My wife – who is smarter than me – suggested to me at the end of today that writing about my work might not be such a good idea, especially considering we live on a small island. It took me little more than a few seconds that she was of course absolutely right, and that I had to rethink my whole strategy for these posts. In theory, this is essentially for my own benefit: for me to have a record of my thoughts and things that have happened as well as some fairly straightforward writing practice while I chew over bigger ideas. So in theory I could just keep them all private either on my Google Drive or on this blog but hidden from anyone’s view. I could do that, but I’m possibly too hungry for some sort of pat on the back further down the line. Also, part of me probably needs this to be visible so once I start getting into double figures of consecutive days posting, the idea of other people knowing I just gave up if they stopped is something that might keep me going. Something like that. Still, given the fact that I spend about seven hours at the library each day it might be a struggle to avoid that window of time when writing a diary entry.

That these posts might need to reflect thoughts rather than events wasn’t going to be a problem, as I’d already planned on writing some words about how I felt I’d turned a corner in terms of my mental health, without really understanding how it’d happened. I’m generally very happy these days and hardly have a complaint about life at all, but the first three days of this week in particular had taken me by surprise in terms of how confident, optimistic and myself I felt. I felt noticeably more at ease with people and worried less about how each individual comment, joke action or whatever impacted those around me.

If the past tense hadn’t already alerted you to it, this did not stay the course on Thursday. I was mostly fine but maybe an afternoon spent entirely in front of a computer screen adjusting graphics and setting up 13 Facebook events against the clock had taken its toll on my psyche a little. I fell into a foul mood at home which I carried with me to the gym. I abandoned the treadmill after about six minutes because I was hating it and felt like throwing my phone, towel and sippy sports bottle up in the air. I retreated to the weights room and after some fairly calm chest and arm exercises I felt more calm. I apologised to Rae in the pool afterwards, with little explanation for how I’d acted. The rest of the evening was largely fine, but there was a bit of a cloud over me once it’d been pointed out to me that I was potentially playing with fire speaking about my work in such a public manner in such a small island with absolutely zero anonymity (what’s a guy to do? Not have his own name as the web address and multiple images of his face plastered across his website? Nahhh…)

The positive I’m taking away from this momentary lapse into a funk is that these days I have more of an anger and frustration when I feel low, rather than a hopelessness: like I’ve just stubbed my toe walking across the room, rather than waking up in the morning to discover that, Christ almighty, another toe has fallen off in the night. So as shit as it is to have an evening derailed by my brain deciding ‘fuck everything’ it’s good to have a feeling of wanting things back as they were, rather than a complete surrender to it.

Going back to my confident, relaxed ways over these last few days, I wouldn’t be surprised if it had something to do with typing this up each morning. You read everywhere that writing can be therapy, but I think it’s satisfying a need to be ‘creative’ in a straightforward way, without me sitting and thinking of plot or setups and punchlines. I’m hardly even editing or reviewing these, which feels quite liberating. In spite of the fact I’ve told myself that I’m doing one of these a day, it feels surprisingly low-pressure, and even though I’ve acquiesced to the fact that some of these days might be covered in little more than an obligatory paragraph, I’ve so far found a way to ramble on for more than 700 words each time, which is good I suppose.

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On a separate note, this sudden foray into journaling and my decision to now start at the very beginning of Elis James and John Robins’ podcast (currently on episode 6 of 222) has meant I’m finding a little less time to read at the moment, so I’ve stalled on both Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle and Akala’s Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (I generally allow myself one fiction and one non-fiction on the go at any time, but sometimes I stray beyond even that, which is a bit much). These are both titles I’ve bought for myself with cold, hard cash – the 18 library books currently sitting around the house clearly not being enough for me. Both are very good, with Akala’s in particular standing out for how easily it reads in spite of some of the heady subject matter (racism and classism, both personal and historical, and our general ignorance of it in both present and historical contexts). Beatty’s also centres a lot around race, but hasn’t grabbed me like his Man Booker winner The Sellout, which I enjoyed so much last summer that I almost feel ready to read it again.

I’d very much like to get through both of these, so I’m going to have to set some time aside over this weekend to hopefully finish them. Having said that, if these exercises in writing prompt me to get back to working on a script instead I’ll accept that too.