Another year over

It's customary at the death's end of a year to look back over the months past, and to measure the distance since that last raising of hopes at the deepest point of winter. I'm usually the type to indulge a near-term nostalgia, but this year I'm feeling less inclined to rise to the inspection. In a way, it's simpler not to think too hard about it. Highlights of 2005 were, in no particular order: birth of my nephew; my visit to New York; my Audi; moving back into my flat; sculpture class. Lowpoints were, again in no particular order: going back to my old job; getting turned down at interviews; dropping my forbidden affections; getting busted for speeding.

It's also fairly normal for me to look ahead to the turning of the year and groan. Like birthdays and anniversaries, these calendar milestones just put me in a mood about where everything is and how I never seem to be satisfied. This year, ironically, I'm not feeling as pessimistic as I normally do. When I do go back to work next week, I know that it'll be about 6 weeks remaining before I get the hell out of that project, which ain't too bad. I'm booked to go skiing with the guys in March. I have a few interviews lined up for January... so there are things to look forward to.

Will 2006 prove to be a better year than 2005? Obviously, this is something that cannot be answered right now. What I can say is that the perception of a year as "good" or "bad" becomes more and more vague as time goes by. I guess it's because life becomes more complicated. At 19, it's all about studies, girls and the future - the risk-reward framework, social networks and the economics are fairly manageable. At 29, there are so many conflicting concerns, so many things falling into the mix - things like tax, career prospects, pressure to get married and settle down, work-life balance, the need to do something worthy, and the sense that time to fulfil one's dreams is continually draining away. It's important, however, that you don't let that stop you from still reaching for it - you have to keep reaching for it, otherwise we'd all end up suiciding eventually.

Turpitude... Motivation... the passing of Richard Pryor

Turpitude

Sometimes, we do bad things. It happens. We know it's not good, but we do it anyway, and sometimes there's just no alternative. What's my bad thing? Well. it's bad enough that Moses brought back one of the commandments not to do it.

So they say, "don't break up a happy home", and I decided to behave and leave the married woman alone. Then comes another, and she's engaged, and I just can't help myself. I hawk and move, flirt and test the limits of her devotion. Is all fair in these matters? What has fair got to do with it anyway? I look at the flipside, and see that it would be awful to be on the receiving end.

Motivation

My motivation appears low at the moment. I have an interview this Friday, and another next Wednesday, and this should mean that I'm in fully-focused, go-getter mode. But no, in fact I'm feeling quite... not indifferent as such, but ambivalent. Yes, there are still opportunities out there that I can try going after, but right now I just want to curl up and sleep for a week.

I think it's because of the anticipation of xmas, the wind-down. I hate being on an out-of-town project at this time of year, because at least when you're in the capital you can slip out and wander the xmas market, or watch people consuming in the high street.

the passing of Richard Pryor

I don't feel bad for celebrities when they die, most of the time. Let me re-phrase that - I don't feel especially concerned when they do pass away, not that it matters whether they are famous or not. But I felt bad when I heard that Richard Pryor had died. Not just because he had a shitty end to life, but because, selfishly (as it always is with entertainers), I thought that maybe he'd come back. Miracles - who can say whether they happen or not? Certainly not Richard. I have recordings of his great stand-up performances, and they always touched me and cracked me up. I loved wearing my Pryor tee-shirt. It made me feel expansive and true to the anger that bubbled persistently within...

Something hot in a cold country

It's cold in my world at the moment. My boiler died, and is being replaced at a sickening cost to my pocket. When they quoted me the price, I almost vomited - let's put it this way, it's not going to be a generous christmas this year! Anyhow, today the installers have bashed huge holes in my walls, and as night is falling the prospect of sleeping in a perforated apartment looms. So it is cold and damp, and I'm not liking it. I'd rather be on a beach, in sunshine.

But Christmas is coming, and the prospect of one whole week at my folks' place eating good food and drinking without consequence is a highly entertaining one. It will also be my nephew's first xmas, and I will be happily cooing and gurning in the warmth of family.

I've been feeling moments of love recently. Sometimes I well up with affection for people, apparently for the smallest kindness or communion. I have short, comforting smalltalk with a colleague about coping with the downers of work. The chat is brief but there is a sense of sincerity, such that we both suddenly appear vulnerable, making ourselves almost naked. Needing, and being needed; Longing, however temporary, and being longed for, however temporarily, is magnetically beautiful. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms, bury my head into her neck, breathe in her emotional exposure, infuse it with my own. Restraint, how difficult it was to maintain...

So how come I'm feeling so full of this emotion even at this, often the bleakest time of year? I don't know why... maybe it's the music on the radio at the moment. The kind that wraps you up in the 3 mins it takes to play. Royksopp, in particular. Perhaps also it's the arching back of the night at barely 5pm, the darkness calling for humanity to bond closer as we did before electricity. Who knows...

