Everything is....

Everything is.... just a little bit up in the air right now.  Nothing feels quite right.  Lots of things feel rather unsettled.

The job security of me and my work colleagues has had some doubt cast over it, time off always feels fleeting... eked out between housework and hobbies and more housework, my mind is rarely at rest with all the things I'd liked to do and need to do and haven't got the time to do, fling in a recent bereavement in the family and you've got a mixture of emotions and mental health high-jumps bumping along with your average day-to-day existence.

How invigorating it was to leave behind the real world for a day, taking advantage of a rare combination of two days off in a row (miraculously including a Saturday off work) to tie together the opportunity of attending the Brickish Weekend at the National Space Centre and visiting family in Leicester.

A rather recently resurfaced love of Lego (I blame the Batman Movie and its accompanying minifigures) has left me with a geeky itch that I needed to scratch, and a whole slew of space and sci-fi themed displays and builds at a tourist attraction mere minutes from the majority of my wife's family was just too good an opportunity to pass up.  Within minutes of getting through the door we were already parting with cash... picking up a Ralph Wiggum as a belated valentines present for my wife, and then buying a 'classic' set of doors and windows (again, i must add, because my wife likes them.... ok, i liked them too) along with some other well-worn pre-loved bags of bricks and pieces and marvelling at a bunch of custom minifigs... we'd spent somewhere near an hour or so getting excited before we'd even left the vicinity of the 'brick fair' and the huge Paris themed build that was situated nearby the various sellers.

In fact we spent so long taking in so many of the builds and also talking at some length to the people behind these creations that we actually saw precious little of the Space Centre and its permanent exhibits, thankfully this can be easily remedied as booking our single visit online also secures an annual pass, perfect for the next time we're visiting family again.  And the creators themselves were equally as fascinating as the Lego builds on display, talking honestly and openly with both me and my wife about their passions, their ideas and sometimes about the price-tags that have fuelled their involvement, the complete lack of pretension and a willingness to 'just chat' was not only refreshing but also informative and very rewarding for me, and possibly gave my wife an insight into what she may have let herself in for.

With a handful more 'grab bags' of bricks and pieces (including a small mixed lot of wheels, again, suggested by my wife) in our tote bag we headed back to see family once the Space Centre's doors had closed, and I was more than a little surprised when my brother-in-laws curiosity about my purchases resulted in three adults in their thirties (two male, one female) all sat around building a variety of vehicles and oddities from the assortment of regular bricks and random components that we had accrued over the course of the day.

Time spent looking at Lego and 'playing' with Lego left little time to do some of the obligatory family rounds, but a couple of whistle stop visits to see family members of a wide range of ages was a perfect way to end the day, including some rather intense imaginative play and dance moves with a four year old that left me sweating and out of breath before a two hour journey back to London.

I'd met and talked to some fascinating people, seen some inspirational and breathtaking Lego builds, bolstered my own collection, built a spaceship (of course), spent time with family, dance partnered a care-free four year old and enjoyed quality time with my wife....

Maybe, just for today, everything is awesome!

a blogger?

 

a blogger?

is that what I am? I check the ever declining post count that sits aside the years that scroll down the side of the page like a dipstick being plunged into my own personal history. more frequently coming up empty.

am I a blogger?

 

sometimes I wish that I still was. I still have a blog that exists, but everything is changing. The Internet is changing. Attitudes are changing. Interests are changing. I am changing. And blogging is a strange lost art, not just to myself but to so many creative outlets that I used to ponder over and draw inspiration from.

Now I see bland advertising and twee snapshots of happy lives that link to instagram profiles. I'm sure that somewhere out there my happiness lays in wait, but I've never the time to look for it.

 

And I mourn my own lack of writing. This is my diary. A public domain documentation of the person I am happy to present for display. On occasions I even read my own prior blog posts and smile at who I was, and feel proud that whatever was inside of me in that moment has been captured, and preserved perhaps forever.

 

So am I a blogger?

I'm certainly not a career-minded brand that exists in every corner of the world wide webs global reach. I'm too tired for that. The internet seems to keep displaying bad timing as far as I'm concerned. I haven't got the energy, and the energy I do have I am putting into other things that I am not always annotating.

I've got meals to make, a house to keep clean, a garden to tend to, a wife to support practically and emotionally. I'm sometimes exhausted by life, but I still want to be more.

 

But am I a blogger?

Right now, I am a comic book writer. I've only just started and I don't imagine my first run through will be particularly amazing, but I have wanted to do it for a long time, and I decided that October would be when I become that thing that I want to be, I'll just have to find time to be all those other things I still want to be.

And perhaps I should blog about my comic book writing, I'm pretty sure that is something I would have enjoyed reading about in the blogging hey-dey of whenever it was, before the whole world fitted in my pocket. Perhaps I will. Or perhaps I won't.

