Fourty Six Days - Let the Countdown Begin

Forty Six sleeps and then I turn 30 years old. Faaaack. It is incredible. Really. Here I am, leaving the twenties. Finally? Or too soon?

As sure as I can say that I won't be working as an accountant any time in this life, it's a guarantee that when anyone over 30 hears that my birthday is coming up, they will say something along the lines of "Thirty is great. Life will be more bearable." Or, that is what I interpret anyway.

Will it? Really? Will I be 29 on the Thursday, and the next day, everything is going to be alright. I'll get a nice salary, I'll fit into a size 0 (that, I hear, is the size) and my dog won't have any more flees.

I konw - that is not what they mean. But what exactly DO they mean?

See, I'm approaching 30, and all I can say is that the mystery is thickening.

Nicotine Withdrawel: Twelve years

Here are the symptoms I am experiecing now:

1. Dizziness. I struggle to empty my mind.
2. Confusing messages: One voice is shouting to me that I should smoke a cigarette and rather wait for the day on which I can afford patches.
The other voice is saying that I might as well go through this now because withdrawel will always feel like this.
3. A nagging voice is telling me to stop trying, because there is no way I can beat this. I tend to imagine that I agree.
4. There is a strange heaviness in my head, arms and legs. Its a physical feeling and I suspect this is the physical withdrawel taking place. It is not wholly unpleasant, with rushes of warmth and tingling taking place on the surface.
5. Whenever I try to focus on why I am doing well, I struggle to get my thoughts in order. The thoughts refuse to coalesce into a useful thought.
6. Its incredible how often I think "have a cigarette." At least a few times each minute.
7. I'm snacking a lot. Although, I have a weird feeling of fullness all the time. Almost a feeling of being bloated.
8. I feel close to tears a lot of the time.

The Biggest Battle

That's it. The time has come, to battle the enemy. To shake of my fear, flip through my "heroics for dummies" and get down to the business of kicking my nicotine addiction right back to the BIG TOBACCO CO. in the USA.
It has only been a few hours since my last 3 cigarettes (last night, at approximately 20.30 I finally gave into the physical craving) and I'm unsure whether I will make it through this day.
The cravings are severe - in fact, I did not expect this. I expected something bad, and I thought I was prepared. But I wasn't.
The fact that I began smoking about 10 to 20 cigarettes each day, since about the age of 16, means that my brain depends on nictotine to a very large degree.
As I sit here, I can barely type. The withdrawel is severe.
But what really motivates me, is not the fact that I know nicotine addiction can be beat and overcome, but the fact that my addiction is part of the big business plan of big tobacco companies. In fact, that pisses me off to the core!
I've realised that they go to extreme lengths to ensure that I'm a "return" customer. They pump cigarettes full of chemicals, which are, in my mind, far worse for my health than my addiction to nicotine, although the nicotine addiction is what makes me such a good, reliable, stupid customer.

This morning, fighting cravings every step of the way, I remembered a day a few years ago, when I was sixteen. SIXTEEN. A child. A young adult. Open to evil manipulation.
I'd seen a programme on television, about the dangers of smoking. The programme showed cancer victims and all the other sick stuff resulting from smoking mass-produced cigarettes. But the thing that stuck in my mind, and which scared me, was the reporter saying that it had been proven that the earlier someone begins to smoke, the bigger the chances of cancer were.

SO, at sixteen, I tried for the first time, to kick the habit. And I failed. Three days later I failed. The memory makes me sad and angry at the same time. What chance did I really have to kick the habit, without really knowing the power it had. I could not prepare myself.

Now I can. And I will beat the shit out of this addiction. Screw the big, fat Americans and British with their big, fat tobacco bank accounts.
(Due to withdrawel, this post might seem a bit disorientated and wired.)

Buddha at the Wedding

This morning, sleepy-eyed, a friend called and told told me an incredible thing. She had gotten married. Like a week ago. She said it the first time, and I did not hear. My brain sent the message to my ears , a rumble was heard and then I took another cup of coffee. I genuinely was not taking in what she had said. I think a comfortable sound of me sipping coffee in response to her news, was not quite the reaction she had in mind.

So she said it again. And BAM DAMN BAM BAM. I'd stopped sipping. But still, I could not respond.

Then she said it again. And suddenly, the combination of "I" and "married" was deciphered and transmitted to my ears so that I immediately had to exclaim "What?". As one does. The exclaimed "what" in response to the unexpected news. WHAT?

She calmly told me again. At first I thought that I had not understood her properly because of the impossible sleepiness I’ve been confronted with since I sort of got out of bed this morning.

Later, it occurred to me, that possibly, what had made this message so remarkable, and thus at first undecipherable, was that my brain, and thus I, did not expect this to EVER happen (I guess if someone phoned me now, and told me that a distant relative I had never heard about, living in Croatia, had died this morning and left me 2 million pounds because she had been keeping track of me on facebook - that I would have understood immediately, because somewhere, in the back of my mind, I genuinely hope I will get rich very unexpectantly, in a moment, and so I am prepared for incredibly unlikely stories to present themselves and make my wish come true ).

