'm hurt.
     Strange that, to be so affected by something that happened so long ago.

I've been thinking for a while that, whatever stage I've been at in life, it always seems I can look back on myself and feel I'm looking back at idiot. Realising that, and taking it to the next logical step, I must conclude that not only am I being an idiot right now, I must forever be doomed to be one - at least to some future version of myself. Even the me that is looking back at a long line of idiotic former mes and feeling pretty okay and happy to have learned and grown somewhat since his predecessor's time will be an idiot. And I guess there's no escape from this.
     I can't work out whether that should be a depressing or a liberating thought. A part of me thinks it should be liberating, because no matter how hard I try to be perfect and do the right thing, and no matter if I feel that I've actually succeeded, I'll still look back one day in the not-too-distant future and think, "I was being an idiot." A part of me does find that funny - but the bigger part, right now, today, thinks it's just plain depressing - especially considering that I'm currently in a stage where some of the biggest and least reversible decisions of my life will be taking place (e.g. buying a house, making a baby, finding a career, etc).
     But what if they're just idiotic whims? What if I'm mistaken in my choices? Lord knows, I've wanted all those things before - and, likewise, Lord knows I was being stupid then. The question is, am I being stupid now?
     I miss God. I still feel sometimes I wish I could leave it all behind and head for somewhere, and discover something wonderful again. I'm not really sure I like any of the people around me, to any real or great extent, and I'm not sure I like the life I lead. Sure, I've got a great girlfriend, and a sweet place to live, and I'm not really wanting for anything, but…I don't really know if it's me. I don't really care for possessions - definitely, they get you down - and I don't really care for the world I live in - meaning the world of busyness and jobs and running around here and there trying to fill it with things. Sometimes I feel that I'd much rather be out in the trees, with a tent on my back, and no noise and other such botheration-type things of the modern world. I don't even know if I like the charity job I do.
     There's not much to keep me on this planet. Maybe I'll die when this book is finished, job done, your time is up Rory, now have a nice new body in some nice new country where God is more important than wearing the right shoes and your spirit can grow some more, unburdened by the wearisome memories of all that you did wrong in the youth of your current life. I'm not sure what else there is for me from this world.

Ten

Well the writing's been going good and not so good. I've pretty much completed a short memoir-style piece for a class, and I'm happy with that (though not sure if it's any good), but the book project has floundered again, lost in the struggle to find the right format, the right voice, and the right place to start. I've rewritten some old journal entries, and like the diary style, but I'm having a hard time getting the beginning the way I want it. And the beginning is important...

Originally I had the beginning as a chapter describing my arrival in New York. I thought that was okay, if a little pedestrian. Now I'm thinking maybe I should just plunge straight into the action, and start it at some point in the weeks before I left Charlottesville to begin my hitch-hiking odyssey, in the middle of my mad little depression. It was a good time for thinking, and revisiting the past, and I did do a lot of writing then, which would help the authenticity of it...but actually getting down to it, and getting it all straight in my head is where I flounder. I just don't know. This is starting to feel like a very difficult thing.

In other news, though, I turned thirty with the minimum of fuss, and it hasn't really made any difference to my life, or to the way I feel. Maybe because I don't have any regrets about things I didn't do or feel any particular sorrow at saying goodbye to my youth (I mean, it was interesting and all, but not exactly easy, or happy, or settled). No, the only thing I've noticed is a slightly odd sensation inside when someone asks how old I am and the number comes out, and I realise that I can never be twenty-something again. So many things you get a second chance at, but that has gone, gone, gone.