Age old concerns

This is the first article I've written for over 8 months. I apologise for that, but I promise I have a good reason. I'm now sitting in the living room of my mother-in-law in Brisbane, Australia, having just emigrated from the UK. I've had lots of time to think and write recently, particularly on my Spanish-based novel, but I've also been thinking about how I've given up on having friends and family nearby for the sake of a pipe dream, and then I realised it took almost five years to get to the point where I was truly comfortable with these friends.

Why, then, did I abandon them?

Part of me was restless, part of me wanted adventure, and part of me still has no idea why. The truth is I wasn't happy, but emigrating doesn't really solve that at all. I still have rather poor career prospects due to a combination of being both utterly overqualified and underqualified at the same time. I still have almost no ambition except to experience life and write.

And, to add to these demoralising revelations, I've realised that time has flown and I no longer register its passage. I still think of myself as the 20 year old who loved university life and loved going to nightclubs, but, 7 years later, I realise I'm getting to the age where it appears lecherous if I spend time with 20 year old females, whatever my intentions. The problem is that I still feel like I'm 17; I still think I look in my early twenties, I still have the interests of a young man in his late teens. More recently, people have been saying that I don't look twenty and it scares me. The time, my life, has passed without me even realising, and, just when I was truly comfortable, I uprooted myself to start all over again. Suppose I have children: would I be able to carve a life out for myself and find friends when I'm permanently restricted to the confines of my home? And yet the pressure grows. I don't want to be old by the time the kids hit their teens. Where's the fun in that? But then again, where's the fun in being young and tied down by a screaming baby?

At the end of the day, what happens will happen, what will be will be. I am content in my writing, and I look forward, with optimism and excitement, to the day when I get published, but until then I just have to take it a day at a time. If I have kids, fine. If not, great. If I'm rich, wonderful. If not, I can survive. I've done it for 27 years; the next 27 surely won't be that bad. Surely.

Evolution gone wrong

I’m no longer sure that evolution works.

 

My argument is slightly tenuous, but after returning from Spain I had to fix my car, I went to a restaurant to order lamb shank for £12 and it came microwaved, and the school I work in moved into a £5 million building that has a tin roof – which leaks – and has a shelf life of 28 years. Oh, and is a garish green. Considering I saw churches and cathedrals still standing after hundreds of years, resplendent and awesome despite the wear of centuries, I therefore find our short-term perspective – enhanced by our information age and need for immediate gratification in both work and pleasure – somewhat disappointing. The men who started building these cathedrals died before their work was completed: I won’t even be 60 by the time they tear down my school building.

 

Add to this the fact that I can pay £12 for a lamb shank and it comes literally five minutes later, you have to question just how much this immediacy has been a good thing for our culture. No-one likes to know that their shank is microwaved; I’d have preferred to wait, safe in the illusion that my food was freshly cooked. (I know Wetherspoon’s microwave their food, but then that’s why I pay under £5 for it.) Sure, washing machines and emails and internet has improved out knowledge and increased our capacity for work, but that in turn has increased the demand for output and, by extension, our stress and has also, to a certain extent, taken the joy out of the simple things. I’m not arguing that we should return to the Middle Ages, but I am saying that the Information Age has taken a certain amount of joy from the simple things. Look at the men who started said cathedrals: they were prepared to die for an idea, an architectural blueprint, content in the knowledge that the building would be finished long after they were dead. Then look at our architects, who build shoddy buildings on the cheap despite the fact they have greater resources and better equipment.

 

And what about cars? They’re meant to make life easier and stress-free, as well as opening the world up to you, but in reality they consume money with a ferocious fervour, become awkward to deal with when they break down (how do you get your car to the garage if you only have roadside cover and your car won’t start at home?), and destroy the environment in quite a backward fashion, which no-one seems to care about. I lived on trains in Spain and loved it, plus I recently sold our second car to save money, and my life has genuinely been simpler and more enjoyable as a result. Until my first car broke down. Then it became difficult again. Human advancement only seems to bring stress.

 

I know people have always cut corners in cultures throughout time and transport is so much quicker and easier in our world, and I haven’t even mentioned medicine yet, but you do wonder what will last from our age. The buildings? Well, we’ve already ascertained that that’s a no. The cars? Global warming and lack of coal will answer that one quite emphatically and quite soon. The food? One could argue that there’s little new to our food culture as it is based on centuries of tradition and success.

 

The internet? Well, it’d be hard to kill it now. That will probably evolve over hundreds of years. Our gift to the next generation is the internet. Just think, all that porn, those scamming websites, and that incorrect information that our children and grandchildren will read over the years to come. I’m exaggerating and playing devil’s advocate, but it’s worth a little think.

 

Ironically, I’ve thrown this blog together in about half an hour. I practise what I claim to hate, demanding things instantly myself and failing to appreciate the value in waiting. What is that value? I have no idea.

 

And that is why evolution hasn’t worked. Or at least why it hasn’t quite gone according to plan. Survival of the fittest? Sure. Then why are we building shit?

Extrovert / Introvert?

This past week has been miserable, truly miserable. I was always convinced that I was a loner, a thinker, one of those anti-heroes from the movies who are grumpily saving the world while refusing to be civil or friendly. But I'm not.

I'm in Jerez de la Frontera, in the south of Spain, for a week by myself - just a week - and I'm already lonely. A trip funded by my own self-importance and desire for adventure, I've found that it's been the opposite of everything I imagined. I'm not a loner, just lonely; I'm a thinker, but I really want a break from my own company; and I'm certainly not someone who lives off shunning people.

Some of you will quite rightly point out that I'm 27 and that I should have grown out of trying to be like a character from the movies, like Indiana Jones or Wolverine, but I guess it's been ingrained since my youth. The truth is that I admire them for their ability to be independent, to walk through life with only their thoughts for company.

You see, I'm an extrovert. I love being with people, huge groups of people, for as long as possible. It sounds like attention-seeking, but it's not. Or maybe it is. But somehow, as a human being, I depend on social interaction to sustain me. Without it, I feel like I'm going mad. I'm sat in my hotel room now, writing this blog whilst my extroverted self is frantically trying to pull down the walls inside of me.

So I have my heroes because I want to be able to be independent from people, like they are, but I can't. I want to not have to rely on people, but it's not possible. Without people, I would go crazy.

The irony is that I came here to write a story set in Cadiz and, although the trip has been invaluable for setting and plot, I have had no inspiration for my writing, nor even any desire to write. How shocking. How disappointing. But I have no doubt that, after I've returned home and spent a few nights with good friends, the juices will flow again and I'll want to lock those same friends out and write for a while. Then I'll need to see them again. People give me energy, passion, desire. I want to be self-reliant, but I can't.

Some of you, of course, will think completely contrary to me. You will admire the people who are the centre of everyone's attention, who draw laughter or engage an audience without even trying, while you curse your inability to socialise. You long to be the extrovert, despising the fact that you draw your energy from being alone. You cannot stop yourself being introverted, but you damn well fight it.

Sadly, you are, and always will be, the introvert. And I will be trapped in my own head until I can escape Jerez.