Up on the downside?
Which is to say, I'm finding vaguely positive aspects to being out of work.
Yes, indeed. The mind-numbing, frustration-inducing, crushingly depressing ennui and sense of nothingness about my days does have a small upside. And, believe it or not, it's Television.
Now, bear in mind I'm only on Freeview - conscientious objections to paying for televisual content beyond the License Fee, and all - so I don't have the full spectrum of entertainment available to me. Lord knows, I spend most of my days with the TV off all day unless I'm playing videogames or watching DVDs because there's so little worth watching... so it's a welcome gift when the Freeview channels actually offer something of genuine interest.
First up in today's splendid lineup was Breakfast at Tiffany's - a movie which, somehow and for no specific reason, I have spent more than 36 years not seeing. I figured that, since I enjoyed the recent showing of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (similar situation with that), I'd give it a whirl, and add it to the gradually increasing list of classic movies I've finally bothered to watch.
Glad I did, broadly speaking... but it is quite distressing that so many people these days - male and female, if I'm honest - are the Holly Golightlys of their own little worlds. It's just a shame that real life isn't as simple as that film - you can't just give them a stern talking-to in the back of a cab as they're running away again, and snap them back into reality... But then, as I have related in a previous posting, the reality is far, far more complicated than anything addressed in that movie.
Still, it was a pleasant bit of fluff for a story about people who were - essentially - whoring themselves out to their respective 'benefactors' (the background 'White Knights' of the piece) and doing their damnedest to ignore the consequences to themselves. One of them sees the other's 'Dragon' and, because this is a movie, manages to conquer it and also defeat their own in one stroke. Subjective 'realities' notwithstanding, because that just wouldn't be a happy, romantic ending.
It reminded me my I should never, ever again try to be the 'White Knight'.
Fuck... Just really depressed myself.
Moving on.
Memento - sounded intriguing, and yet I managed to miss it in the cinema, and haven't picked it up on DVD because I was worried it wouldn't be as good as I hoped. Christopher Nolan's first big movie, and now one of several co-written with his brother Jonathan. The film follows its own story in two different ways, both episodic: One way runs forward, and fills in the character of the protagonist... the other runs backwards and tells the main bulk of the story in a deliberately disjointed and disconcerting way. It's one of those films that keeps you guessing, despite starting at the end of the story... very well put together, and I may end up buying the DVD now, to go in the same part of my collection as the likes of Shutter Island and The Usual Suspects.
Nothing much planned for the weekend... I should probably take the advice of a friend and go for a walk or something, but it's turned very cold again. Loathe though I am to feed my own stir-craziness, but I suspect I'll be lurking around the flat doing not much at all.
Maybe play a game... maybe watch a movie... maybe do some sketching... maybe do some writing (wouldn't that be something).
Actually, on that note, just so I know I've written it down somewhere... One thing I really hate about internet dating - well, relationships as a whole at the beginning, but particularly internet dating because that's currently pertinent - is that, despite my cynicism, I do find it all too easy to open myself up to people... And one of the worst things about that is that I love to talk about my writing. The more I talk about it, the clearer it becomes (still slowly, but it happens). The more I talk about my characters, the more they talk to me, the closer I get to understanding their stories, to the point that I can actually write them out.
But when I talk about my writing to any extent with people to aren't really 'friends', or whatever, I just end up feeling violated (pardon the melodramatic terminology), because I'm basically scared that my writing will never actually amount to anything... but now they know about it. Years down the line, when they still don't see any books with my name on them on the shelves at Waterstones, they'll be thinking "yeah, I was right, he was never going to get it published"...
And part of me really wants to prove them wrong, but part of me is shrivelling up because there's a good chance they are right.
Wow... that's just even more depressing.
Time for bed.
Ps. Approximately an hour after 'completing' the above post, and before I go to bed, I'd just like to point out that I am, in fact, aware that the only person that's actually spending any time thinking about whether or not I'll get published here is me. Everyone else will likely forget me long before such thoughts might occur to them.
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