On why stultification is no walk in the woods

I think it is time to recap on some recent developments. I had awoken the dreamer in me, agreed to follow his heart. I set out with high hopes, a bright outlook and a little spotted handkerchief tied on the end of a stick. Not too far along the way I was joined by some familiar traveling companions.

You know the type. At first you are glad for some (or any) company. But as minutes turn into hours, hours turn into days, days turn into weeks, you wish you had been more selective from the start. Your 'friends' seems to dictate where you head next, who you talk to, what you discuss, even the tone of the conversation. Soon it seems that your whole life has been hijacked.

The first of these interlopers was cynicism. Back in the day it made me cool. Nothing ruffles the cynic. Not a hair is displaced, nor any stride broken by unwanted sentiment. Kind words don't touch him. And hope?... only someone who is unacquainted with the facts would hold out any.

Next came sarcasm, that bastard son of cynicism. When that became my weapon of choice, so long as I drew first, ridiculed someone else, the pack was kept at bay. I wasn't always quickest and had to man up, as a boy. In our house the snipe and the sneer was the currency we traded in.

Bitterness and regret soon followed. So I grew a shell. It kept my tender heart safe from harm. It was made of cynicism and sarcasm, bitterness and regret. It kept me undisturbed but it imprisoned my empathy and compassion, my hopes and dreams, inspiration and creativity.

The point of all of this? Self stultification is not big and it most certainly is not clever. To render myself ineffectual, to appear foolish, inconsistent and ridiculous to avoid appearing foolish, inconsistent and ridiculous could seem... well... foolish, inconsistent and ridiculous.

So I have arrived again at the fork in the road where I can choose that I and my old buddies, cynicism, sarcasm, bitterness and regret go our separate ways.

The ('elusive' and 'really big') Next Step

I have been saying for as long as I can remember that I will write a book. It has been a constant (quietly droning but insistent) annoyance to me that no book has so far turned up. It has (remarkably, miraculously or even ridiculously if you prefer) not blunted my enthusiasm for insisting that such a thing is meant to happen.

Lately I have realised that this no-book (a true work of fiction insomuch as it does not exist) and I are more than casually acquainted. This really is not a complicated thing. There is a direct correlation between the absence of a bestseller and the fact of my refusal to actually write anything.

And (I am not being morbid- melodramatic more maybe) my sell by date is drawing inexorably closer. The time approaches when I (if I have a maker) should meet Him. It truly could be any time or day for any one of us. What I dread about this prospect is the thought that I have failed. To be told what I already know- you did not do what you wanted most to do.

The greatest failure is of course the failure to have even tried, which ironically could be at what I have excelled. Any friend of mine will tell you that irony is not lost on me, far from it, it is the language I understand best.

And, like all good and honest things with their ability to speak of many seemingly unrelated things "my book" is a metaphor. For everything you never did and wished it were not so. Let's put that tired old thing to bed, for as the bard himself once said,-

"We are such stuff. As dreams are made on; and our little life. Is rounded with a sleep." End of. Innit.