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short stories

~ Seriously, What’s the Point? ~

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~ Seriously, What’s the Point? ~

“Seriously, what’s the point?”

“The point to what?” I asked.

“Life, of course.” She rolled her eyes. “All I’m doing is working, eating and sleeping – just struggling to get by and survive. It all seems so meaningless. When am I actually going to live?” I paused for a second, trying to think of a helpful response.

“Maybe you need a change of environment,” I suggested. “Or perhaps to go on an adventure?”

“Adventures cost money,” she said. “And what little I have I need to keep a roof over my head.”

“There are ways to do it,” I told her. “I’ve never had a lot of money, or a good-paying job, but I’ve found ways to get out and see a bit of the world.”

“That’s because you do those medical trials,” she snapped. “I don’t want to do that. And besides, I’m getting too old to travel now. All my friends are starting to buy houses and start families. I’ll fall behind if I go bum around in a foreign country now. I’m almost thirty, you know?”

“So?” I snapped back. “You need to stop caring what people think. You say you want to really live so open your mind and explore something new. Who’s to say a little adventure won’t give you a new perspective on life? There is more to life than just ticking boxes and trying to fit in with the crowd.”

“Is there? You went out and travelled the world, but yet here you are back home seeming unhappy with your situation once again. Face it: the best thing one can do is just find someone you can tolerate and settle down and maybe go on a nice holiday every now and again while trying to not go insane. Those who do anything else usually end up homeless or something.” This time it was me rolling the eyes.

“You are looking at those people and thinking they have ‘arrived’ or something because they have the classic components of a ‘normal life’. In reality, many of them feel just as lost and confused as you, if not more so because they are trapped by contracts and commitments. Maybe they are looking at you and wishing they had the freedom and lack of responsibilities you have? The grass is always greener on the other side. Don’t be fooled. Create your own reality. Write your own story.” She shook her head with a look of annoyance. I could see she was reaching the end of her tether.

“You know what, you give all this advice but look at you: you’re almost thirty and you have never had a proper job, you live in a flatshare with people you don’t like, and you don’t even know how to drive. I don’t think I’ll be taking advice off you, thank you very much.” An awkward silence fell over us for a few seconds before she looked away. I opened my mouth to say something but decided against it. The conversation was beyond saving and I walked off to leave her alone with her thoughts. 

I should have just brushed her frustrated comments aside, but her words stayed with me for the rest of the day. I thought I had some wisdom about life, but maybe she was right and I really was just a no-hoper that no one should have taken advice from. I guess I was a bit of a loser by society’s standards. I was quickly approaching the age of thirty and had never had a ‘proper job’ (whatever the hell that meant), a girlfriend, a car, my own place or even an Instagram profile with a load of pictures of myself on a beach in Dubai. I was now at the stage where I was clearly ageing too. I looked in the mirror and saw the hairs on my head begin to grey, as well as the first wrinkles start to make their mark across my forehead. Apparently I was now an official adult, fully grown, but with absolutely none of the things that were expected of me at this age. I guess I had at least seen a bit of the world and climbed a few mountains, and done things many only dreamt they could do, but how much further could I really take it? Maybe my current method of living was not one that was sustainable past your twenties, and that I was just going to end up homeless like my friend suggested. The thought of it all made me also think: seriously, what’s the point?

The point to our lives? The point to our paths? The point to our struggles and trials and battles? It just seemed that it was an endless fight. No matter how far you had come or what position you were in – whether you were poor or rich, famous or obscure; whether you were in a relationship or single; whether you were young or old or good-looking or bad-looking – the one thing that stayed the same no matter what was that you were perpetually dissatisfied and always looking for more. True contentment and fulfilment was something you only read about, and the few who said they had it were usually lying, secretly trying to fulfil inner voids with whatever vice they could find. All in all, life just seemed an absurd joke in which no one really ever got lasting happiness or inner peace, and that people were constantly searching for it like my friend. Like she had alluded to, so much of it was a struggle to get by – when were the times when we actually arrived? When we actually lived?

