trying harder

It was like I’d suddenly announced a newly sprouted penis, such was my brother’s whooping theatrical incredulity at the news. On revealing the pregnancy to him and his wife at our childhood home, they seemed shocked and surprised and pleased. Their children, aged 11 and 8 and also in the near vicinity, understandably seemed more indifferent.  “Weird” was the verdict of my niece.

I sensed that although my brother and his wife had never probed and would never concede it, they had more or less assumed this was off the agenda for us. It would not happen. Perhaps it was wonder enough that I found someone with whom to share my life after so many barren years in my 20s, a period when they appeared to smirkingly speculate about my sexuality from time to time.

And now we appeared to have our modest lifestyle sorted: our dog, nice enough house and our relatively low income. It was clear I was not earning much money. My other half was doing ok in her steady job though and we were getting by. Surely we would not upset that with a new human being. That would be silly.

But this pregnancy news presents a whole other dimension.

Later on, after the initial shock had subsided, a mile or so into a long walk with the dogs and kids, my brother said, “well if you sat down with a spreadsheet it wouldn’t work, but…”  While this was eventually followed by a more positive spin and ways it could work out with the help of our parents, those words stuck with me. They rang around my head for days because I knew they held a cold bleak truth.

I still scrap by month to month, sniffing out the next few hundred quid, and the next few hundred quid. I work hard but continue to exist with horrible insecurity. My mental landscape is defined by my bank balance, how achievable the next bankable few hundred quid will be, when it will arrive in my account, how much I will have to politely chase for it, what the next job will be.

How sustainable is that when your wife has to go on an all too brief maternity leave, when you are looked upon to provide more, to ‘man up’, to try harder? It is not all that sustainable, admirable, manly or generally good.

Waves of sickening nausea are not currently hers alone. Profound worry now skewers me regularly, deep in the pit of my stomach. Guilt for my slightly indulgent lifestyle which I often feel when closing a book and finishing a coffee at lunchtime. Are you working hard enough? What more could you be doing? Are you just in essence a massively idle prick? Sometimes I voice this and am severely rebuked by my wife. ‘This is not helpful to you or me.’ Of course she is right, but it’s a program I have difficulty overwriting.

There was a meltdown of sorts while walking the dog alone a couple of days after telling my brother, back home. Leaning against a gate at a favourite spot, watching the sun set over the rolling green hills the bigness of it all came crashing in, the life-changingness, the responsibility, the finances, the money, the insufficient funds, the emasculating inadequacy, the potential being who will ultimately hate me for their boring empty scrimping frugal childhood. Panic and despair and frustration and stupidity and an almost out-of-body sensation. My red face and tears confused the dog. That was weird.

Should I look for other work and another reliable income stream? Easier said than done perhaps, but I suppose I should try. How I despise the idea of a boss, authority, judgement, tediously mind-numbing work. How will we manage with the dog? She could go and stay with my parents and their dog and that would be fine. I would hate it though. I would painfully miss the creature, the only thing that reliably makes me smile most days. And I would trade it for probable misery and money? Would I? Please no, don’t let it come to that.

Plenty of people do this though. They take on more work when faced with greater responsibility, arguably the ultimate domestic responsibility. They unthinkingly make sacrifices because they would do anything for their kids. I am no different and should accept it, buckle up.

Adaptability is something I have traditionally considered myself good at.  I have moved a few times across a central belt of Britain, had a number of very different jobs, experienced no small amount of change. A few years ago now, for around eighteen months I wrenched myself into a recruitment consultancy largely populated by idiots. It was awful but it was regular reasonable money.

This impending phase of work appears the most formidable: a biblical swell of digits which I will heroically surf upon or drown beneath or thrash through.  I cling with dumb hope to ideas: being miraculously saved by a huge job, a new professional relationship bearing spectacular fruit, an old one coming back around, offering something solid and dependable, some random opportunity. Wishful thinking.

there’s this guy

There’s this guy who I hate mainly out of pure envy.  And yet I also sort of want to be him. Or be best friends with. Because we’re around the same age, share a fair amount in common – regular blokey things: football, music – and I think in an alternative universe we could be friends.

