Life on the list

Having spent much of the last three years being either introspective or retrospective and sometimes a hybrid of the two ("What was I doing wrong last week?") I feel it is high time to start looking forward. I have developed a (not unjustified) phobia of making plans because the ones I do make never quite pan out as expected: my plan to graduate, get a job and live happily ever after, for instance, has been disrupted by the abrupt terminus of my kidney function. Once that had happened, my rigid dialysis regime meant that any plans that didn't revolve around an afternoon at the hospital were a dead end. I resented it for a while - I felt it cruelly unfair that I couldn't arrange a holiday, but then I realised what an obnoxious dick I was and that not being able to get burnt and drunk over a week in Turkey is not exactly a violation of my human rights. In fact, the only significant impact my medical inertia has had on anything is my career. I tried working full time: ...

I calculate it has been roughly six weeks since I wrote last, which I realise translates as an eternity in the blogosphere. The gap correlates with my having gone back to work after the summer holidays and consequently being too tired and short of time to contemplate the goings on in my life, then attempt to articulate them in amusing vignettes. In addition, all my spare time (when I have not been asleep or hungover) has been dedicated to The Book. It has paid off in part because I now have an opus of approximately 55,000 words, most of them trite, but there on the virtual page of my pre-historic lap-top never the less. Perhaps if I had a brand new lap-top I would get more written: I had to give up writing in Starbucks, what with the shame of my old clunking Mac and all; I would ask for a Christmas cash injection towards an update if only I wasn't so desperate for Laura Mericer products. Still, if the worst dilemma in my life is currently that my expensive computer embarrasses me i...