I guess I always wanted to write....

 I think my first ambition was to be a writer.  I'm not sure why.  I think it represented some kind of power over reality.  Authors and writers seemed to create reality as much as reflect it.  I wanted that power.

So 30 years on, I have written nothing, but I have been biding my time.  Waiting for the narrative to unfold.  For circumstances to direct me.  And here I am.

There is nothing easy about writing.  The blank page, the endless opportunities, the dark winding forests of possibilities unfolding in a Mandelbrot chaos, clouding out directions of thought and terrifying progress. Shutting down thought and bullying the narrator into confused silence.

But still, this time I can think.

My life changed irrevocably somewhere in 2011.  It had been a rocky road since the economic crisis of 2008.  A crisis that I had seen coming, along with others, but was helpless to avoid.  Like a village under a la harre, after having watched the smoking mountain for weeks.  Years.

Defining a plot is the start, what is the plot?

Ah, yes.  Somewhere in 2011, I had been having strange experiences, some may call them spiritual awakenings. Though, in all honesty, many years of hedonism, London living, cocaine, MDMA, wine soaked, beer guzzling, made the experience seem somewhat normal.

I had become aware  things in the world where not quite as I expected.   Career floundering, love life stalled, friendships in stalemate.  Good times where had, but the weekend benders, carryout 7, bar 11, carryout 2, dancing till dawn 7, where wearing thin.

I remember an interview with Michael Caine, you don't want to be the oldest swinger at the party.  I had long since passed that milestone.... Just where was this going?

All the Art world parties, secret gigs, flings and adventures had led me nowhere.  Where am I?  I had just quit my rather comfortable well paid city job, to take up training as a teacher?  Why the fuck I did this, I still cannot understand.  But I did it. The teaching job turned out to be problematic due to the last minute reshuffling of the department that I was joining.  Gone were the jolly males and in were the neurotic psychopathic females.  This was not a good situation.

You see this is one of the major problems I find with writing, just how do you structure a narrative?  I spend too many years reading comic books and pulp fiction nonsense.  I hate the post structural mess, but I also hate to bore myself. 

I just have to make sense of how I got here.  How the hell did I manage to screw up my life so completely?

The last 5 years I have basically spent information gathering. That was how I spent the last good years of my life before we entered the eternal night of shutdown.  I had dreams, hopes, happiness and now, now it is all gone and only death is before us.