You never thought you’d be alone this far down the line
And I know what’s been on your mind
You’re afraid it’s all been wasted time

It’s part of the haunting Don Henley vocal from Wasted Time, one of the best songs the Eagles ever recorded. It’s been circling my head for a little while, as these things invariably do.

So I turned forty today. Forty. Life begins now, doesn’t it? People are right – it doesn’t hurt, at least, not physically, but there are emotional pains that go along with it that I can’t run away from. A decade ago I was a much happier person. I was probably a better person as well. Looking back, my thirtieth birthday was probably the best one I have ever had, or am likely to have. This is not to say that getting older means getting worse, because a decade before that – when I turned twenty – I wasn’t in a particularly good space either. So perhaps it alternates, and hitting fifty will be pleasant.

Or perhaps all this is arbitrary.

It’s been twelve years since my father died, an anniversary that I had (embarrassingly) forgotten until a conversation with my grandma brought it to mind.

Full disclosure: i grew to dislike my father. It’s fair to say that for a number of years i genuinely despised him, although that did mellow somewhat towards the end of his life. That comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me well, and even my family (some of whom try to pretend I’m exaggerating) know it’s the truth.

It’s the first time the date has crept up on me and caught me off guard, and i wonder if that is a sign that I’ve emotionally dealt with it, and all the subsequent fallout. I don’t know. I don’t know if you ever do, really.

So why am i posting this unfinished thought? I don’t know that either, but sometimes the world only makes sense when it’s raw and transient. Give yourself too much time to edit, and you sanitise the message… whatever that may be.

It’s been far too long since I have added to this list…

Items 1 – 5

Items 6 – 10

Items 11 – 15

Items 16 – 20

Items 21 – 25

Items 26 – 30

Items 31 – 35

…so here are a few more things I want to get off my chest.

• When you recognise a person in the street heading towards you and as they pass they say how are you doing? … but keep walking as they do. So, do you want me to answer the question, or was it just rhetorical? I assume by your continued movement away from me that you actually don’t care to hang around for my answer. How about next time you just say nothing at all and be done with it?
• People who – within hours of meeting me – ask what football team I support. Not, whether or not I support a football team. Because I’m a guy there’s an instant assumption that I must like the sport. The moment I declare that actually, I don’t like football, that awkward silence means I’m suddenly not worthy of their conversation, as if the only thing these people can talk about is how good/bad/exciting/boring/tense/rigged that game was on Saturday.
• Business speak like going forward and let’s run it up the flagpole. It’s excruciatingly passe, but it’s a stereotype for a reason. Working in an office you hear that kind of thing every hour of every day. I refuse to use these terms, either in verbal or in written communication, unless I’m being facetious. That’s… thinking outside the box.
• The idea that I’m not allowed to dislike a black man for fear of recrimination. Political correctness is insanity these days. If I dislike you, the fact that you have black skin is incidental. You would be an asshole whatever colour you were. And don’t worry, I can assure you, I dislike plenty of white folk too.
• People who go to a Chinese restaurant and order the Chicken Maryland with chips while everyone else is chowing down on the shredded chilli beef and the crispy duck. Are you kidding me? Why is that stuff even on the menu? You don’t go to McDonald’s and ask for crispy won tons, so why does society require that our delicate European palate is catered for in our ethnic restaurants? Do yourself a favour and try the special fried rice.

My 1200 word short story, The Girl in the Glass Bottle, which appeared in the online publication, SQ Mag back in March 2014 has made it into their annual paperback anthology for that year. It was a pleasant surprise to receive my contributor’s copy in the mail a couple of days ago, and it’s a timely kick in the pants as well. It’s one of my favourite pieces of the last few years so I’m happy to see it given the print treatment.

So if speculative fiction is your bag, and you want to check it out, you can do so here.

I saw Creed on the weekend, which, for all intents and purposes, is the seventh Rocky film in everything but name. However, here, Sylvester Stallone cleverly relegates his pugilistic underdog to a secondary role in favour of the titular character, Adonis Creed.

