Down but not out

The trick is to remind myself that I am telling myself I am miserable and I need to stop telling myself that I am. It’s getting in the way of my plans for world domination. That and the harsh reality of the situation. That thousands of swipes right on Badoo and Tinder later nobody is interested. It’s actually odd that NOBODY is interested. Ok, yes, somebody 5555 miles away on Tinder swiped right but a swipe is what? You need a lot- typically speaking- to convert one of them into a date. Essentially I am unwanted goods, a member of the underclass. I think my mother has hit on this slightly more poetically but no less truthfully by describing me as a caterpillar. A 39 year old caterpillar, that has not yet morphed into a butterfly. And perhaps I am. When the chemical balance is right in my head it all seems like everything is going to plan, when I’m feeling down it seems all too obvious that the situation is stark and getting more so by the day.
Being unemployed with little contact with the outside world is a blessing and a curse for the writer. I have time to write but time I should be spending writing is haunted by loneliness, a lack of self esteem and worries about the future. Also far too much time reading crap on the internet and checking my phone for social media updates. And I worry too about my ability as a writer. Ok, so I can write but can I actually write stuff that anybody wants to pay to read? The answer, at present, has to be no as this blog costs nothing to read and nobody is reading it anyway. But it might be yes if I improve as a writer, or write more or get the necessary breaks. I don’t know, because the future is a genuine unknown.
It’s a darn shame I wasn’t wearing my writer’s hat enough when I was in China. I should have been taking copious notes. I would occasionally scrawl rants and fantasies in notebooks and that is all I have alongside the memories, which are far from perfect. I’m hoping that as I start to write I’ll remember more things. Ok but enough of that and the frustration of being single and what-have-you. I’m going to pull myself together and go down to Morrisons.

lovely

I went to see my GP today (Thursday).  She is really lovely, still a trainee.  Actually I think all my female GPs I’ve ever had going back to the lovely one I had in Deptford through to the lovely ones I had in Farnham to the now lovely one I have in Margate have been ultra lovely.  Women are very good at the holistic approach.  Is that sexism?  I guess some men are too.   We had a very long chat, longer than I think I’ve ever chatted.  I thought the NHS was supposed to be on the verge of collapse and was happy to just explain my situation hurriedly (I never got my prescription back in Sept) and scarper but she seemed very chatty and is-there-anything-else-I-can-help-you-with.  I wonder if that is her, her training or the enthusiasm of someone fresh into their career. 

Washing up crisis

In my view, time appears to go faster as you get older not merely because a unit of time is a relatively smaller fraction of what you have experienced with each passing second. No, it's because your brain gets slower. In my case, things are reaching a crisis point. I just cannot seem to do the washing up in anything like a reasonable time frame. I think that's partly because my brain is slow and also because I can't focus on one thing. The Maths, the Chemistry, the novel, the film, the Fiverr gigs, the football, the guitar and more besides. If you ask me how I want it all to end, I just want to live in a nice hotel room with a nice suitcase and whatever will fit inside that. The proliferation of stuff I buy on Ebay, the thousand schemes I dream up, the unfinished ideas...it's all a drag TBH. But it's not just that. It's that unemployment is its own little death. It's like I'm living in a pot of glue and moving in slow motion across the lounge...
But you don't want to hear that. You want to know about my success. About that all I can say is maybe I should start buying lottery tickets. I must be the most left swiped man on Tinder. I must be because bar a woman living 5555 miles away and another one who enjoys welding I've not done well. I've come out of the closet and signed up with Large Friends.com for a month, tho.