I guess the futility of it all is what led men and women to get ‘fucked up’ – as many tended to call it. The bottles, the joints, the pills, the powders – whatever recreational substance you chose on the quest to alleviate the pain of being human. That was what I did that very night as her words continued to grow in my mind. I poured myself a large glass of red wine and prepared to sink once again into a bubble of being comfortably numb. This was it: the universal vice. No matter what culture or creed you were from – no matter what age in history – one thing that stayed the same was that people always looked to get out of their ordinary states of mind. It was the great escape; tricking your brain into thinking that something exciting was happening because the reality of your normal life was too much to bear at times. All across the world, weekend warriors could be found finishing work on a Friday evening, then heading straight to a bar to pour that poison into their blood so they could momentarily escape the dreary drudgery of human existence in a hazy blur of liquor, neon lights, and late-night takeaways. Then there were the pill-poppers who lived for the raves; working and waiting for that next time they could use up all the happiness chemicals in their brain in one swift swoop. Ultimately, then came the comedown which brought them sharply back to the gnawing aches and pains of reality which was always waiting for you.

That reality ceaselessly consumed each and every one of us. The girl I had the conversation with continued, I knew one day she would have it a bit easier, perhaps even have the house, the partner, the steady career and a few offspring running around on a rug in the living room. But I also knew she would still be standing beside the curtains and looking out at the world, dreaming again of something more – something that would finally allow her to feel like she had arrived. She resented her situation now, but she would also still find new things to resent her future situation. Even for me, I was now at a stage I always hoped I would be – having seen all the places I wanted to travel, wrote a couple of books and had a bit more confidence about who I was – yet I was getting easily derailed by a simple conversation with a friend; spiralling down into a state of unhappiness and alcoholism and feeling like I had gotten nowhere over all the years. I guess this is it: the reality that human-beings were never meant to be happy or content or satisfied. Our brains have gotten too big. We contemplate and think too much for our own good. We now look at the animal kingdom in jealousy that they live so simply in the moment without our trivial pains and worries and concerns and conundrums. What is left to do but get drunk and try to find a point to your absurd and trivial life. Even if it’s just supporting a football team, or teaching yoga, or searching for love, or writing a book. What’s the point to it all? I’m not really sure either, but if you have any original ideas, do let me know. We’re all secretly grasping at straws here.

      

thoughts

~ A Scarred Beauty ~

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~ A Scarred Beauty ~

“The journey of your life has been a testing one and as the years keep falling by, your heart is filled with a little more pain, that spirit doesn’t quite soar like it used to, the strength sometimes a little hard to find. You have fought hard all your life in a world that didn’t understand you; in a world that never had the guts to embrace your essence. Your path has led you through many places and now you look back you have left pieces of yourself on the way. On the shorelines where you dreamed of sailing home; on those mountain paths where you searched inside yourself; in those dark rooms where you tried to summon the strength to face another day. And you kept moving because it was the only thing you knew how to do; you kept moving because there was something that called you to a place you might have been able to call home. All these fights now weigh heavy on your soul, but may you keep your strength until the end of your road. From the greatest rains blossom the brightest flowers. And one day this world will stand in awe and marvel at the beauty of you.”

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thoughts

~ A Writer’s Path ~

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~ A Writer’s Path ~

“I took a few wrong turns, made some bad decisions, got lost along the way. But I look back now and realise it was the totality of those things which eventually led me home. I am living proof that fearlessly following your heart will eventually take you to where you need to be. My words come from that soul-searching wilderness; of walking alone through dangerous places with only my heart to guide me. It hasn’t been easy, and yes – there were some troubles along the way – but I now feel a completion in my soul that eluded me for so long. That completion has come after finally making it to the place I always knew I belonged. This is the linear way of life. We can only live it in one direction and our journeys usually only make sense when we look back upon them. Our lives are the culmination of many twists and turns, ones which leave marks upon us which we end up treasuring. It’s those scars and scratches which tell our story. It’s those cuts and bruises which make us the people we are. And it is our pain and our mistakes which eventually lead us to the lands which make our hearts sing and our pens dance.”