Toby (My nephew) 

The subtle indifferences of feeling...

What happens when you run out of things to say to someone? After a few years, you've exhausted everything good to talk about, and all the things that you had in common seem to have been eviscerated by silence and repetition. That's the way relationships go, and the way friendships go, eventually, because if you're honest with yourself there will only ever be a small handful of such connections that will last for life. When I say "for life", I mean from the point that you meet until the end of life - the "forever" concept that finds meaning only in its utter negation.

It's like that one Chris Rock skit, the one called "Shut the fuck up", where he talks about not being able to take listening to the same shit over and over: "At some point you've heard everything this person has to say, and it makes you sick to your stomach!"

I think about all the people I ended up just losing to indifference and prolonged absence of common interest, and I feel... idiotic. I don't feel regret - it takes two, always, to make discussion. Sometimes it's just a loss of interest, kind of like those ill thought-out, short term relationships where after an explosive couple of weeks, be it through phonecalls or texts, or vigorous sex, or faded smiles, the thought of the other evolves beyond the wick of their existence. You become demanding, wanting them to be more than they are, because everything that they were that was special has been consumed, the mystery sated and the lifeblood of desire spent.

On a more immediate note, the air in London is crisp and cold, and as in every winter day I am enjoying the odd smoke in the evening hours. I am most certainly a seasonal smoker - the weather and the dimming light demand it. It gives me a chance to perch on my balcony, cigar in my gloved hand and thoughts on the prospects of change that lay before me, an array of pregnancies of which all or none, but hopefully some, will come to fruition. No news on any of my job opps, but a couple are still alive and merely unresolved.

Enjoy the silence

Well, did you enjoy the silence??! Yes, it has been a few weeks, but I was running out of interesting things to say, and the art of word had bolted.

So, what's been shaking up and down the nickwong-o-cephalus?

Well, my continuing professional escape drama rolls on and on. I'm through to a third interview for a job I desperately want, and man have they put me through the mill to get this far!! First round was a pair of 45-minute one-on-one interviews. Second round was a 2-hour presentation (which I had to construct in powerpoint) and four 45-minute one-one-one's. I think this is the final round, and I'm praying it proves less exhausting than the last one. I also received feedback - they thought I came across as "too aggressive".

Too aggressive... hmmm. Too aggressive. Too aggressive? Too agressive?!!! This whole anger thing, i have just got to learn to control. I was on my best behaviour and they still thought I was aggressive, which frightens me a little...

I've been spending a bit more time with my nephew as well. Who is now also my godson, although I'm a catholic and he's a presbyterian (like his dad). I'm loving being an uncle and a godfather. At the baptism, I got a little card with my duties as a godparent, and the one that stood out was the one where I committed to teaching him "to protect the weak and to fight evil". Now that I can totally do, and I picked up the little tyke and whispered: "together, my nephew, we will fight evil and protect the weak". I have posted a little photo of him now, because I remember posting his foetal scan photo months ago, so it kind of plots a story...

Oh, and there's a new chick I'm digging at the moment - she's pretty and skinny as hell. Is she nice? Or funny? or even interesting? Well, let's just say I haven't really thought about personality just yet. I'm just focused on her bewitching, twitching, swishing behind. Lovely...

Brain on the mend...

Everything changes, and everything must, eventually change. So my mood turned back up from a period of being down. Everything changes, and this is the hope to which I am currently clinging.

Recently, I've been very positive. On Sunday, I met up with a friend I used to work with, who left to become a teacher. He told me about how things had changed since he quit and went into teaching. His life is so much more... "real", his accountability firm and the rewards more than pecuniary. He sees his wife, he does DIY and cultivates his garden...

After a horrible feeling last week, I'm in a good mood. I have an interview at eBay this Friday, which I am really looking forward to. I'm really eager to do well with this one, as it's actually a job I want to do! Who knows if I'll get beyond the first interview, but hey I've got as much chance as anyone I guess.

And I got offered a job from a software company, which was nice even though I don't want to take it. The job's offering a near 20% increase on my current salary, but would involve a whole lot more travelling and demand most of my time again. The confidence boost is good, though. It settles the mind, and stops me thinking too negatively.

I'm also getting active again - I played squash with my brother, and it was great. We played for a good hour, full speed, and I ran for every ball, lunged at every bounce, until I emerged sore and sweating from the court, my buttocks feeling firm like mutton...

I haven't been able to finish my retrospective of 1996-1999. It stalled. Why? because the more I dig into it, the more I realise that 1996 wasn't all the beauty of my nostalgia. Yeah, I did well at college, and I had a great time drinking and socialising, and I played football three times a week... but I also cheated on a really cool girl, I started a fight and got deservedly kicked, and I felt loss for the first time. The not-so-good things have played on my mind, and I'm not quite ready to delve so deeply into it. So you'll have to be patient, if it's interesting at all...

