Thoughts On Forty

Met up at the weekend for a coffee with a couple of friends and their beautiful little girl. As you might imagine, I don't get many chances to play catch up, especially during fringe season, which is normally given over to rehearsals, planning, and panic attacks. Indeed, I think I only see these friends a few times a year, in real terms. Somewhat inevitably, the same conversational gambits come up again, largely what I'm working on at the moment, how is my actual day-job work, who I'm (not) seeing at the moment, yadda yadda yadda. 

This time, however, there was a (almost) new one. 'So', I was asked / reminded / warned. 'You're forty next month?' I allowed that this was true. I don't particularly have a problem with getting older (let's face it, I was born at the age of 38), but I do feel pretty awkward about attempting to do anything to do with my birthday. I'm totally fine with celebrating other people's birthdays, obviously. In that case, I'm absolutely fine, if invited, with rocking up to whatever venue and helping celebrate a friends birthday. But when it comes to my own, I'm a lot more anxious. I'm inordinately convinced that if I attempted to organise some kind of birthday bash, then it would be on the very date that everybody I knew had other plans. I know, I know how self defeatist that sounds, but it shouldn't. I'm not fishing for a 'aww' here, I'm simply denoting the banal possibility that everybody's calenders wouldn't quite match up. And then of course I'd feel needy and fishing for a 'aww'. Which would be a terrible way to celebrate your birthday. It also feels - from my side of the table, at least - overly arrogant. Well, no, not arrogant, but you know what I mean: 'Hello, come celebrate knowing me. And the fact that I haven't died yet.' It just seems all so tiresome. I figure if you've known me for a while, you probably (vaguely) know when my birthday is without me reminding you, as indeed proved to be the case with this couple at the weekend. I generally feel awkward about reminding people about my birthday (somehow, I feel the only natural response is 'and?'). If you don't know, or indeed care, then that's perfectly fine and acceptable. That's at least honest. It's why I even dislike the birthday greetings on a facebook wall - tons of people, who previously had no idea that it was your birthday, see someone else say 'happy birthday' on your wall, and then do the same - three seconds of typing, and duty done. It doesn't really mean anything, does it? I'd genuinely much rather someone entirely forgot, and then, apropos of nothing six months later, suddenly asked 'oh, did I miss your birthday?' That, to me, is honestly more meaningful. I'm being serious. I feel so (out of proportion, admittedly) seriously about this that I ended up disabling the wall function on my facebook account after, in my first year on facebook, being confused that so many people were, for the first time, wishing me a happy birthday. I'd previously been pretty confident that they didn't give a damn. 

God, that sounds bitter, doesn't it? It's not meant to, seriously. I'm just allowing the possibility that perhaps my (and indeed your) birthday isn't exactly important to anybody other than your closest friends and family at any given time, and I'd much rather not worry people's timetables with mine. I'm acutely aware that I've probably gone a bit too far in the wrong direction: in recent years, I've passed a reasonable amount of birthdays with absolutely no comment and little regret. So, why this blog entry, which is a clearly an ill disguised plea for someone else to kick me up the rear to actually get something done? Well, of course, it's the 40 thing. Bloody milestone birthdays. They put an undue amount of pressure on you to try and mark the occasion in some way. Last year, the birthday coincided with the last night of a production I was directing, 'Medea', so I was able to smuggle in some kind of celebration without feeling the pressure that it was all about 'me', but actually about the last night of the show. This year, however, I've got no such beard. It's already giving me a slight headache. And I haven't even had a birthday drink yet. 

Sunday 6th January 2012

This is it, then, my last real day off for the first section of 2013. Well, I have the first in a new series of improv workshops starting tonight at 7.00 (http://thisisandrewallen.weebly.com/ironclad-improv.html), but you get the idea. Ideas have been kicking around successfully for a week or so now, I've had lots of alluring conversations with various people about just how possible, how reasonable, it would be to sign up to casting agencies and the like, and I fully have faith in work tomorrow having the ability to kick those ideas in the teeth, and steal its wallet. And possibly write something rude on the toilet wall. I'm no longer sure that I'm still talking metaphorically.

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.

Saturday January 5th 2013

My neck has locked in, I'm getting tension headaches, and I'm feeling far too fatigued. It's clear what the cause is: it's time to go back to work. I'm loathe to moan too much about going back to work, since it's already January 5th, and I remember only too well working at pubs and clubs and suchlike, having to work straight through the holiday season without a break, and being intensely nettled when a customer both moaned about having to go back to work, and, at the same time, sneered at me because they assumed, wrongly, that I'd just had a week off. On the other hand, this happened so often that I guess I don't feel so bad about whining that I had to go back to work today. It was painful.

