In this aspect they are like ruthless and inexplicably succesfully efficient toddlers. The other thing they share with the fledgling, wailing, sticky-fingered semi-humans is that once they have your attention whatever they are trying to show you is often incredibly and insufferably annoying, if only because you should have seen the life milestone/ dead amphibian in your kids hand (and, imminently, mouth) a lot sooner.
Such an epiphany hit me recently. Everything I have known so far is almost over. The thought came to me while I was doing three things (well, three things of consequence which I can say related to the epiphany, anyway)- drinking a pint, reading the closing chapters of Bill Bryson's nostalgia and comedy tour The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, and listening to Frank Turner's Love, Ire and Song album playing in the bar. At the precise point I began to have my enlightening vision the eponymous number, Love, Ire and Song, was slowly drifting along in it's nostalgic, melancholy way. I think the lines that got me thinking were 'Then where's the harm spending an evening in manning the old barricades?' Got to love Mr Turner.
Anyway, these three things made me realise a single truth- I'm getting older (well, not, that wasn't it exactly), I'm coming of age, moving from Bryson's so-well-named Kid World to Adult World, a big scary place, and I'm bored of the town, the scene and some of the people I'm stuck with here, will be returning to soon and have no hope of escaping for at least the next year while I do whatever I can to get some money together. What a thing to be struck by of a Friday afternoon.
It drilled into me the need, more than ever, to have a definite plan in place, an idea of what I want to do, where I want to go, how I can go about making sure these things come to pass (not making sure they happen to me, making sure I happen to them). So, I've set in stone what I will do. I'm putting it here so that I can, in time, either look back with content success or stare at my failure and punish myself, but also because I often find one way to get motivated is to promise a deadline to someone and then you're letting someone else down if you fuck it up. Hey, it's a theory, and for three years I've tried and tested it with great success.
So, the plan is-
Get a job.Doing whatever I can, preferably in London, preferably writing, but I'll take PA and reception work, cleaning, greasy spoon cooking, anything.
Save money. Pretty Ronseal, but with goals in mind, namely-
Learn to drive. Again, Ronseal.
Buy a bike. A motorbike, that is, not a kid's tricycle. I need to do this, because without it I can't-
Learn to ride. The bike, not a horse or something else. And only by knowing how to ride can I-
Travel in style. Cruising around after about a year of working to save the money to do it, hitting a route I'm planning through the South of the USA following the old Route 66 for a bit and making sure I cut through Arizona and Utah for Monument Valley and the Valley of the Gods. On the way, who knows, I might write a travel book. I'm undecided. Which leads to-
Really thinking about (and working on) what I want to try to get published. Just as a nice additional income to whatever jobs I get, so I can find somewhere decent to live, eventually managing to-
Settle in London.
So, there we have it. Motivation starts here. In two years time, if I haven't done at least three quarters of this, I'd better have a pretty good reason lined up for myself. Paralysis or something.
Why don't you all have a go at making your own 'Determination Rosters'? It's very soothing, and hey, it feeds the Procrastination Monster no end.
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