Writing Brave

  They say writing can be therapeutic. It can be and i found i often used to indulge in my creative writing. I sacrificed i don't know how many hundreds of hours where i could have been out socialising, but instead i felt compelled to sit behind a computer screen and conjure up a world - or at least a variant of what we know and claim to understand right now - and try and turn it on it's head. My stories would never be as simple as 'A guy meets a girl.' They never have been about that, and i'm sure it'll be quite a few years before i ever consider doing anything like that; but i would transcribe all my thoughts all my feelings and i would put them on virtual paper.

  However, there's more to the therapy than just putting down your ideas, unleashing your fantasies, or simply trying to conceive a place that doesn't currently exist. There's the bravery that's attached to writing.
Anyone who had anything better than a godawful education can write, and anyone who doesn't really care about their writing can put it out for the public to see without a care in the world. But it's only the people who care about their writing that are the truly brave ones.
These writers are the soldiers on the battlefield of fiction who have a wife and children to worry about at home: in other words they feel they have something to lose when people read their writing.

  To be like Stephen King, to have that unique prose and wonderful writing style where he can dip his pen into the ink of almost any genre and still come out with an amazing book is something i always dream about being able to achieve. But when you do this, when you put these notions, concepts, thoughts - whatever they are - onto paper you're also putting yourself onto paper.
When you care about your writing you begin to bare yourself in your writing. Whether you care to admit it, whether you even realise it, there's a little part of you, a sliver of your personality - that doesn't come out in public - all of a sudden rears its questionable head. When you're on your own you're happy putting these things on paper but then you've got to come to terms with the knowledge that you are making this so other people can read it.
I think about this whenever i create a character that I think a reader would instantly dislike because he's socially shunned for example. Say i wanted to write about a rapist; i then have to get inside the head of a rapist, i have to think like one, i have to enjoy what he enjoys, describe what he feels, speak of all the senses that light up when he performs this horrific act. I have to put my own slant on it...i have to put ME in that part and then i have to put THAT on paper for everyone to read and for everyone to judge.

  I don't want people to know that i have thought this indepth about a rapist or a terrorist or how a girl dying from the blackness inside her is feeling, but if i think it would make a compelling read then i brave it and bare my soul. And that's what I do - as do hundreds of thousands of others - when they open up and write. I put everything i have into my writing because if i'm going to let people know that i've thought about these details that some people wouldn't even like to think about let along talk about, then i want them to be compelled by the read. I want them to feel that engrossed by it all that they think they are reading from the perspective of the aforementioned despicable person FIRSTHAND.
There's that little voyeur in all of us, that little someone who wants to read some of these things, get inside the mind of the people that do some of these awful things that go on in the world.
I have written short stories about a terrorist failed suicide bombing attempt that left him alive and hundreds around him wounded or dead and having to deal with those consequences.
I have written a short story about a rapist and i have watched my fingers transcribe the voice of my mind as it details some astonishing thoughts that this rapist has...that i have.
I've written an entire novel about the end of the world, where the entire human race crumbles and everyone dies slowly from inside to out. I initially thought this was going to be published this year, but alas, life never goes as you planned.

  All of this i will gladly let anyone read if they wish to and their reactions are the things i am most prepared for. Simply because I am the person that creates this monster. Maybe in the story i glorify the act, but never in real life would i condone such actions.

  And it's not just the nasty stuff you write about, it's the glorious stuff you write about. It's the characters you create that you want everyone to take a liking to so that the story works. In every character and in every plot line there's a piece of the writer. Regardless of whether that character is inspired or heavily based on someone the author knows in real life, the author can't NOT apply a little part of himself to it. To create a character you have to know it inside and out. There is no one in this world that you know inside and out other than yourself. And the only reason i write these stories is because i haven't heard a good enough version or i haven't read a version that caters to what i wanted. So i put the Matt Weir into a zombie story, or an end of the world story, or a psychopathic plastic surgeon story and Matt Weir goes right into these characters as well. You spend so long with these characters and plot lines that you grow really fond of them, and when people don't like them: it hurts.