Apart from anything else, I ended up having to cycle in driving sleet. That's the problem with this time of year; the weather is still dreadful, but you no longer have Christmas to look forward to. I was getting close to my destination when a car stopped, a friend got out, and offered me a lift. I ended up declining, because I really was so close to where I was going, but I was struck by the two acts of kindness. The first act of kindness was, obviously, the offer of a lift, but the second act was the fact that she took time to overtake me slightly, come to a stop, and get out of her car to attract my attention. You know, as opposed to what most anybody else would've done, which would have been to inch the car very close to my bicycle, and then suddenly hit the car horn, thereby almost making me veer off into the ditch. I've genuinely lost count of how many times this has happened. I know people are just trying to say hello (at least, I hope they are, the possibility that they're deliberately attempting to drive me off the road isn't one that I'm really willing to contemplate right now), but I wish they wouldn't, or at least find a more effective method that driving up really close, and then suddenly hitting their horn. It's really rather scary. Since car horns are meant to signify a sudden and immediate risk of danger, it is, to say the very least, somewhat startling to have one blaring in your ear without warning while you're cycling along.

Of course, the car horn is very rarely used for its original purpose any more. More usually, it's used to signify anger when the driver doesn't agree with the way another road user has used the road, to bully the car in front when it's taken longer than 1.6 seconds to react to the traffic lights changing, or, oddly, as a replacement for the words 'hello' or 'goodbye'. I don't get this. It's bad enough when someone parks their car outside a house a hits the horn to alert their friend, and therefore everyone else in the street, that they've arrived, but the thing I've never been able to understand is when somebody hits their horn in farewell, making a big BEEP sound as they drive away. It makes no sense , since it seems to suggest that, as they left the house, they simply forgot to say 'goodbye': you know, that they were day chatting with their family in the lounge, when they suddenly got up wordlessly, walked out of the house, got into the car, and finally looked up to the window at the front of the house to see the confused faces of their loved ones peering questioningly at them. Of course, they think. I knew there was something I'd forgotten. There's no point in going all the way back in now, of course: rather than bothering to vocalise a farewell, they hit the car horn. This is obviously the only rational explanation for their actions.

One Day Down, 364 To Go ..

So, how has 2013 been for you so far? I imagine for most of us, it is pretty much like 2012 was last week, just with slightly less turkey leftovers. Of course, there will be a small minority of you who suddenly and unexpectedly found someone to kiss when it hit midnight, and of those few, there will be at least a couple who have woken up this morning, the first morning of a new year, with someone strange in their bed. Well, start the year as you mean to go on.

For my part, when the clock struck twelve, I found myself on stage. I was at the NVT NYE party, and there was all manner of entertainments going on; song, comedy, etc. When they chose the person to lead in the countdown to New Years, to whip the crowd into some kind of joyous, expectant frenzy, they somehow ended up with me. I will never quite be able to understand their logic in that choice. Presumably Jools Holland was busy. I'm hardly the most cheerful or charismatic boy (or girl) in the theatre - hell, even in the postcode, so I can only assume they were going for a last days of Waco kind of vibe. I myself was incredibly nervous before I did my piece. A lot of this was because its reasonably rare to do a set where it's quite so important that you don't overrun (and, indeed, have audience members continually telling you just how much time you've got left), but the major reason I was nervous was that, even five minutes before I was due to go up, I still wasn't entirely sure what I was going to say. Like a drowning man about to go down for the third time, I tried to warn as many people as I could about my predicament, hoping that they could give me some last minute pointers as to something that I could chat about. But each of them, without exception, said something along the lines of You'll be fine; it's what you do: improvisation. Such faith is unnerving; particularly as the longer I do improvisation, the more I discover that there is so much more to learn about it.

All of this should come in some kind of use from this weekend. On Sunday, I have the short form improv classes starting again at the Duke Box Theatre in Hove, and on Monday, I've got the first in a very short series of long form improvisation classes, by way of prep for a long form show I've got coming up in the Festival Fringe. Doubtless more details will emerge about that as we go along.

It's difficult to know how I feel about this upcoming year. Just because of an arbitrary date, there's so much pressure to feel positive and full of hope, clearing the decks for a much more productive year, be it creatively, job wise, romantically, or just eating more fruit and veg. But then real life gets in the way, and if you're not already in a situation where you're able to tick all those boxes, it's easy to get ground down to powder. Over the holiday season, I was struck by the amount of status updates I read that said something along the lines of 'best wishes to everyone who gets to share today with others', the barely veiled inference being, of course, that the author of that update was themselves alone. I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about those updates. The usual reaction would be to rail against them, to assume that they're bitter cries for attention, but there's so much nuance and subtlety that can be lost when updating your status. So, I think I've decided to assume that these people are being sincere, and that they're actually wishing well to people who they perceive are better off than them.

It's not a bad way to be, really. We spend so much time and energy, it seems, in being jealous about what other people have, the breaks, money, time, sex and good fortune that everyone else seems to get, that its exhausting. And of course, here's the kicker: nobody really cares if you're jealous of their good fortune. Why would they be? If you're right, they're too busy having a great time. Much better then, much happier, and much healthier to simply wish them well. And then maybe we'll all feel a bit better. Jealously is a severely overrated emotion.

And as for the people who aren't doing quite so well, who, however improbably, seem to be jealous of us? Well, maybe we can start being nice to them, include them more. Look, the good vibe created by the new year celebrations is going to last three more days, tops. Maybe only until tonight, really. After that, it's all down to us.

Happy New Year.

5 .. 4 ... 3 ... 2 ...