The man at the back

Bus didn’t turn up (Stagecoach, an old old story), was about 25 minutes late.  Laurie was well in to a lesson on displacement (when less reactive atoms are exchange for more reactive ones) and I struggled to get to grips with what he was teaching.   He was showing how a battery works.  A negative and positively charged piece of pure and impure copper in a sulphate solution.   He always invites questions if we get confused.  I was trying to remember all the basics we’ve been taught so far so and trying to put all the jigsaw pieces together.  I asked Laurie what I thought was a reasonable question, why blah blah- to which a girl at the front- an attractive BBW as it happens- said ‘Why do you have to make everything so complicated? .’ 
‘Who?” Said Laurie.
‘That man at the back’ the girl said, without even turning round.  ‘You don’t need to know why, it just does.’
And that just about sums it up.  In China I was the monkey, in England I am the man at the back…Perhaps that should be the new name of my blog.
I’ve just devised a way to get to the front but that’s another story.
Having been a teacher myself I must say that I know one of the big problems in the classroom is not (just) the teacher but other students.  If you are discouraged from asking questions by other students what can the teacher do?  Well Laurie did his best- he came over in the break and explained it to me in the time he had.  It’s not really difficult to understand it’s just that there are component pieces to put together and if I’m not careful I’m going to start missing out components. 
Laurie asked us where we were all from, as in previous years some have come from as far afield as Ashford.  One student said, ‘i get extra points because I come from a rough town.  I’m from Margate.’  When she found out where I was from in Margate she said ‘Ohhh, be careful.  It’s rough round there.'  And to think, it's not even the roughest part of Margate. 

Scheduling mix up

In Downton Abbey the week before last one character was lampooned for putting something akin to boot polish in his hair to look younger and it sort of reminded me of myself because this year I’ve taken half-hearted steps to arrest the signs of age. The face I look at in the mirror is every bit 38 going on 39. For years I cheated age. Every year I’d get the students to guess my age and in aggregate they thought I was in my early 20s when I was in my mid 30s. Even Westerners got caught out. I remember being at a friend’s place in Beijing about 3 years ago and his American flatmate being shocked when I told him I was 35. He thought I was about 23. But I’d say in the space of two years it’s now all caught up with me. The hair is now greying and thinning, the skin less elastic, the eyes sunken so that a second bag is clearly defined. I don’t look a bad 38 but certainly not a good one. There are much better specimens-née 1975- out there than me. David Beckham, Russell Brand, Enrique Iglesias. Their far better diets and better genes make them look great at 38 but my body is showing clear signs of middle age. So what is to be done? Well I’m grateful to my body for the reminder that life is short. But that said there are 2 ways of approaching the 40s, 50s and beyond. Like a pot bellied aging man who has some sort of ceasefire agreement with the aging process or like a rock star. You are eternally under 40 if you are a rock star. Rock is a young man’s universe. So rock stars, as you know, dye their hair. Rock stars wear Converse All Stars, jeans and t-shirts. Where do I see myself in all this? Neither here nor there. My anti-aging regime this year has to been to buy a hair max comb and not use it, join the gym and stop going, buy a bottle of Grecian 2000 that I forget to apply, to take my vitamins only sporadically. And not eat 5 a day. I am definitely an unemployed, poverty line 38, not a prime of life, power citizen 38. Of course, I could do the gym and the diet without resorting to fakery. There’s something about laser combs and dye which is just not me. Your hair is supposed to fall out, that’s why it happens. It’s like leaves falling off trees in Autumn. It’s a beautiful thing and I dig it. It’s all part of the wheel of life. Trying to ignore middle age is like sun bathing in November. But here’s the thing. There’s been a scheduling mix up here. Middle age, I'm all for it, but I wasn’t supposed to look this age ’til I was 41 or rather, I’m not quite ready. I’m still in my 30s for goodness sake. So all I’m contemplating doing is slowing things down somewhat so that they happen at the right time. I’ll let you know if I use that comb again.

