write.as/jonbeckett

Today’s Wordpress Blogging University writing exercise is asking me to consider what I might write if I had more time to write:

If you’re not a full-time writer, or if your day is so full of other tasks that you have little time to write, consider these alternative questions: if you could step into a machine that gave you more time, what would you write with this extra time? I would like to think that I might write a sprawling epic in the style of Ernest Hemingway, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I think we all know the chances of that are infinitesimal. Most people probably think they can be Hemingway on a good day – but that’s the thing – he did it all the damn time (sure, he was often inebriated, or fighting somebody else’s war, but still…).

Maybe if I lowered my sights, I could writing biting commentary about the modern world. It might be fun to do the celebrity culture beat, and re-trace the path Toby Young did while accruing material for “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People”.

Could I be the next Tom Wolfe? Maybe. Stop laughing. Ok, maybe not.

Let’s be honest. If I had more time, the chances of spending it writing are minimal, because I typically write blog posts when I should really be doing something else. Ergo – absence of time is NOT the reason I haven’t written anything of consequence. If anything, making me more busy will cause me to search out procrastinatory pursuits even more actively, which might result in even more writing.

My backpack and suitcase are packed, my personal phone, work phone, and tablet are charged, and I’m debating on polishing my walking boots, rather than wear shoes. I’m heading to Yorkshire, in the north of England with work for a few days.

While I know it’s going to be cold, I also know that I will be inside trains, hotels, or office buildings for the entire time. I find it strange that so many people still travel so often with work – myself included. I could easily perform the work of the next few days remotely. For whatever reason, the client wants me to attend their office – which racks up travel, hotel, and food costs on top of the daily rate they pay for my time. I suppose it’s their choice, but I think it’s madness.

I have thought about applying to work for Automattic (the organisation that maintains Wordpress) more than once. Their staff famously work from wherever they wish – using the internet to stay in touch with each other.

So what do I have to look forward to over the next few days? Five hours on six trains today, followed by a table for one in the hotel restaurant for a couple of evenings (accompanied by requisite people watching sessions), and no doubt some very long blog posts from a very bored hotel-bound person.

I have several episodes of Mr Robot, and an entirely new (but very short) season of Red Oaks hidden up my Fire Tablet equipped sleave to help burn the midnight oil while away. I also have a couple of books waiting to be read. Ok – let’s be truthful – a mountain of books, that I keep side-stepping. They will fall on me eventually and I’ll never be seen again.

For the past few months I have been trying out a “Bullet Journal”. Rather than re-purpose my pre-existing Moleskine notebook, I went out and bought an official Leuchtturm1917 notebook with requisite pages for future logs, indexes, and so on. While there have been a lot of positives to take from the experiene, I’m still not convinced. I will admit that one of the reasons I have stuck at it is because the book cost so much money (I hate wasting money).

Don’t get me wrong – there have been positives. The whole process of migrating tasks from one week to the next has been good. The process of writing up each week, and having to think about what’s going on has also been good.

I experimented with layouts for a couple of weeks before settling on the scheme I have been using, but in general it’s been getting more minimal with each passing week. When I started out I looked at Pinterest, and various blog posts for inspiration, and invented all manner of rubbish that I eventually abandoned – sleep tracking charts, lists of books to read, movies to watch – you name it. I’ve ended up filling the book purely with things I need to get done, and random scribbled notes about whatever I’m working on.

I struggle to understand how some people manufacture the time to draw pretty pictures all over their notebooks, or to fill pages with plans to fill their day – plans that don’t really exist (coffee, yoga, shopping, more coffee, more yoga, movie, and so on). If I filled my task lists in a similar manner, each day would be approximately the same – get up, shower, get dressed, feed cats, feed fish, tidy up lounge and kitchen, wash up anything in the sink, empty dishwasher, make breakfasts, make packed lunches, help children look for things they promised they had already organised for school, shout at children for not doing anything to help, extricate bike from shed, cycle to work, headbutt desk for eight hours, cycle home, and then re-play the morning in reverse order.

Maybe one day I will write out the task list on paper just for fun, and tick things off to make myself feel better about “getting things done”. Perhaps I’ll fill a fake page specifically to photograph for Instagram, with “TMI” themed tasks too.

Anyway. I’m persevering with the Bullet Journal. Will I make it into next year with it? I’m really not sure. Will I revert back to the Filofax? Again, I’m really not sure. I could even ditch all of it and return to Evernote, but there’s something wonderfully eccentric and counter-intuitive about writing in a notebook in this age of electronic gadgets.

Today’s writing prompt for the Wordpress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” challenge is to “let social media inspire you” – to go look at social media, and use it to inspire a few well put together words.

Here’s the thing – I decided some time ago that social media is not social – so perhaps my inspiration might not be to lift something I have seen shared, but to rail against the sort of sharing that typically goes on within the Facebook walled garden, or the Tumblr hall of mirrors.

