On Moping

I don’t know where the unhappiness comes from, but it’s a constant. Sometimes it gets nasty.

But then I have re-read parts of this blog and realised that I actually sound successful. Here I talk about working for a magazine, and how I write humour and reviews and have a column in another magazine... I’ve had my own pages of humour in other glossies and just the other day another mag emailed to confirm they have accepted my feature and to please invoice them for two grand. I talk constantly about invitations to opening nights and free tickets to the theatre and meeting publicists and how thrilled they are with my reviews. There is a band (Loonaloop) playing to big festivals in Europe at the moment who thanked me in their new album’s cover notes (something the teenage boy in me thinks is THE coolest thing), and if you look at the photos on their website you’ll see a fluffy cat tail that lead singer Shiney Le Fai wears which I gave to her (she didn’t thank me for the tail, but because I wrote good things about them). The tail comes from the very cool shop that I co-own and am very proud of. Right now if I look just to the right of my computer there is an award for 1st prize in a national short story competition, and I have had several stories published in magazines both highbrow and mainstream.

Okay, so the magazine I work four days a week for pays utterly crap money and I owe my credit card more than double the payment I’ll get for the feature. I loathe being in an office and financially I live from week to week and free tickets don’t pay the rent. I’m not at all confident that I can step up into a better paying writing job because I have no qualifications. The shop (the loan for which was gambling on a large scale) is a constant struggle and may never make a profit, and in reality it’s been about three years since my last fiction story was published (not including the three I gave to e-zines lately). So I’m not Successful, but in ways I guess yeah, successful. I have few but good friends who jump at the opportunity to come around for silly stories and good food and others I don’t see often enough but am happy that they are part of my life, and all the things mentioned above, all these are small, good things. I’m also in a relationship that only seems go pear shaped when I fuck things up, I don’t live in new Orleans or Pakistan or Afghanistan. I live in a pretty damn good part of the world where the sun is shining and the sky is blue. My sometimes morose personality frequently veers into the land of silly and I have the luxury of laughter, and I can now add to my life’s achievements car tyre-changing and mannequin-dressing... so what is my fucking problem?

Man, people like me really shit me.