The thing is, he is SO ‘in’, with the innest of in crowds in a city where it richly pays to be ‘in’. And he’s super ‘In’. A checkered, skinny-jeaned hipster, a pretty cool and stylish mod, quite dashing. It appears like he spent most of his career with one PR agency employer, steadily growing with them from a smallish size and rising up the ranks to a senior title. They are now a big name in the city’s business world, a leader in their space, arguably The Leader. This must have given him access to plenty of influential people, a great network of contacts. I don’t doubt that he’s good at his job; bashfully, floppy hairedly charming, maybe a bit cocky and a bit of a lad, but loveable.

Perhaps. I don’t really know all this. I’ve gleaned much of this intelligence through the internet and just seeing him around at stuff. We did meet once in person, a fairly quick exchange when I was representing a client and he didn’t follow through on his professional promise, but I didn’t much care. He probably wouldn’t even remember. He was confident and likeable enough, taller than expected, and imposing, but charmingly smiley. I’d bet he’s sent many young female PR executives knees nervously quivering over the years. Previously I was aware of him at a business function, flirting with people he knew at the fringes, not genuinely minded to mingle with strangers, as the majority never seem to be. And I’ve seen him once or twice at gigs or in a bar. A girl I had seen him with once, when I was single, was predictably really attractive.

I’ve often wondered if we’d have a great time getting drunk together having really open conversations and end up being mates, or if we’d just think each other dickheads.

In recent years he appears to have bravely put himself out there a bit more in his own right. He has written a novel, distributed by a local publisher, for which he’s done a fair amount of self promotion. I’m not sure how well it sold or was received, but he’s now writing another one, so it can’t have been a disastrous experience. He’s a very well respected PR name locally. The world is his oyster.

Recently my attention has been piqued because he does cool things online too; stuff to do with writing and food and stuff. I look at it and instinctively hate it.

But I tell myself to stop, grow up, and ask what is it exactly that I’m hating.

Is it his popularity and apparent success? His recognition and huge social media followings? (It still eats me that although I’ve been a fairly early adopter of all platforms and my commitment to them has never wained, I fail to have any large followings. This is mainly – I tell myself – because I won’t unthinkingly follow back the first few thousand people to follow me.)

Is it that deep down part of me thinks that he has what I deserve? If I had a little more career luck, shown more loyalty to an employer in my mid 20s, more patience, more diplomacy, been just slightly better looking.

Is it that nothing I’ve seen makes me think he is markedly better than me? (I read the opening and closing pages of his loosely autobiographical debut novel and was largely nonplussed. But then, I didn’t want to like it, so my perception was far from being warm and willing).

Is it that he is very of this place, a local guy people will identify with and want to like, a local hero? While I’ve lived here for the majority of my adult life, I could not and would not ever want to be considered a native.

Is it that so many people seem to fawn over him? There’s an extremely try-hard, busy young guy, around 25, desperate for career success, quite boring: he flaps around him like a moth round a lamp. It’s adorable and disgusting.

But then, despite myself, I can sort of see why. I want to be his friend too.

No I don’t. I bet he’s a dick. Is he a dick? He’s a dick. Yes, let’s think that.

fall to the flaw

I was really disappointed, mostly at myself.  And then it grew, that disappointment, into disgust.  I was disgusted with myself.  The inexplicable pride (when I have not much to be proud of), the inability to tolerate tossers, to keep my mouth shut (or email fingers still, to disconnect them from a fizzing brain).

Then I would briefly reconcile myself.  Onwards. There are other options.  His email reply proved what perhaps I was subconsciously testing, or asking: are you a ridiculous alpha male psychopath with a colossal ego, cracking the whip at me slightly harder than you might otherwise because you feel somehow threatened by me?