At some point over the last several years I started to form the opinion that the way most people take part in the social internet is incredibly unhealthy. It is often used as a highlight reel – a marketing machine to advertise the best parts of people’s lives – the part they want to show off. Photos of expensive holidays, exclusive restaurants, haircuts, makeup, nails, cars, houses – privilege run riot. The problem of course is that life isnot a highlight reel. I would far rather read honest appraisals of the challenges people are facing, than “LOOK AT MY NEW THING” (that you don’t have), or “LOOK WHERE WE ARE” (that you are not).

I guess at some point in your life you start making decisions about who you are willing to expend time and effort on – who you will humor, and who you won’t worry quite so much about hurting. It feels horrible to write down, but I’ve stopped worrying almost entirely about the sort of people that share what they have, or where they have been.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong. The above words were written by Terry Pratchett – the late, celebrated author of the Discworld novels.

I discovered the Discworld novels through my other half. Not long after we had begun seeing each other, she arrived at my house one day with a many-times-read paperback book called “The Colour of Magic”. Through that book I discovered a humor and wit I had not seen since reading Douglas Adams books about the adventures of Arthur Dent and friends.

I suppose in many ways Discworld opened my eyes to a literary world where the nonsensical was encouraged – where the madcap, insane, and really rather clever were celebrated.

There’s a lot to be said for being a bit of an idiot from time to time. My children delight in the moments when I drop the parent act and go all out for a smile on their face. They are defenseless against the idiocy. I have Mr Pratchett to thank for at least a part of that.

Today’s writing prompt from the Wordpress Blogging University “Every Day Inspiration” course asks me to describe the place I write. I think I’ve described this place before, but I’ll go again, because I have nothing better to be doing right now.

I write in the junk room. I think before we lived in this house, this room was occupied by a teenage boy. There is a safe built into the old chimney breast in the corner of the room, which we cannot remove without knocking a considerable quantity of brickwork out of the wall. We have always placed furniture in front of it.

This room remains the only room we have never decorated. It is surrounded by shelves filled with ramshackle collections of miscellaneous detritus (now there’s a sentence!). Some of the shelves bow under the weight of books, magazines, and brick-a-brack that has for some reason been kept.

Behind me stands one of the original book cases from my first apartment – a proper stained pine bookcase – like those you might find in a second hand bookshop. It is filled with “my” books – my “to read” list, accompanied by numerous books about chess, the internet, science, manga, astronomy, and a variety of biographies and collected essays by the likes of Norman Mailer, and Truman Capote.

There are two desks in the room. One has a 2003 vintage iMac perched on it, attached to a ZIP drive. It still works perfectly, and is connected to the internet – not that it ever gets used of course. I had grand plans to use it as a “writing computer”, but the adjacent desk – that I’m sitting at right now – has an old desktop PC perched on it. I tend to sit at the PC to write for the blog, purely because I like the keyboard, and the chair is comfortable.

On the floor, next to the door of the room sits a dolls house, built by my other half’s grandfather for Christmas when she was about six years old. It’s one of her favourite stories – about how her brothers unwrapped their Christmas presents, and she didn’t appear to have as many, but she didn’t say anything. Eventually her Grandfather asked her to make him a cup of tea, and she wandered into the kitchen to discover the dolls house in the centre of the room, with a ribbon tied around it with a huge name label. It still makes everybody cry when she tells the story now. The dolls house needs serious renovation, after being played with by generations of children (ours had it too), and will no doubt be handed down.

I tryto keep this room tidy. I say “try”, but in reality this is the junk room – the room things get put in when people come to visit. Things are shoved in here and forgotten about until I eventually throw them in the rubbish outside.

Somewhere along the line the children started to refer to the junk room as “Dad’s room” – probably because we kept important paperwork in here when they were young, and encouraged them not to come in here. The relative peace and quiet in here as a result affords me a bolt-hole from the mayhem of the rest of the house late on an evening. If I don’t want to watch CSI, NCIS, Foyle’s War, Broadchurch, or whatever else my other half is watching, I can shut myself away in here and write.

I was reminded by a wonderful friend this morning that back in 2007 I wrote a post on the blog titled “A Letter to my Future Self”, with instructions to be opened ten years later. The letter asked a number of questions, so I thought it might be fun to finally reply.