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short stories

~ Lost in the Virtual World ~

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smartphones

~ Lost in the Virtual World ~

It was sometime when I was sixteen years old that I came to school one day and found everyone shifted to a strange new state of existence. There they all were: heads down to their hands, totally absorbed by whatever it was they were holding in them. I walked closer to see what it was that was causing them to permanently reconfigure the skeletal structure of their necks. I reached the circle and saw them all clutching their precious new possessions. It was the arrival of the smartphone – a small device, no bigger than a notepad, which sat in your hand and connected you to the entire world. Clearly a new age was upon us. We had lived in trees; we had lived in caves; we have lived in farms and towns and cities. Now we were living in hyperspace – connected and communicating with each other via satellite signals and apps. I looked at the transfixed faces of my fellow classmates and knew something had changed for good; seeing just how much this device yielded a sort of otherworldly power over the person it belonged to meant humanity was in for a wild new trip.

I resisted the urge to get a smart-phone for years and, as a result, I became an alienated member of society. At first, there were still a few of my kind left – those people using those heavy Nokias and old flip-phones – but quickly they were becoming a breed on the brink of extinction. There were many times where I sat left out in social circles as people exchanged things over their phones and sent Vines and Snapchats. Soon Instagram was taking over the world as selfie-taking spread like a contagious virus – evidenced by the fact that the word itself even made it into the Oxford English dictionary. I watched curiously as my species became possessed by the need to pose, take and post pictures of themselves whenever they could. Even their cats and dinners weren’t safe. Apparently, whatever meal was on their plate somehow needed to be shared with all the random people in hyperspace, desperate to see one more time what a mediocre plate of spaghetti bolognese looked like.

It was a confusing time altogether and I tried to get by in modern society without owning this new organ of the human body. It was something that quickly left me out of touch with many people. I recalled a girl in a bar asking me what my Instagram and Snapchat was. When I told her I didn’t have them, I was met with a look of shock and horror – as if I were a time-traveller from a prehistoric age. Another time I was laughed at for not being able to get directions somewhere on my phone. Soon the alienation of not having a smartphone continued to grow at a sharp rate. So often I sat in a circle of friends, unable to speak to any of them as it seemed social media had overtaken real social interaction. There was a certain irony to it all and I wondered what exactly this shift in human behaviour was leading to. Perhaps soon we’d just sit at home and control virtual versions of ourselves? Perhaps we’d be able to ‘like’ people on the spot and our value in society would be judged on how many followers we had?

It was a scary thought and one that kept me from joining in on the madness, but eventually it got to the point where I could no longer get by in society without having a smartphone. It seemed that everything was geared to this one device that now ran the world. I couldn’t even get a taxi with my friends without being seen as tight for not paying anything toward the fare they shared over the Uber app. I couldn’t even purchase a goddamn bus ticket in some cases. Getting by in the world had become too difficult, and reluctantly I went and got a smartphone to join the masses in this strange new era of human behaviour.

At first, I was quite good with it; never using data or the internet while out of the house, not downloading any apps, but just using it absolutely when I needed to while enjoying the camera that came with it. It wasn’t long however before I found myself getting sucked into the vacuum of hyperspace. After getting relentlessly asked for my WhatsApp, I downloaded the app and quickly found myself part of numerous groups and conversations. There I sat staring at the screen as the notifications flooded in throughout the day. After a year or so, I found myself part of a bunch of chats that made that phone constantly ping. It was easy to see how so many people got sucked into that vacuum and spent hours of their day in a hypnotic trance as they stared at whatever it was that was on the screen. It was either you ignored everyone trying to contact you, or spent hours of your day replying. Like a baby that wailed, the phone was always there commanding your attention and it was easy to cave into its incessant demands.

One day I realised I would have to join the thing I despise the most: Instagram. On the most part, this photo-sharing application was the great tragedy of our generation, creating millions of narcissistic and self-absorbed millennials whose sense of self-worth was dependent on likes and followers and emoji comments. This constant need for social gratification off random people on the internet had led to a mass of people who dressed up their lives with masks and makeup and filters. It had led to people who made out that their lives were constantly amazing, when really they were anxious and stressed and getting by on antidepressant medication. Often, I wept for the state of my generation who had now become so fake that being real was sure to leave you as an outcast. However, like everything else in the world, there was still some good out there, and Instagram gave a platform for genuine artists, singers, writers, dancers and whatever to share their work. My Facebook blog had crashed as Facebook was experiencing a mass exodus of users, and I realised I would have to post my work on Instagram if I actually wanted a decent amount of people to read it.

