It’s been a while since I wrote a semi-philosophical self-indulgent blog so I thought that now (12.43am – I can’t sleep at the moment) would be as good a time as any to write some stuff down. There’s an inherent problem with blogs I think, they’re so very attention seeking and ego stroking (very similar to standup) and rarely examine life outside the bubble of a persons life. However, if you chose to read this, then frankly I suppose I can be as self indulgent as I want. I mean it’s not as if I didn’t warn you. This is a good point to stop reading if you want to avoid reading self indulgent crap.
Still here.
Ace. My ego is suitably stroked.
I’m going to divide this blog into bullet points, simply for ease of me getting my thoughts down. Also so you can pick and choose what you want to read…
- Hungry people live near me – I found out this week that South Liverpool, a reasonably affluent area, has a food bank. I guess I always imagine poverty as not near me, as something distance and possibly only in Africa, but it really struck me that there are people in the UK, one of the richest countries in the world that will be hungry at Christmas, or won’t have heating, or a roof. It made me incredibly grateful for what I have but also incredibly sad and I’m not sure what I want to do about this. More info here.
- People die and are alone – There was a death in my family recently and it made me think about mortality, particularly the notion that there will be a point when everyone, or large portions of the people I know will be dead. The scary thing is how this will effect me in the facebook generation. I have 553 facebook friends, I’d estimate that I am older than 250 of them. That means that I will digitally experience their deaths, as they pass away they won’t be unknown, they won’t be forever young, we will see our lives progress from Uni, through marriage, children, divorces and retirement until death. I wonder if we will post funeral photos. Morbid but I find it slightly fascinating.
- After 28 years I still don’t know what I’m doing – Life is meant to get easier, some people find what they want to do and just do it – I feel like I’m still doing things in the industry I want to work in without ever doing what I get real satisfaction from. I find myself with an empty feeling with achievement at work more often than not (although the arrival of pink paper left me with a massive sense of achievement, which is weird) , not joy, or excitement… But this leads into the next point…
- Recognising achievement is hard to do – I think maybe I’m a bit rough on myself. I get pissed off really easily about things not being good enough or perfect and maybe fail to see the change that has happened. At work I keep staring at the website wanting it to be amazing and getting annoyed that I’ve not done a better job on it, but at the same time it’s vastly better than it was. Similarly I get annoyed that my standup isn’t perfect or I didn’t nail a gig, or I had to go to Preston – while at the same time forgetting that until October this year I had stage fright so bad I couldn’t go out in front of an audience. Perspective.
- Writers block – I don’t have it and it is bollocks. I’m lazy and worried that I won’t write something that’s good. I need to man up.
- Living away from home means you’re always 17 when you go back – I’m excited about going home at Christmas. It’s always a bit weird though, you see people you’ve not seen for 10 years who relate to you in the way they did then. People change vastly between 18 and 28, (my big change was 24 – 27, massive growing up and prioritising) and it’s weird to experience the reaction to the “old you” in the place of the “new you”. (this point is the self indulgent bollocks)
- Sometimes it’s okay not to be the extrovert – I was worried after the Impropriety gig this week that I was a bit shit, and in many respects I was, but I think I’ve learnt that sometimes it’s good that not everyone is an extrovert, and maybe a quieter less bouncy tone frames and helps the other performers. I could be wrong though.
That’s all folks!
Night.