Sunday 2 September 2012

Playing therapist

i don't write anymore. it's odd.

it's not that i can't. i spit out a fairly decent truckload of tripe everyday at work, making syfy classics like 'seeds of destruction' and 'snowmageddon' sound like cinematic masterpieces (and don't even get me started on the latter; most of the boys this year have mentioned that i expanded on the entire plot the very first time i met them - drunk obviously, but still filled with gusto).

it's not that i don't have the stories in my head. my brother - who starts a degree in film direction soon and is the nervous nellie to my calamity jane - sent me a paranoid text half an hour ago announcing that it was now the end of his life because he couldn't think of anything for his short film script ideas. i typed up a couple of things one handed (one fingered, rather) and sent them back to a somewhat pacified sibling while not letting jared leto's delicious pelvis out of my sight (i'm on a 30 seconds to mars youtube loop).

so what happened?

nothing's really changed drastically. i still live in my tiny box of a flat with piles and piles of books and a temperamental african violet named fred. i still drink too much, talk too much and swing from ecstatically happy to hide-under-the-duvet gloomy far too quickly. i still change the colour or length of my hair every few weeks. i'm still non-monogamous and hang out with the boys far too much.

actually, scratch that. something's happening to them.

i should probably state, for posterity, that most of my friends are boys. and a fair few of these boys have, at one time or the other, lent me t-shirts to wear to work the next morning - to put it delicately. we were friends before, we stayed friends after. shrug. anyway, over the past year, four of them have ended up being in relationships after me. all four of these idiots had been very militantly single (read: promiscuous, a quality it appears as though i make a beeline for) before that. we'd swap stories of recent conquests, idiots who 'cared', and there was never any talk of feelings. but inexplicably, a few months in, they'd suddenly go funny and end up sheepishly announcing that they now had a girlfriend - usually one of the women they'd whined about (one of them even told me it was my fault; apparently he figured it wouldn't work with us, so he wanted it to work with someone). on a general basis, most of them have stayed the same, but the fourth one turned today (yes, i've been watching far too much walking dead) and it suddenly got me thinking.

i don't want to go into why this is happening (let's save that for when i have more vodka in the flat), but it's my general frame of mind that has me worried. i think being either deliriously content or incredibly unhappy makes you a better writer (well, i'm of the opinion that the latter is the preferable option). but being apathetic and having nothing you really care about - that makes it hard. because when you don't care, you can't bring yourself to put anything across. you can't tell stories. you can't invent lives. you can't create. 

i need to find something i care about, and invest myself in it. or lose it.

and i'm guessing fred the potted plant doesn't really count.