The problem I had found immediately was what I wrote was typically longer than twenty words. One of the byproducts of the age of the smartphone was that people now had the attention span of a newborn puppy on cocaine. Relentlessly, they finger flicked and scrolled away at the neverending content that filled their screen. If something was going to take more than thirty seconds to read, then the odds were that it would be swiftly dismissed. This meant my longer pieces of writing didn’t really have much of a chance of being read by the entranced thumb-twitchers of the world, so I focused on turning some extracts of my writing into succinct, easy-to-digest quotes and memes. It worked to an extent I guess, although it made me feel limited into what I could share, and it was definitely going to take a miracle to become popular on a platform where ‘instapoets’ had amassed millions of followers for posting things like ‘true love never quits’ in sleek and stylish memes.

Still, I got on with it and tried to find my place in the modern world where this device had completely changed the way we behaved forever, and most definitely not for the better. Sure, things were easier in many ways, but people’s mental health was suffering as it became a socially-accepted form of addiction. People’s minds were like overcharged computers, saturated and frazzled by relentlessly checking their phones and notifications throughout the day. Some days I found myself with a headache after allowing myself to get sucked into numerous Whatsapp chats. Other times I found myself getting anxious about what some stranger in America was commenting on my posts on Instagram. It was a device which had the power to completely take over your life and it appeared that no one was safe from its tyranny. Even my parents – who had always been slightly ‘technologically challenged’ – had conformed to this new state of existence. One day I walked in the front room to find my mom with her head also embracing that permanent shape of facing down at her hands. She had gotten a new tablet for herself and now spent hours of the day scrolling through tabloid news stories and looking at holiday packages on travel agent websites. It appeared that even the older generation were getting sucked into this smartphone vacuum, even going as far as overtaking the youth as the core user base of Facebook. Yes, you could now find your grandparents sharing Daily Mail articles to the social media world. And let’s not forget about the new members of human society. Now you could find kids as young as three years old with their faces glued to those tablets and phones. Many parents had discovered they could keep them transfixed by those devices and thus spare themselves the hassle of actually having to entertain them themselves. There on Instagram you’d find Timothy, just four years and three quarters, posting selfies with his latest toy or comic.

All things considered, it’s a surreal time to be alive and who knows what the state of human interaction and behaviour will look like with the technologies of the future. Right now, you’ve got people like Elon Musk trying to connect AI to the human brain. You’ve got the sex robots being developed by horny tech gurus. There also are bio cells that could lead to people becoming ‘amortal’ – meaning they will live indefinitely without being the victim of a car accident or fire. Smartphones will soon be able to control everything in your house as well as provide a database for everything you’ve ever done or said. It’s a strange and scary time to be a human-being. No doubt some of you may even be reading this right now on a smartphone or tablet or whatever other device is now out there to keep you transfixed. Well, if you’ve made it this far at least you had the patience to read more than an Instagram meme. Thanks for that. Oh, and please remember to follow my blog on social media: @thethoughtsfromthewild. A part of me would really ‘like’ that. Cheers.

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short stories

~ Social Distancing? No problem ~

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solitude

~ Social Distancing? No Problem ~

The great crisis of our generation came almost out of nowhere. It was just after the turn of the new year when reports of a novel coronavirus spreading through China started appearing in the media. At first it seemed like something very far away – a drama unfolding in the far east, something similar to the outbreak of SARs virus a few years before that quickly petered out into nothing. I guess it was that sort of scenario which people expected again. After all, we were a generation who was regularly being told the world was about to end: swine flu, bird flu, ebola, the climate crisis, Donald Trump – we had read about our imminent destruction many times before as editors fervently created sensational headlines to shift newspapers. So, it was only natural there was a sense of ‘here we go again’ when Covid-19 started featuring on the front pages of The Sun and The Daily Mail.

However, fast forward a couple of months and the disease had now started spreading throughout Europe. A side effect of the virus was seemingly the sudden urge to travel the world, and consequently hundreds of people had brought the virus over with them on their holidays and business trips. The north of Italy was the first region of Europe to have a mass outbreak. Almost overnight, towns and entire regions went into ‘lockdown’ – a phrase that was quickly to become one of the most spoken words of 2020. People were confined to their residences, only allowed out for ‘essential’ things such as getting groceries or medicines, as well as travelling to work (that was if your company was still open and you were not out of work or working from home). All things considered, it was the biggest change to people’s lives in peacetime, and it wasn’t long before most countries in the world were imposing tight quarantine and social distancing measures to stop the virus from tearing through the population.