  There's a handful of people that i care very much about and care what they think of me, and when they read my work they see a new side to me all the time, which is difficult for me. But it's a choice I make because I want to be a writer and I know i'm good enough. If only i didn't care what others thought of me...then again, at the end of the day, who in this world honestly doesn't care what other people think about them.

Simply put, this is why, to truly put writing that you care about into the public eye, you need to be very brave: because everyone you know and everyone who doesn't know you but still reads your stuff will judge you. They will judge YOU.

This has no title, just prattering on.

Seriously, is no one else aggravated by this. You always watch films, read books, listen to music about people who are clueless in their life, but it always seems so fatuous with them.
It's all really superficial as they fret over should they or shouldn't they have a career, but it's the principle of this entire life that bugs me.
If i do or do not settle down what difference will it make at the end of the day. It's times like these that i feel so insecure about my existence. My confidence in myself and my abilities will very rarely - if ever - fall short of my expectations, but the notion of a life, a standard 90 year life, amounting to absolutely nothing is mind blowing.
I'm certain if more people took the time out of their day to think about the idea of a pointless life, not many people would get any work done. To think that even the people who claimed to have truly "lived" in this life end up going the same way as the rest of us will: alone with no REAL impact on the rest of the world.
As revolutionary as Martin Luther King jr was at the end of the day, if he never had that dream, guess what? Someone else would have. If Einstein had never pondered the ramifications of a universe centred around relativity, someone else would have. If Stephen Hawking never coins the theory of everything...sooner or later, someone else will.
As a species unified we achieve very little day in day out. As individual nations we achieve significantly less day in day out. And as an individual - with no one else with whom we can unite and pool our daily achievements, activities, experiences and lessons - our day to day goings pale in significance to anything substantial.
I've got myself a bucket list, a list of things i want to do before i die...what difference will that list make to the world if i never see them out. What if i never bungy jump, what if i never visit china, what if i never have a threesome. It won't matter to me when i'm 6 feet under, churning over, decomposing and adding to the circle of life. And it won't matter to the bungy jump workers whether they get to meet me or not; whether china gets some of my hard earned cash or not; nor will it matter to those two girls if they ever engage in a night of coital relations or not.
At the end of the day what matters?

So i didn't end up getting published, so i didn't get to see my book on shelves all around the world, so Stephen King didn't end up writing my blurbs, so I didn't get a cheque that would financially secure me for life.
Wherever i walk in life, does it really make a difference.

Existence bugs me. I can't get my head around the concept. I learnt a long time ago that there is no black and white in this world. Nothing is that simple. There are no certainties; there are just grey areas...all over.
If there is a god what was his purpose, if there isn't a God can i accept that all this came about by chance.
Will any of this life linger in something that could be slightly referred to as a mind when i die? Will i remember fondly on the good times i have had from the perspective of some existential form of being?
Will i become the stars and look down on the earth and see everyone making the same mistakes i made, fretting just like i did as i calmly sit back knowing it'll be "alright"?
Will the worms that eat me - just for a second - get a taste of my life, my experiences, my memories and feel what it was to be me?

I never know what i'm essentially trying to say when i think like this. I'm thinking all the things everyone else thinks, i'm sure...only i put it more eloquently than some and not as so as others.
At the end of the day, it's people like me who end up over-thinking these things, and eventually are prescribed cannabis to alleviate such intense insomnia driven nights.
What is it they say? C'est la vie. I always think of that Irish girl group when i say "C'est la vie"...what were they called? Bewitched!!! That's them...

This Stubborn Life...

  What brings on the most recent rant, otherwise socially accepted these days as a "blog"?
Seems my sister, 3 years my senior, is pregnant. She has an 'It' inside of her. She's married. She lives in a nice place with her husband. They have 2 cars, 2 jobs a bunch of friends they see every week and have done so for years.

  Her little brother on the other hand is somewhat different: Never aided in the creation of another being. Never been in a long term relationship, never has a steady long term job, has no vehicle to his name and his old friends (although, stay as so, for a long time on facebook) never really see him for long periods of times because they they barely have time to scratch across his radar before he runs off again to another part of the world making new friends who will remain just that because he never sticks around long enough for the to become old friends.

