Edit: Hey there. I’m now some days after the initial flurry that made this entry. Facing a similar alcohol-related issue in a much stiller place. It isn’t easy for me to do what I want. I want to write, I want to talk, I want to be a part of reality, whatever that is: the ever-changing maelstrom of real beauty and ugliness that makes its own kind of disturbing, drowned perfection whenever observed. Perhaps. Perhaps it’s nicer than that. And what I started with the other day was just thinking on these usual themes and thinking…

I just need to work this out. Problem is, I never do. Problem is, the way of working it out is to keep going at it indefinitely in the hope that enough small things change in order to make a big thing change.

So, diary or journal writing. Counting the days. Writing for the sake of making a statement at that moment in time, every time you can muster the power of your fingers, thumbs, hands, wrists, forearms… what other parts of the body are involved in writing? Your back?

I have a longstanding issue – I don’t feel like I have anything worth saying, but I also feel like I have to say it.

That’s feelings. The bubbling underworld, under your skin, inside your cells.

Rationally, I understand that I do occasionally come across interesting information that would be worth communicating. Rationally, I know the chances are that someone on the internet, someone in the whole wide world, will find me interesting regardless of whether I can see myself as such. Rationally, I know there must be at least some small value to my writing, which makes me feel like I should write. But I don’t feel that there’s value to my writing. Not most of the time.

I mean, what about work? You know. Clearly this isn’t paying my bills. So how and why am I doing it? If I’m not getting paid for writing, surely it’s a worthless waste of time? Isn’t that what our society says? Doesn’t it say I’m living in the lap of luxury, being able to waste my time and other resources like this? Shouldn’t I think how fortunate I am, shouldn’t I be ashamed?!

I’m brewing a little something on that. An article, a piece. I have many thoughts. Thoughts save me from the feelings, you see. And my life’s mission so far has been to get the thoughts and the feelings to make friends.

It’s complicated, at least in as much as my feelings are contradictory, sometimes my reasoning too. The flow of life means that you’ll occasionally bash against an obstacle and have to make your way through. The flow of life means, sometimes, that you’ll be struggling against your own psychology until the day you die. But it’s not always a struggle.

Put it this way, the flow of a river progresses smoothly until it doesn’t. The flow of a river is only stopped until it isn’t. Challenges are entirely natural, as is a lack of challenge. This only becomes strange when it’s your life, rather than a river you’re observing.

Settle down, Merlin. Have some focus here.

Okay, so. Humans are social creatures. I am a human. I think we malfunction a little if we can’t communicate enough, if we can’t both listen and be listened to. I’m an introvert, I have had low self-esteem for a long time. Being listened to is therefore something of a challenge for me. I won’t talk, I won’t feel like I need to. I won’t feel like it’s appropriate. But there is some part of my human self that needs it.

I have friends, of all kinds. I’m not currently sharing out the time between them as much as I’d like, but they’re still friends. I’m not sure how common this is, but I try to have lots of different friendships with all kinds of different people, not only (but partly) because I then have enough people to listen to all the different parts of myself. If I’m just following that objective, for the sake of this trail of thought, I need to be sharing time among them all in order to remain healthy. And failing that…

Well, failing that, diary entries begin to take on a slightly different character.

I guess, what I’m wrestling with here, is that I don’t want to just churn out a weird rant each day because that’s all I’m ready to string together at the time. I want to, I dunno, observe something interesting, useful, entertaining. But I’m dogged by this wild and severe anxiety. And half the time, to observe something good, you just need to chill the fuck out and be there for it. Minimal imposition, minimal objective. Just presence. Like a meditation of sorts.

Hard to meditate when you’re panicking. Not impossible, but hard.

I’m writing right now, mainly because of panic. A whole range of panics. And rather than untangling them, it feels better to write this. It’s like I’m packing them into an airlock and when the writing’s done, I can press that big red button on the side there and they’ll all be jettisoned out into space. Whether they might then endanger the structural integrity of the ship is not something we’re going to be thinking about today.

I’m on a train. The sky is blue. Everything should be hunky-dory. I need to piss. I’m drinking and worrying about drinking, but only drinking to make me worry less. It’s a tale as old as time. Or at least as old as rail travel.

I’m not sure I’m going to find a natural conclusion to this. But, that’s why I created “counting the days”. To try and remove the requirement, in my mind, for me to write with a certain structure in mind. I’m just writing, in this space, for the sake of passing the time. And maybe to jettison an errant emotion or two. Maybe to dislodge a log that’s stuck into the riverbed. Maybe to make me think less about pissing, because if I go to piss I’m probably going to lose my seat.

Piss? Do Brits like myself have a good, rude word for piss? We have wee, tinkle, slash. Hmm, I’m going to need to think about this. Do some research.

I saw a man piss on the bus a few weeks ago. Not piss himself. He’d drunk a bottle of vodka, most of it before he got on the bus. It was all catching up to him as the hour long journey progressed. Maybe half way through, or two thirds, it crashed into him with an unnatural vigour. He was sitting quietly, got his cock out, and pissed onto the floor of the bus. A big old puddle of piss. Dribbling all around the floor as the bus moved. He put his dick away, sat there like nothing had happened. He was chatting to and harassing the passengers within minutes, almost as if his shoes and trouser legs weren’t coated in his own urine.

It’s because of things like that that I have a strange affection for my own self-loathing, or at least my deep suspicion of pride. You can get drunk on pride, as much as you can get drunk on vodka. It’s all about believing that you can get away with something that you shouldn’t be able to get away with. And hey, there are times when that’s good, that’s useful. But there are also many times where it is not useful, is harmful.

Life is about balance, more or less. No one path will take you where you want to go. Some of one path, some of the other, and then between them you work out the new way. The holy triangle. Pfft, we should never think in terms of solids. The world doesn’t behave like solids.

The world’s a bit more like piss.