There was hardly a person on earth that wasn’t negatively affected by the crisis, but it was fair to say the outbreak of Covid-19 came at a particularly bad time for me. I had just left my job with the anticipation of taking part in a lucrative medical trial and then using the money to go travel on my latest backpacking trip. With the job quit, the trial cancelled and no international travel possible for the foreseeable future, I was left in the situation of being unemployed, stuck in my apartment and having about £5000 less in my bank account than I had anticipated. Obviously there were people far worse off than me – the ones who lost businesses and, you know, those who would actually die from the virus – but it was fair to say I wasn’t jumping for joy about the emerging situation. 

Nonetheless, I had to roll up my sleeves and get on with it like everyone else. I did exactly that, spending the first few weeks of lockdown in my apartment that I was supposed to have been moving out of. Instead, I was now stuck inside that apartment for twenty-three hours a day, only going out for my one form of permitted exercise, as well as the occasional trip to the supermarket to try and buy whatever food the panic buyers had left on the shelves. It wasn’t so bad. Having been someone who delighted in my own solitude, the whole self-isolation thing came as no big deal to me. Often I had looked at the four walls and thanked them for the great guardians they were. They were the walls that kept humanity out; the walls that gave me some peace from the insanity of society. I could have happily spent months within those walls in my own company, and I quickly realised having a hermit nature was a great strength to have in the era of Covid-19. Apparently the act of having to keep yourself socially-distanced proved to be something that was the challenge of a lifetime for many. Past generations had endured world wars, civil wars, crusades, genocides, great depressions and the black death; our great crisis was having to stay inside and keep ourselves entertained with Netflix, Disney movies, social media and group video calls. The difference was almost laughable, but apparently many people couldn’t cope with actually having to be alone with their own thoughts, while also not getting their regular dose of social gratification. A part of me almost delighted in it all. All my life I had been stuck in a society that catered almost exclusively for extroverts. Introverts had always been told to be more sociable and outgoing to fit into the system, but now the tables had turned and the extroverts would have to learn to be happy in their own company to survive the lockdown. The age of the introvert had finally come and the thought of it made me sit back on my bed with a smug sort of grin. What a time to be alive it truly was.

The great global crisis of our generation continued unfolding as I kept myself busy with a routine of meditation, writing, reading and just going on seemingly endless hikes through the Youtube wilderness. Of course, I kept my eye on the situation too by regularly checking the news reports on the development of the outbreak. The death charts and infection tallies were shooting up all the time, and it had quickly gone past 9/11 to become the biggest news event in my lifetime. I was now living through history and I sat back in my lair of solitude to soak it all in. I knew people were dying from the disease and, of course, it was a tragic and sad thing; but I also couldn’t deny that a part of me also found it refreshing that something dramatic was actually happening in our everyday lives. It really was like one of those end-of-the-world movies: the sight of people wearing masks, empty town centres, skies without planes, shops without food, police patrolling the streets – they were the sort of things you only saw on a movie screen, but now you were witnessing them through your own eyes. Finally, I didn’t need to quit a job and go travelling in some dangerous country to feel like something exciting was happening. 

Still, although I found many things about the lockdown refreshing, I was not without my problems. I was living off the savings I had and not being able to find a job, I soon faced the prospect of moving back in with my parents. At the age of twenty-eight, moving back home wasn’t ideal, but if I was ever going to do it then this would be the time. Like most people my age, my happiness to a degree was built on my own independence, but strange times had arrived and I figured this would be the next step down the rabbit-hole of Covid-19. The decision was made. I packed my bags and moved back in with mommy and daddy to set up camp for the rest of the lockdown. 