  He sits there sometimes, contemplating a life of abnegation, deploring the concept, the NOTION of it in substitution of the life he has now, but he also asks himself:
What kind of an uncle will i be?
Will i be the cool uncle, the fun uncle, the one 'It' wishes 'It' could live with?
Or will i be that uncle that they never see, never really think about and never really crops up in their mind?
I live a life of freedom, no doubt, i do what i want, but it is detrimental to my functionality. "Freedom" or "freedumb" one could ask.
Am i sacrificing a life that i should be living? What do i constantly get from running away all the time? I'll tell you what it gets me: a broader horizon, a different set of fleeting friends every 12 months who end up settling down while i go off and attest that the life I'm living is a glamorous one, when in fact - as notoriously itchy-footed as i get - i never get a feeling of stability.

  I don't half moan sometimes, but i know if i was at home i wouldn't be doing the things I'm doing out here. I wouldn't be having the fun I'm having now, I'd be stuck indoors in a 9-5 (or worse, a 2pm-2am) living the same routine everyday of wasting hours on the computer, masturbating profusely to my abject fantasies of whorish malignancy and only ever socialising with two of my closest friends: my mum and dad.
  Nay, i do not protest to having my mum and dad as part of my list of closest friends, i am in fact privileged to have such a relationship with the hands that fed me, but i don't see them having the same social life with their parents - it's just not healthy. The sapling must flock the nest...or some other analogy that would be mildly accurate and germane to this abomination of my not-even 1/3 life crisis I claim to go through sometimes.

  I genuinely believe i am not even a third of the way through my life yet. If i were already at my third of my life span then I'd die at 84. So what is it about society that demands i should already be settled down and if not already then i should spend no more than the next 5-10 years before i really settle down and get it sorted.
So, if i settle by the time I'm 38, what will that get me? I'll have another 50 years (give or take) of settlement.
  What the hell do you do with your life in that time? Pay bills? Raise offspring? Compromise your dreams, desires, fantasies and conceded to a life of monotonous procurement and desolate thoughts of monogamy, selflessness and gardening with a day or two there of painting and decorating? To deciding whether to change the car after 8 years of chauffeuring the little bastards in the back seat or to run it into the ground and get your money's worth?
  I don't really want to play make-believe at Christmas and save for half the year just so the kids can have a "special Christmas". I don't want meetings with the bank manager about my mortgage. This is not how i want to spend the prime of my life. I'll happily start doing that when I'm truly tired of the person i am now (my 50s maybe?) and the life I'm currently living, when all I'll want to do is actually settle down, because i have no qualms in saying that WILL happen. I just don't want to be pressured or guilted into feeling that i should be thinking about that now. In my 20s - albeit late 20s.

  So here's what I'm proposing. I'm only going to start living the life I'm so vehemently battling against right now, when I'm sick of living the way I've been doing for the past few years; when i want some stability, when all i want is a routine.
  Then, maybe then my niece/nephew will get to know me and by that time i will not be the fun uncle, I'm afraid. I'll be the uncle dedicated to his passion as he once was as a vivid youngster. Die a family man in a stable life or die alone doing what i want to do. Such is life. I'd choose no other way.

Shit happens...but friends & family help you through.

It's understandable – it's unwritten, but it's encoded into all our minds the older we get: you're definitively human if you end up getting hurt in your life. When I say get hurt I don't just mean physically. I mean it in every concept applicable to the human state. The kind of hurt where you are rocked to your core. Like an earthquake in your soul.

At some point in our lives we all experience hurt of those proportions. For me I'd gone through 28 years of being lucky, because I'd never before felt the pain that I felt four months ago.

I'm not going to go into the story, but suffice to say I was betrayed. I put so much of myself into this girl that when the truth finally came out I felt like I didn't get any of it back. This wasn't a relationship, it wasn't what you see on TV. This was me putting my trust and putting my future into her hands. Continually putting my trust in this girl was a tiring act, yet foolishly I continued to believe her because she told me time and time again I could trust her. Time and time again I defended her, but like a rope being pulled to it's extremes my trust and my energy began to fray.

