Awaiting A Feeling

“Where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

It’s such a frequently asked question, but one I’ve never really had an explicit answer to. Sometimes I feel as though I should, especially now I’m closer to 30 than I’d like. It doesn’t always feel good enough to say that I just want to be happy, wherever I end up and whatever I might be doing – but that is the honest truth, at the end of the day. When you strip away all the baggage there is in life, isn’t that what we all want, deep down?

Mum once asked what would make me happy. That was the moment I realised I had no fixed concept of what happiness would look like – that ultimately, it would be a feeling of warmth and security that would come from within. I’d just know. At most, all I have are a few vague impressions of what could bring that. Finding someone special is probably the most pressing one – a relationship feels like one of the few big life things I haven’t had yet. My lack of experience in that department is more and more of an elephant in the room with every passing year, although it’s not easy to make anything happen when you don’t think much of yourself or your ability to make another person happy. Career-wise, it’d be great to put my wordiness to good use as I’ve always intended, but I can’t be certain whether that’ll be as a writer or in another more unexpected way.

I suppose that’s where the fun in having no specific expectations lies, isn’t it? Enjoying the journey and not worrying quite so much about the destination. I recently saw a writing prompt that asked what the biggest challenge in the next six months would be. My answer was similar to what I’ve said here – whatever it is, I’ll keep a cool head and savour all the less testing bits. That definitely applies right now as well, and I’ll have the added excitement of never knowing when or how that wave of happiness will hit.

Mason

Four In July

As I’ve been taking these first, somewhat tentative steps into a post-uni world since returning to Somerset, I’ve heard a lot of chatter – from family and friends alike – about “getting myself out there”. Now that I have a Creative Writing degree, and ambitions to write for a living, exposure and how to get it is one of the biggest question marks I’m facing. When I think about it, there are quite a few of those, actually. They all reared their ugly heads at once as soon as I started searching for jobs, but they were personal as well as professional. What job will I end up in? When I get it, where will I live? What do I search for first – work or accommodation? What do I do in two months’ time if things haven’t worked themselves out? When will I next have friends I see regularly? Will I ever get a girlfriend?

You get the picture. There’s a lot to think about, and making myself seen as a writer is an ever-present objective. It therefore seems logical that that should start with this blog – in fact, something Mum said last week is the inspiration for this very post. If I remember correctly, they were words to the effect of “get back into blogging. You want to write, so write more regularly.” As always, she wasn’t wrong, and any visitor to Third Time Enabled will surely have noticed that it isn’t updated as regularly as it used to be. Not since January 2019 – when a global pandemic was something you only ever saw on the silver screen – have there been more than three posts in a calendar month.

Although there have been several abortive attempts at surpassing that amount since, none have been successful. As of today, however, that will change – I will aim to have published at least four by the end of July. To make that even easier, I’m already halfway there, because this is the second! What that means is that this time, there really is no excuse. As those of you who read my last post will know, I’ve been challenging myself as a writer with the book club notes I’ve been making, and this gives me one additional creative opportunity to relish. Let’s hope I can stick to it – and, for once in my life, go without contradicting something I’ve promised on this blog!

Mason

Doors Opening

Over the past three months, I’ve spent a lot of time travelling from floor to floor in a lift, and every time those gleaming steel doors slide apart, I never quite know who I’m going to find on the other side. I don’t always know where they’ve come from, where they might be going, or why. They just depart at the end of our journey and – in most cases – I never see them again. If I do, I certainly don’t recognise them. It was after a few weeks of such mystery had passed that I started to wonder if it could lend itself well to a story of some kind. I would picture myself waiting for the lift as usual, before the doors parted to reveal a sprawled corpse lying within. A lift could be good murder mystery territory, mainly because of the questions it instantly raises – especially if you’re travelling alone. Who could the culprit be? How could they commit their crime in a sealed and cramped space – and how could they do it in the mere seconds that pass between departure and arrival?

If I wanted to introduce more confusion, I could have the occupant vanish into thin air without explanation. It would be even harder for someone to do that in a lift, after all, and it would allow people to ask where they had actually gone as well as how. I love how there is the potential to do so much with so little, and I think that with the right characters and motives, the idea could work well. In any case, it was one I was eager to record here before I could forget it – so you could say that this post only consists of me thinking out loud. Then again, which one doesn’t? It could arguably have made good material for a podcast to follow my previous one, but I have swiftly concluded that my energies are much better suited to writing than to broadcasting! With that in mind, if I write something that I approve of as much as what I have already showcased here, it may well appear for you in due course…

Mason