Stepping Up

If you’re not familiar with the format of this blog- if you’ve just joined us- you might not know that this a blog about being habitually single, being ordinary and chronicling my attempts to walk a bit faster in the rat race so that I fashion a life of fulfillment. However in the face of that I should make a confession.  I feel I should add- at the risk of boring my readers- that in fact for me trying to be more successful should not be a priority.  Yes I court success- measured as sexual happiness/finding a partner, scoring career goals and financial security, going to nice places, doing exciting things, surrounded by friends and so on...  But I can’t help feeling personally that that is all a bit of a red herring.  Above all I crave a world where people are kinder, more honest and more responsible and I know that starts with me.  You might say the two are not mutually exclusive and I hope they are not but I fear they are all too often. We often think achievements in art, sport and career are important. We get carried with all this.  Truthfully, I think they are in no way interchangeable with honesty, kindness and responsibility.  These just seem like fine words until you begin to realise that often you lash out at the world when your dreams are threatened and become dishonest, unkind and irresponsible.  In China they all think they should have a dream.  But a dream is something you need to wake up from.  As I continue to write this blog I’ll try to show how tough moral choices have to be made and how I’m actually a bit half hearted about the success game as we know it. 

Anyways...Saturday met Sue in Folkestone, then Burlesque in the evening.  But what is there to say?  Ok,bigger stepped in dog turds in Folkestone than Margate and a busker playing ‘Love in song’ by McCartney was a surprise.  Would definitely not have thrown 50 pence in his guitar case if he’d been playing BOTR or JET. Stephanie claimed town centre was 25 minutes walk.  Wasn’t even 10.  Little things like that baffle my logical side.  I don’t think it was reluctance on her part.  We chatted about the ghost venture in a cafe.  She wants to do a stake out at Pluckley Woods.  Shook her left hand with my left hand as her other had a cigarette in it. Limp shake, possibly limp meeting.  She sounded a bit like David Beckham.  “As I say, Folkestone used to be better than it is now,” she said with small variation several times.  Added on Facebook.  Her profile pic is one of her holding a cigarette but not possible to say which hand.

Burlesque was a bit brash.  The entertainment for the masses version.  Burlesque body, Panto chassis.  There was a Chinese woman all dressed up in 20s finery on my table who throughly enjoyed it, tho.  One joke from the compere: ‘This is my mother I’ve got something to tell you outfit.’  There was a topical joke about Scotland and Rolf Harris but I forget what they were.  One that applied to me, calling Margate ‘Housing Benefit Office on Sea.’  The Winter Gardens theatre is another legendary theatre.  Beatles played there 3 nights in a row and Gerry and the Pacemakers playing in October.  Very grand interior, over looks the sea.  Blah blah blah.

So to last night, I think I had a realisation.  I had a bit of time to think because my door continuously slamming neighbours downstairs were having a party and it ran ’til about 4.00 AM.  Then the fire alarm went off and didn’t stop until about 8.  The realisation has been churning for a few weeks but last night it really felt settled.  In a sense, I’ve always lived in a fantasy world.  I’ve imagined that a life that feels like it’s got underway will materialise.  But it hasn’t.  It’s true that as unemployed layabouts go, I have some exciting projects on the side.  A novel, a film, an album, a documentary, two GCSEs, a bit of Chinese self-study, 50 odd short stories on the go and this blog to name about half the things I’m working on.  But these can break as much as make me.  My refusal to focus on any particular one, but instead switch between them and Yahoo cat videos and hours of Youtube hasn’t helped.  But where is it all going?  The realisation was- I suppose- that I’ve got to step up a gear.  I know I can do it.  It will take a level of maturity and concentration that I’m not exercising as yet.  It’s a bit like Liverpool.  They can either step up to the plate or they can watch one of the real contenders hold it aloft.  But whichever way I slice, dice it, mince it or marinate it (to use the full expression taught me by Rev Q) I can’t rely on psychics, a sense of entitlement or hope to see me through.  I’ve got to focus diligently and patiently on hard stuff and not expect results this season.  In case you’re thinking this clashes with the first paragraph- no, no, no.  Not completely.  In my chaos, there is order.  That diligence includes doing all the responsible and honest and kind things too.  I hope.

