The road into 2011
New Year, new hope and endless possibilities. We hope. I hope. This is going to be a tough year for everyone, including myself, and is going to need all the creativity and ingenuity we can muster to make it though. Already I am worried. Already I am thinking about bills, unpaid taxes, future earnings, bread and butter gigs that are no longer guaranteed, where the next job is going to come from, when the next job is going to come in and so on. There is no safety net, no default position. This is it. This is real. This is unknown territory. It always seems easier when you’re young; easier to be broke, live in squalor, survive on basics. But now as somebody who is nearly 40 with wife and child and a belly that is drifting outwards and southwards due to years of excess I find myself wandering through blighted memories of disgusting bedsits, dinners of instant soup and crap bread, flagons of cider, cheap tobacco, working like a dog building carnival puppets from scrap found in skips and wondering if I can do it all over again. These photographic memories are best left in the past. Once was fun. Once was enough. Once was a good lesson. I don’t think I can do it again but know that if I have to I will.
Oh, such negativity to begin the year. I don’t mean to. I don’t want to shine such a negative light on my first blog of 2011 but like vomit, I need to puke it out to get better, think straighter. For the truth is there are many things I am looking forward to this year; my 40th birthday (I always see my birthday as a celebration of being alive longer as opposed to being a year closer to my demise), working on the development of mutantspace.com, projects and ideas that will come my way, the new things I’m going to learn, stumble across, listen to, see. I’m lucky. I know that. I have a beautiful little family and warmth and food and comfort. And I also have a great book to dive into tonight when I get home; Jonathan Franzens latest novel, Freedom and as soon as I’ve finished that i have the new Philip Kerr book to indulge in (part of a series that I wrote about in this post on Berlin Noir). So what’s to be depressed about?
So I’m going to end positively. Hooray! A little patience, boundless energy, enthusiasm, a little luck, a break, an opportunity and we can all make something out of our predicament. Limitations are good, they stimulate the mind, creativity, imagination. Everything is possible. Especially when every morning your daughter puts her arms around you and says “Dada”
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