Plans

For Liz.

Advice kids: Never make plans. Plans are for idiots. Incidentally, I wrote a thing about idiots on Monday which I was saving to put up here today. See, in my head, I'm amazing and have several thousand followers interested in whatever the hell it is I do. Case in point: this. So I decided a while ago that I'd update this blog every Wednesday, on the Wednesday, in order to keep my habits as a writer somewhat constant. After a while, I figured I was running out of things to write about, which is lazy speak for "I was becoming more and more lazy". Over time, I allowed myself "off-weeks" where I'd skip a Wednesday whenever I saw fit. In 2013, this suddenly became every fucking Wednesday.

I've been kidding myself that, with the final term of the final year of my degree looming, I needed to spend my time focussing on important work. Side projects like this would, therefore have to take a hit. Incidentally, that's the same logic I applied to putting off a serious conversation some weeks back. See, in reality, I'm an idiot. The very kind of idiot I complained about in a rambly thing I typed up two days ago. The kind of idiot who makes plans for the future because they don't realise that present is all that actually matters. All of a sudden, now, I realise I'm contradicting myself. I'm arguing with me. And I hate that. Why can't I just get along?

So, what's all this then? This is my last-minute replacement post, hastily cobbled together with cold fingers, perpetually perspiring underarms and the realisation that I am an idiot. In the two day period since writing my now-hypocritical analysis of other people, a close friend received a spot of bad news. Actually, scratch that. The worst news. The fact that this post contains a dedication at the top means I don't really have to go into detail. Unless you're an idiot.

I read through my idiocy post this morning, ready and raring because I finally had a weekly update for this blog. The only problem was that I actually read it. I don't normally read these things back until after they're in the virtual ether. But I read the pre-planned one and oh, my God, it's absolutely awful. To be frank, I was in a bit of a dark place when I hammered it out; I was in one of those I'm-angry-at-the-world-and-it's-the-world's-fault kind of moods where basically everyone on the face of the Earth, bar me, would have to fall into a pit of despair laced with parasites to satisfy me. But situations change and I feel it would've been wholly inappropriate to spew such vitriol onto the world knowing what I know now.

Some months ago, I fell into that old tangled web of personal feelings. With only my own meandering existence to draw from, that old situation never ends well for anyone. But still, the heart wants what it wants and the brain tries to rationalise it by being an idiot; by keeping quiet at whatever rare opportunity arises to speak up. Technically, I suppose that's the mouth's fault. Or the throat. Either way, I'd planned ahead to get kicked repeatedly in the chest. The actual assault occurred far sooner than I'd anticipated, thus leaving me feeling a) an idiot for planning ahead, and b) kicked in the chest.

So yeah, fuck plans. Plans only exist to remind people that fixed future events exist. Except they don't. Everything's hypothetical. The only thing that matters at any given moment is that very given moment. At the risk of sounding philosophical or awe inspiring, the past is what's fixed, the future is hypothetical. It's what you do with the moments you live in that you can possibly have any control over. Okay? This is not a chastising lecture to either the living or the deceased. This is pure fucking common sense. Most don't realise this, and I know that because I didn't fucking realise it until pretty much just now, when I wrote this paragraph.

Use the time you get properly to get what you want done. Don't assume you get more. For the love of whoever's up there/out there/somewhere, never make plans. Here endeth the lesson, idiot.

Regular January

I seem to hate Januarys. Two years ago, I completely shunned the month on this blogspace for reasons pertaining to, oh I dunno, I just couldn't be arsed probably. Last year, I posted about death and how we're all mortal and eventually gonna kick it one day. This year, I spent thirty-one days ignoring this pathetic excuse for a writing space in order to... well... you tell me! Actually, fuck that. I'll tell you. Now.

I read a fair bit. I wrote a fair bit. I stressed a fair bit. I drank a hell of a lot. Well, there we go, that pretty much sums it up. I wish I could be a bit more specific on some of those points, but I have deadlines looming and my way of dealing with them generally seems to be to ignore them like your regular January. My points of stress mainly revolve around a combination of such deadlines, certain individuals whom I'll not name and talk smack about in a public space such as this because (a) that would just make me sound bitter, and (b) I still see certain individuals on a regular basis and don't think I could cope with the face-to-face "why iz yoo talkin shitz boutz mee'z on da intanetz?" without physically assaulting them and then me. Instead, I let it fester inside, all the while telling myself I don't care and it doesn't actually bother me, even though I turned the light off at midnight and it's now 4am and I evidently do care.

On top of the mundane and the mediocre stresses of work and people who need to find out what a chainsaw tastes like^†, I would also like to present to you the bizarre stress caused by the back gate of this rented property I'm currently residing in. Basically, for weeks - hell, for a whole January really - every time I've gone into the garden for any reason (taking the bins out, getting some fresh air, cleaning the chainsaw, etc.) I've noticed the back gate is always wide open. This disturbs me. This disturbs me so much because every time I'm out there, I close it by using the hooked latch and the deadbolt which slots into a hole in the middle of a brick wall. Every time, I close it. Yet every time, it's open again. This has led me to two possible explanations. Both are as fucking absurd as each other.

Absurd thing one: People are breaking in. You're probably really thinking there's nothing very absurd about that. People break in places all the time. In fact, the bent-inwards-ness of the wooden planks that essentially form the entire door-like thing on the back wall suggests that some kind of brute force has been exerted onto the gate meaning that a forced entry seems likely. The only problem with this scenario, however, seems to be that no other damage is actually done anywhere. Heck, if half the garden was trashed or an attempt was made at getting in the house or there seemed to be some kind of attempted theft or violence I'd naturally assume we were having frequent univited visitors. But no. The garden and the house - all of the property being rented - remains exactly the way I last saw it... apart from the gate. Logically, if people are actually forcing an entry into my garden, they don't seem to have any other plan byond that, other than to say: "Right then, we showed that gate. Let's go break a branch off a tree. FUCK YOU, SOCIETY!"

Absurd thing the other one: The wind is sentient. The forces of nature often unhook poorly constructed gate latches and blow hinged planks of wood around like nobody's business. However, I've never met a mild breeze capable of lifting the handle of a deadbolt halfway up so it aligns with the locking mechanism to pull it out of a wall. Maybe I'm just being crazy. Maybe I'm not, and the wind and rain is capable of more than I had previously expected. It forms itself into the shape of some kind of being able to interact with the physical world. Or actually, it could be ghosts, or an unruly ferret, or inexplicably floating geometric shapes. In the case of the latter, I imagine them to be parallelograms. Why, exactly? FUCK YOU, THAT'S WHY!

For many people, "I hate Mondays" is some kind of life motto. Personally, I hate Januarys. And really, if you think about it, January is just like one big, giant Monday. The mother of all Mondays. Der über-Montag. Screw the depressing beginning of the week. January is the head-scratching, chainsaw-wielding, alcohol-consuming start to the entire bloody year and I, for one, am glad it's over.

As I said, I've been drinking a lot.


^†This line about learning what chainsaws taste like was stolen from the blurb of This Book Is Full Of Spiders by David Wong. Told you I've been reading.

(I don't actually own a chainsaw.)