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...