Tuesday, 27 November 2007
Getting old

News 24 rolls across my television screen, but it needs to be muted. Full Tilt flashes up once again, bearing me gifts such as 2-4 off suit and if I'm lucky 2-4 suited. My attention is easily drawn from tasks. It's something that I need to look into. Not in a drugs'll fix it, Ritalin kind of way. Actually, I don't have an idea what causes it or an appropriate remedy. It's seems I am picking up on ailments recently. I think I'm getting old.

The plan was to write about a heavy session on Saturday night, but even that seems a bit too egocentric for a blog. Needless to say (I'll give you the short version) I drank two bottles of Tesco's £2.50 red wine and then took too much speed. I helped out a guy who was too fucked to get home (it was freezing and I was rather feeling quite friendly due to the substances, although it has come to my knowledge that I was being a bit aggro earlier on).

Anyway, without being able to get any sleep during the day, I got to work feeling just the slightest bit ropey. The plethora of tea, coffee and Lucozade that I drank during the day seemed to get its comeuppance as I fought to get to sleep in the early hours of Monday morning.

Fortunately, I've had nothing on today. I have though plowed through a bit of college work, which has made me feel a bit less guilty about not doing much over the weekend. And... oh shit, you see? I'm banging on about things of the least of interest, even my own!

Anyway, long, boring, rambling story short: I'm becoming an old person. I'm not out on a Monday and I seem to have picked up the old peep's narrative style.

Posted by Tim at 01:15 0 comments
Saturday, 24 November 2007
night writing pt1

There is a strange mist in my room. As I look towards my lamp, away from my laptop which omits the sound of whatever tunes the random (or 'shuffle' as it is now known) button decides, past the poor hole cards that Full Tilt is throwing in my direction and my breath that hangs in the cold; I notice that it has cleared. Well, there goes my inspiration for tonight's writing exercise.

iTunes flicks on to another song, it sounds familiar but only by artiste. It's Ben Folds, but I don't know the tune. I check to confirm that it's a track off Supersunnyspeedgraphic, because I haven't got around to listening to it properly yet. But no. It's something from Songs For Silverman. Was I really not paying so much attention when that CD was on rotation previously? Apperently so. Never mind.

This is the kind of irrelevant thoughts that fill my head as I lie trying to get to sleep. [Oh great, just been dealt the Hiltons. Decent raise preflop. Safe flop. Another bet and the pot is mine. Why can't they be that good to me all the time?] Where was I? Oh yes. Of course, had I really been trying to get to sleep the light would be off making it near impossible to see the room fog (I'd just had a cigarette, there's some sort of resolution for you) and I wouldn't have had my computer turned on, making it improbable that I'd be listening to a random Ben Folds track.

I say irrelevant, but the trying to get to sleep thoughts rarely are. If I really was as busy as I suggest, there could be the possibility that this would be the time when my thoughts caught up on me. Perhaps I only half think about things during the day and I receive the other half as I lie waiting for sleep, like some kind of Victorian telegraph, or the old pages of Ceefax where you'd have page 4 of 5 on the TV guide and the present times programming would obviously be on page 3 of 5, so you'd have to sit and wait to find out while the 3 pages of useless information passed by. My life is Ceefax? That may explain why I have a somewhat half arsed knowledge of the weather (it's blue, but should be green in the afternoon); but although I'm going through a quiet patch, no women has appeared as freakish as Bamber Boozle's missus.

No, wait a second, there is a mist in my room. I must have been looking in a slightly different direction before. Maybe I was blinded by the intensity of the 60w bulb, but as I looked over to the corner of the room: carefully guarding my eyes behind the lip of the duvet, I could definitely make out the forming of a minature cloud like substance in the air.

Now that I've aired out some of the junk in my head it's time to try and go to sleep again. I wonder what pointless or profound thoughts I'll have instead of drifting off to a peaceful slumber. Maybe I could invent a notepad that you could use in your sleep or diminished state of conciousness. Perhaps a dictaphone would work? No, I don't talk in my sleep. Or do I? I could find out by recording myself sleep. But I think I've got better things to do tomorrow than listen through a seven hour recording of silence (or non silence) just to find out. Yes, sleep, I need sleep.

Posted by Tim at 03:21 0 comments
Tuesday, 20 November 2007
No distractions

About a month ago I did an interview over the phone with Rusty Hodge from SomaFM. It was for a part of my course called Negotiated Portfolio, in which we compile a portfolio of work which we are supposed to negotiate with titles to sell. Anyway, I was under the impression that that meant actually selling work. After weeks of trying to figure out who to pitch said article to and receiving no replies in my inbox, I found out that that wasn't the case.

