I remarked to my wife that the realisation that I am 45 is quietly blowing my mind much more than turning 40 did. I am in a much happier place than five years ago, but back then despite my protests I still felt like I was young. I certainly don't feel old now, but it's harder to convince myself that I'm not. 45. It's fucking ancient and unbelievable and I am on the rapid slide down to 50.
And I am taking stock a little bit of my life and my priorities and the choices I've made. I have lucked out in so many ways in my life, largely in spite of myself, but like Dobbin in Vanity Fair I get to a point where I am wondering if the prize I had set my eyes on (professionally speaking in my case) was worth the winning. In many ways I am fortunate that I have failed to achieve what I would have hoped for, because the position I find myself in through luck rather than judgement is probably personally speaking much more preferable. But fuck, I'm 45. How did that happen?
And I am wondering if I am losing the drive and ambition that got me this far. My sitcom script progresses slowly as I distract myself with other ridiculous things (
Frame 17 of Me1 vs Me2 snooker was recorded today) and maybe this is the usual lull before the storm and maybe the inertia will lead to inspiration and application. But I feel a little bit in limbo as I struggle to work out what is actually important to me.
I suspect this self-analysis will get more intense as I move towards the 10th anniversary of this blog (now less than two months away). A decade of my life ticked off in daily increments. It's bound to make you think a little bit. Even if a lot of the thoughts are positive that's still ten years of my life. And certainly the blog has had many, many positive consequences for me and entertained a few hundred people I still can't work out if it's a monument to persistence or stupidity. It's probably both. Have I wasted all of our time? Would we have wasted it in any case?
When I got to a whole year of having written an entry for every single day I had an idle fancy that perhaps it might be remarked upon, that maybe a journalist would comment on this incredible achievement. And of course that makes me laugh now, because around about 3600 consecutive entries have been written and still it's more or less a secret. I know that it means something to a loyal band of people and now I am 45 I can see that that is actually a better thing (for me at least) and that mainly this is something that I've been doing for myself anyway. But wow, it's a whole lot of guff, ain't it?
I can't give up now - not so close to the actually meaningless milestone of 10 years - and I bet I won't give up after either. But if you ever stop to take stock of your life it's pretty hard not to conclude that you've made a lot of dumb choices and attached importance to things that aren't important whilst ignoring the things that might be.
I've been making jokes about poo and willies for over 40 years now. It would be as tragic to stop as it would to carry on. I don't know what I am trying to say here. I know some of you will read this as me being miserable or pessimistic or defeated - I am none of those things. Mainly the opposite in fact. I might actually have the most successfully stupid life of any man that has ever lived. And a monument to relentless stupidity is maybe the coolest thing (or at least the most human thing) to produce.
But I spent all afternoon either reading out entries for the audio version of this blog or playing myself at snooker, fastidiously avoiding the work that I actually get paid for. This blog was originally supposed to help me get over writer's block and stop procrastinating, but it's actually just a way for me to avoid working. Or tricking myself into doing different work I suppose.
I still think whatever the case that much of the stuff I am doing somehow combines to be brilliant and terrible at the same time. I can't tell you how much I am enjoying inhabiting the various aspects of myself in the snooker podcast and still contend that it is the purest and best thing that I have done in comedy terms and maybe the most worthwhile- though it must fail to succeed, or at least would fail if it succeeded in making the majority of people think that. I think pretending to be mad might be the sanest thing I am doing. It's everyone outside of the Shepherd's Bush Dodecahedron who are pretending to be sane.
No sorry I got mixed up there - it's the bloke in the cellar talking to himself who is mad. Easy mistake to make.
Just 57 more of these to go and I've done ten years. I think I might stop when I've done 56. That would be the best joke of all.
But the truth is if I do this for another 10 years I might get good at it.