Needless to say, at the end of the ordeal, the whole truth - the whole idea of my future - crumbled beneath me. I stood and fought on that day; I stayed strong and I vowed for it not to get me down. I refused to look weak in front of my mum, but as soon as I told my dad about the situation I lost it. I regard my parents as some of my best friends and as I told my dad about what happened I could see how sad it was for him to hear. 4 months later and I can still see his face. It was then I realised that this act of betrayal on me had broken my parents hearts...and seeing their hearts broken hurt me more than I would ever thought possible. My heart also broke that day. I can still remember sitting there, in my living room that I knew to be so familiar, wrapped in the arms of my parents who have looked after me all my life and I couldn't help but feel lost.

I bounced back from that day. I realised that the life – the future – I so faithfully believed in was a lie and always had been. Yet I've always been a strong person, I pride myself on the faith I have in my own abilities, the confidence I have in myself to achieve anything I want in life and I have never – and will never – let what happened that day get to me. I have the occasional bad day, a few hours where I think about how I was lied to, but that's just natural and that's happening less and less as time goes by.

For a short time after the truth unfolded I quickly found out who my friends really were. Who were there for me and had my back; and unfortunately those who didn't entirely stand by me, but just cowardly sat on the fence. I can safely say, those cowardly individuals are no longer my friends.

2 weeks after that happened I had already made up my mind that I was going to get out of the stagnancy of the life I was living. There was nothing for me back at home and I decided to make my way out to New Zealand. I had friends there and in Australia – good friends...no, brilliant friends. It's been hard work since I got out to New Zealand, but I have no regrets in traveling to the other side of the world and not a day goes by where I don't thank my lucky stars, however many Gods there are, my 4 leaf clover, my rabbits foot, my good genetics – whatever I want to thank – that I'm strong enough to take this one on the chin.

They say that difficult times are sent to test you in life. I'm not sure if that's true, but you learn a lot from these times, that's for sure.

It's having experienced this hurt that I ask you – whoever you are, reading this – to please, think of other people before you take actions. I'd hate to think that I was ever a person in someone elses life that made them feel the way I felt four months ago because of that certain girl. I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.

I used to be a very trusting guy. I'd only think good of people until I was proven wrong. This mind set came back to hurt me. I've learnt, not that I shouldn't trust people anymore, but that I should be more weary of the people I trust. I've learnt not to be quite so naïve – which is a valuable lesson for a guy like me who isn't altogether that bright. But in the words of Roger Alan Wade, “If you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.” Great words.

This event has affected me fundamentally. I have made many new friends since being out in New Zealand, but I'm hesitant in letting those friendships get any more meaningful. I'm hesitant in making any new relationships. It's something that - I admit – doesn't sit comfortably with me. But as has been my attitude for a while now: if it scares me, I must leap head first into it. Bungy jumping and sky diving scares the hell out of me, hence the reason I've got them scheduled in the upcoming months and I have no doubt that I'll take the plunge sooner rather than later and let my relationships flourish.

This isn't a sob story, this isn't a way to get pity from anyone (although who doesn't like a bit of attention, eh?) this is a little bit of therapy for me, but also it's just me just asking, to whoever reads this, to please consider your actions. Sometimes you can't help but break someone's heart and there's just no avoiding that, but be as considerate as you can. It may be a redundant message, maybe only a few people will read this, but I hope it makes some kind of effect. I wish I could be the only person to ever have to experience that pain so nobody ever has to. But that kind of an attitude, makes me sound like a martyr. A bit like a Welsh Jesus: getting hurt so you don't have to, haha!

Ever the egotist, eh? I write a blog about a time I got hurt and I end up comparing myself to, someone who millions over the world consider as, the son of God.

Can't take me anywhere.

Bloody hell, I'm an old man!

What's wrong with the society of today? I'll tell you what's wrong.
Am I a wise man with years upon years of experience behind my back? No. Am I a scholar with worldly knowledge constantly probing me to excel in whatever field I endveavour to take on? No. Am I wholesomely observant so that nothing slips by me, not even a single newly dyed hair on an under-confident girl? That'll be a no with an Amen from all the girls that have known me personally, professionally and intimately.
But i can see what's in front of my eyes.
The whole world suffers from - and I condemn god for ever creating such a phrase (and I don't even believe in god!) - Peter Pan Syndrome!

