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.