 

And I'm trying to tweet more often. Not for any real reason other than to stay sane and determine that I have things to say that are more interesting than boring things, but that is only a matter of opinion anyway. I am still slightly fascinated by twitter, not as a 'social network' (if that is still a thing...) but as what I always remember it being referred to when people referred to it and it was a novel idea... as a 'micro-blog’. Where I can think things, and express them, in miniature.

It's more time effective for a start to dash off a handful of sub-140 character nuances that nobody will read than to spend time crafting an exemplary display of the written world which will hobble onto my blog to be read by no-one.

But right now I have chosen to take my thoughts, mush my fingers all over a touchscreen and conjur up a rambling stream of consciousness that I shall drop onto my once well-attended soapbox and I've enjoyed the chiming sense of release that such a practise emits.

 

I call this a blog post from a far-too infrequent blogger.

 

 

hesitation.

Hesitation.

It haunts me.

Hangs in the air beside me, an apparition that seldom leaves me.

Holds me, holds me back.

I hesitate.

today.

It's hard to remember a time when anything was possible.

It seems so long ago.

'When I Was Young'

A rather recent concern of mine is something that is new to me.

As someone that has felt that in my day to day life I have seen what there is to see and had my fair share of experiences, this new feeling is troubling to me on so many levels.

Because I love music, and I listen to a lot of music, but since I turned thirty (for only the second time) just over a week ago I have felt a whole new sensation that leaves me cold.

Older music used to remind me of when I was younger.

suddenly, old music reminds me of when I was young.

yes, the difference in the written form (or even the spoken form if you aren't capable of silent reading) is only slight, but the ramifications for me are overwhelming.

I hear Stardust's Music Sounds Better With You, I hear Usher's You Make Me Wanna, I hear Sixpence None The Richer's Kiss Me (to name just three examples off the top of my head that I have heard today alone) and I think of other times, and other places, and this is nothing new, but now I think of someone else.

I don't know what happened, perhaps making the conscience decision from now on to lie about my age has triggered a wholly unexpected alternate past.

But suddenly, the person I am now feels almost completely disconnected from the person that I used to be...  It used to be a thread that ran from then until now, but now I feel that I am on the other side of the glass, looking back at what once was.

Not only that, but previously, I felt that everything that happened to me was leading me somewhere.  Now I am somewhere, rather lost with no clue where I am going still, but all of that time that has passed, I don't know where it has been...

So, this isn't ageing I don't think.  I think I am aged.

My life is still going somewhere, but the youth that trailed me is barely even in my orbit.

I'm still too young to feel old (I hope), but something changed.  and I don't think it could ever change back to the way it was.

I guess I can't be the first person to feel it, but as a person it is the first time I have felt it for myself.

so.

what happens next? 

.

Warning Signs

I guess I'm one of those people that sees the signs, and doesn't always know what they mean

And when all signs indicate the worst, perhaps it's time to disembark

In my old job, a furniture retailer, towards the end things didn't look good, and for a long time things weren't looking great, but I was comfortable. the pay wasn't amazing, but it got me by and it gave me an opportunity to save and more than that, it afforded me certain freedoms at times when we weren't busy... freedoms that I took full advantage of and lived a pretty fulfilling life whilst still manning a retail business, assisting customers and hoping to turn over a profit

when things weren't looking so great, I kind-of assumed that being forced out of my job that I was capable of doing blindfolded would be a blessing in disguise, a chance to find a 'real job' that paid 'real money', but the pressures of the 'real world' were too 'real', I had a mortgage to pay, a roof to keep over my head, i needed an income, and pronto!!

the time between being made redundant and being offered a job was extremely demeaning as I began to realise the fuller extent of the recession, my experience seemed to mean jack-shit as I was turned down for the most menial jobs, cashier works , cleaning jobs, and it was with this broken spirit that I scraped into an entry level position at a soul-sapping builder's merchant

less than two weeks into the job and I felt my life was in tatters, and I'm eternally grateful to my girlfriend for making me see sense and quitting, it gave me the time to make myself available for the next job that came along, something much more promising, the interviewer talked sense, appreciated the position I was in and talked about career development within the business

between jobs I was also interviewed for an assistant managers role at a well known stationer, i was offered the position two weeks into my new job but I plumped with the business that seemed to offer natural growth

and a year down the line and my opinions have changed, I can see the warning signs clearer this time around, the people that make the job worthwhile are slowly but surely disappearing from sight and the talk of management roles and training, well the view of them is even murkier, I'm privileged to be in a job that I don't hate, but at the same time it restricts me, suffocates my creativity and ultimately I can see the deception of a tight-fisted business clearly, it saddens me, but I don't belong here.

and so I yearn to take flight

It is a slow, torturous ordeal, but I have faith in a higher power, that what will be will be and that everything will work out the way it is meant to be

I've seen the warning signs

and I'm trying to put my life in reverse, to back up and change course...