Happiness Log - 9/7/15

Today could have been a day of refusing to check my texts, feeling sorry for myself under the duvet and bemoaning fate. I write the worst kind of poetry when I'm down, terrible only in its self-absorbed nature. It's so easy to slip into self-pity, I was seriously scrambling against the rocks today.

Trying to take responsibility for myself, (for who better to be your life coach than you), I cringed as I decided on the 'two Ps' as my marketing strategy: perspective and productivity. So, today I read the newspapers, the budget analyses explaining that one's personal choices: to have kids, go to university, work in the public sector, would be economically punished in a completely unjustifiable manner. I read about Lesbos and the refugees who walk 40 miles, barefoot in the baking heat simply for a chance of crossing the Aegean sea. So, perspective. Whilst nobody's saying you don't have a right to feel down sometimes, surely the best thing is to channel that negative energy into positive action?

And productivity: I was a model citizen today. I helped my elders, I did their shopping, I was engaging and calm and charming. I cooked dinner. I went to the gym. I read a book. I came up with ideas for the magazine that I write for. I hid all of my resentment under a guise of competence. Distraction is better than the cure it seems.

Today could have been rubbish. At this minute I could be sat in bed in the same pyjamas I woke up in, feeling greasy and unwanted and full of self-loathing. Today actually turned out pretty well, I watched the sun set and stretched out all of my tension. Despite all of the negativity I felt today, I think I channelled it well. Whilst today could have been a lot better, it could have been a hell of a lot worse. It seems that keeping engaged and busy can cure a multitude of ills.

Post Break-Up Drive Home

The gearstick your lance

I am wounded by forced silence

Hanging between our fingers

And nestled within the static 

Of a Radio Four documentary

Unremarkable stretch

Of grey-blue blurs 

Interspersed with coughing saplings

Struggling in their plaster casts 

The miles tick downwards

My chest balloons with relief 

Sweaty fingers fumble with the dials 

Is there a station to drown out your resentment? 

Deep lidded glares, caught in the musty smell eminating from

Under my seat 

Thoughts

People always tell you to 'write what you know' and it's incredible how many great works of literature have been influenced by the author's background and experiences. I struggle to write prose and I think it's that Dorian Grey argument, sometimes you can't share things that have too much of yourself in them, sometimes art is the outlet for which one can best represent oneself.

It's then interesting to consider why somebody wouldn't want to share that, why we're not all Walt Whitmans - celebrating ourselves, our lives and our achievements, Writers in general are either egoists or painfully introspective and analytical, which makes perfect sense when you consider the complex nature of some of the thoughts and emotions that they inject into their characters. How would suspension of disbelief prove possible if those thoughts and emotions had not been experienced first-hand?

The nature of the craftsmanship of literature is something that shouldn't be overlooked, it's so easy to become immersed in a story that flows so seamlessly and appears to have been condensed in a single moment of inspiration. Honestly, there's so much painful re-drafting that goes on and nobody no matter how skilled they are, can write flawlessly first time. Hours of time, hundreds of cups of coffee and reams of paper goes in to writing a book worthy of publication. Sometimes the finished product isn't the part that deserves the most appreciation.

If me and Anais Nin were friends

I wish you'd forgotten Sunday
And cracked the glass of
The gilt picture frame
Depicting you; seven, red ribbon
Bruised knees.

Reflecting me, old, dungarees,
Shit taste.

I wish you'd cut your hair so short
That I could feel all the knobbles of your skull
And imagine how your smelled
Whilst we muddled through
Tripping over feigned cool

Clenched fingers at Communist rallies
"Statement" art: glitter glued condoms,
leopard skin and desecrated Manet prints

I don't know what kind of statement we were trying to make.

How I would like to go

It tasted like good wine
As he rolled it over his tongue
Inscrutable experience stood to attention
And dug its trenches within the lines of his face

Remembering the name of our mistakes
The candelabra and her grandfather clock

The lake glowed pink under a renaissance sky
Over lowered shoulders and shaking hands
With unstoppable, indomitable courage
It was coming

Another 3am Haiku (Western style)

Barren souls sauntered alongside
The endless desert moon
I sighed to see them go

etched upon your face

she was a windy wednesday morning with the

rain dripping from dusted eyelashes, sighing at

the creak of trains pulling away in all

their melancholy. 

why aren't they allowed to stay anywhere for long

dawn broke and there was no reason

to stop, a solitary figure stretched into her horizons, 

maybe paradise exists amongst

the illuminated crisp packets and cigarette buts

holy in their second-rate glory

An open letter to my friend Instagram

I feel I'm one of many teenagers who desperately need to prioritize, I feel as though people within my age group find this particularly hard because we're at that stage where it feels we're suddenly being pushed out of the nest and dog tagged with things called "responsibilities". 

It's glaringly obvious to me that social media needs to be forced down my list of priorities, I get a shaky, seasick kinda feeling when I think about the hours of my life I've wasted watching cats doing stupid stuff and reading "10 things every Londoner understands" and the like, despite the fact that I do not nor have ever lived in London. 

The most ridiculous form of social media that I admit to using - in my opinion - is definitely Instagram. Don't get me wrong, conceptually it's pretty flawless, a website intended for sharing pictures you have taken with you iPhone, who doesn't want to marvel at the fact that a picture as beautiful as that can be captured without photoshop or fancy lenses on DSLR cameras? It's the way in which this concept has been altered that grinds my gears, it has become a form of social media when I don't think that was ever the intention, the intention being - in my eyes - a mobile form of things like Flickr, making professional standard photography and photo sharing accessible to those who don't have all the gimmicks. 

Instagram can be pretty detrimental in my eyes, like all social media, it has become a form of one upmanship: who can "out-selfie" their friends? Whose weekend looked the most exciting behind that smokescreen of filters and clever angles? It's become a competition, as if the number of likes you get determines your worth as a human being. Like you aren't worth so much more than that, like your charm, passion and inner-strength don't mean more than a bunch of numbers on a picture of your cat. Like the way the sunlight hits your face on a morning and the chime of your laughter isn't far more beautiful than any "no make-up selfie". 

Of course, I'm not going to pretend I don't use it, social media is renowned for being addictive and enticing. Not to mention the fact that the prevailing paradox of our society (this term + that context = me cringing) is that not to conform is also to conform. But the reshuffle within my ministerial cabinet of priorities has proved time and again that I don't NEED Instagram, why do I need to seek validation from strangers through a screen? Why do I need validation at all?

Instagram, it's been great, but it's time we cooled things off. I'm narcissistic and psychopathic enough without you.