I'm heading back to our Birmingham office tomorrow morning, after a mildly pleasant weekend in London. I can feel a bad mood coming on though, and I haven't yet worked out why. The last couple of months have been pretty damn good all in all:
- Work extended my contract until the end of November and gave me a little responsibility (which is why they're sending me alone to Birmingham this week). That means that - as long as I don't get sacked or the project doesn't get pulled, both of which could happen at any time given the ruthlessness of the industry and the fluidity of this project - I ought to be able to save enough to tide me over for an extended holiday/ unemployment period.
- After months of fruitless shopping ventures, I finally splashed out on new clothes and gave my old ones (some of which were over five years old) to charity. The catalyst for this was the chance acquisition of a book on ethical buying, which gave me a good excuse to reprioritise my hangups about the fashion industry, labels and clothes as a means of self-advertisement.
- I deliberately left this until third, but we all know it ought to be right up there at number one: women. I've hardly been the heart-breaker my family think I am, but it's amazing what attention from the opposite sex can do for a guy's mood (or the same sex, whatever waters your flowers). I basically had a fairly lengthy (for me) period in which I got involved/ had various encounters with a number of people, none of whom I considered as even possible candidates for the seemingly unattainable "A One" status (as opposed to The One, which I don't believe in), but who served a purpose and with whom I was (almost) entirely honest. I say almost because, in the full knowledge that I never wanted anything serious from them, and being careful for the most part not to play an active role in them thinking otherwise, I used the contrived, transparent "Let's just go back to yours. I won't have sex with you, but... [there's plenty of other fun things we can do]" line in order to try and have sex with them - the old foot in the door now-I'm-in-your-bed-and-I-can't-resist-you strategy. It didn't work (I think it stopped working around the age of 22), but I did end up having a surreptitious shag, in the parlance of our times, with a girl who required neither proposal nor pretense. She did however, rather comically, deem it necessary to neck what looked like a large whisky on arrival at her place. I'm still a little puzzled, but then she almost certainly had a funny taste in her mouth by that point as we'd found a little space of our own prior to going back - I apologise for the crude level of detail here, but sometimes I find it difficult to resist making inappropriate jokes. I wish I could remember what I did in fact say to her - all I can recall is her admiration for my seemingly abundant self-confidence. Alcohol: it gets you there, but nobody knows how. In my puzzlement at the whisky episode, I've entertained the thought that she didn't really want to have sex with me - given my sometimes unfortunate cognitive disposition, I've almost been convinced - but then a rational look at the entire situation seems to suggest that maybe she was just a little nervous: she said she didn't usually do this sort of thing (and, not without a sense of irony, I agreed), it was her who suggested doing anything more than just kissing, it was her who suggested I accompany her back to her place etc. Poor thing, and there's me, playing alpha male for the night... Maybe she had an alcohol problem? Maybe I just shouldn't question these things - we got back, she fancied a quick whisky, we screwed, I left. End of story.
- I've moved flats. As I said before, I'm now living in CM's old room. I didn't dislike where I was living before by any means, especially as I was right on the doorstep of three of my childhood friends, but now I'm in a bigger room and in a better location.
- My dad seems to be getting better. He suffers from bipolar disorder and his latest bout of ill health has been going on since April 2004. I doubt whether I'll pursue this theme on the blog though, I'll have to see...
Anyway, I guess things are calming down a little now and perhaps that's why I might be feeling the onset of a bad mood. It won't last. What I did want to say though was that while I'm in Birmingham this week I very much doubt I'll have time to blog, so I wanted to leave a link to an essay by Bertrand Russell - in my opinion one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century - called In Praise of Idleness. Read it if you have time - if you like it, I would recommend the eponymously titled book.
5 comments:
Hi,
I found your blog by chance and read some parts of it... i like it. It´s funny how some worries and problems that people have, are the same, despite we can be in different countries (i´m from portugal). Maybe almost any 25 years old person, in an european coutrie would feel the same, í don´t know, but i guess that i could have written some of the things you have wrote...
I´m going to read "In praise of idleness" as soon as i have opportunity (time...).
Sorry for my lousy english, i understand it easily but i don´t writte it often, so here´s the result (the bad result), but i hope you can understand. Maybe if my english was better i could write more about all the thoughts that have come to my head when i was reading what you have wrote, but i feel a little bit limited by the language, it would be much easier to write in portuguese, but then you would understand even less than with my lousy english...
Keep writing :)
Rita
Bertrand Russell was indeed a great philosopher. I haven't actually read In Praise of Idleness, but I've read his History of Western Philosophy, ABC of Relativity, Why I Am Not A Christian, and some other book about ethics that I can't remember right now, and a lot of his analytical philosophy. And he was fantastic. Not so much in his personal life though...
Mr. Anonymous,
History of Western Philosophy sits proudly on my shelf as I type, though I have only used it as a reference book so far - I do intend to read it cover to cover but as yet I have not had time. The Why I am Not a Christian lecture was fantastic too, but I haven't read ABC of Relativity. I presume it comes recommended?
History reads very well from cover to cover, I think, because he gives you a very good sense of narrative as well as the actual ideas. ABC is certainly interesting but has probably been surpassed by more modern books now- if you wanted to read something about that I'd probably recommend Stephen Hawking or Brian Greene.
Rita,
Thank you for your comment - it's comforting to know that there might be other people out there for whom what I write strikes a chord, after all, where would we be without empathy and commonality of experience?
I'm not entirely sure that my sentiments are shared with the masses though. While I agree that the majority of people in the Western world would worry about their work and sex lives, and that most of us like to think we have a moral conscience (although some of us are more prone to taking a moral holiday than others - I love that phrase by the way), I don't think the the level of analysis to which I subject my thoughts and feelings - until now, largely in private - is in any way typical of my contemporaries. I doubt this is what you meant, but I think that there is more than just a passing connection between one's worries and the amount of thought one puts into a given event, action, situation etc. Anyway, perhaps this will become clearer as I write more.
Thank you for the encouragement, and your English is just fine: isn't the goal of language ultimately to make yourself understood? Well, I understand you perfectly well so there's no need to apologise - you should hear my Portuguese.
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