The moments before the lesson/life affirming scene
The older I get the less I write. This confuses me no end, because the older I get, the more I have to write about. My every diminishing return on my once favoured past time does cause me no end of contemplation. I would like to do more, no really. I tell myself at least once a week that it would be good to write, but I still don’t do it. How often can I write about not writing? Once a year maybe, twice at most?
I have been thinking a lot about that bit in American films where the day is dawning, the bit before a big ‘home game’ or some other sporting event that is of maximum importance to the entire film, where the hero (anti or otherwise) learns their big life changing lesson. I have been thinking about that shot where the sun is rising over the grass as a sprinkle goes off and maybe there is someone on the radio talking about how ‘the big day is here’. I like those bits in American films (normally but not exclusively teen films), I like them a lot. If I could live out that bit over and over again, I would. It is the calm before the storm, the moment of anticipation, the moment before the lesson. Those bits are good, I like those bits, or at least I like how a film makes me feel in those bits. Imagine if that was life, the dawn. The rising and the waking minus the doing and the dusk. Mark you* I like the dusk too, then you have achieved and you can watch the sky become all pink and orange (if you’re lucky)
I am currently overwhelmed by the speed at which my life is passing me by without any apparently significant moments. At the age of 34 I assumed that I would be, well, either a parent, travelling the world in some sort of high flying way or other. There are many questions on my part, about failure and direction, none of which I can answer or resolve, but still it is worth perusing, I suppose. Or is it? Who knows. Someone probably, but not me. I can waste whole days doing not much at all except for reading some stuff and looking at some stuff and eating some stuff and not drinking enough water stuff. My cat seems to do this all day too,** without too much contemplation or self analysis, so basically I spend a lot of time being cat like. I presume this is not a good thing but my lethargy at present prevents me from seeing the pitfalls. That’s not true of course, I went to a talk the other day where two people spoke about their projects, one being this http://www.pepysdiary.com/ and the other being this http://spacelog.org/ and I can see quite clearly that motivation is paramount to getting good stuff done.
So, if anyone has any idea about how I begin to motivate myself, please send your answers on a postcard, or email me or think about emailing me and then don’t do it because, well, maybe you can’t be bothered, or I’ve bored you to sleep or you’re too busy doing your own things and stuff. Either way, I need to stop the lethargy and get cracking with something soon, before another year passes and I write another blog about not writing and well, the inevitable happens and I wake up at 65 with only 12 blog posts to my (not real) blog name.
* My Granddad always used to say ‘mark you’ instead of ‘mind you’ I wrote mind you but then changed it in his honour as he passed away in December last year and I made a promise to keep alive two of his sayings, ‘mark you’ and ‘hark at those birds, dogs, kids, the wind (insert any sound that would warrant a hark)
** My cat does not read things, she is not a super cat, although she is pretty lovely