She had plunged herself into the unknown, trusting an inner feeling, thought. She had donned a red dress, combed her hair, grabbed her favourite Buddha statue (a cute silver one) and gone and done the mad thing.You might be thinking I'm reading a little too much into the spontaneous nuptials and I might, I mean with Britney's and Spices and Lohan's, the world is daiuly bombarded by ... but that's the point. This kind of unexpected, slightly romantic gesture is something you only hear about on E-News and the Daily 10. Not in my world.

Perhaps you wonder, why so shocked? Was it really that impossible?

My friend, and her man, Mr Friend, met years ago at a party. The encounter was brief, only about an hour, no kissing or holding hands or oohing over mutual family photographs, but apparently, enough sparks flew so that, a few years later, she received a package from him containing a gift and his phone number.

By this time, she was living in another country in Africa and he was, I believe, living in Europe. She told me this story a while back, and we'd already popped the cork on the second bottle of wine, but suffice to say that the essence of their relationship is this:

Once she had his phone number, they began phoning and messaging each other, and soon, they fell in love. Without having kissed. He finally flew to Africa last year, for a visit, they met again for the first time in years, face to face, fell deeper in love while gallivanting across this land of the brave, and then he flew back. To his European abode. Basically to pack his bags, leave his job and prepare for life in a small, not so important African country with the woman of his dreams.

Then, in December, he moved here. Permanently. Into her home, with her 3 dogs and, I thought, that was that. The budding of a blossoming relationship. Well, yes, in a sense. Except the bud opened, and flowered within in seconds it seems, and less than 2 months later, these destined to be lovers, who met four years ago, for a brief moment only, are now married.

Perhaps it is premature to write or think about this now, before I get let in on the full details of the just married duo. But I can not help but think, that even without the introduction, first paragraph, and ending, of this story, having only glimpsed a fraction of what has been going on with Friend and Mr Friend, there is a lesson in here somewhere.

The obvious one, as clear as translucent gin, is that sometimes in life, it is okay to take the plunge, to throw caution to the bloody sun, and let it fizzle and turn into microscopic particles of ash.

If intelligent, settled, content Friend can do it, then there must be something to it. I’ve adopted a weird reluctance towards spontaneity over the last few years, and this shocker has allowed a glimpse of spontaneity gone good. For now. But to hell with doubt. For now.

There is probably a second, more relevant lesson here. But I can’t see it. The shallow version, which is the one I'm kinda into, on which any intellectual worth there salty cracker will spit and spew and say “oh by jove”, is that love makes us do crazy, crazy things, and that I should be grateful that I’m currently single. I really could not afford any spontaneous actions now. I’m too busy. Hm. – I’m sure I could dwell and create a circle of lessons from each ongoing "revelation or stolen metaphor", but I’ll spare you.

What made me write this post in the first place?

Lately, I’ve been surrounded by people. People with genuinely interesting lives. Full-filled in many ways, these people have deigned to share a few days with me here, at my home by the beach (thank god I have a home by the beach and a cute dog to attract them)…

Coming into contact with these people has been refreshing and genuinely enlightening. From each, new angles of life, the past, the future, work ethics, the importance of friends and laughter, have been revealed. It has been a whirlwind, like a ballerina dancing on a pin in the middle of a tornado, allowing, brief but powerful moments of joy, sadness, regret, hope, doubt and insight.
Insight, that no matter how much we manage to hide from life, to keep ourselves supposedly safe, it is contact with others, those you respect, fear and admire, love and want to chat with over a cup of coffee, who give meaning to life.

So, if the opportunity comes along, through the post, a few years later, to marry them at a moments notice, why the hell not?

Beholden to reality?

There are a number of views out there. And opinions. And alleged facts. Whether the truth is out there, depends, sometimes, on whether Papa Smurf really was a pervert or just a kindly elder, looking after the best interests of the blue tribe.
Working in an environment, in which objectivity and fact-checking are a vital part of the job and its outcome, can make my stomach ache.
As a junior, I don't have much say, and can only make sure that my own material is set against a certain standard. This standard consists of a mixed bag of lost and found objects, experience, instinct, google and, I suppose, a degree of my own humanity, morality and intelligence.
What we do here, influences people's lives. In small ways and in big, important ways. The written word has a power, to inflict magic, fantasy, perception, wishes, rhetoric, slander, reputation, humour, sadness, thought, insight, hate, love .... and law cases.
Words, letters, sentences, paragraphs, they form a bed-rock of communication such as we are faced with in a global society - so what we write, and send out there, make public, should be carefully scrutinised...and perhaps check again, and again and one last time - be it by men in blue suits and white caps or a simple, straight-forward double-check.
Perhaps, for some, the world would be better of if they wrote fiction instead of pretending they know, and horror of horrors, understand, the "truth".
Dealing in matters of truth is a risky business at the best of times. Truth, if there is such a thing, should probably best be debated and thought about in a quiet room, with plenty of time, good food and perhaps a good bottle of the finest single malt.
The moment truth begins to be tossed around like a limp, slimy green salad in a news-room, I think it's time to pack my precious feta and get the hell out of there. Although it is news we are after, there are so many sides to a story, and if decisions of truth are made before these sides have been checked, who gives us the right to stand there, and call ourselves objectives messengers of news?
Far be it from me to determine or judge, what exactly the truth is.
I guess, the lawyers and courts will have the final say in this particular instance.Pass the wine.