Notes of Creativity, of Happiness and Sadness.

The following are a collection of notes gathered on my phone since the start of 2024 (grammatically tidied up a bit). Words are so often my comfort and I keep a journal now which has been an interesting experiment.

Those thoughts (in abysmal handwriting) will stay with me, but notes on a phone are in essence the beginning of essays that have gone unwritten, that may continue to be no more than a line followed by blank pages, so these feel safe.

I don’t know why I’m sharing these and you might think this is a lot of shite but here they are anyway.

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Imagine eyes operating at shutter speed with internal aspect ratios, frames, f-stops and apertures that could instantaneously be downloaded onto film and discs; that thoughts and near full stories composed in brains can be dictated and saved for eternity instead of being lost; the version that returns forever incomplete.

I’m going to try and takes notes of these, let’s see how this goes. If anything I might stumble across something.

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I stare intently as fizzy borders of black and malted cream flatten into a still horizon. The sound of D:Ream’s 1993 hit, “Things Can Only Get Better”, repurposed a few years later to become the anthem of a perceived new political hope of Tony Blair’s Labour is bouncing across the wooden bar.

For some, including me, the fingers and toes are tapping involuntarily, for others the fifth tequila of the night has led to a more gregarious outpouring of rhythm. It is indisputably a bop, but as I looked down at the back cover of the pages to the book I had just read, dispatches from the balcony of an apartment in Gaza, written in unapologetically gruesome detail, it was hard not to survey the scene and think about the incongrousus nature of it all.

My heart feels heavy.

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What the fuck am I doing here!?

It’s too much. It’s not fun anymore. Something has to change.

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I don’t think I’ve moved for an hour.

The dopamine rush hits fast and hard but the aftermath can come crashing down even faster. Life has become an endless pursuit towards feeling alive because without that chase what is there to return to? I feel more alive stuck in a motorway than I do behind the desk, staring at walls that have seen my most treacherous of breakdowns. I should probably move, but to where and why?

It’s not running away. I just need to keep moving.

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“Do you want a hug?”

I do. My body’s screaming. Every last breathe has gone into this. All I have and more exhausted, words that have become increasingly difficult to articulate drifting further away.

I say “Nah, it’s OK.”

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Sadness is debilitating. It can create a vacuum but it can also create chaos.

Hours, days, weeks lost. Sparks twinkle and then fizzle out but then they can also whizz, BANG and whirr, all of a sudden there’s nowhere to expel the energy. You want to reach out but you don’t know where, one mistake and the dynamics can change; have changed, perhaps forever. So do nothing, at least that way the vacuum remains.

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What makes you happy.

1. The glint in the eye of somebody who has finally solved a problem they had long written off as impossible to resolve.
2. Those big celebrations, the one’s where the collective joy is uniting and unequivocal, where happiness radiates relentlessly across time and space. Nobody in those moments has a negative thought in their brain.
3. The smile of a friend, it hits sweeter when they think it’s gone unseen.
4. The sweep of strings as the strobe dances to an electronic beat.
5. Just when something tastes, really, really good.
6. When a stranger becomes a friend.
7. When a stranger stays a stranger but you’ll always think back to that random night where you seemed destined to be besties forever.
8. When spontaneous joy unfolds across an unexpected scene.
9. When somebody succeeds despite it all.
10. When nobody has to feel sadness or pain. When you’d choose to fill your lungs with the world’s sadness because one person carrying the burden is better than an entire world.

That last one isn’t real.

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Being creative and freelance feels a strange juxtaposition.

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A person’s story, is their story, it’s not yours to retell in your own way. You can ask questions, you can challenge and help them discover but at the end of the day it’s their story and how you tell it will impact their lives way more than it will yours.

Don’t be afraid to leave a little piece of you on the table, it’s the least you can do.

Be honest. Be compassionate. Be empathetic. Don’t assume (no matter how many times human nature will lead you to). Talk to good people but listen to them even more. Be open to saying “I was wrong/you’re right” and actually say it.

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You got a reference? Show me a reference. We need a reference. How can original thought be nurtured when everything new has to begin with a reference? But how can original thought be explained without the reference to show what it means.

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Just noticed I’ve been sleeping properly for the first time in years. That’s interesting.

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The list of everything is long, but the list of nothing feels even longer. Where do you even begin? You know you’ll regret it but it will only ever be your regret so there’s no real need to make a decision, not yet.

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[The most recent entry]. Things that have made you happy/inspired, part two, like media stuff and that:

1. The Home Game.
2. Reminding You Why You Love Football.
3. Aitana — Los Angeles.
4. The History of the Sports Report.
5. When Glory dropped.
6. What Nutmeg drops. Always.
7. Getting one over that fucking owl!
8. That Russell Martin interview.
9. Rebecca McAllister Finding Happiness.
10. The good cunts starting to make waves. And in particular that one very long discussion about how much the use of the word cunt is misunderstood by people not from Scotland.
11. I Dream in Photos.
12. The silly little interactions that only exist between two people that nobody else knows. We all have them and they are usually class.
13. Valtos and Friends. My soul needed that.

That’s a wrap let’s see what the next check in brings.