I'm trying to write a review of the year. I'm doing something for the NVT New Year's Eve party, and I've decided to try and do a retrospective of the last twelve months. I'm banking on most of the party goers being far too drunk by the time I get to my bit. I always think that New Year's Eve is a very odd night, anyway. For instance, last Saturday I'd come home after seeing a show, and was settling down for the night, watching the odd TV adaptation of Bag Of Bones. I'd just this week read the book, after having had it on my shelf for ten years. The edition I have was handed to me by Stephen King himself, after having signed it, at one of his very few UK appearances. But anyway, I'm getting off the subject here. That happens a lot, I'm really going to have to reel it in. I was at home, being reasonably unimpressed by Bag Of Bones, when a friend called up and got me out drinking, which ended up in a local nightclub. This almost never happens, but the reason I mention it was on that night, like most other nights, time was fluid - it got to about three in the morning without anyone really paying attention. New Year's Eve, however .. What the hell is it about New Year's Eve? Time slows to a crawl. And it doesn't matter if you're with good company. Such is the pressure about the midnight hour, that EVERYTHING becomes about the midnight hour, and you find yourself glancing at the clock, only to discover that it isn't yet nine.

Having said that, time is running out for me, and I still don't really know what it is I'm going to be talking about to tonight. I'm not even going to have a chance to think about what new year resolutions I'm going to attempt to break this month. I don't think I'm going to attempt too much in the way of resolution, since it can always get far too depressing when you stumble - or, as it's more commonly referred to, fail. I am writing more at the moment than I was at the beginning of the year, and it would be good to keep that momentum going. This is always a dangerous time in the year, because I have a job that actually does give me the full two weeks off for Christmas. (don't worry, I pay for it with my soul and hope). The problem behind that is, at this point in proceedings, I'm beginning to actually feel human again, and feel like I have time for a coffee and for a spot of writing. Which, of course, at this exact time, I do. It's when we shunt into next week (and next year) that my mood will down-shift into the grimace where it truly belongs.

Not that there isn't stuff to look forward to. There's a couple of writing deadlines looming (as I've mentioned before, there are few things more valuable to a writer than looming deadlines), and I have a double shift of improvisation workshops coming up. The Iron Clad Improv, which started up in October, begins again on January 6th at the Duke Box Theatre, and I'm doing a short series of long form improv classes at the New Venture Theatre for three Mondays, starting on the 7th.

The reason for these long form classes, apart from the actual just-having-fun aspect of them all, is for my first major project of 2013 ... For the Brighton Festival Fringe, I'm going to be producing an entirely improvised play: that's a production in which my cast, for five nights, will rock up to the stage with absolutely no script, no plot and no idea of what play they're about to put on. It could be terrible. It could be magical. Much like the next 365 days.

Happy New Year ..

I Think They Call It Grazing

A reasonable amount of writing today, although if I had an editor, they probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. My attention span seems to be slim for a writer. I've got about ten short stories on the go at the moment - which is great, it can be tough enough to come up with just one idea - but since one of my biggest problems (or do we still call it challenge these days?) as a writer is to actually finish the darn things, this can be something of a worry.

What I do then, is either a delaying tatic, or the best way forward, depending on what your view is. I spend a couple of hours on one story, and as I feel my interest begin to wane, or if there's a currently unsolvable problem that's about to demolish me, I jump ship to another story. I can't shake the feeling that this feels distinctly amatuerish, except for the fact that it seems to work. I certainly get more writing actualy done this way, rather than attempting the almost-always-failing method of re-working one page in an effort to get it exactly 'perfect' - whatever perfect means. I seem to work in this way even when I'm working on a single project - for instance, when I was writing 'Four Play', I intially wrote various keys scenes or jokes, then began to fill in gaps between them, before finally shifting them around, deleting them, re-writing, ignoring massive plot holes, writing the two scenes to bridge the plot holes, which would normally suggest only one logical thing between the two , write that .. and then, finally, have something approximating a coherent script. It probably isn't the most time-effective way to write, but it seems to have worked so far for me.

I'm a little concerned about work taking hours and mental agilty from me when I return next week, although it's true that for the first time in a year, I won't be working seven days a week. What is nice, however, is the messages of encouragement friends send regarding my writing, asking to see works in progress/finished stories. It's remarkably energising, and it's at least partially why I've been making an attempt to keep up this blog: while I'm painfully aware that there are few things more dull than a writer talking about writing (there's a fair chance that if they're talking to you about the novel that they're working on, that novel will never be completed), I use this blog to speak loudly and clearly to the three or four people who are actually reading it as a way of painting myself into a corner: if I have enough people asking me how the play/story/whatever is going on, there may be enough personal embarassment actor at stake to goad me into actually finishing the damn thing.

For the record, there are two projects (as a writer) that I'm working on at the moment: a re-write of 'Four Play', that I expect to take until at least the end of the year (which probably means that any new production won't be until at least well into the latter part of 2013), and a collection of short stories. As for the latter, I have no idea if short stories are fashionable at the moment or not - whatever I read on the subject seems to have conflicting views. But in any case, short stories seem to have a disipline all of their own - and the possibilty that they're about 150,000 words more likely to be finished.