In my message I had suggested that there are perhaps limits to how demanding you can be of people working really hard for you, putting in time and effort and miles, for free.  That was the crux of what I said – a message I had been stewing over for days, not an impulsive one.  It didn’t go down well.  His eventual email response was insulting and sweary and ranting: like a man not used to being questioned.  “Who are you to question me?”  I am nobody at all to question him, a much less successful and mostly inadequate sort of person, yes.  I do not travel around the world and work with A-List celebrities, I have nothing like his experience.  But I will always have opinions and say what I feel, mostly. That’s not to say that I will be rude or insulting or sweary, but I will say what I think, sometimes to my own detriment.  It’s aligned to the excessive, uncontrollable honesty I often wrangled with when dating.  Like an all-powerful truth serum I cannot deny, inconveniently bubbling away at all times.

Several days later came that reply, upon his return to London, sent late on Sunday night, which I opened and read when sitting on the toilet on Monday morning.  Around the middle of the long, sweary and at times insulting rant he terminated our agreement, stopped dead something I was largely enjoying doing, occasionally loving doing.  While I knew it was possible when I sent the email, still I was stunned, disappointed, gutted, but being at my parents’ home and about to go out for a walk with my mother and girlfriend and dog, I tried and failed to contain it.  Receiving an email like that is not nice.

It was the sniping, needling messages I felt he was enjoying, the mild belittling and patronising.  I could see the avenue opening up towards bullying and it repelled me; I wasn’t going down  there for anyone or anything.  He wasn’t managing me; he was cracking his alpha geezer whip – you need to up your game, you’re getting there (slowly).  I could have parried that others less scrutinised could be criticised for the same things, I could have challenged more.  He was successful, big time, untouchable: our leader.

It was similar to my last big professional relationship fall-out, a man of similar testosterone and large ego.  I was dependent upon him for most of my revenue, rather than my dream pursuit.  But again, ultimately, I brought it to a head, that time face to face, professionally and with requisite composure.  Still, we never worked together again.

Why can I not accept such people when it’s the smartest thing to do in terms of self-preservation and self-interest?  Why am I so sensitive, so proud?  Why must I value basic manners and courtesy so highly?  Look where it’s got me.  (Not very far). You always need people to back you; a conclusion drawn and repeated many times on these pages.  Yet one I struggle to apply.

Still.  There are other options.  Move on.  He was just one guy who might have been important; was important briefly.  Remember that first long phone call taken when sitting in the passenger seat next to your girlfriend on that long journey, when it felt like finally, at last, someone with some kind of heft and influence had recognised you; the relief, the wash of hope that now things were possible…

Still.  There are others.  Aren’t there?

Shit. What in hell did YOU DO THAT FOR?!

No. Enough. There are other more pressing issues of making money, perhaps finding a job, those permanent concerns that seem to never go away.  It’s there you should be applying your efforts.  Those are the things which might financially and psychologically free you from this paranoid purgatory of not knowing what the hell you are doing with your life, although perhaps only to present a new kind of prison.

It keeps flashing back, the opportunity you effectively pissed down the drain in an email at the end of a long day, questioning somebody unquestionable.  Your girlfriend’s worried look when you said you’d sent it; maybe you shouldn’t have done that.  There was a possibility he’d tell you to fuck off now.  You knew that, and he did.  What did you do that for?

Now you’re disappointed again, mostly at yourself.  You loved doing that.  Eurgh, you idiot! And so the cycle starts again.

sorry sperm

It’s late afternoon. I’m bored, restless and a little sad, walking aimlessly through an old neighbourhood, weaving around sprightly cheerful old people walking towards me.

I reach a place I don’t ever remember seeing before: a clearing beyond some suburban housing, a copse of trees which reaches high and majestic into the sky.  Behind them a more developed forest, the beginning of something. Leaves lie thick, deep and moist on the ground, like it must be autumn. I run up a small incline, mildly wary that this might be a hideout for local gangs or bored kids. None are here and there’s no evidence of them, no litter or debris.

There’s rustling though. In the half-light I see, is it a hare? It seems very large. I can’t figure out if it’s stalking or being stalked, until I catch a glimpse of an even bigger hare. This seems ridiculous, something out of Alice In Wonderland. I don’t believe myself and walk on, arcing back around towards suburbia, marvelling at the shapes in the high treetops.