Nobody wants to grow the hell up. Or, given that, nobody wants to let anyone else grow up.
You spend the first 21 years of your life trying to grow up as fast as you can; I've seen you girls try to dress older; and everyone starts drinking well before the minimum legal age limit; then you try that infamous tug of the putrid cancer stick. And you know what? You guys are cool. And what is cool? It's being unique. Yup, all 98% of you bastards are "cool".
Why is no one pointing out the irony to kids these days? Someone out there, some media asshole has bombarded the masses with this idea of "cool" and everyone strives to achieve this bullshit notion. Whether it's with labels or getting laid it's doesn't matter - because that's not what cool is about. Remember when "cool" first started coming on the scene? Cool wasn't the popular kid at school, he was the dick that all the popular kids hated. Why? Because he did what he wanted and didn't do what anyone else did. River Phoenix wasn't a slick socialite, and a great athlete. He had a passion for music and for the rights of his fellow man and the animals on earth, but he also didn't talk any shit - he was opinionated. He was also human, which showed clearly as he died in the gutter after speedballing (taking heroin and cocaine), but then tried to take diazepam, which is a drug used to stop ODing - however, it's effects are countered when heroin is taken and he collapsed never to wake again. The consequences aren't cool, his passion, his standpoint, his views - regardless of what everyone thought - that is what made him cool.

 

You can't all be cool. And saying you don't want to be cool, doesn't make you cool either.
The more i think about it the more I dislike the word "cool". It has this androgynous appeal about it to youngsters...and simple minded elders. It neither defines you as a person, nor benefits you as a human.
Yet we aim, we yearn, we flog ourselves to try and achieve this status. I put my hands up, I'm not exempt from this. I too used to try and be cool back in school. Turns out i was just the guy that nobody disliked. But I accepted that a while ago and I feel like I'm a better person because of it. Because I didn't have to meet these expectations I got to do what I liked as a kid. I played football with my mates, on the night before "the exams that define your life" (or so your lead to believe in school) I was busy throwing a ball at Ben's head (one of my best mates) just talking about nothing and everything until it got too dark to see; I'd never gotten drunk until a couple of months after my 18th birthday...whereas I know all the "cool" kids in my year had been doing it for at least 2 years; and I didn't get my first proper girlfriend until my first year at college. And I believe I am a better adult because of it now. I know I'm a better person. Because I lived as a kid, I got what i wanted out of my carefree days; I didn't put myself through an extra two years of going to nightclubs and getting drunk because I know I don't like it - the only reason i like going to nightclubs is to dance!; and not being one of the cool ones I wasn't pressured into getting that girlfriend and doing all the stuff that's expected of you at a much younger age than I would have wanted it to or would have been ready for. I grew up at my own rate, I grew up with only my expectations and my beliefs in what I could achieve and I don't seek anyone's approval except for the ones that matter - from my friends and family...and myself.

For those who were pressured into these situations they got forced to grow up so quickly that they feel like they left that carefree side of themselves behind a long time ago, that they never really got to experience it properly and now they can't accept that they are moving on and growing older. These are the people you see crying in a night club on their 30th birthday because they're getting older, plus because it's 5am and it must be bloody difficult to party til 5am when you're 30...I can't do it now! They're also the people that can't appreciate not going out on the town in any given month or not get wasted and make a fool of themselves; they can't appreciate the joy of meeting up with your friends and just talking to them and having that sober interaction; these are the people that refuse to accept that it's good to get older - and I keep getting better as I get older. I'll keep telling myself that until my mind gives up on me and my heart stops beating as a I die a happy man living my life as I wanted to. They'll keep telling themselves that they're happy with their lives until their body physically can't keep up and they're left exhausted with life, organs bruised from binging too often, looking older than they should for their 40s sulking thinking it's all over and having nothing left to live for.














The 15-30somethings are being convinced this way of life so many people indulge in is the "cool" way to be. I don't judge anyone who lives their lives this way, but for their sake i hope they see their errors sooner rather than when it's too late.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the god-forsaken Peter Pan Syndrome.
Now, where are my slippers?

Be all you can be...isn't that what the army say?

This world is too big to be in competition with everyone. The only person I have to be in competition with is the guy I am now. If i can better than who he is today, I can't ask for more from myself.

Great team talk, everyone!