But, of course, I jest. Thirty, though, is supposed to mean something, and I might make that meaning something to do with writing, with reflection, and with purging and preparing for the future. I was reading some of my stuff from years back this morning – looking for a certain paragraph, which was a bit like looking for a weasel in a gaystack, and just as successful – and, man did I used to write a lot! And, man did I used to think a lot too! It seems like these days I hardly have any thoughts at all…
So I’m supposed to be writing this book – and yet every time I contemplate it, the size of the project overwhelms me and I go nowhere. It’s a month since I wrote anything – another reason I’m here, in the hope of kickstarting the old grey matter – and it’s seeming quite impossible. I know, I know, if I just take one step at a time, and if I just start, and see what comes, and take it from there, understanding that first drafts can be improved on, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s better to have something than nothing, but…it’s not just the sheer size, but also how to capture some of that spirit I once possessed: the one that thought, the one that pondered and contemplated and sought out the meaning behind things…now, I’m afraid to say, there’s little of that; my mind seems to have become nothing more than a conveyor belt for random and useless trivia, furnishing me with nothing of meaning, just leaving me wishing I could turn the damn thing off. Another reason I’m writing here today: to see if there’s anything left in there, and whether expression, and written expression, isn’t perhaps what I need to put it to work again. The mind is a workshop, not a warehouse…
I will be thirty in ten days time. How do I feel about that? I feel…I don’t really care. It doesn’t mean much to me – and maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe because I don’t have any real regrets; maybe because I did all the things I wanted to do, saw the world, denied myself very little, and found my God (and then lost It again); maybe that’s why I don’t regret things and dread this ‘getting older’ and going beyond my youth. In a lot of ways I’m ready for it. And in a lot of ways I’m not. Which is as clear as fud.
Well I’ve lived a good life. Man, I did some incredible things! And it’s funny, it all seems to have ground to a halt when I started uni, and when I got a girlfriend. Yeah, things haven’t progressed very much in the last three years – other than in the sense than I’m a little less mad, have a little less light, and feel a little less interesting. I sometimes think that uni has damaged me – all that thinking, all that emphasis on the intellectual mind, on academia, on the surface of things and not the heart, the substance, the truth of the matter – but…what the hell, it’ll be over soon (three months; I can hardly believe it!) and then it’ll be on to…on to what? A career? Teaching? (Hey, that could be cool – I like kids, they’re fun, alive, youthful and interesting…) Or maybe the old writing lark, who knows where that might lead? And, in reality, who cares? The most important thing is just to do it – whatever follows doesn’t matter even a hundredth as much.
So in thirty minutes I have another class. My tutor is a published young novelist, Scarlett Thomas, who I read about on the web yesterday. Seems like we have some shared interests – Britpop, video game addictions – and maybe we’d get on if I wasn’t so anti-authoritarian and didn’t treat all my lecturers with disdain. A bit silly, really, but I just can’t help it, I really seem to have this “us and them” mentality with this, even when I like them. I wonder what that’s all about?
Well I guess I don’t really have anything to say. Too conscious of time – but maybe I’ll be back later. Reading my words this morning inspired me – inspired me that I did have something inside, and that it’s probably still there, if I just take the time to have a look around – and I think it’s worth a nosey. Just to celebrate the passing of my second decade, and the ending of my youth, and my unavoidable slide into adulthood and stuff. Etcetera, etcetera. Amen.
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