Back in another city, I started looking for jobs again. Luckily there was an Amazon warehouse close to my house and I now had the opportunity to be a modern-day sweatshop worker. At this point, Amazon was comfortably the biggest company in the world. Jeff Bezos had capitalised on the age of mass consumerism by providing an online e-commerce store in which you could buy anything you could imagine under the sun, and even have it delivered to your front door within twenty-four hours of clicking the purchase button. This meant that all the ‘thing’ addicts in society now had a place where they could order whatever caught their attention that day. This would naturally be even more extreme now that people couldn’t spend their money on getting pissed in pubs and clubs. Thankfully, good citizens like me were on hand to help them get the important products they needed to survive such as celebrity autobiographies and one-litre bottles of ‘luxury anal lube’.

Sorting those products for them to be distributed for ten hours a day was how I kept myself busy during the great crisis of our lifetime. I could imagine little children asking me what I was doing during the great Covid-19 crisis of 2020. “Well, I was helping people to keep busy with acts of experimental sex,” wasn’t quite as good as saying I was fighting on the beaches of Normandy or parachuting behind enemy lines; still – it was something I guess. And besides, I actually ended up enjoying the experience of working there. I felt like I was some sort of dystopian sci-fi movie having to distance myself from fellow workers, wearing protective equipment and having to go through a temperature check every time I entered the building. It was something I knew would feature in textbooks for school children for many years to come and I made sure to stop and enjoy every moment of history unfolding around me. 

After a while of working there and waiting out the crisis, I got speaking to a girl online. Meeting girls in real life was something of a bygone age and Tinder had connected me to this girl living in the city I had just moved out of – Nottingham. She was a teacher assistant who had been ‘furloughed’ – something which meant she got paid her normal wage for sitting at home, sunbathing and drinking bottles of fruity cider. I envied her situation as I texted her while stuck inside that dark warehouse for over ten hours a day. We were soon speaking most evenings on the phone as I began to feel an attachment to someone I hadn’t even seen with my own eyes. Maybe it was the drama of the situation, or just that I was sexually frustrated due to the lockdown, but we struck a connection that I had rarely come across with another girl. She was another misfit like me; someone a bit scratched and scarred by life who loved animals and nature and fantasy movies. Fantasy was an important thing in the world of lockdown and often we imagined going on weird and random adventures. Hell, I even convinced her to write some poetry and short stories – one of which she turned into an erotic camping trip in the peak district. It was a modern sort of love story; two people separated and unable to meet from the lockdown of Covid-19, but still living out imaginary lives over internet messaging.

We continued talking online for weeks until one weekend when we arranged to break social distancing measures by meeting up for a day in the park. She drove to my city to come and meet me where we walked around and had a picnic under the trees beside a stream. Finally together, we spoke about the world and our lives and all the things we had chatted about over the phone. We then moved to the long grass and fondled before spontaneously deciding to drive back to Nottingham where we played with her dogs, watched Lord of the Rings, got drunk, ordered pizza and put an end to our lockdown sexual frustration. In the morning, I lay  by her side and watched the curtains flap beside the window. Out there was a world in the strangest state I had ever seen it; and the situation I was in seemed to fit in with the madness of the age that had arrived. I was truly living in some sort of strange dream – a surreal reality that wouldn’t have been out of place in a George Orwell novel. I imagined the future of the modern world; perhaps this random meeting would turn into something long-lasting and we’d be telling our children the story of how we met during the great crisis of our generation. I was supposed to be going travelling but with international travel looking like a shitshow for the foreseeable future, I didn’t know where the next tumble down the rabbit hole of Covid-19 world was going to take me. Life was as bizarre and unpredictable and weird as ever, and not even Donald Trump or Boris Johnson had a clue where we were all going. 

Well, for now, I guess the only thing we can do is sit back and enjoy the dystopian movie we’re living in. Let’s let the crisis play out while we all isolate ourselves away within the walls of social solitude. Let let the earth’s atmosphere and environment recover while we are all stuck inside our homes writing these books and getting drunk and watching Lord of the Rings and having sex and ordering bottles of luxury anal lube off the internet. The future is a scary thing and we no longer need to watch the sci-fi movies and episodes of dystopian series Black Mirror to see something crazy. Just pull back the curtains, look out at the world and you will find something stranger than anything from any fictional book or movie. Welcome to the world of Covid-19.

