So, I guess this blog is nothing more than a place to vent. An inner monologue of frustration, so to speak. The ramblings of a disillusioned 22 year old who is worried that life is becoming nothing more than a struggle.
There seems to be a point in most people’s lives where, for some reason, they come to a decision that their dreams are, for want of a better word, fucked. Their hopes mashed, aspirations pummelled, wishes culled. At this point, the pursuit seems to be; money, house, car, pension, child, midlife crises, better car, better house, another child, retirement, illness, death. Now, for me, this is not ‘choosing life’. This is not compact disk players. THIS, is something else. Why do we decided that what we want in life and what we can achieve have become mutually exclusive, and that its time to join the fucking meat train of fixed rate mortgages, isas, pension plans and office football tipping. One could argue at say, 30, it’s forgivable. That is 12 years of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and after a while, no-one wants to be ‘the old guy’ at a youth hostel. But there’s nothing more depressing than seeing a fresh faced 21 year old at 6.30am on a train station platform in a £100, ill-fitting, pinstripe NEXT suit, off to work at the company he’s going to spend the next 37 hours, 52 weeks and 39 years at. I know I might be coming across as a bit of a Nazi, dictating to people what they should and shouldn’t do, but Jesus, there must be more to life, right? Can anyone honestly say, when they were a 5 year old child, when asked by Mrs. Appleblossom in reception class what they wanted to do, they replied with, ‘well, I’m really looking at heading up a media sales division, possibly in the role of key accounts manager, but I’m keeping options open at this time’. Anyone? No, and if you say yes your either a) a fucking liar or b) a child genius who should be at Oxford with that level of basic conversational English AND knowledge of the internal working of a media sales company at the paltry age of 5.
Now I feel like I’m speaking for all 22 year old graduates when I look back over the insane debts I’ve stockpiled for my Politics degree and wondered; ‘what, on earth, was the point of that then?’. $17,000 in debt to be a runner/office bitch/on the phone all day trying to sell advertising space to companies who do not want or need it? Now I am an atheist, so this is basically all I have. There is no ‘lead a good life; get a good patch in the garden of heaven’ thought process. I have one crack at life, and I am sure as fuck not gonna spend it making some morally vacant, dead behind the eyes, penny-pinching scumbag rich.
Now the flip-side to this argument is; ‘yes, but not everyone can have their dream job. You tit.’ I can’t argue with this. I have - after strenuous inner deliberation - accepted that I’m never gonna captain Aston Villa. I have also accepted that I’m never gonna headline Glastonbury. Please don’t be shocked. Anyone that witnesses my weeklong foray into minimal-electronic music may be thinking ‘but, please, NO! DON’T GIVE UP!’, but sometimes everyone has to hang up their - in this case - pointlessly oversized headphones. But maybe we’ve misconnected the reason why we had these dreams. Was it the hours of tiresome practicing, playing gigs in front of 5 people for no money, sleeping in vans, in-fighting, clichéd drug problems and grinding your way to the top that made us so enamoured with getting into ‘da music biz’? Or was it just because we wanted to touch people’s lives? To have an impact on others? Let our thoughts and pains be dissected by the masses? Furthermore, was it because we have a morbid obsession with punting a butchered cows carcass around an allotment in front of 30,000, drunk ejits, or was it just, you know, the idea of being happy? Enjoying what you do. Looking forward to going to work every day. Not putting your life on hold for 8 hours a day, 48 weeks a year. Not sitting through a painful existence just so you have a few quid in your pocket to get blind drunk on a Friday night and sleep with something resembling Anthony Warrel-Thompson in drag. Saving all your holiday pay up to get a week in Torremolinos at the end of the year and do the same shit you do at a weekend, but in a warmer climate. How much enjoyment do we actually get out of a heavy night? How much of is it really the wanton escapism from an existence so mundane that we have to feel something, anything, that’s not part of our cripplingly dull routine?
We have the power to control our lives. We not cloned slaves. If we are willing to remove ourselves from our comfort zones, to do stuff out of the ordinary, then we can embrace the existences that we want. We are young, educated, healthy, and free. To be born in a Western country is such a unbelievable gift that most of us don’t realise it, and instead moan about weather, hoodies and ‘elf and saftey’. No-one can tell you can’t do something. No one can tell you can’t achieve something (well sans the previous footballer/rockstar example, but I’m on a roll here) and if we can just wake up and realise this we can have a positive effect on everyone we meet. Actions, do indeed, speak louder than words.
My goal is simply; be happy. Do shit. Set goals and achieve them. Hopefully I can do this, then I can prove that even the most lost subject in the world, with no focus, no long-term plan, no clue where they see themselves in 5, let alone 10/20 years time, can still spend their lives joyous, and feel like that have standing in the world.
- Note, I realise this all my comes across a bit Paul McKenna’s ‘7 ways to stop being shit’, but a bit of righteous positivity always puts a smile on people’s faces. At least I hope it does, or else this is looking more and more like a My Chemical Romance sleeve. Also, I realise the writing may be bad. Maybe not Dan ‘The famous man looked at the red cup’ Brown bad, but could do with tweaking. Gisa chance, yeah? It’s the first post, you grammar Facist.
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