Saturday 29 June 2013

So, this time last week (God, has it been a week already? How the hell did that happen?) I tried to organise a picnic/barbecue thing on the beach. Of course, I know, and you know, that as soon as you say those sort of things out loud, then the weather will be against you. And so it came to pass that there were pretty healthy winds all day long, which effectively (very effectively, in fact) put paid to any chances of spending time whatsoever outside. This Saturday, things are different. This Saturday, there was a full day rehearsal with the youth theatre, so it was pretty much inevitable that today would be the first day of 2013 where there would be more than two hours of uninterrupted warm sunlight (please don't message me to tell you that, actually,  you've had loads of days of brilliant sunshine: we're talking about my experience here. My experience may admittedly be significantly a lot more boring than yours, but we happen to be on my blog, and not yours. Of course, you could argue - very successfully - that the reason that you don't have a blog is precisely because your experience is less boring than mine, and I'm really not going to argue with you on that point). 

Like most people who write a blog (with the honorable exception of Richard Herring) I've let it go a bit fallow without updates this month. This is mainly because of the festival fringe production I was directing (which I really, really will chat about in more detail in a couple of posts time), but a few other things have happened in the meantime. I guess the main thing most recently was turning forty. This, in fact, was the main reason for attempting a beach picnic/barbecue type of thing. Many people have been asking me - quite intensely, in fact - if I've bothered by this milestone. They ask with such intensity, in fact, that I've begun to wonder if it isn't to facilitate their own sense of glee at a fellow human being falling apart and crumbling to dust before them than any actual concern they might have for my well-being. But the fact is, I feel like I was born at the age of forty, so getting to the actual physical age is no great hardship. Of course, traditionally, this is the point in time when a man is supposed to have a  mid-life crisis, but since I'm not exactly adverse to the idea of suddenly having a classic car and a girlfriend who's all sorts of wrong for me, I'm not exactly sure that it will be any kind of crisis at all. 

There are probably lots of things that did or didn't happen while I was far-too-busy to keep the blog updated, but the thing that springs to mind was getting to the long list for a writing competition. Now, I'm hopelessly naive about these sort of things. I wasn't even aware that there was such a thing as a long list. I know, logically, that there must be - that would make a lot more sense of the phrase 'short list', but it wasn't really something that I gave much thought. So when I originally got the email telling me that I hadn't made the short list, I took that as a standard rejection, and thought no further about it, other than to redraft the story (for what was probably about the tenth time, now). I rewrote it with the critical eye of a story that had, in fact, been rejected. I think the changes that I made were actually pretty important, and vital - indeed, how had I missed them the first nine times? - and made the story a helluva lot better. That done, I sent the story off again (to its third chance). 

I hadn't really read the rejection email until weeks later, and it was only then that I discovered that my name was on the long list. Sure, it was still a 'rejected' entry, but I wasn't exactly sure what long list actually meant, believe it or not. For a moment there, I did wonder if it was simply a list of all the stories that had been entered - literally, a long list. Turns out, not. Apparently, there was over a thousand entries, and the long list was under 100 stories. As 'rejections' go, that's pretty good odds. As I say, I have already redrafted the story and improved it. The long list (now that I actually know what that phrase means) gets announced at the end of next week. It might not be third time lucky. 

But, then again .. 

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.