The Corridor

Hi there. You know, we've had a lot of fun over here and we've touched on quite a few important topics - procrastination, boredom, weather - and they've all been a approached with an air of witticism and whimsy you probably wouldn't normally waste on a dog with cataracts. But now, we here at this blog (by which I mean "me here at this computer") have decided to focus on some of the bigger things in life. Bigger things like houses, trees, erm... what else? Statues, they're pretty big too.

Okay, there probably won't be much of a focus on statues. Or trees. Or physically large things. Or anything of importance, really. I feel like the need to reinvent the whole nature of the meaning of this place but I just know I'll only end up reverting and defaulting to mundane stuff, like the fact that my new bedroom is significantly smaller than my old one. Furthermore, this bedroom is situated adjecent to next-door's bathroom which seems to be perpetually inhabited by a bloke with irremovable phlegm in his throat, not matter how often and constantly he makes that throaty HHWWKKKH noise. He's even doing it now. Twenty-three times, in fact, during this paragraph.

Ever since my initial moaning about not having work, I've been thrust into two potential lines of work, allowing me to keep a metaphorical foot in the present day whilst also symbolically stepping into a potential future career. Going along with that metaphorical image there you've got in your head just now, I want you to imagine life as one big corridor that starts a birth and pretty much just forms an extention of a birth canal. Actually, yeah, there's an idea. Picture your mum's gateway to the world forming the entire wall at the end of a corridor. Don't worry, it's not naughty, it's natural. We all came from there. Well, no, we didn't all come from your mum. We came from our own mums, respectively. Where the hell am I going with this? Now turn around. No, not physically you idiot, now you can't read this.

Turn back.

Good.

Hi again. Now turn around in the corridor in your head and stop looking at your mum there. At the other end of that corridor is a bright light that people in movies are told not to go towards when they're lying in a pool of their own innards and feebly reaching upwards. Whatever that light is, that's the end. And along the way, the life corridor is lined with many, many doors. And behind each of these doors is some kind of opportunity like a job or the ownership of property or a bikini-clad woman on a motorbike (or if she's not your thing, a charcoal dusted bloke holding a fire-hose near to his groin as some kind of sexual metaphor). Many of these doors remain closed to us but if you get to the right place at the right time, and occasionally talk your way past the bouncers well enough, you're granted access to whatever opportunity lies within.

Great. Now that we've established that metaphor I can explain the related image that's in my head. Basically, after months (or what seems like months) of nothing, two doors have decided to open for me around the same time and I'm essentially stretching across the length of the corridor trying to prop both opposing doors open with a foot each. Okay, I pretty much nailed it already with the foot metaphor earlier, but I like the corridor one better. Plus I just made you imagine a lot of images with words, which is the thing I like most about writing, really.

In the meantime, when I'm not worrying about leading a future double life like some lame superhero who's a checkout assistant by day, but by night puts his underwear on last and goes by the name of Freelance Copywriter Boy, I'm playing old video games, watching American sitcoms and kidding myself into being more cultured by reading novels very, very slowly. Also I seem to be perpetually cleaning a house that's just completely out to get me - mentally - because it like gathering mess whenever I'm not looking. Speaking of which, since moving here, I've designated Wednesday as "Cleaning Day" and I'm not about to go throwing away some weekly tradition by neglecting it, thus leaving it for another entire week like it's some kind of mindless blog.

Complaining

A lot of the time, I find I'm never happy with anything. Case in point: I've just spent the best part of the last 40 minutes typing up post completely different to this, only to completely delete the lot and start on this instead. See, I can tell when it's a rubbish topic and that I'm not actually interested in what I'm writing when the paragraphs are short and take forever to come up with because I keep stopping mid-sentence to check the dirt under my fingernails. In hindsight, it's really not all that good anyway when the post essentially talks about swearing toddlers and the fact that babies - just like the rest of us - defecate.

Since my last moan-fest on here about how I have no means of financial support, two job offers have found their ways into my inbox, causing me to stop blaming the virtual postmen for losing my stuff in the vast ether and actually realising that I'm able to receive messages just fine. Furthermore, the fact that two of my conquests managed to get back in touch with me, that means that the other 37 people and places I've politely asked for employment have all ignored me and that they're obviously bastards.

