Rush.

Mindless moany gibberish and a manifesto for life improvement. It’s after the jump as it’s only mental overflow.

I’ve had one of those little epiphanies where I’m suddenly sick and tired of always consuming things all the time. Sick of playing one game just because another is coming out soon, sick of being in the middle of two books and having a hard drive full to the brim with TV shows and fucking films and actually planning to sit and wolf all this shit down for no reason. I take a notion for some old films and all off a sudden I’ve got ten to choose from for every decade from the 60s onwards. Yet I create nothing, consume but never create. And I’m full to the fucking brim with ideas but there’s always massive, tiny, hugely critical unimportant things standing in my way. I might think of something but all I’ve got is paper handy. Do I want to just jot down the rough idea and expand later or do it all right now? Should I be doing it in this notebook or on that piece of paper, is the pen right, shouldn’t I type it all up? It’s probably quicker, but then there’s not a physical thing is there? Things might fuck up and all my work would be gone. And it would only exist as a series of microscopic little switches on a hard drive, I can’t pick it up and hold it and read it. Paper doesn’t need batteries, it just needs light. I can take paper anywhere. I guess there’s the idea that i want there to be something tangible, to make something that has a bit of heft behind it and isn’t a mere fraction the size of a music file.

What the fuck have I done with my day today? Been lazy, signed on then sat on my arse quite literally all day, consuming things. I played Oblivion because Skyrim is due out, why? I wouldn’t be playing one of them if the release date of the other was another six months down the line. I watched telly: Penn and Teller, House, Dexter. Films: The Wild Bunch, MI3, Escape From New York, Transformers 3. I read a magazine on the toilet and a book while waiting for the dinner to cook. Fuck, I’ve even decided to multitask them. I’ve watched entire seasons of TV shows in one window on the computer while the likes of Minecraft has been running in another, while in a different window I’ll have Cracked open as well as a few forums and the usual Facebook.

Where is my computer? It’s not looking out some window with a scenic view and natural lighting, it’s in a great big fuck off cabinet that was made to be shut away and seemingly discreet. And that’s not even in a room, it’s in the fucking upstairs landing, I face a bare wall if you want to be nice, but really I’ve wasted an uncountable number of hours over the years looking at the inside of a fucking cupboard. What the fuck have I been doing? Now maths: my rough and fairly boggled mathematics puts watching a 22 episode season of a 40 minute program at a total of about 15 hours each. That’s fifteen hours for the first series of Lost, the third series of Fringe etc etc. I couldn’t tell you how many episodes of how many shows I’ve watched. Not including games and just browsing.

That’s just the routine I’ve fallen into, I’ve had that “what the fuck am I doing” feeling before, we all have, but I’ve not tried to work out the maths of it, to stop and think about what the hell it was I’m doing. Say I make a resolution to stop, and fill it with what? Writing, drawing, throwing shit at the walls and see if I can tell the future from the pattern my jobby makes on the wallpaper?

Maybe that’s what it’s going to have to take, if not cold turkey then slicing back on all the pointless things. I’m not talking about turning into some monk, devoid of all pleasure, but do I really need so much pointless shit that I’m having to organise how I’m going to be able to fit it into my day, that I’m unemployed yet still having to do two things at once just to keep up. I don’t need to rewatch Buffy, I don’t need to replay Oblivion, I don’t need to reminisce on 80s films or spend hours at a time on forums talking about games news that isn’t important. I could be making something, I should be telling myself to finish the page I’m writing, not to finish the level I playing. I’ve got it too good, I’m spoiled for choice and trying to have my cake and eat it does me no good at all. What will I do to fill this time? Write, train, fucking socialise. I have a fucking car, why the fuck am I sitting on the internet talking to five different people who all know each other when we could be doing it face to face?

Now I feel like shit for keeping my little brother in. Maybe if he went out he’d get drunk, drama would happen. But something would happen. Tonight he did exactly the same shit I’m moaning about right now. I wasted my school years, I spent a year and a half with one girl, five with another, in the middle of that was eighteen months in recovery during what many would see as the most important times. I didn’t get to all the parties, go with the girls, get drunk, get in fights, run half as much from the police as I should have. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t absolutely fantastic either, I didn’t laugh or come away with stories to remember. I spent half my time with one tiny group and the other half in front of one tiny screen. I fucked up bad, I realise that now.

So fuck doing nothing but ingesting worthless shite, I’m not wasting my free time doing useless bollocks sat in front of a screen. I don’t want to remember the plot to games and films, I want real fucking experiences. One simple thing and my whole day is now free.