Stumbling towards the end of the year.
I walked to Portslade this morning, doubled back past the cemetery on the Old Shoreham Road. Used to sit in here over the unemployment summer of 2010, thinking about Em who I had just started seeing. I can't believe that was nearly four years ago now (well, three and a half as we speak). Life was different - better - then, though I have nothing to complain about now. Things just seemed full of more possibility. I didn't feel as old then (38) as I do now at 41.
42 next year!
Life passes us by in a blink. That old cliche. Never thought I'd be (still) struggling to work in a call centre at this age, with very little to show for my life apart from a lot of drawings. As I said - nothing to complain about, plenty to be happy about, but... I suppose there's some kind of perceptual shift that happens what happens now happens forever. Not true of course, but I have the fear that this is it. Working in low paid, unfulfilling jobs for the next 25 years, afraid to break out and do something for no good reason, then a state pension and a cold and lonely old age. Bedsit death, a sacrifice to the four bar gods of wall heater and electricity meter...
Oh lets forget this maudlin-ness, I'm not feeling very melancholy at all actually, I'm quite cheery this morning. Time to head out to meet a friend for coffee.
Bedsit deaths can wait for at least another 40 years.
Touch wood of course.
