....at the risk of repeating myself

I wonder why I'm still doing this. Here I am, but why? I'm pretty sure a fairly recent (ish, well, recent by my standards) post has posited the same question, but repeating myself is pretty much all I've got at the minute, so that's what'll have to do, here, now, while I wait for a couple of tables to leave.

"Might as well" isn't really the most compelling reason to write, is it? I mean, it's not the worst reason, it's not doing any harm, but it's hardly a passionate, driven compulsion. It's not having to write or else your head might burst.

Might as well.

February the 11th. That's the last time that I posted something here. Seems a long time ago, is a long time ago, really. At least by the standards of the content driven age, where four posts a day is slacking off, I might as well be chalking some mammoths on a cave wall. I'm not built for these times, I don't have time for these times.

Seriously, the one thing that always goes by the board is the writing, if there's something that has to give, it's that. I'll give you an unedifying insight into my working practices. As a congenitally lazy bastard, I set myself a certain amount of targets each week, a certain amount of exercising, a certain amount of writing, a few other bits and bobs, if I achieve more than I fail, I deem myself to have "won" the week, I keep a tally. 

So far this year I'm losing 2-12.

This is actually a pretty good year for me, last year I didn't hit two wins until mid July.

The reason for all of this unnecessarily complicated blether is that, left to my own devices, I'd do naff all, and as a chap that has only to look at a cream cake to gain half a stone, it's fairly necessary to keep me on my toes, I normally get close on the exercise ones. The writing I never get near. I aim to blog once a week. Dear Reader, please imagine a hollow laugh on that score.

I do find myself wondering if it's because writing is a fundamentally selfish act. It's a solitary one, certainly, but so's running or working out, and I have no difficulty making time for them. They have the added cachet of being necessary for continued health and well-being, they are an understandable form of selfishness. Taking yourself off to write for a bit is something more of an indulgence. There's a tap that needs fixing, there's laundry to do, dinner's not going to cook itself, the KP rota needs writing.

So it goes, as the man said.

Indeed, if we're making the argument that the intellect needs working out as much as the body, then there's a big stack of books to catch up on, journals unread, I promised that guy I'd proofread his novel, I really do need to start researching the summer menu...

Excuses, excuses, they scoff, if you really wanted to do it, you'd make time. And to them I reply, well you pop round here and fix the pothole in the car-park and replace that ridge tile on the roof, and I'll go and dash off a couple of sestinas, deal?

They have a point though, my imaginary interlocutor, the absolute bastard. If I were serious I'd be rising at five to bash out my masterpieces in the dawn light, while listening to something whimsical by Liszt. Only problem there is I work until midnight and I'm forty fucking five.

(when, it the risk of banality, did that happen?)

Yet here I am again, talking to myself. Maybe to one or two others, but, to be frank, I'll be amazed if anybody's stuck with me this far, there are far more compelling ways to spend one's time. Do a Duolingo lesson instead, get that irritating little owl off your back for ten minutes before it crops up passively aggressively guilt tripping you into doing five more minutes of absurd German, when am I ever going to talk about my room-mate's carpet?

(An aside, when doing my German oral GCSE I burst into tears "Was ist loss?" asked my teacher, concerned "meine...Wellensittich...ist....tot" I sobbed, and skipped the exams, Top marks. The death of my imaginary budgie was a good enough reason to get me off, seeing as I'd articulated it perfectly).

The question, as ever, is one of "the point", as in what is, of this/. I think that when I've asked myself this question before (which I'm sure, I have, many times) the answer has generally been: does there have to be one? I'm not sure that there does. But it seems a bit rich to expect you, the long-suffering Coastalblog reader, to have tracked your eyes this far down the page without actually having one.

So, what's the point?

Well, apart from being a tick in my weekly games versus myself, I suppose it's that I can't quite bring myself to call an end to it. I was reading an article in the excellent Mundial magazine (if you like footy, give it a subscribe, there's much to chew on) about casual night five-a-siders, and an arl fella in a regular game in Liverpool's still going in his sixties: "use it or lose it" he says "once you stop playing, you'll never start again"

That, I think, is the fear that keeps me slinking back here like a penitent drunk at irregular intervals, the fear of stopping, and not starting again, the fear if always wondering what might have happened if I'd kept plugging away, what ideas might not have cropped up, what pleasurable alleyways I might not have meandered down. An example, that German GCSE memory has just popped up, something I've not thought of in twenty years. Another example, a couple of weeks ago I got a message from someone I'd not spoken to in a comparable period, remarking on an old blog they'd just read.

You can never be quite sure what will happen, can you? I rather enjoy that. I rather enjoy that, the other night I found myself idly writing a tracklisting for a band that will never exist, purely because I was trying to get something, anything, down on paper. I enjoy that I was able to message a friend about it, and it brought a lot back up. There's too much that could happen, too much that exists in potentia just to go you know what, I'm knackered, and there's no time. Can't risk it. Need to keep going, just to see.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, here we are again. Hello.