Happy New Year everyone! Time for the traditional resolution, so let’s get this over with quickly: finish a novel, get a job in the non-dead end department, and begin to make some savings, be happy and healthy. Maybe as a final flourish of writerly pretension I could add to that list start and finish reading one or more of the four super-long books cluttering my shelves. For posterity and as a declaration of intent I will now state the tomes in question: Ulysses by James Joyce, War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Perhaps a further resolution should be to get over the obsessive need to make lists, and the studenty habit of name dropping Joyce and Tolstoy.
I’m aching at the base of my spine from sitting up, on this futon in my parent’s spare room, with the laptop on my knee; my eyes are sore from staring at the screen in the dark, to the point where the little red zigzag informing me that ‘studenty’ isn’t a word is actually moving back and forth trying to bore its way into my eye like a parasitic worm. These niggles bring up another possible resolution; to do the blog at a less unsociable opportunity i.e. not in bed. For that to happen I must tidy up the office (which has had the door shut for a couple of months to keep the mess out of mind) and reclaim my desk from all the papers and paint pots. Anyone got a crappy desktop computer I can have; a dedicated writing one not connected to the internet (not much use for blogging, but should be great for getting some proper writing done).
Given enough time I might just keep coming up with resolutions. Next New Year I want to be away in a hot country, or even just somewhere different and exciting. Or perhaps I could take a trip to Berlin or Osaka. Anywhere but Great Britain. A change is as good as a rest, but both of them together should be even better. I will have had a massive two and a bit weeks off work when I return to that shit-hole (probably on Thursday) but of course it won’t be enough. I haven’t given the place much thought over the last week and a bit, and whenever anyone has asked me about it I’ve basically ignored them. Over the last day or so, thoughts of work have begun to creep back into my mind. Having had two weeks off work, but not made any headway on the novel, or any contribution to Blank Space makes me feel like a lazy piece of shit. I’ll get back to work with the feeling that I have wasted my time off, despite the fun, force-feeding and frolics. And of course the truth is I have wasted my time. Such time off is a gift that I should have used productively and, Negative Nelly that I am, I anticipate the return to work eating my life up.
And so springs forth another resolution or two: Stop being so negative about everything, and stop moaning about work. Work is shit, but so what. Ignore it and focus on the many good things in life. I enter the new year engaged to be married to the most amazing person I have ever met, I have a flat, great friends I have known for years, a load of books and stuff, a niece and a god son, a daily blog edging towards 200 entries, possibility of a job interview with the BBC, a load of exciting opportunities with Blank Media, an almost finished script, and two well formed ideas for novels. What could possibly go wrong? Nothing!
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