CURMUDGEON TRANSFORMATION COMPLETION

You might think that getting “out and about” a bit more often would stimulate the braincells a little more and provide a bit more in the way of imagination than sitting all alone in a room might once have done, but no, not really. Instead I find myself feeling more weary and brain-mashed than I have in a very long time and find that my thoughts just can’t be formed into anything other than how weary I’m feeling and how soon I can stagger up to my bed and get some sleep.

Perhaps it’s because of the commuting, because the physical act of merely driving around in morning and evening traffic can be so very wearing on the soul, and the mind and the body, not to mention the hopes of the travelling human being. Oh, yes, I said I wasn’t going to mention them, didn’t I? It just goes to show how tiring it can be. I had forgotten, to be honest, how wearying the sheer act of driving a car can sometimes be, especially when you’ve just got out of the habit of doing it for any length of time every day. All that pedal pushing and wheel turning can be like doing a tiny little daily workout.

Now I know all you healthy types out there, with your gym memberships and personal training plans and marathon medals and ten mile hikes and swimming club galas and cycling journeys would pooh-pooh any suggestion that something so sedentary as driving a car could even remotely qualify as exercise, but it leaves me drained both emotionally and physically these days.

I must be getting old.

Or, perhaps my brain’s stopped working because of other factors, maybe something like being in a room with other human beings perhaps drains and saps the psyche simply because I am prevented from having those quiet moments to myself in which I can think and conjure up new topics to drone on about in my own, particularly uncreative way.

It’s not the people themselves, of course. In fact I’m very happy to have them around me for a change. It’s just the tiny unavoidable fact that the day is now full of so many more distractions and so that occasional five-minute moment as you have nothing much else to ponder upon other than the boiling of the kettle, when an idea might just leap into form and substance and maybe even coalesce into something tangible, just doesn’t happen when there’s genuine actual conversation to be had, considerations of others feelings and needs to be thought about, and the prospect of who exactly should make the next cup of coffee needs addressing.

There are other things, too. Perhaps the problems you happen to be having with a particular piece of software or design need to be discussed, or someone just wants to pass the time of day with you as the kettle boils, or darker, more sinister notions of the wars over the contents of the fridge, and just whose milk belongs to whom need to be trickily negotiated. Certainly things just seem to get in the way of good, old-fashioned creative thought. I even find the creative flow of the work I’m doing seems somehow more difficult when the flights of fancy can be immediately considered, as if the ideas become doomed simply by the repetition within the earshot of others.

Suddenly they just sound silly and lifeless and unoriginal. The confidence, a thing I’ve never had in huge quantities anyway, crumbles to nothing in the presence of other minds. Instead of being allowed to soar and fly and transform into something rather wonderful, my pathetic little notions of what might have been a “good” idea just die on the vine as I hesitantly stumble them out and almost immediately regret the utterance.

I did, of course, think that maybe those quiet moments alone in the car might just lead to new and exciting stimuli, with all sorts of exciting things to see and remark upon, but the sad truth is that the average journey to work in the gathering gloom of autumn provides little to make my heart leap with joy and inspiration, and certainly nothing worthy of much further comment.

Today my chief concern was as to why the council bin collection operatives are sent out to do their vital work during the rush hour, so that their massive vehicles are almost guaranteed to block the entire road for minutes at a time and cause precisely the kinds of hold-ups and delays that they simply would not do an hour later. There will, of course, be very good reasons for it, ones that could never even be dreamt of by the ragged motorists as he sits in the inevitable queue and rages against the world.

But dark mutterings about the mysteries of bin collection practices are not such things as dreams are made of, and my spirits grow ever dimmer as I realise that this is what I have been reduced to. I start to doubt that I shall ever have an exciting thought ever again but instead will simply drift into the grumpy old life of the seasoned curmudgeon, railing against the injustice and unfairness of it all and powerless to change one bit of it in the face of massive indifference to my plight.

Some might say I’m already there.