Here’s a little about ME for a change…

This time last year I claimed to be tying up loose ends. I had spent New Year in London with various friends and a germ of the idea to relocate here was definitely taking root somewhere in my subconscious. Twelve months later, here I am. I’ve completed the Journalism course I was so excited about at the beginning of 2009 and I’ve taken decisions I never thought I’d actually dare to take. Even selling my car seemed a laughable suggestion nine months ago.

The Peppermint Skip

I remember arguing the case for selling the peppermint skip, with an eco-aware friend of my brothers, after watching The Age of Stupid back in March. I swore to her that if I ever lived in London I would sell the car. She seemed unconvinced and despite my apparent resolve on the matter I, in fact, secretly doubted my own rant. I was sure the prospect of selling the car would either eventually inform my decision to stay in Cambridge, or I’d end up taking her with me.

I loved the skip so much I had mentally pencilled her into the life stories of every forthcoming generation of my family. That car was going to witness the conception and birth of the unfortunate sole that would have no choice in later inheriting it. And, as if that wasn’t beautiful enough, the same was planned for every generation after that, until the inevitable outlawing of the internal combustion engine. At which point she would become a family relic, preserved eternally, probably as some kitch seating solution in the cinema at Gannagé-Stewart Towers, to remind my descendents of my unwavering dedication to a lurid green mark three Golf Cabriolet.

So what changed? Frankly, I have no idea. I can’t pin-point the change. I don’t know when I realised that despite trying to tie up loose ends I was still lugging a heap of material baggage with me, pointless stuff that did nothing more than represent a moment in my past. I bought the car the first time Car Crash broke up with me. I never expected we’d get back together, I wouldn’t have taken him back after he’d pulled that shit, or that’s what I thought. I was 24 and still travelling light as far as emotional baggage went. I had pride and ambition. So there’s no telling why I bimbled off and bought a convertible like some sad old fucker called Nigel in the midst of a nervous breakdown. That is, however, what I did. Only to take Car Crash back not just that once, but several, ego-crushing times over the following two years. Obviously if I could advise that Nigel-like Hannah now, I’d bollock her for the quarter-life crisis and encourage her to pursue journalism straight away. That way maybe I wouldn’t be regurgitating the tragedy of my mid-twenties from a far more successful friends sofa-bed, just weeks from turning 27.

So, the cars gone, along with most of my other trinkets and keepsakes that did nothing but remind me of a bygone era. I’m left with almost just me, a bare bones version of myself on which I could potentially project any one of a million possible identities. There are two problems, the first is that personal reinvention seems to be far harder the older you get. The second is that I keep stumbling over the realisation that I don’t really want to reinvent myself at all. I just want to drop all the bullshit and remind myself why I quite like being the self-deprecating, while still irritatingly self-righteous, over ambitious yet terminally inactive, tirade of lyrical neurosis that I am. There was a time, brief though it proved to be, when I blithely accepted all my flaws and even embraced them so that they slowly diminished into charming eccentricities rather than debilitating conditions.

If the world operated the way I believe I am designed to, the word bullshit (one of my favourites so I’d be quite sad about this) would no longer need be used. We would all drop the mind games, formalities and ceremony of every tedious human exchange and just be a little more fucking Tourettes about it all. That’s just me though, it is another example of my selfish nature, it would just make it all a bit easier for me. Because I’m not a player, I’m not especially interested in the game. I know some of you get a kick out of it but I just get stressed out, kinda tired and pathetic and then withdraw into a room with a bottle of wine and write shit like this. I’m much happier with all my thoughts just out in the ether were people can pick through them and decide what they like without me having to put a lot of effort in.

That’s why, a couple of weeks before Christmas when I decided I was going to stop speaking to my Dad for a while to preserve the remainder of my sanity, I walked into work physically displaying the weight of that decision in every facet of my being. The regulars caught on straight away that something was wrong. I am, believe it or not, typically the most buoyant and jovial face behind that bar. On this day though I was projecting the blackest of auras that I could muster, quite deliberately. I didn’t really want anyone to know why, I just decided they should know not to cross me, not to invite me into their games, because I wasn’t playing. It’s lucky I’ve cheered up since because a particularly trying patron of some 15 years, who has to be tolerated despite his irritating disposition, has taken to referring to that day approximately every 10 minutes ever since.

The truth is in 2010 I haven’t made any resolutions because I don’t want to resolve to change this year. I don’t want to augment who I am on the basis of badly researched predictions of what society may like me more for. Neither am I sticking two fingers up at the rest of society for wanting to do that if they want to. I’m just sitting out the game, like I sat out dance classes when I was 5, and, mortifyingly, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, when I was far old enough not to be freaked out by the hangman’s noose scene. That’s not such a great example really. The point is; for the first year in a long, long time I’m definitely not de-toxing through January, giving up smoking, drugs or alcohol, in fact I’m taking drugs back up, or inventing a load of personality traits that I’d prefer to the ones I already have. Neither am I disputing that anything is possible and liable to change – particularly as being recklessly fickle is another of my more wonderful traits. Oh and any family that are reading this, if any of you still do, I still love you, I just can’t stand to be around you and they’re just little, harmless drugs, nothing to worry about. (I forgot to mention that the dropping of bullshit applies to my blog, but I guess that’s obvious now. Shit, that sounded a little like a resolution!)