I was apprehensive at first, but I needn’t have been – Michael B. Jordan is perfect in the role of Adonis, son of the flamboyant and charismatic Apollo Creed. Jordan has the physicality and the mannerisms (without becoming parody), and bears more than a passing resemblance to Carl Weathers, who played Apollo in the first four Rocky films. Jordan is a fantastic casting choice.

Although there is nothing earth shattering about the development of the plot, and it does colour outside of the lines a little with the timeline and events of the Rocky universe (which only a well-versed fan would know), it is a very solid entry in the series, and a great platform for future films.

Stallone is often written off – wrongly and unfortunately – as a has-been action hero who simply does not have the acting chops for dramatic roles, but for this turn he has deservedly bagged himself an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Love or hate the series, Stallone lives and breathes the character of Balboa, and it’s hard to deny that he completely embodies that part in a way that few of his peers could lay claim in their own ouevre.

I look forward to what the future holds for the Rocky/Creed franchise.

I just heard that Glenn Frey died earlier today, from complications after intestinal surgery. He was taken too soon at 67 years old.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the name, he was – along with Don Henley – one of the founding members of my favourite band, The Eagles. I saw them twice in concert; in 2001 and again in 2014, and they were fantastic on both occasions.

Another icon, gone.

It’s your world now
My race is run
I’m moving on
Like the setting sun
No sad goodbyes
No tears allowed
You’ll be alright
It’s your world now

— It’s Your World Now, from the 2007 Eagles album Long Road Out of Eden

Rest peacefully, Glenn. Take it easy.

I hope you all had a great festive period, filled up on turkey sandwiches, ate a few too many chocolates, etc, etc… and now that we (most of us) are back to the grindstone, it’s time to remind ourselves of the minutiae of Real Life©.

In the first three days of the year I’ve read the first 50 pages of The City by Dean Koontz and the first 130 pages of Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann. Now, once you stop laughing and have put aside the idea that you think it’s a book for girls (I’m trying to convince myself it really isn’t), I can tell you that total page count is about three times the amount of reading I did in the entirety of 2015! Crazy. I’m enjoying both and will hopefully be onto new stuff soon.

Now, the writing…

So as I stumble my way out of 2015, my only real hope for next year is that it is better than this one, and my only resolution is that I make it better. Somewhere along the way, in the last twelve months, I lost the essence of who I was – who I am. I stopped writing in March. I didn’t think I had stopped; I thought I was taking a break, but nine months later and I have yet to write much of any great value since.

Of course, December 31st is an arbitrary passing of the baton from one year to the next, but it’s as good a point as any to make some changes.

…so it begins tomorrow.

…that’s how long I’ve been on this planet.

I’ll be honest, it was not one of my better twenty-four hour periods. It’s probably the end of an era, or – perhaps more frighteningly – the beginning of a new one. I guess that doesn’t make any real sense, because every day starts anew, and with it comes another round of expectations and another batch of fresh challenges.

Maybe the full stop I imagine to be there today is completely arbitrary.

Life goes on. Tomorrow is another day

Right?

Yeah, I know… it’s been a while.

The last few years, on a personal level, have not been great. 2015 began much as 2014 ended – badly – and now that we’re in the tenth month of the year, the landscape has not changed much at all.

Spring held promise, and for a while I genuinely believed I was beginning to look over my shoulder, see the bigger picture, come out the other side, etc. To be perfectly honest, for a few months the world did look a little brighter, but you know, sometimes your eyes can deceive you.

I used to deal with these things through my words and my writing, but I seem to have run out of juice in that department lately. For want of a more appropriate analogy, the cure has, well… kind of become the cancer. To put that in some kind of context, this post is the most I have written in months. Months. For me that is both sad and embarrassing, and I hope to get that part of my life back on track very soon.

So yeah, watch this space…