In Retrospect

So lately, every time I've been meaning to write a blog I've felt hesitant or uneasy. I don't know why and I don't know how I've let these feelings get in the way so I've decided to break the cycle and type one up now. I'm currently sat up in bed surrounded by a sea of mess, remembering that I'm going back to Northern Ireland in T-36 hours.

I haven't packed.
I haven't got my train ticket.
I've still got baggage here I can't check in.

Going over it all its strange to imagine I've been here for five months. I can vividly remember leaving home with feelings of anxiety with my mood still low as, my sense of purpose ambiguous and the knowledge that my summer trysts were just that when I recalled them. But one question loomed over me as I raced across the irish fields; What did I want to achieve this year? I returned here in July all ready to get back on the job-hunting, raring to cut my teeth with some writing. Did I achieve this?

Yes and No.

There'll always be some kind of ambivalence with my personality, my hopes for the future and some kind of existential conflict, but progress has been made. I've finished a draft opening of my novella 'The Seventh Veil', which I'm hoping to release on kindle in early spring. Its been on a journey, like me, and its had some fuck-ups but I'm at a point where I'm really happy with it. I've also been writing more poetry, more solid work. I feel like I'm at the point where I've nearly defined my own style, both with fiction and poetry. Its a strange feeling too, to have that. Its even been more often then not that when I've been approached and asked what I do its been 'I'm a writer'. I've sad it with brevity and conviction and I've been taken aback myself when its been my instinctual response.

And with this, I've noticed that my moods have began to improve. I thought it'd take more difficult procedures and I never knew if it would go away. Maybe it hasn't. But for now I've reached an equilibrium that I'm happy with. By pouring myself into writing I've been exorcising the inner demons that have been knocking at my door for the past 18 months. I've felt less like a minefield. I was going to say I feel more like a flourishing garden but that's frankly too camp a reference to throw in. Oh, what the heck!

If there's one thing that is still pestering me though, its my nihilism. I still feel a sense of insignificance whenever I make a decision. In the big, wide world we're but an ant. And in the context of all that exists we are just the nothingness of nothing. I still wonder if I have a purpose in life and whether it actually exists at all; am I here for a reason? Is life and my fate pre-ordained by some deity with a wicked lust for destruction? Or maybe its just a flying spaghetti monster that lacks any rational thought. Maybe my life is just for me to decide. All I know is that if I were a path I'd have no signs to show where I'm going to end. It'd just a miasma of mist and rain. Obscurity. But I guess, its a good thing.

So whilst I've babbled on here, I thought I'd use this just as cathartic writing. For myself to look back and realise there is improvement and just to dent the net a tiny bit. In retrospect, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

PS - If there's one thing I've realised though, is that even the most unexpected things can make you happy. I've learned that very recently and its put a genuine smile on my face. It may end soon, it may end in years to come, but its happened.