Tag Archives for thoughts

Captain’s Log… Supplemental?

 Eh, beedoobeedoobeedoo. That’s all.
[Eddie Izzard]

 So, there are a few things going on. First and foremost, I am exhausted. Spent most of the day at the cottage raking up leaves (approx., shit-ton) and then dragging sackfuls of them over to a compost heap. For an idea of how many leaves there were, please see exhibit… er… this.

Here be leaves and sticks and things.

On top of that, as a little warm-down, there was a few willow branches that needed sawing off, so my arm was nice and healthily numb by the time it started to get dark. Tomorrow I’m off to visit Abigail for the weekend, but there is the very real concern of my joints solidifying again whilst on the train journey there.

In other news…

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So… I slept well?

For a start, I’d like to clarify that this is not going to be a place for me to regularly record and analyse my own dreams. Most of them are pretty boring, for a start, and I’m sure I’d be no good at it. What’s that, brain? You dreamt that I drowned in my car? Psh. I don’t even have a car.

That said, this one was pretty strange. Firstly, it was set in the future. Although I wasn’t expressly told by anybody that “hey, this is the future”, that part was pretty easy to grasp. Secondly, I was dying. Nothing sudden, and I was still my current age, so I suppose it must have been some dignified yet inescapable disease. I came to realise that we were so far in the future, so hugely far, that all the traditions concerning death as we know them today were gone. There was a new way of dying, hugely extravagant, yet in that time so long established that they weren’t considered out of the ordinary. It was simply what happened. And what was this new way of dying? It was… well, brilliant.

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Hark, An Update!

It’s been a short while since my last post, and I have both much and little to tell. That is to say, there could be much to say, but much of that would be boring. I’ve been continuing to visit Abigail, of course, and we manage to spend rather a bit of money for two unemployed people. Part of these visits is always spent in trying to get her hugely emotional and slightly anxious dog to trust me. The growling has stopped; only the expressions of meek and bewildered terror to go! I still work at Willow Cottage most weeks, usually between one to three days each week, though it is getting less regular. Yesterday I sawed down six tree trunks that were unlucky enough to have the three strikes of being in a bog, too close together, and too close to a bigger tree for comfort. The work was exhausting, and all I’ll say is that I never thought I’d be someone who would consider a small hatchet to be a most precious and desired gift. I have been meeting with some people at a company called The Career Practice, who have been asking me about graduates and trying to teach me how to market myself, network, work towards goals, etc. They seemed a bit excited at the prospect of having a famous writer in their network, my name ‘up in lights’. I think I managed to subdue my wild-eyed nervousness, and instead thought how smart they were to having such a long-term business plan. Such a very long-term business plan.

In more relevant news, I still have ideas that I am yet to start writing out, and I still have to finish Ogle & Creake – the latter hopefully in time to submit to a ‘Spooky Story Contest’ in Kentucky. 1st place nets $75, and it seems as good a place to start as any. Talking with my old creative writing tutor via email has provided some pleasant motivation, as he seems to judge that I’m going about things the right way.

Oh, and one final thing; response to the writing group flier was poor indeed. Save for my sister, and my friend’s mum on my friend’s behalf, there was no response at all, in fact. Considering leaving some short stories out for people to read on open days. That’ll show ‘em.

On Becoming a Bumpkin.

The thought of Coming Home was, at one point, rather daunting. The student in his final year did not relish the inevitable entry to the ‘real world’, and favoured even less the impending shifts in his rather comfortable life. They are as follows: get a job; pay off the overdraft; pay back the parents; save; move out; and continue to deal with the ever-increasing influx of ‘grown-up’ decisions. My liberty, it was assumed, was about to be apprehended. Graduation day arrived, and, with appropriate ceremonial confusion, passed. This entry is partially a re-entry into the habit of writing (which is a fancy way of saying ‘practise’), and partially something self-exploratory (for I intend to pose to myself the question, ‘so, what the fuck am I doing?’).

So. What the fuck am I doing?

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