OK, another of those ‘reflective’ blogs coming up. Probably more for my own benefit than anyone reading this so feel free to skip to the end for the musical interlude if you don’t really give a fuck what I have to say about myself, my life or anything to do with me; I assure you I won’t care :)
So, I made mention of a ‘date’ I went on with a most enchanting girl who appeared to like me. Now, while most people would be wondering why I am not focusing on the fact that a girl 12 years my junior thinks I am fascinating and why I am not laying the groundwork to sweep her off her feet and into my bed, I have to admit the one thing that I came away from that date thinking was more how much I’ve wasted my own life. OK, I know that’s a bit more melodramatic than it is, at 36 I’m hardly washed up and hung out to dry but believe me, that’s currently how I feel for about 25 percent of the waking day and as I average 5 hours sleep that means I spend more time thinking I’m going nowhere fast than I do sleeping! It’s all very well me living by my adopted motto of “Don’t take your worries to bed” but if such a huge chunk of my waking hours are spent worrying it surely defeats the purpose of the motto?! Maybe I should just sleep more and then things would balance out?? Hmmm…there’s a thought!
I’ve spent the weekend thinking back to my life aged 24, I was managing an admin office in Slough (for my sins) after being promoted over my boss to set up the department and then one morning I woke up and decided I was sick of working 15 hour days, going in at weekends for no pay just to get the job done and getting no thanks for it; OK I was getting a good salary, it was only 10 years later when I was getting the same salary that I realised just how good it was, but I gave it up to temp ‘for a few months’ which turned out to be 7 years. But a lot happened in those 7 years. I travelled across the globe and spent a year in Sydney, I re-acquainted myself with a friend I had met whilst travelling thru Europe at 19, I returned to the UK with great ideas of going to Uni and getting that ‘holy grail’ degree which would allow me to emigrate out of the UK into a sunnier climate. I took a shit job with an investment bank to save the money to fund my way thru a 6 week math course which would decide if I got onto the Uni course, got offered a trainee dealers position 2 weeks before I was due to start the course and turned down a starting salary of £35k because I didn’t want to turn out like the arrogant, but rich, twats I worked with. All I had to do was study math for 6 weeks, sit a test and get 75% and I was in… I got 95% and was ecstatic. Even more ecstatic were William & Cleeve who finally got full possession of their sofa, where I had been sleeping for the previous3 months ;)
But everything fell flat when I moved into a flat in Brixton and discovered at 26 the joys of pharmaceuticals… hello 36 hour sessions of Tekken 3, goodbye degree, hello massive build up of debt, goodbye life as I knew it.
However, can I say I’d change it all if I had the chance to do it all again? Of course not, I’ve met and made some good, dear friends. I’ve discovered good and bad things about myself and at the end of the day I’ve made to 36 and I’m still fairly sane, more than can be said of many.
I watched Knocked Up at the weekend. The first hour of it irritated the shit out of me, so I switched it off and went to bed and watched the rest on Sunday. Gradually I started to warm to it, perhaps the idea of a young, pretty successful woman falling for a lazy, layabout, fat bastard wasn’t so preposterous after all? Perhaps it was a sign, telling me that I shouldn’t assume that every girl wants a rich go-getter husband anyway? I mean I’ve already thrown my bong away, so I’ve made a start, I just need to find the pretty, young successful girl and work on getting her pregnant ;)
Right, I really can’t be bothered writing any more so it’s time for the musical interlude, if you’ve read this far you deserve this track, if you just skipped down here on my earlier advice, say hello to the Groovefinder remix of Nina Simone’s Ain’t Got No, I Got Life
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