And I didn't say anything about Tinder

Ah, Friday night with Radio Jedna and a cup of tea.  Things could be worse.  But still, High Fidelity is a getting-ready-to-go-out-show and most Friday nights I’ve stayed indoors.  So it’s never without a tinge of regret that I’m not in Prague when I listen to it.  Going out somewhere.  I lived in Prague for a year and I’ve been back many times since.  So many that I’ve now lost count.  Where am I now?  I’m in a holding pattern.  I’m in a decompression chamber.  I’m in a cocoon.  And when I emerge I’ll flutter my wings- show the girls how bright the colours are- earn revenue, pay my taxes- die.
Ok, that depressing thought over with let’s get the news flash going.  Rev Q is back on board.  He had to be, I had to swallow my pride, ‘fess up, I had been a little hasty.  I started chronicling the comedy or errors yesterday, but there was more to come.  I don’t have the will power to tell about all of them, I’ll just paste this evaluation of a Life Purpose Reading that was given to me by Althea.

Hi Althea,

Thanks for your lovely reading. I'm figuring you might be curious to know how accurate it was. I'll take you through it.

You are an artist. A highly creative person.

Correct so far. Most of my time is taken up with creative pursuits.

1/1

I see you as creative in:

• Cooking
• Photography
• Writing

1/3

I have no time for cooking, I'm far too busy with projects that mean something to me. If I could just eat a pill each day I would. I'm not a bad cook when I put my mind to it but it takes me about 3 times longer than anybody else. I've taken lots of photos in my time but I mainly don't see the point in it and just follow the crowd posting the odd pic on Facebook. It's one of the artistic pursuits I put the least store by.

And also, you live near some expansive, beautiful land. (Since I get readings from all over the world, I’m not sure where you live.) But I do see a ranch, horses, just land that expands for miles with dots of homes, rather than a congested area like New York, or suburban sprawl like Atlanta. It’s like the ranches in Texas, or flatlands like in Australia.

1/3

I live in Thanet in England, which is a highly congested area but I'll award one mark because it is by the sea and I suppose you could say that that is the expansive bit. However, dots of houses, no. Ranch, horses, no.

That’s the kind of place you need to live. Living in nature will inspire you to take your skills to the next level. Become a professional. Do videos. Publish your own books.

In short, start your own business, combining all of your passions. And spend A LOT of time outside. Nature is what inspires you, and increases your spiritual connection to God.

1/3

This is not really nature. Thanet has bits of nature and I do appreciate them but it is mainly urban and suburban. Does nature inspire me? Not....exactly. I love nature but l love architecture and cities too. Artistically nature is not particularly inspiring, spiritually it isn't my first port of call either- music is my first love. Yes, I've had a special experience in a beautiful place and the setting helped but it was a holiday romance so... for me who I'm with is the most important thing. I like what you said about starting a business that combines my passions because I have a big problem with consolidating my 30 or so interests. However, most of these require me to be indoors.

Your life will only get better with age. That, I can promise you. Your 40s are going to ROCK. You are going to wish you had been born at the age of 40 .

Hope so! :-) But I cannot comment on this as it's a prediction.

Overall, 4/10

Thanks again for the reading,

Hugs, J.

Perhaps Althea's reading will make more sense with the passing of time but for the time being Q is my kind of guy.  I’ve studied his faults but now I’ve learned to let them pass.  This time I won’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  His let’s make lots of money philosophy doesn’t sit with me as well as might with his other clients but I am lazy and I need some one to kick me.  I am glass half empty, I need someone glass totally full.  Rev Q is outrageously optimistic.  He seems to think I can get a job that pays 3500 pounds per month by January.  Actually I don’t think he thinks that at all.  I think it’s all an act to get me off my butt and see how far I go.  But we did spent quite a bit of time last night going through jobs on British websites.  If I tried to shoot something down, he’d say- you can do that- you have transferable skills.  And he got a text from one of his clients saying she’d just got a job as an exec, so it seems he has a track record.  He said all his clients are successful and I wasn’t going to fail on his watch.  He asked to look at my CV and quite rightly identified things about it which “suck" and gave me homework.  Make fifty pounds by next week, and fix my CV.  Then I'm going to apply for 9 jobs a day.

So this might work.  And besides, the guy gave me a 90 minute session last night, it was supposed to be 7-10 minutes.  This is dedication, no?