The reason I'm choosing to openly moan about it is an attempt, perversely, to keep it at bay. This blog has so far been updated daily (we'll see how long that lasts, shall we?), and that's only because it's an attempt to keep some kind of writing going on every single day. That doesn't mean that the writing is necessarily going to be any good, but it does enable me to sharpen my pencil, so to speak. It's so easy, otherwise, particularly if the main thrust of your physical and emotional energy goes into the day job, to allow two, three days to go by without actually doing anything creative. You just don't have the energy. And if three days go by, it may as well be five - the full working week. By that time, you've got to the weekend, and you feel that you deserve a rest. Then, of course, you're back to work. Before you know it, a year has gone, and that script you keep telling everybody that you're going to finish still hasn't been started.
Of course, a blog is simply a much more public way of doing that. Much more embarrassing, and deliberately so. I don't kid myself that a great many people read this blog (although the number goes up slightly when I'm doing a Doctor Who feature), but I'm always slightly startled when people I know mention to me, in person, that they actually read my blog. There's the old joke about the guy talking to everybody about the novel that he's writing ... year after year, after year. Eventually, people stop listening, since it's obvious to all (with the possible exception of the writer themselves) that they're never actually going to write the damn thing. They become - deservedly so - an object of derision.
Is that what I'm trying to do, then, with this blog? Set myself up as an object of ridicule? You wouldn't have thought that I would have had to look that hard for such opportunities. But I rather think I am. Or at least, give myself less wriggle room to avoid finishing that script/short story/theatre project/whatever. I always argue that I'm not quite where I want to be because my job doesn't quite let me be where I need to be, and I don't have enough of a financial cushion to simply jump ship. Now, that's all true; it's not simply a self-blinkering excuse. But, however inarguable it is - I mean, when it comes down to the harsh facts, I'm right - it doesn't change the facts that - well, that the facts aren't going to change. You have to work within the boundaries you're given, up to the point when you discover (or, more likely, are able to engineer) the way to break those boundaries.
Of course,it's the new year vibe making me think this way, and I sincerely hope I can continue the momentum throughout the next couple of months. But the other thing that's focussing me is the undeniable fact of me hitting 40 this year. I'm not much of a one for birthdays, and rarely draw attention to them. I feel so strongly about this that I made a point of removing my birthday details from Facebook a couple of years ago: I remember being startled one year by a stream of people putting birthday greetings on my wall. I had at least two minutes of honestly believing that people had remembered my birthday before realising that it had come up automatically on their news feed, and that others had merely seen them post Happy Birthday on my wall. While the sentiment was lovely and appreciated, it was essentially meaningless: for my money, I'd be more taken by someone who, in mid conversation in late October, suddenly went 'Oh, hang on, did I forget your birthday?'. I'd consider that more a more genuine and heartfelt birthday greeting than twenty people who simply jabbed in two words onto my Facebook wall just because they saw someone else do it. Maybe I'm just reading too much into things, being too grumpy. This is why I don't have too much of a problem about turning forty, basically because I appear to have been born at the age of 43.
But a couple of people have already said that I should mark the passing of time this birthday, particularly as I generally avoid doing so at every other one. But, it's not like 40 is even a 'special' birthday in any way; it's only of merit in the way that it's a neat rounding up of a number. I'm not even sure what 40 year olds are meant to do these days. When I was a kid, a 40 year old had a mid life crisis and worried about what sort of lad their daughter was marrying. Now, it seems, more and more 40 year olds haven't actually left home yet.
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