The two respondents - whom I'd like to stress are definitely not bad at all - cover bother short- and long-term bases for me; one could potentially help to kickstart a career in writing whilst the other is what could be classed as "the day job" people are often advised not to give up. So soon, I could have regular access to money and stop complaining about how I'm never happy. Actually, that's a point. Since I complained about it so much in my last post, only for job-related advances to occur in my life, I could use this bit of web space to my advantage and moan about more things I'm not happy about. Then over the course of the coming week I can expect my luck to turn.

At the risk of sounding topical, I'd like to end by moaning about the latest monarchistic birth and how nobody cares what name he'll be given. At least I don't anyway. It's not like I've put a bet on what the kid's name will be that I'm not going to win. Stupid baby. Anyway, if you're reading this in 2089, Your Majesty, with your brain linked up to the Ultra-Hyper-Inter-Highway from your throne in the floating palace of the sky metropolis of New Londinium, I'm turning 100 years old around now. If you weren't offended by that "stupid baby" remark and you can find it in your heart to not execute me, I'd very much like a congratulatory birthday telegram or whatever it is you get when you're 100 now. If I don't get it soon, I'll only write a blog post (or think it, or however we put stuff on here now) complaining about it, meaning I'll definitely get it within the next week.

What am I doing?

Okay, erm. Well at the moment I don't really have anything else to complain about. If anything comes up though, I'll be in touch. Thanks Universe.

Limbo

Life, I've discovered, is made up of all those engagements, appointments and important adult-related things that occur in between sparsely posted blog entries. After a quick look back, the last time I came here I was in the midst of packing up an old dwelling and reminiscing about a long gone childhood. In the time that's passed since then, I've moved from one house to another, organised the ensuing clutter, attempted to find work, spent sweltering nights wishing I could sleep in a cooler environment, got a stye on my eye, got rid of a stye on my eye, attempted to find work, thrown an academic cap in the air, added another annual notch to my future gravestone and attempted to find work. A lot of this I've done without regular access to the internet in the middle of a housing tranfer, so I've not really been able to document it at all here, really. Sorry.

There's an overwhelming sense of self-worthlessness that comes with existence. Days get spent in a zombified state on the couch, staring vacantly at moving images supposed to entertain you. There's an underlying context to any piece of TV or film which essentially just screams out "What is your meaning/purpose/existence worth when this is the most you're doing?" The fact that you've attempted to hunt down collaborative things to do with your time/means of monetary support, yet yeilding no response doesn't help matters. Eventually, you realise your proudest achievement of the last few weeks is that you've managed to reach a 79% completion rate on the first Crash Bandicoot game, which is brilliant considering it's a challenging piece of interactive entertainment and you never got past the first couple of levels when you were younger anyway.

At the moment, I'm somewhere in that horribly grey intersection of a Venn diagram, stuck inbetween the segments of "no longer studying" and "technically still a student". As the kind fellow at my local JobCentre Plus pointed out to me, I'm currently unable to claim Jobseeker's Allowance as the institution I've attended for the last three years is still clinging onto me until the end of August, despite the fact that it just kicked me away with a "Good luck and all that" two days ago. I even have a photo taken to prove it. In the picture, I'm dressed like a cross between a Hogwarts student and Dickensian headmaster whilst smiling vaguely and holding a piece of plastic drainpipe, thus officially certifying me "clever". My current stint in limbo, therefore, means I have to seek jobs and not get paid for it by the country, which is fair enough, I suppose. I've pretty much been brought on making a living out of actually doing something other than watching the same two episodes of Scrubs three times a day.

It is said that struggling through hardship makes us stronger. A butterfly cannot fly without battling its way through the cocoon and so on. And when the day comes when I lie in bed, dilapidated and ravaged by Father Time and I reminisce on a life gone by, I cannot help but feel this period will be regarded as one of great complexity; as a period of academic success and no money; as one of sunshine and friendship and no money; as one of new beginnings and no money. And maybe, just maybe, that reminiscing will be better than sorting through dusty videos of rapping mathematicians.