So, yeah, I started a new job – picked it up “by word of mouth” – always the best and maybe even only way to get a job – and had my first day Wednesday. It’s just cycling round Leeds delivering DHL packages. Kind of like being a cycle courier except instead of a funky shoulder bag and a radio we ride special long bikes with massive boxes on the front that were originally used to sell ice creams at the Olympics. Leeds is a good city for that kind of thing, wicked compact and not at all hilly, but still pretty knackering even though the shifts are only like two and a half hours. Quite digging it so far though; we’ll see how it goes.
Ain’t had much time for much else this week, what with reffing pretty much every night and needing to take naps and being zonked. Did work an afternoon down at my dad’s updating his shop website and listening to him say mad things and sing songs in the pub singer stylee. Apart from that…well, the usual, really: just thinking about life and working through stuff and plodding my way back to 98% happiness 98% of the time. We’re definitely back in the high-eighties by now…
One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about this week is positivity and its opposite. Seems to me that I’ll often watch myself saying something negative when there’s no real reason – like if someone mentions they shop at Asda I’ll feel compelled to tell them I don’t shop at Asda and why – and lately what I’ve noticed is that I go away remembering that and thinking, hm, was there any real point in it? Did that bring anything to the interaction? I mean, I could just keep my mouth shut and wait for the Asda-moment to pass…
Monday it was kind of brought home by a Greenpeace fundraiser I got chatting to on Briggate; seemed like whatever I said to her she just had to say something negative about it, or introduce her own negative spin. Maggie Thatcher had died that day and she was all excited talking about how much she “hated” her (and Ghandi, and Mother Theresa). I just can’t see the point in that: hating anyone can only reflect badly on yourself, even when it’s Maggie Thatcher or Hitler. It’s like not seeing the point of life or something. And it’s just not attractive. But it was good to have that external reminder to work on not introducing unnecessary negativities myself.
Which is of course all ironic given the freedom of expression I gave my own ‘hating voice’ with regard to Nicky the other day – but I do hope you’ll all understand that was in order for me to see more clearly my projection and the lessons I needed to learn therein. And anyways, I guess there’s a memory also of writing about forgiveness and the clarity of that. I don’t hate her. I just have a bit of hurt – understandable, even if it was my own fault – and a desire to move on from the parts of me I saw reflected in her. Though I guess I’ve said all that before.
Anyways, working is good and physical activity is good and being busy is good and the healingness of time is good too. Time passes and you forget the people and things that cause you trouble – unless, that is, you continually write it all down and keep it stored forever and ever on hard drives, which is what I’ve done. Not sure about the wisdom of that. Though it does come in useful sometimes, like when one is pining for a past love – when one has an overly sentimental heart such as I do – and there are all those black and white reminders of the reality of such and such a person, beyond the rose-tinted fantasy. Don’t know why, for instance, I keep alive the spectre of certain people when I’m confronted with details of what they were actually like. Think I’m going to try and stop.
But not much to say really. A great week. A good day today. A nice (platonic) evening with Laura, eating fish and chips and falling asleep early and taking a bath in her amazing bathtub (about twice as deep as a normal one and substantially longer). Also one incredibly groovy moment when she was saying how it seemed like it was never going to work out between the two of us and I was musing how part of it was that, you know, when you’re first in love and thinking the other person’s perfect and you don’t know their annoying side and you’re all infatuated and lovestruck and out of your head there’s this real impetus that pushes and keeps you together and you’re so dazed you don’t really stop to think about it until you’ve grown all attached and co-dependent and, actually, that’s probably a good thing. But thing with her and I is we’ve known each other getting on twelve years and been through all that and probably more in this place of like, well, fuck it, shall we not just give it a go, it’s kind of rubbish not doing it and I’m not sure if I can be bothered not to, just wanna stop thinking about it. I mean, I think I said it better than that but that’s about the gist of it. Had been thinking that for a while but thought I could never say it to a woman, even though it seems sort of obvious, what with all their romantic fixations and stuff.
Anyway, all she did was laugh, and laugh heartily, and completely agree. I really found that awesome.
Reality, not fantasy.
Comfort and ease, not pressure.
What a groovy gone chick. I wonder what it would take to get me to commit? I did do an I Ching about her the other day – a week last Saturday, to be precise – and got the chapter “Family” (number 37; no changing lines) which seemed kind of clear-cut and obvious – but then when I read a different translation yesterday I wasn’t so sure. Yes, it said a lot about the awesomeness of the family unit and how when that’s in order everything’s in order – but it also seemed to counsel about not getting into it if your heart wasn’t really in it. Or rather, if you weren’t truly able, had an inability to do it properly. I wonder if I really have the ability, much as I say I want to and want to get over all the flakiness and unreliability I say I saw mirrored in Nicky. It’s all very well saying I’m ready to commit – but the fear of becoming trapped is strong in this one. Could I really stick it out? For eighteen or twenty years, at a minimum? I’m far from certain. And given that getting involved with Laura would probably very quickly mean children on the way, I’d like to be sure. For her sake more than my own. I dunno, maybe it’s only natural to feel this way and maybe everyone does and just gets on with it. But I really really really don’t want to be: a) a deadbeat dad; b) responsible for causing a struggling single parent mum; or c) trapped in an unhappy situation that leaves me chomping at the bit for Mexican beaches and other women. Though most likely what I’d find is domestic bliss and an end to all this restlessness of spirit and the words, “I wish I’d done this years ago.”
Fuck: how do you ever know?