 

thoughts

~ Hardened by Pain ~

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“I looked at the eyes of people around me and saw inner worlds of sunlight and peace. Meanwhile, inside my skull the ceilings dripped, the rats scurried. The world inside my mind was a scary place and I knew it was one that no other person should have had the misfortune of visiting. The darknesses I had descended to and the demons I had faced were not for the faint of heart. Still, sometimes when their non-understanding eyes stared at me once again, a part of me wanted to imprison them inside for just a day. I wanted to see the looks on their faces when they had seen the world behind my eyes; the looks on their faces when they came out screaming and crying. Never again would their ignorant sentences fall my way; never again would they think that their troubles were troubles. Of course, I wouldn’t have done this to my worst enemy. This prison inside was reserved for me and for me only. Only by some strange miracle had I managed to endure it all these years. By all rights, I should have been destroyed, but I had survived and now had this strange sense of invincibility flow through me. Words of hate did nothing; fear was laughable; storms were easily weathered. In the meanwhile, the others cracked and crumbled at the slightest exposure to such things. Their vulnerability made me reflect and come to appreciate my past sufferings. I had been hardened by pain and toughened by madness. I was able to walk through the fire without flinching. A strange courage filled my heart and I went through life no longer fearing the shadows or any monsters. Having lived in the darkness for so long, the demons were only companions to me.”

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coronavirus diaries

Self-Isolation: The Coronavirus Diaries (day 2 & 3)

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For previous days see here.

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Days 2 and 3

The next day I woke up about 11am, able to not feel guilty about lying in bed until near midday. Being a bum was now the socially responsible and ethical thing to do after all. Day one had been a day of writing before giving up and watching disaster movies to get me into the mood of the apocalypse. Some recommendations for getting yourself revved up for the potential end of humanity: Outbreak, Contagion, 28 Days Later, Shaun of the Dead and The Omega Man. The latter three were zombie apocalypse movies; things hadn’t quite got that exciting yet, but one couldn’t be sure the rate things were spiralling out of control. One thing I realised at this point is that I had no food in the fridge at all. I had yet to face the hordes of humanity stripping the supermarket shelves dry and I was now due to get my first taste of the mindless madness. I ventured down to LIDL at the bottom of the road to find the shop in the same way I had seen on the media. I wandered around looking for supplies unsuccessfully. The human race had already stashed months’ worth of food in their pantries, fridges and cellars. In the end I walked away with some super noodles, broccoli stilton soup, a cheese and tomato pizza, and the very last box of LIDL-value bran flakes. The apocalypse was seeming more and more real every day.

Back home in my kingdom of isolation, I engaged in some reading and meditation before spending a solid hour staring into space. Having a wandering mind was a godsend in times like this and I was certain to go on many introspective adventures through the galaxies inside my head. Today my mind was reflecting on what this disaster meant for us as a species. Reading the news it was clear we were facing a huge change to our lifestyles and perhaps a period of reflection for where we were as a race. One news report said that due to the lockdown, countries such as China and Italy were seeing a massive drop in CO2 and pollution levels. With no planes in the sky, fewer cars on the road and many factories temporary closing down, the planet was finally catching its breath from the relentless battering we were giving it. On top of this, the canals of Venice could be seen full of fish and dolphins were coming closer to shore with the absence of boats.

The thought hit me that perhaps this was nature’s way of striking back against humanity. Effectively, we had been told off and sent to our rooms to self-isolate while mother nature tried to heal itself for a short while. The virus itself had even come from an animal like all the major disease outbreaks over the last twenty years – Sars, Swine Flu, Ebola and now Covid-19. One only had to watch a video of the inhumane practices and conditions animals were kept in at the market to maybe think this was our punishment for our brutal and cruel treatment of the animal kingdom. It was ironic I guess. In terms of the natural world, the human species could almost be seen as a virus itself in the way it spread, destroyed and consumed its natural environment – the very host it lived on. Perhaps all these diseases that threatened humanity were the antibodies of mother nature? Perhaps this was the planet fighting back against the very thing killing it?

