Finally! A blog written by a man about nothing in particular. It’s what the internet’s been crying out for!
I’m not going to get bogged down by anchoring my thoughts to particular topics and themes. If I want to write about anything and nothing, then I will. I’m a grown-up. What are you going to do? Not read this?
The best advice I was ever given was to just write. It doesn’t have to be good, and clearly it’s a mantra many writers in Hollywood live by. I always felt that if what I wrote wasn’t good then I shouldn’t publish it, not even to my one fan. That held me back, and I wish I’d shared more rubbish sooner.
The advice was given to me by my A-level psychology tutor — who also advised me to become a gas fitter (this was back in 1999) because ‘that’s where the money is, and you’ll never be out of a job’. I mean, he was probably right.
But he’s also dead, so… I’m not quite sure how much I should heed his advice.
Maybe it’s just a consequence of getting older and greyer — which I don’t mind admitting I’m performing very well at — but I just wanted to create a space where I could encourage my writing and experiment with a bit of whimsy and not care who reads it (even it’s people I vaguely know).
As someone who earns his crust writing, I’m paid to overthink and I find it a hard habit to kick when I want to write something for myself.
So, this venture is deliberately loosey goosey. I’m actually looking forward to writing some absolute drivel and nonsense, making some typos along the way, and not feeling a thing.
I haven’t given myself many guardrails with this, only to avoid negativity. There’s enough of that out there, so I want this to be a positive, carefree space.
I doubt I’ll write anything that gets too philosophical. Psychological, well maybe. I guess that’s the heavy price us spontaneous creatives have to pay for being emotional wrecks (or it’s my A-level tutor coming back to haunt me).
But one of the few benefits of being unpredictable is that it makes life hard for my adversaries and keeps them on their toes. Even they would have to admit that.
My attention span wasn’t great at the best of times and it’s probably getting worse, so why fight it, that’s what I say to myself when I have meta conversations.
Writing is the only thing I ever really been good at, and it annoys me to think that I might only be the second-best writer in the world.
So, doing this will probably help bump me into top spot. It’d take more than an infinite amount of years for an infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters to replicate this.
It’s the lack of monkeys from the future returning to the present day to correct me on this claim that makes me certain that a) what I said is true, and b) time travel will never be invented.