And: anyways, that’s all just thinking out loud and let’s not get back on to mind things when everything’s been so groovy and I’m almost back to being myself, except hopefully new and improved. Though: it is good to think about these things and, hey, probably what I’m actually doing is covering my ass ‘cos in my head I have a few imaginary voices of cool and uncomplicated people who read this and think, God, what a loon, why can’t he be different? And to those imaginary voices I probably ought to quote some ancient dead Greek smart bloke and say, “ah, but the unexamined life isn’t worth living and therefore it’s actually me who’s the groovy one after all.”
Well, whatever; we’re all the same underneath aren’t we? It’s just that my underneath’s on the top and laid bare for all to see in the microscope of this blog. I quite enjoy it really – in fact, did I ever mention that I love love love this typing thing I do? Probably have done somewhere along the line. And ‘tis a petty fascinating time; most likely I’m going to really enjoy reading this at some point in the future – say five or ten years down the line – when the inevitable solution has been reached, whatever it turns out to be. Which reminds me – speaking of unknown and uncreated futures – I got given notice on my current house and’ll be moving out of there on the 26th of this month. A bit less time than I would have liked – especially given that I’ve really started to dig the area – but c’est la vie. More conundrums and possibilities and maybe freedoms…
Did I ever mention about this sign I’ve been seeing over and over plastered to the back of the local buses? “Discover your options, create your future,” it says. I dig that. I feel that’s kind of what I’m in the process of doing. At some point I’ll probably have to make a list of all the available possibilities and then pick one or two of them. It’s slowly dawned on me the last few years that the future isn’t something that’s pre-destined, some arranged and glorious situation that I’m just looking for the door to, but a blank canvas and I’m the painter. For too long I’ve been thinking someone was going to come along and paint it for me, or at least tell me what to paint, but it doesn’t really work like that, does it? Free will, man: what a headache! You create your own reality but how to choose what to create when there are so many options? No wonder people follow the herd. So much pressure to get it right.
And – oops – is that negative talk? Bemoaning my position as master of my own personal universe and shaper of my destiny? Rather a silly thing to moan about, don’tcha think? (he winks). Ah but…
Here’s some awesome memories from this week:
1. Coming home from reffing late Thursday night and a chap in the middle of a ghostly industrial part of town was pushing a fairly new Mini with the lights off, electrics seemingly kaput. So I locked up my bike and gave him ‘bout twenty minutes and helped him push it a good few hundred metres up the road back to his place of work. I was starving hungry but that was okay, I right enjoy pushing cars and helping poor chaps in distress.
2. Coming out of the uni late one night I was right in the middle of campus and pushed off on my bike not even going at walking pace but decided to try not to pedal and even though it nearly stalled several times I eventually got going and even made it over the rise that goes over the ring road and probably managed a good two miles of freewheelin’. How cool is that?
3. That moment with Laura in the bath, saying the thing you think you can’t say but which seems so perfect and obvious and realising that you can actually say it if the other person’s switched on and lived a bit of life, ‘cos then all you have is laughter and not young girl’s disappointed feet-stamping romance burst dreams.
4. Staying behind at my dad’s shop for a little while after he’d gone home just to finish off an internet thing (the repair guy upstairs was there to lock up) and in comes a punter and he buys a lead and there I am, twenty years on, writing the sale on the sheet – so old school! – and putting the money in the draw all sitting behind my dad’s shop counter just like I did when I was a young boy and how funky that felt.
5. Watching cricket in the park behind my house while eating fish and chips or drinking my own mug of tea. Nearly everyone round here’s some form of Muslim and I dig how they play cricket every day and the kids run around and the park’s pretty much always full. So much life on the streets. People of all ages hanging out. Seems like white people just stay indoors all the time these days. Or can’t think of anything to do beyond their TVs and computers and drinking. I like the outdoors social life and groovy little third-world shops that are open all hours.
6. Cycling round on my new job and spying all those offices and office-type people in their smart clothes – thousands of ‘em! – and wondering, wow, how did they get there, what are they all doing? and wondering if maybe I shouldn’t be joining them, being all smart and educated and talented too. I used to like working in an office. Seems like such a strange and magical world though when you’ve been out of it for a while.
7. Singing in the house. That’s awesome.
8. Typing, too. And was it this week I wrote about forgiveness? Forgiveness is pretty groovy.
9. Watching High Fidelity again in the bath on Friday. Amen for a night off and a lovely hot bathtub and a good film that never gets tiring no matter how many times I see it. Amen too for how the breaking up and the longing to get back and the eventual reconciliation – plus all the “she’s shagging someone else in between” – doesn’t bother me anymore. Another mirror: ‘cos it sure did when I watched it and read it a month or so back. Anyways, bathtubs are great – and how lucky and what luxury when you think of how so many of the people of the world are spending their evenings (innocents in Guantamo Bay, for example).
10. Dates and egg sandwiches and fish and chips and dhal and green tea and toothpaste and cycling hither thither and Pedallers Arms and my new local Morrison’s and the stool I made and my re-fixed bike and playing football and some really lovely friends and Shooting Stars and dreams and ideas and rubbish self-invented jokes about anti-depressed ants, plus the ever-present trumping; they’re all awesome too.
And now I’m going to stop at ten, rather than putting pressure on myself to think of like a hundred awesome things in the world this week, ‘cos ten’s probably enough. In any case, it’s just to remind myself that life is awesome and be grateful for what I have and not dwell too much on what I don’t – especially when what I don’t have is actually so piddling and inconsequential anyway (not that I can think of anything I don’t have that I might need).
Cheers! Adieu! Tchüss!
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