The leaves and ground underfoot here is boggier than I recall. Turning over my left shoulder I see two figures, a man and a woman, children on their shoulders, all wearing some kind of protective boiler suits. Have they been bog snorkelling? Sounds and looks fun. The children laugh.

I follow them inside their perfect house – light blue walls, red door – and look around the place.  It’s unruly but somehow ordered. I befriend the boy and scare the mother. I tell him not to speak or play with me here, I could be anyone, and go back downstairs to his mum. I’m not sure where his father is. I leave the house and wake up.

*

Lately in waking life I have been thinking more about children, the idea of having them, being 33 in the next month or so, and of never having them. My best friend and his wife are pregnant with twins.  They will soon be moving into a new house in a commuter-belt town.  Added to this, I really enjoy the time I spend with my nephew and niece, 6 and 3.  Their lack of any real care or stress about anything is infectious and freeing and I begin to miss it when I haven’t seen them for a couple of months.

I’ve thought about it and discussed it here before.  But perhaps it was my best friend’s news – delivered in a stunned tone on a telephone call shortly after the first scan (twins!)) – and pondering it more since.  That has made me think again. Everyone is growing up, getting married, buying houses, having babies, getting dogs, seemingly growing reconciled to their careers. That’s what Facebook says anyway.

At almost 33 I am more nervous about paying my rent each month than I ever have been; more uncertain about a career path or lack of one as I have ever been. Freelance work is slow at the moment, all regular jobs look unrealistic, unobtainable, over 4 years out of a regular full-time workplace. I feel unemployable. I am worried.

Unlike my girlfriend – who is incredibly supportive – I am not hung up about the whole marriage thing, but do regularly hanker for a dog, holiday, travel, a nice house, a solid supply of good quality wine; and occasionally (often privately) think of children.

Having children is like experiencing a tremendous thunderbolt of love. I see that. I get that. You want to provide them with the best of everything and give all you can.

While I am indefinitely nervous about paying my rent every month, ‘big progress’ of the kind gently encouraged by parents, doing ‘life things’ on any level, it all seems impossible or hamstrung at best.

Everybody lives life differently, yes. It’s unhealthy to compare yourself with others (though equally impossible not to), yes.

And yet all this stuff can’t help but add up to feeling at least a little inadequate, at least a little failed.  Sorry sperm.

competitive nature

Mum wasn’t home during the week when I called, so I spoke to Dad for a little longer than normal.  I told him how my lower back had spasmed, like it now does every 15 months or so, causing acute pain.  In a style more regularly adopted by Mum, he took this as a cue to talk about his back problems – which he does nothing to help by continuing to run what to me seem like still pretty long distances for a guy in his mid-sixties.

A neighbour who is also a doctor not long ago stopped him in the road and severely reprimanded him for his selfishness, how it will impose on my Mum in the long term, how he basically does not look healthy and upright when he runs.  He looks ill.  She didn’t even know him or us very well, but it was all true.  It was a wake-up call he accepted he needed, but still he runs – now just slightly shorter distances.  No more half marathons.

He has to weigh it up against his mental health, he says.  Because not being able to run would affect that.  A recent convert of cognitive behavioural therapy, he had a few sessions and now believes himself cured of irrationally intense mood-swings, more able to handle his depression – for which he has taken medication for many years.  Therefore he runs for his mental health, and because he enjoys the company and camaraderie of his running clubs.  And to hell with his slowly crumbling spine.

I didn’t speak much of my own acute pain and how I’m a little hacked off to know I’ll probably have to suffer it for several weeks a year, and I’m half a lifetime younger than him.  He didn’t seem all that interested.  But he never seems all that interested in me, which still hurts a little.

Later on in the week my girlfriend changed her profile picture on her Facebook account.  My Dad was quick to click a Like.  This irked me because my Dad never ‘Likes’ anything I do on Facebook, and I do a lot on Facebook – mostly to promote a business interest.  While I realise it’s a relatively banal thing to be annoyed about, the irritation hung about and I began unpacking and possibly over-thinking it.