It was a depressing thought to think of yourself as a biological virus so I turned to a bottle of red wine. I couldn’t drink with anyone else of course, so now it was socially acceptable to get totally drunk at home alone. I had waited for this day for a long time. I shamelessly poured myself an extra-large glass of wine, went on a youtube session and got chatting to some of my comrades who were also self-isolating around the world. One of which was a good friend who had been under lockdown for almost four weeks now in Northern Italy – the epicentre of the European outbreak. After four weeks of remaining indoors, he was now polishing off four wine bottles a day as well as a wide range of other exotic substances. I hadn’t descended that far into the depths of self-isolated madness just yet, but it would be interesting to see what debauchery awaited me over the next weeks. For now everything was all good and sane. I kept sipping my wine as the walls stood strong and I remained uninfected. The music roared from the speakers and the drinking went on for two days…

(days 4 and 5 to follow)

thoughts

~ Being Yourself ~

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~ Being Yourself ~

“I guess when it comes down to it, no one else is going to make you truly happy but yourself. When all is said and done at the end of the day, it’s you and that mirror reflection. It’s you and the solitude and silence. It’s you and that voice inside your head. And if you can’t be happy in those environments, then you are always going to be a slave of another person or system. We think of loneliness as being alone but often the greatest loneliness is felt by those dwelling in crowds to which they do not belong, who depend on others’ validation for their happiness – who speak words that they do not feel and follow paths which are not their own. These are the people who have wandered so far from the essence of themselves that they see only strangers in their reflection. These are the people whose true selves are locked away in forgotten places of spiritual isolation. Each year that neglect slowly tears away pieces of themselves. Learning to be happy on your own is what is necessary to keep your true self intact. Not dependent on the crowd, you will retain your individuality; not defined by the system, you will retain your unique shape. And from there blossoms the beauty of the individual. The strength of a person who is at home in their own inner world, rather than that which is constructed and dictated by others. Self-actualized, empowered – the one who looks into that mirror knowing that their life is their completely their own. The life of personal truth. The life of substance and authenticity. The life of someone who isn’t afraid to be totally and completely: 

themselves.”

man walking road

 

thoughts

~ Towards the Dream ~

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man walking night

“You’ve gotta hold on to them. Those dreams and desires that haunt your heart; that stir in the depths of your soul; that scratch and claw at the walls of your skull. It is easy – it is so very easy to listen to those voices of fear and doubt. To keel over under the weight of the system. To abandon your deepest desires for the sake of a comfortable and crowd-pleasing existence. It takes something a bit extra to abandon such notions and walk fearlessly in the direction of your truest life. And yes: the journey won’t be easy or straightforward. Doubt and discomfort will be felt. Isolation will be experienced. The reflection in the mirror will stare back with testing eyes. But the beauty of living a life totally true to yourself will give those eyes a unique shine – a shine that is hard to find in a world where so many let their inner flame die out without a fight. Don’t let that fate be your fate. Don’t let yourself become another wanderer in that wasteland of broken dreams. Be brave enough to follow your heart. Have the courage of a warrior; the mind of a dreamer; the spirit of a hunter. Have the guts of someone who chose not to settle for life, but who instead felt the glory of what it was like to run full-speed in the direction of their deepest dreams and desires.”

thoughts

~ The Silent Submission ~

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~ The Silent Submission ~

“It’s a world of broken people with broken hearts. Of minds full of desperation and desolation. Of starving souls sitting behind desks and staring into space, dreaming of something distant and out of reach – something that can not be purchased in any store or downloaded onto any computer. It’s a world of people tightly gripping onto steering wheels as they try not to go insane on the morning commute. A world of people scrolling on their phones to try and connect with someone or something. A world of people drifting down the sidewalks of life, following someone else’s path and not their own. The absurdity pervades and I like so many others have stared up into those skies dreaming of something to take me away from all this madness. The human condition. The suffocation of society. The struggle to hang onto who you really are as this world strikes you from every angle. Few make it through the machine without being torn up beyond repair. Out there on those streets I stare at the passing faces and see eyes losing their light, hearts losing their fire, minds losing their madness. I see tired faces of sickness and sadness. I see mouths that move but do not speak. This thirst for life in my veins will not let me succumb to the same solemn fate. The wilderness in my heart roars out for some kind of glory. The glory of breaking free from it all. The glory of taking your mind back from the machine. The glory of making sure your life is one that is lived totally to the full, and not stutters slowly into a silent submission of the heart and mind and soul.”

people walking street