I suddenly realised that the restless itchy feeling was the need to write. So I will.

Thirty-one, thirty-one!

For the first time in an age I have a song crush. I have played one song so often that I fear my neighbours may be getting out the pitchforks. The burning plastic smell may indicate that they decided to forego the pitchforks and the stake and go straight to the burning. Woe?

By now, really, reasonably, rightly I should be sick of it but I’m not. I have reverted to teenager type. I suspect that I shall shortly start doing weird things with incense, start colouring my hair with textas, write endless tedious and monumentally pretentious letters, and just generally moan about things. I really was a cool kid, yeah.

What you got is what you wanted. Alternately, so many different choices that you've got to make instead.

Is this the life I wanted? I feel stuck in default. Did I want the default? Should I have fought harder? Should I have set my mind to a vocation and a career and just gone for it? Yeah, the usual crap I’ve been going on about for years. Which reminds me, I read High Fidelity the other day. I’m changing the title to Me As A Man. My internal monologue checklist went tick tick tick and tick tock once or twice. There’s really nothing like fiction to hold a mirror up to one’s soul and have it spit back the broken glass of failure. Not just failure but holding off, holding back, keeping the options open and watching life slip away. I think the seven years bad luck is at an end.

Won’t you stop and remember me…?

I have, quite unashamedly, been enjoying the election. What fun. Despite a general consensus – sometimes expressed very crudely indeed – that I neither understand politics, political processes, or, in fact, anything about anything especially that relating to The Real World the politics nerd in me as re-awoken with a roar. Frighteningly, there’s a lot I’ve forgotten and quite a lot I may never have known. Despite generally feeling like I should know everything as everyone else seems to I don’t really mind admitting that I’m ignorant. Nor do I mind reading, watching, listening, asking questions and just generally trying to alleviate my ignorance.

Standin’ on the corner of civilization.

In the last couple of months I’ve realised how much I have been deluding myself. I’ve always known how I try to please other people - don’t be difficult, don’t make a fuss, have a nice stable job, don’t ask for money, don’t need any help, don’t make me worry about you. More than anything I have failed to please myself for years and I have hidden away. Most critically, given how much time we spend doing it, I have deluded myself as to what I should work as or at. Better a job in the hand and better a better job in the hand. I am capable and intelligent and quite good at solving problems (rather over being an agony aunt though – the answer is grow the fuck up – seriously). I learn quickly. I make connections fast. All of this leads to me being very bored a very great deal of the time.

Last year I made a compromise plan to get myself a better job and well blah blah. Lately I’ve realised how disastrous that would have been. My interests, when it comes down to it, are politics, political history, the bizarre world that is quantum physics (understanding minimal, keep plugging away though), and good writing. You could probably add a bit of psychology and sociology into that – they are, to a certain extent, implied in politics and history – because I like to know how people tick. Most importantly, I can’t come up with a single fucking reason why I should work boring shit jobs and not be involved in things I’m interested in. That’s quite a scary moment. There’s a part of my brain that asks why I should be different from other people. There’s another part that asks why I shouldn’t. I’m quite used to being thought a freak – I often wonder if other people get the criticism and backhanded insults I get simply for doing such things as reading books or speaking well. How fucking dare I, yeah?

I still need to write so maybe I’ll do some more of that.