Dad had a terrible relationship with his father.  His old man was a bit of a depressive lunatic so he left home as soon as possible, aged 15.  An only child, my Dad is not a natural with kids – although my brother, who has a couple, says he is improving.

Growing up, my older brother had what appeared to be in-built self-belief.  He knew he was great and smarter than the rest of the kids and would succeed.  My parents’ only other kid, a couple of years younger, I didn’t.  I never felt encouraged, particularly by my Dad – which I think is a key job of a dad, I never had much belief.

Seeing my Dad like my girlfriend’s photo, knowing he encourages and supports other people in his running club, remembering his utter disinterest about my back pain, I think: what about me, Dad?

Maybe it comes down to his early conditioning that the father-son relationship is built on one-upmanship and competition.  But I don’t want to compete with him. I’m not great at competition.  I want him to be on my side, dammit.  He’s my Dad.  I want us to be mates.  I want him to back me, recognise me, endorse me, be proud of me, or at the very least pay some genuine fucking interest.  Not fall into the introspective world of self-interest which marks many a depressive.  I know he doesn’t live exclusively in that place because he’s more than happy to support others.

Would I ever talk to him about it?  My girlfriend asked this when I expressed this frustration.  I don’t know if there would be any point.  Is he really able to change?  It’s probably an unconscious thing.  Maybe he does envy me in a quite basic way – although fuck knows what I really have to envy.  Would it more likely cause upset and unrest at this stage of life, when it’s something that, perhaps at 32, I should just accept?

men and motors

“Oh no! We dunt ave one a them!” the neighbour yelled over to Dad’s request for a special tool.

We needed it to try and fix a worrying new problem which Dad had uncovered on my car.

Rather than simply kick tyres and suggest more air, he insisted on checking under the bonnet and taking each wheel off in turn, almost as if desperate to find something to tut at, which would justify the thorough investigation and his superior engineering knowledge.  Not that this was even arguable.  Of course he knew more.  But if he was this bothered, he could’ve got off his arse and helped me find a better motor, rather than literally picking holes in the one I’d plumped for, which up to then I’d believed was reasonable enough.

Don’t be an idiot and inflate this, there’s no banal father-son power struggle here.  He’s just trying to help you out.

“Let’s ave a look though,” the neighbour said and hitched his short frame up and over the garden fence, planting one food unsteadily on a pile of logs our side.  The dumpy fellow cantered over the grass and sank down onto his knees for a closer look under the vehicle.

I stood behind them, bewitched by the three tones of this man’s hair.  Dark brown, grey, then blonde tinted highlights.  Hrmm, I nodded at whatever it was they were talking about.

A couple more passing villagers arrived to breathe through their teeth at my dodgy wheelnuts, a parochial version of the A-Team.  Except nobody had a welding kit, chainsaw or brutal sense of purpose.   Instead, men more wisened than me in the ways of cars inspected wheelnut threads, grimaced and shook their heads.

All agreed that this was indeed rare, someone in a garage somewhere had at some point forced it back in: a consensus that was neither reassuring or helpful.

It really did appear to be fucked then, would be a serious operation, would cost me lots of money and could leave me stranded in the village for a few days.  To be grateful for fatherly mechanical fastidiousness which may have saved lives, or to be bleakly sulky that he’d cost me as yet untold expense?

Despite the grave faces, all wasn’t lost.  Dad loves a mission and set off for a seemingly random walk around the village to houses of likely candidates who might own said obscure tool which may solve our problem.

An elderly gentleman came to the rescue.  The unexpected source had leaned out of his car window to say hello while Dad was in conversation with another neighbour.  Yes, he had one, he’d drop it by in half hour or so.

This man was a gem, a sharp-minded old gent with whom I’d enjoyed a couple of fascinating discussions at the local pub – always memorable, fascinating discussions at the local pub.  They’re not common.  Now I had new reason to love him.

More peering over men’s shoulders, nodding sagely and feeling impotent was on the cards, but for now at least, significant expenditure was postponed.