With fuck all work done so far this year, it is now time to write the article. I've eaten, I can't be bothered to wash up. Shit, I just need to to write the damn thing. So this is my warm up writing. Getting the brain in gear. A few pints down me to lubricate the brain and a bottle of £2.50 Tesco wine to keep me going. £2.50! I'm as shocked as you are, but in all honesty it tastes all right.

My phone is downstairs and I'm not leaving the room or falling asleep until the article is written. No distractions!

Posted by Tim at 19:39 0 comments
Monday, 19 November 2007
There are a thousand things I could, wait no, should write down. It seems ever increasingly recently that writing should be my calling, be equally and quite frustratingly, it seems that it is not. For to be a writer one should write. Hell, that's most sensible thought to pass through my head in days. And here is where my self defeating problems begin. I don't give myself time to write.

As a tap away these thoughts, it becomes painfully clear that tonight (Sunday) is the first night that I haven't had a drink in a week. I seem to be indulging in the vices of writers: drinking and smoking heavily (in both cases), but not willing to do the hard work either before, during or after.

Reading a post from my favourite blogger Tao Of Poker, the busy life that Pauly describes himself of having puts my own to shame. But it at least inspires me to think about what's going wrong in my own hectic existence. I have around three hours of contact time at university, yet within the extra (going on the scale of 9-5, five days a week, with an hour of lunch daily) 32 hours that I should give myself to study, I seem lucky to score more than three or four max. I bitch about how little time I have to do stuff and then realise that I sleep too much. I sleep way too much. Due to my financial situation I've recently had to take up a job. Meet McColls Falmouth branch's newest supervisor. Yeah, I'm 23 years old, have never had any experience in the realm of responsibility in my life and you're entrusting me your business? Well, I'll give it a shot thank you. Especially for the extra 50p per hour I can make doing it. As long as you don't try and screw me around for overtime too hard.

So, I've got a job. I'm trying to give myself more time towards college. I'm going to have to cut down on my daily sleeping allowance. I need to stop spending so much time and money on alcohol and socialising, but at the same time still receive the benefits of alcohol and socialising: meeting interesting people, sleeping with the attractive ones. I need to start eating better, but then everyone says that. Although, I do need to buy a decent cook book. Beans on toast is starting to get a bit repetitive. A bit like my writing at the end of the day. The plan was to write about the Jello Biafra show. It's taken ten minutes of venting to remember what I set out to do. This is why real journalism will not be killed by blogging: editing. I could delete the last couple hundred words, but seeing as I'm only wasting my own time, I think I'll leave it.

Aside from the obviously corrupt businesses that Biafra talked about. The horrific tales of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan. The subject that he touched on that has stuck in my head is the constant abuse of media on society. Kids with unremovable iPods. Myspace and its 'emotional trophy cabinet' mentality. People unable to communicate without the use of technology (how ironic, as he writes it in his blog!). We allow ourselves to be tied, to be restrained by the things that are meant to make ease of daily tasks. Thus, we don't achieve anything, but distraction from our goals. Technology is replacing reality. Keeping a firm grip of our attentions, whether it be a poke on Facebook or a fiend request on Myspace, while the authorities poke us out of our civil liberties and human rights. Shit, I think I just put together a decent sentence. Admittedly, stolen from someone else, but that's how ideas work. They grow, adapt, pass on.

And it's with that shameless, smug, self achieving thought that I'm going to check my Facebook and go to bed.

Posted by Tim at 00:30 0 comments
Tuesday, 6 November 2007
Already Sliding

If I could write a good explanation as to why I haven't updated this in two weeks, I could consider myself a good writer. If I could empty my head via my fingertips and relate the mixed up thought processes I have, then I would consider myself a good writer. If I managed to analyse every thought, as opposed to letting them thrash around my mind while I try to sleep, I'd consider myself a good writer.

Considering the way things are right now (and I think we now the way this is going), I can't. In the space of a week, everything I thought no longer seems the same. The way I look at things is now different. The way I act and hold myself is somewhat reminiscent to the immature, unlearned, pre-jaded but depressed teenage self. Whereas for the last four months I've been enjoying life, dabbling in hedonistic ways, feeling free of the shackles of lazyness and boredom; I find myself bored, tired and lonely. I've got no motivation for anything. Tonight I fucked off drinking with a friend (a friend who I should mention is my ex, and what would've been a rather awkward session, but nonetheless), for what I hoped would be a drinking session with bloke mates. [Check the time here: 1.40am, I didn't even go out!]. I can't do anything right at the moment. I can't even hold together a night of drinking.

So here I am, amongst the millions of other bloggers. Sad and alone, vying for any form of attention. Trying to keep myself awake, because it's always most comforting feeling sad.