Hello Jonathan,

Greetings from your past self. At the time of writing you were sat at a desk in the office of your then employer just outside of Marlow, whiling away lunchtime before a hectic week ahead. You had worked here for five years, and although you sometimes wondered if the grass was greener elsewhere, you did in fact quite like it. I’m still working for the same company, ten years on – still doing the same job. I guess the technology has changed somewhat – we now all have laptops, and smart phones – but it’s essentially the same. I have continued to wonder now and again about moving on, and very nearly did about three years ago. Still here though, putting one foot in front of the other. You have been married to W for a bit over five years, sharing her with Simpsonthe cat she owned before you met. You’ve been through quite a lot together so far, and are both apprehensive about adopting children. The review panel is due soon, and you wonder what the future holds. How many children did you adopt? What were their names? Where were they from? What is it like being a Dad? After fighting through red tape for two years, the adoption process accelerated dramatically at the end. We flew through the review panel and the matching panel, and were immediately told about “three girls” who were in care, waiting for a family crazy enough to take them on. Turns out we were that family.

Ten years on life is unimaginable. The children are now 16, 13, and 12 years old. The household runs on rails each week – churning out packed lunches, dinners, and colossal quantities of clothes to be washed and dried. You rarely sit down before 9pm on a weekday evening, but strangely wouldn’t have it any other way.

Weekends are spent standing on the touchline of football and rugby pitches – stamping your feet to keep warm while cheering your girls on. Yes, you read that right – you have girls that play football and rugby. One of them did Judo for a while too.

How long did Simpson live? (knowing him, he’s still alive, and grumpier than ever) Simpson died a couple of years after the letter was written. He went down-hill very quickly, but was loved very much by the girls when they were young – despite repeatedly scratching them while being forceably hugged to within an inch of his life. Do you still live in the same house? Did you ever get that safe removed from the chimney that the previous owners left when they moved out? How about the front doorat what point did it fall completely to pieces? The front door really did fall to pieces in the end – we now have a lovely wooden one that cost a scary amount of money. In the past year we have spent 3000 getting the flat roof replaced, and another 1000 getting the bathroom floor repaired after that bathroom you just finished paying for leaked and nearly caused upstairs to become downstairs. There’s always something going wrong with the house. How are your family? At the time of writing your nephew is 8 years old, and has just moved to Lincolnshire. Your brother is working in London still while looking for a job up there. Your parents are enjoying retirement in Cornwall, and your Dad has started writing a blog My nephew is now grown up, working, and driving. You still think of him as the little lad that would sit on your shoulders when you took him to the chip shop though. My brother did eventually move to be with his family – you rarely see or hear from him any more, and sometimes feel bad about that. Mum and Dad still live in Cornwall – both of the Newfoundlands died a couple of years after your letter. Bosun outlived Otto, even though he was a couple of years older. Dad bought a Jaguar, and Mum discovered Facebook, which is endlessly entertaining. How did your cousin from San Francisco get on? Did she move to England in the end? Did she marry that rugby player? She did marry the rugby player, and they moved back to San Francisco after a couple of years here. Everything seemed to be fine for a long time, but in the last year the wheels seem to have fallen off their wagon. Not really sure what’s going to happen, but keeping fingers crossed everything remains amicable. You have a niece and nephew you have never met. Does Microsoft still have a monopoly? Windows Vista has just been released, and everybody is horrified by it’s hardware requirements. 2 gig of ram is a lot right now. I guess the answer to that is “sort of”. Microsoft still rule the world of business computers, but Apple and Google have come to dominate mobile devices. Nobody really saw it coming – they destroyed Blackberry along the way too. You cycle to work every day at the moment, and it keeps you fairly fitdo you still do that ? Yes, yes I do! After a succession of mountain bikes, you finally caved and bought a single speed bike last year. You dread to think how big your backside would be if you didn’t cycle every day. You kind of get free calf muscles in return though. Are you still in touch with the same friends? The singer songwriter in Oklahoma, the glass artist in Oregon, or the girl from Cornwall you visited last Christmas? Yes!

The songwriter got divorced, then re-married last year. You write emails back and forth every few months. She came to visit your house a couple of times, and stayed over while visiting England.

The glass artist also got divorced and re-married. She’s still the most unconventional person you know, and still has the most refreshing take on the world of anybody you know.

The girl from Cornwall just moved in with her boyfriend, after a series of car-crash relationships. You’re not as close as you once were, but you still keep in touch from time to time. You’ll probably be friends for the rest of your life.

Do you still write a blog? Have you written that novel yetthe one about the fictional world that only continues to exist if children believe in it? I do still write a blog – as evidenced by this post! I never did get around to writing that novel though. Maybe one day. Your work lunchtime is about to come to an end, so it’s perhaps time to draw this to a close.

In 2006 you were happy. You were married to a wonderful lady who you adore, you live in a big old house that you secretly love, you do a job that others aspire to, and you have more friends than at any time in your life so far. Here’s hoping this message finds you well, and that you know the answers to all the questions contained In 2017 you are also happy. You are still married to the same lady (which seems to be increasingly rare these days), and your life is filled with mayhem. It’s a good sort of mayhem though – remind yourself of that on a regular basis though, because you have no idea how argumentative teenage girls are going to be.