I'm such a fucking freak sometimes...

Recently, I've been fucking things up completely, and it feels like everything is just coming out wrongly. I just can't seem to shake the doubt... the confidence, the empowerment that should be there has gone awol. I swear, right now I could be the narrative voice of a Coupland novel.

Maybe, sayeth the ego, I'm just at a juncture. Maybe, it's a kind of millenial moment, but without the dates.

Whiskey is a temporary reprieve. A dry havana provides momentary removal from the confusion of the heart. I picked up my neglected guitar, played a few chords, plucked the remnants of a tracy chapman ballad, passed out, woke, made awkward calls, ran out of battery, poured more whiskey, plundered the stack of cd's, put on ben folds five, made an unsuccessful booty call to a forbidden peach, flopped onto bed and mumbled myself to sleep.

Why does everything seem so complex at the moment? Why are there so many variables? Why can;t I just pass for what I need to be right now?

And the irony is, it could all be so simple! I could just get lucky, the stars could align, and I could end up not feeling like a freakish detail from an edgar allen poe story.

And I miss driving fast. Since getting busted, I have been forcing myself into 70mph hell, when I want to just put the foot down and feel the surge of motion and growl. Damn the pigs... damn them.

Mid-Week Miscellany

So, I got busted for speeding yesterday.

I was driving back to London in my A3, pulled out into the fast lane, saw an open stretch of motorway gaping into the distance and put my foot down. The car surged forward, and I got that wash of satisfaction that only speed can deliver. I was just checking my rear-view to slip back into the middle lane, when I saw the flashing lights behind me. The cops tailed me for a few yards until I stopped on the hard shoulder, walked me to the back of their unmarked sedan, made me watch a video of my offence, then slapped me with a £60 on-the-spot fine. My first prosecution! Not my first run-in with the law (a few youthful misdemeanours).

So, tomorrow I must turn in my licence at the local police station for it to be endorsed, with three big black points on it for the next four years. It was going to happen - just a bummer it had to happen this week!

>>>>

I have an interview at Amazon, on Friday. The job is managing their books product line for the french site. It's the first product of my registration with a recruitment network, in my attempt to move on from the consulting world.

Whilst I am quite attracted by the idea of looking after something to do with books, and in French no less (I studied French Lit as one half of my undergrad), the prospect of conversing in French at interview chills me somewhat. It has been a good few years since I had to string more than a few paltry sentences together, .

Having managed to hustle the next couple of days off of work, I am plotting my strategy and style . So, here I am, sipping a concoction of Absolut Mandarin, ice and cranberry-orange juice, thinking about what the fuck I am going to say about myself in this interview... Apart from the fact that I love books (duh!) and I'm a fairly capable manager... If I'm honest, I don't think I am going to get the job, because I just don't have enough commercial experience. But we'll see!

I would never laugh...

I saw Abby's list of songs she likes to sing drunkenly into her pillow, and was moved to write about my own experiences of singing drunkenly - mostly in an effort to get laid.

Since Maverick and Goose burned "You've Lost that Loving Feeling" in Top Gun back in the Eighties, it has become a cliche. Hackneyed as the idea may be, in my erstwhile experience, singing drunkenly to a similarly drunk girl can be the best thing to make a long night of it. Horizontally, if you know what I mean... (wink, wink - better than wank, wank, right?).

Drunken singing was once effectively my pulling technique - I had neither the soulful baritone of a Barry White nor the falsetto of a Jeff Buckley. But I could belt them out with the best of them.

So, unlike the wet rags weeping silent poetry into their glasses, when I wanted to get into a particular girl's underwear, I would get myself mashed and then launch into a heartfelt yell of musical lust.

Hence, I disclose to you my top 5 favourite songs to sing to the willing girl, be it successfully or in failure:

"End of the Road" by Boyz II Men

(Success factor: 10. She fell into my arms, we forgot the limits of youth, and left our teenage years behind. I was only 19. Still the ultimate seduction song)

"If I Ever..." by SHAI

(Success factor: 8. I found that ladies love the line that goes, "I just want to be the one to serve you / Sometimes I feel as if I don't deserve you".)

"Foxy Lady"

(Success factor: 7. Works for chicks who have a thing about their looks - outright declaration of the purely physical attraction, animal, pheromonal...)

"Do you realise?" by Flaming Lips

(Success factor: 5. Almost worked once. Failed otherwise.)

"Wonderwall"

(Success factor: 4. I have a spot for this song - it defines my first year at university, and my realisation that maybe Oasis wasn;t the best music to try it with a girl)


Ah, sweet memories of the nineties and the turn of the century... Makes me think about that Howard Stern skit, where he made a woman climax by getting her to straddle a HiFi speaker and then mumbling into a microphone. Now, if I ever get to work out that audioblogging thing...