"Even if I got rid of all my problems, I'd just go out and get new ones..."

Rambling, wandering, wimledon common are we
9:36 p.m. on 2004-02-27

I'm feeling.... restless.

Itchy feet. The travel bug. Um... okay, so I'm rapidly running out of crappy little phrases to sum up how I feel and to be honest, the only that really works is 'restless.' And maybe a little melancholic to boot.

Melancholic? Melancholy? What IS the adverb of melancholy?

Eats, shoots and leaves aside... I feel restless. It's been five months since I returned from South America and I'm ready to take off again. I recieve emails from people who were on my trip and long to be back out there, anywhere, snorkelling, trekking through jungles, going to odd karaoke bars, swimming with dolphins...

Okay, not the dolphin bit. To be honest, I've never understood the thing about dolphins. If they were so damn intelligent they wouldn't keep swimming into tuna nets. And I really don't want to go swimming with one, you know what I mean?

Sorry, rambling. Where was I? Oh yes - looking up every time I hear the roar of a plane's engine, watching a plane descend and wondering where it has just returned from, or watching it rise and guessing its destination. Far flung, exotic places, travellers abandoning this country and its crappy weather with nothing but a cloud trail behind them.

Even if it's just for a few weeks, even if I have to returned to this town, this country, this life... just for a couple of weeks, to be rid of it all.

If you've never done it, then you don't know. But if you have, that feeling of freedom, especially when you're not tied down by the expectations of others or even the expectations of yourself... its amazing.

These feelings have peaked this week. Chris, of course, is back in Hong Kong - hardly amazing to him, since it's his home, but I'm still jealous. Pet has just recieved his Visa and at the end of March will be jetting off to work in Canada. Laura and Jonathon are off to Australia for 6 months.

Of course, I'm being selfish. Most of my other friends are still back in this country, limited by the same things as I am, and most of them haven't had the same opportunity I did when I went off to SA. And I'm grateful, I am, but...

I feel... stuck in a rut. I'm lucky, of course - I have a loving family, a house over my head, enough money to buy that computer and a holiday, and a job which, even if I don't exactly enjoy, does have me spending the day with some lovely people.

But then there's the future. This big, wide, gaping expanse of nothingness opening up before me. What do I do? Where do I see myself in a year? Still at this job? I hope not. At a different clerical job, but earning more money, maybe for the civil service? Sure, the extra salary might enable me to move out, but it isn't what I want to do with my life. And then what? Moving from one temporary job to another, just for a pay rise?

I'm terrified that in 50 years time I'll come to my retirement and I won't have done what I wanted to do with my life. I'll have had all these dreams and they'll have gone to hell, swallowed up by a regular salary and the need to feel safe and secure.

Even a brief glimpse of my own immortality is enough to scare me senseless - so much so that I'll shake myself mentally, reprimand myself for thinking such daft thoughts. The human brain isn't designed to grasp its own limitations, and certainly not the short span of its life. Ignorance is, in some cases, bliss.

And yet, am I scared enough? A recent episode of Six Feet Under featured an art teacher asking his students why they chose to take his course. One answer was "Because I'd die if I couldn't paint."

Is that how I feel about writing? I guess it is. I think about it all the time, write every week, if not every day.

But if that is how I feel, why don't I do something about it? Why don't I spend every waking moment scribbling, why do I dampen every fresh idea with the reminder that, well, I can't stay up all night typing because I need my sleep. Where's that urge that drives other dreamers?

Meh. This is all too deep and, as if to prove my point, Nip/Tuck is on in ten minutes and I don't intend to miss it.

I will write tomorrow. And the next day. And the day after that. At least, that's what I tell myself. That's what I've been telling myself for years.

I know I could be good. I know it. I just don't know if I have what it takes.

But lord help me, I don't want to be that gray haired pensioner, looking back on memories of office job after office job, flicking through photo albums of fleetingly short holidays and wishing I'd lived my life differently. Because I can't. There are no second chances.

I only get one life, one chance to be the person I want to be, and I'll be damned if I'm going to let normalacy come between me and that goal.

Listening to: "Sao Paulo Rain" - Tom McRae

Quote: "A says he's glad to be here,
B's chasing storms in the lightning state,
Where everyday above ground is a good day,
And life is great"

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