While getting on with my work this morning – yes, it happens sometimes – I noticed a raft of emails arriving in Google Mail, and curiosity got the better of me. This is why I rarely get anything done if there is any chance of procrastination available to me.

That’s odd, I thought. These emails are from some kind of online marketplace website, asking me to confirm my email address – and look at that – I’ve bought something too?

A little voice in my head started shouting “YOUR BANK ACCOUNT IS BEING EMPTIED RIGHT NOW!” through a pretty impressive megaphone, causing me to swing into immediate action (read: hunch closer to the screen with a furrowed brow). After checking that the website really existed, and that the from address of the email was correct, and the links in the email were not from spurious domain names, I decided to be clever.

I confirmed my email address, reset the password on the account, and logged in. Apparently the “other me” had bought a number of pink Casio mathematics calculators. They were pretty good value too. I looked for some way of remedying the situation, and emailed the owners of the auction website – telling them what had happened. Then I noticed the guy’s phone number in his account details.

One google search later, and I discovered there is another person with the same name as me, living about 200 miles away, working as a math tutor in a school. I sent him a text message. Ten minutes later my phone made a cheerful sound (I rarely receive text messages, so it was a bit of a surprise), and I changed the email address on the account. He also volunteered that he was the cause of a strange email I received about six months ago too.

Of course now I’m wondering what would happen if we were to cross paths in real life – would we somehow morph together into one bigger person? I’m also wondering about the pink calculators. Are pink calculators cheaper than other colours? Was this the result of a ridiculous female targetted marketing disaster? Or was the teacher using them to shame anxiety ridden teen boys that have forgetten their calculators for lessons ? I’ll never know.

The Blogging University “Everyday Inspiration” prompt for today is “A Story in a Single Image” – encouraging you to look at a selection of photos accompanying their email, and use them as inspiration to pollute the internet a little more with your unique brand of idiocy.

The photo accompanying this post isn’t theirs – it’s mine. They had a photo of Grand Central Station in New York – mine is of Paddington Station in London. Those that have never visited will be pleased to discover there is a beautiful bronze statue of Paddington Bear in a quiet corner of the station, looking rather windswept and lost.

Long time readers of my adventures will know how often I navigate the railway network through London – they will also know how bittersweet my various adventures have been. As mentioned a few days ago, I spent the greater part of two years arriving and departing from Paddington Station – before either vanishing into the depths of the London Underground, or escaping off across the fields towards home – hopefully in time for tea and medals.

The big stations in London are like cities withing the city. Each train that arrives delivers hundreds or even thousands of new passengers onto the walkways and escalators – rivers of people – all going somewhere.

One weekend while waiting for an Underground train beneath Paddington with my eldest daughter, I pointed across at the sea of faces on the opposite platform.

“Just think – each of those people has a family – parents, grandparents, children perhaps. They all live in different houses, in different towns, and have different hopes and dreams.”

“I never thought of that before”

Shortly afterwards a train came barreling through the tunnel on their side. When it pulled away, they were gone.

Even though the big railway stations are huge, and loud, and busy, and stressful, I can’t help feeling there is something tremendously romantic about them. St Pancras has a huge statue of a couple kissing that towers above the parallel departure platforms. I have always wondered if the couple of greeting each other, or saying goodbye.

For the better part of 2007 and 2008 I commuted into London each day – leaving the house at 6:45am each morning, and returning at 7pm each evening. The door-to-door journey took in the region of two hours on a good day. Think about that. Four hours on trainsevery day.

Life became a weirdly automatic experience – hanging clean clothes in the same place each day, cycling through shirts, socks and underwear through the week, leaving wallet, keys, phone, and a book in the same place each night – ready to be picked up the next morning. Weekends became a chance to wash and iron everything worn throughout the week, ready to wear again.

While sitting on the trains, I read books, played video games, and procrastinateda lot. Some days – after sitting up the night before to avoid the coming of tomorrow, I would just sit and stare out of the window for the entire journey.

I regret not making any friends.

I saw the same people on the train almost every day for two years, and never said a word to any of them. They didn’t talk to me either. All it would have taken was a “hello”, and my world might have changed.

I think perhaps the reason I never took the chance is because I over-think everything. I always get on better with women than men (don’t ask me why), so would have been most inclined to talk to a woman than a man. I suppose a part of it could be grounded in the thought that if a man talks to another man, he’s going to talk about manly-man stuff – football, and cars.My line in conversation about football and/or cars is completely and utterly non-existent. This leaves me with a problem – because if I ever tried to start a conversation with a woman I don’t know, I would not only presume that she would think I was hitting on her, but I would also presume everybody else would think I was hitting on her too (or think I was just another dick head on the train that likes the sound of his own voice).

Anyway. I regret never taking that chance. I regret leaving the London commute after two years without a single acquaintance.