Progress Report #1

So it turns out change doesn't happen overnight. Or even, it would seem, over years.
I didn't get everything on my list from yesterday quite done. For some reason I was surprised when I went to my parent's house and they wanted me to interact with them for longer than an hour. This is what you get for trying to multi-task. Lesson: Delineate your life. Study in the library. Ingratiate in the home. Socialise in the park.
I did a good job of asking people about their lives though. Which is just as well, because everyone else has so many more interesting things happen to them than me. Maybe Project Fix Bec will fix that, but for the time being I'm very happy to let everyone else do some talking.
Today I got up and went to work, which was pleasant enough, as always. I even managed to make the required amount of money for the day, which, though capitalistic, always gives me a bit of a thrill. It's nice to have a daily acheivement, don't you think?
Then I came home, set my timer for forty-five minutes and set about clearing out/up my bedroom, which has been in various states of disaster for the last few months. I got rid of the enormous old iMac which has been doing naught but sit on my desk and take up unseemly amounts of space for the last few weeks. (Before that it was sitting on my desk and taking up unseemly amounts of space but with functioning iTunes. With that one redeeming feature inexplicably kaputed, I decided it was time to shelve it.) It's currently sitting at the bottom of my wardrobe, which is not at all where it belongs but the sense of clarity and light it has brought to my bedroom is spectacular. I cleared all the nonsensical things of my desk, moved boxes of clothes to the side of the bed I don't sleep on (sorry, my love), put my little laptop down and started work.
But not before getting distracted, while filing away some old scripts, by the little notebook I kept during my time in London and Europe in 2007. The great Gap Year Experience! The Living Of Life to The Full! The Acheivement of Goals! The Embracing of The Moment!
Not really. I believe I had chosen to forget how unfulfilled and unfulfilling parts of that year was/were. There, as it would seem there are everywhere in my life, were lists and lists and things I wanted to do and go to and see and experience, only half of which I ever did. Money was a big constraint but so was fear. Just general fear. Fear of the unknown, of something going wrong, of being lonely - which I was, really, so much of the time. I wonder now whether I was in any way ready to move away from my home, my friends, my entire life, for an indefinite period of time so soon after emerging into the world after the bubble of high school. It only takes a quick flick over this notebook - not even a proper journal, where I wrote all my Real Thoughts - to reveal that I was desperately nostalgic a lot of the time.
This fills me with deep regret for several reasons. Firstly, it saddens me that I did not take full advantage of the quite extraordinary situation I found myself in: living in London (albeit the suburbs thereof), rent free, in self contained accomodation (save for sharing a bathroom with several people of dubious hygeine habits), with regular, reasonably enjoyable employment that paid well, the company of my family when I wanted it and the occasional visit from a friend from home. I didn't like my flatmates and everyone I worked with was either fifteen years younger or older than me, and I was desperartely trying to save money for the Great European Summer (which was, on the whole, a much happier experience) - all this is true, but I was not even working at bettering myself intellectually or culturally. I don't think I finished a single book in London, though I could possibly pinpoint it as the begining of my now-renowned habit of starting books and then abandoning them, for no good reason, halfway through. I saw two films that I can remember and one was one I'd seen before. (Casablanca - it never gets old.) I did develop a fondness for Hollyoaks, a terrifically awful British soap opera, as well as excessive cups of tea, shortbread and a habit of wearing oversized clothes (as was the fashion for British youth that winter, thank you). But I look back and I see missed opportunities and most embarassingly, I forsee that when I next return to London, as I hope to do in the not-too-distant future, I will have so much there that I haven't done - and I will not have anyone to look up.
Secondly, it upsets me that all the while I was ignoring this spectacular city on my doorstep, I was pining for a world back home that I subsequently did a very good job of ignoring upon my return. As a result of both circumstance and preference, I no longer see very much of the group of people from high school I missed so sincerely as I sat in my flat in SE21. Perhaps I overestimated them in my mind, perhaps I changed more than I realised in my time away - but whatever it is or was, coming home certainly felt anti-climactic.
Possibly consequently, one of my New Year's Resolutions (I told you I liked resolutions) in 2008 was Be Involved. I couldn't stand to go back to the feeling of watching the world pass me by as I knew it did in London. It's one of the reasons I threw myself so unashamedly (or at least that's how it felt) into campus life at the begining of that year. I wanted - needed - to know people, to have things to go to and people to go to them with, to see things and discuss them with others. I think I was quite successful in that. Pat on the back me.
But perhaps I need to widen my scope a little. I still have trouble finishing books. (Again, I'm sorry, my love.) I really do not know why that is but I feel I have become more and more a victim of the MTV generation, as we are known, as time goes by. Strange but reparable so we shall not dwell. I still don't see very many films, problematic for all sorts of reasons. I rarely read the newspaper and when I do I find myself skipping straight to the Arts & Entertainment section, which is so bloody paltry in the SMH as to be nonexistant. I rarely do my readings for university, but I've been doing some tonight, and good God, do you know - they're quite interesting! I know! I would never have guessed. But it's all leaving me with the most horrid sensation of intellectual inferiority because all the clever writers keep referring to other clever writers that I know I'm meant to have read and goodness knows I've probably even started to...it's all almost enough to make you give up altogether.
Unfortunately that has been my course of action of late. When the going gets tough, the tough suddenly aren't that tough any more and it takes less and less to un-tough me.
No more! Into the fire I say! Not really sure what Adorno and Horkeiner had to say? I'm going to read them. I'm going to go and see a movie. I want to see Whatever It Takes because I like Woody Allen and I like Larry David and because secretly I dream of being an insouciant, plucky young thing in an Allen film. Ironically enough, the book I am currently reading is called How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, which I feel may only encourage my habit. If I can finish it, I'll tell you what I think.
Also, I wrote one out of two Performance Studies Things and I'm sure if I really wanted to I could write the other one now over another cup of tea and a sea of determination. What's that? You think I should?
Oh well. Alright then.