The Future Is Not Orange

It's occurred to me that the reason I've not actually been doing any Uni work this third and final and oh so important of years is because I don't want it to be over. Plain and simple. I've very much enjoyed my time at University and, even though I still have a good six months left at it, my ever-planning mind can't help but look past those days and see me in a future that currently resembles something of a greyish blur like a stone landmark zooming past a train window, or a massive jelly made of obscurity.

In six months' time, I'll be all done with this undergraduate course, hopefully with a decent degree in hand, back in the town I grew up in, in a residence I didn't grow up in, attempting to pay my way in the world, spending countless hours in a retail assistant uniform, and filling whatever time I have left trying desperately to get noticed for my writing skills through avenues such as this piece of crap. The people I've met at University will merely fade into profile pictures and occasional text updates on how their individual lives have panned out since I last saw them.

That's not to say I won't have people back in my roots. Of course I have people there. But over time, the school links and the college links and the occasional drinking buddy links have snapped apart like old shoelaces, or new liquorice laces, and friendly gatherings seem fleeting at best whenever someone, anyone, arranges a night in or out. Try as we might to fight it but we've all grown up now. We all have other things to worry about and I fear I'm hurtling head-first into exactly the kind of life I never wanted; the kind where once you become an "adult" you relinquish all rights to the very notion of "fun" and become just another cog in the machine of mundane and lazily thought out metaphors. I remember growing up watching Friends and thinking that when I'm in my mid-twenties, I too will have a close-knit group of wacky comrades with whom I'll spend my days having jovial conversations, sharing takeaway dinners and occasionally poking the naked guy in the flat across the street using an obscene amount of chopsticks sellotaped together.

Don't even get me started on when, where or how I imagine myself engaging in a personal, romantic relationship with anyone.

My phone company recently merged and threw expensive technology at a bunch of British cities, mostly in the south. Before that, though, they used to tell people that the future was, in fact, orange. I regret to tell you, dear reader, that the future is not orange. The future isn't any colour. The future is a blank mesh of grey with bits of fluff and dust woven in to make it look at least lived in a bit. It could entail absolutely any situation with any people in any location, but I don't like staring gormlessly into that void for too long because it drives me crazy and makes me write something long and ridiculous like this. So with that in mind, I leave this place now to go rest my aching head and fall into a blank and boring dreamless sleep wherein all vague time parameters become a certain swirling shade of black.

I suppose this whole ramble only applies to me right now though, considering that for several million folks in the United States today, the future - apparently - is blue.