Giving Myself Time

You know for the past five years I thought that being productive meant being out and working. Or performing or anything other than just being inside. I had this idea in my mind that it meant being busy that staying in and not doing a thing was a negetive and then today I just stopped and did some painting. My mum had said to take some time off until the new year. I'd been working non stop. Both working physicaly and mentaly trying to figure out my next move constantly not stopping to think about what I had done. There was bits of writing on paper all over my living room/ here living room, the space that I had occupied since coming back from university. Sleeping on the sofa and now the futon that had been dragged out of my sisters/ my old room. I thought that staying in was a luxury that I can't afford. As though to stay in the flat was somehting that meant that I wasn't connected to the outside world anymore and so I spent all of my time and money trying to get from place to place, trying to make the most of those wasted days. Two lines that I have repeated from a poem that I wrote called Ashtray. A poem that I recorded whilst studying smoking culture. It was something to do at a time when there was nothing to do. At the time of writing that all I had wanted to do was perform my poetry to people. Then a year or maybe even less later I was performing every night going from Leeds to Macnhester often and being invited back down to London by art collectives that wanted me to join in on their Jam nights. Life had become exciting and any moment between performing was a waiste of time or like some form of waiting loby if I wasn't working or performing there didn't seem to be any point to what I was doing unless I was around my girlfriends or in the pub with my mates there wasn't much point to doing nothing. I was always walking or trying to have a conversation with someone. I had hated being in my room. The past seemed to bounce off the walls behind my closed door. I would smoke cigarretes in my room, listen to the same songs over and over again on my lap top and stare at my un-made bed, simply pacing as I waited to do the next thing rather than sort my life out or my room for that matter. I would stand by the back door and try to figure out how I would be able to make some more money having sold everything of value that I owned to pawn shops or CEX. I was truly living that starving artist lifestyle things were pretty shit. And so nights of spoken word and laughter seemed to make it all worth it. The constant hang over from free drinks given to perfromers and the black out drunk nights were forgotten the moment I woke up the next day there wasn't even a chance to have a feeling of hangxiety what would eb the point in that. All words and conversations simply whistled over head like the airs of breath that they were. Cigarettes inhaled in the smoking area and spliffs shared with other performers. To fall asleep and do it all agin the next day at another place. Leeds was simply a place to keep moving. It sounds strnage to hear that, that was the way to live life in such a small city but there you go it was. To stop there scared me. I was haunted by the past in some way. Fragile memories echoed around my head in paralysed states leaving me unable to move anything in my room. I'd become the opposite of agoraphobic. I enjoyed that. I strived for that. Agoraphobia was somehting that my dad had suffered from hence his absence. I didn't really want to stop to think about that one. It was only after a conversation with my mum last night that I realised I could stop. On returning to London I had been trying to find trade work. I had realsied that my university degree might not be put to work staright away and that I needed to sort out a strong form of income and so I set off looking for trade work. Signwriting was the main idea. I found a point after a few months of working at a pub job where I could do the signwirting at a boatyard in Richmond there I also learnt the trade of boat building and hence with that carpentary. That last until I was chucked off the lot by the owner who said that he didn't have time for idiots. I felt stuck after that. Slipped into a bit of a depression and carried on looking for quick fix work. I gave myself a day to recover and then I was back out again. Going back to work at the pub on odd shifts and then going back to agency work something that had kept me going through the winter and summer breaks of university. It's soemting that I would come back to pick up everytime that I had run out of money in Leeds that was until I had managed to find constant work up there at Leeds united and Middlesbrough matches. Running the bars there and the odd paid gig with the spoken word and student loan bursts. I hadn't stopped to allow myself the time of signing up for the bursery amounts that are offered to students there for some reason I didn't think that I would qualify. I thought this against all of my housemates suggestions where they said that I definitely would. I would ratehr struggle through. I had this sense of self sabotage. Getting myself addicted to smoking and going out drinking everynight. Trying to cure something that I didn't know what it was, this feeling of complete loneliness. I would try and find myself in books but could never really sit down long ebough to sit through one of them so I was always reading three or four at once other than the Catcher in the Rye which I ended up taking with me everywhere, to bars and cafes, days that turned into nights out. I would find my solice in that novel for a while. I would sit and sketch that day of reading it. I managed to read it in two or three days. I thought that I might try and get it returned to the bookshop that I bought it from had I read it quick enough and then I thought that I'd hold onto the copy to pass it onto my children. This reading so quickly only happened with two or three other books in my life; Get Carter, To Kill a Mocking Bird and Giovani's Room. The last one because I had borrowed it from my friend Omar Abufares and I thought that he might have wanted it back quickly. I realsed then that I had a very quick mind or something like that. On meeting my cousin in Leeds I found out that we have a family trait of ADHD. This might have been the answer to the problems I guess it is, I dont know though. I still haven't been tested. My mother thinks it's trauma based, that's her theory anyway. I don't know I just like being outside. In the outside world you know. Theres some peace there in England anyway. London's busy. Leeds had characters. I was always talking to someone or getting into something with people there. I would share cigarettes with the homeless or pass by the cafe. No phone just following what had felt right to do. Whilst my mind ran a hundred miles ahead of me almost like a child as they ran ahead of there parents and then back to them as they carried shopping bags down a busy highstreet. That's how it felt anyway. It had felt just liek that to me. I was the mum with the shopping bags the thoughts were the children that get under other peopels feet. The mother shouting something at the child in a foreign language trying to get them to calm down. The shopping centre they're leaving could be my room I don't know I'm just spitballing here now. The language is something only me and the child could unferstand. Do you understand me? Anyway today I did something that I'd not allowed myself to do sometime now. I just sat down and painted. Whatever I liked. Last nigth after getting a Papa John's pizza after a day of searching for quick fix work. I did a self portrait. It wasn't very accurate. A biro skecth carved essentially into a blcok of wood that my mum was going to through out but I thought that I would save to do some practising of signwritting on. Instead I wanted to the painting. I thought fuck it I want to do this I want to do it, so why don't I just fucking do it. I painted lightly over the biro and white paint white sky blue enamel and let it try whilst I went to get the pizza. Then I came back, looked at it thought people might like that, watched some skateboarding videos for a bit and then fell asleep. The next morning I woke up and cracked on with the painting again. I thought about what I wanted to do with it. I stopped thinking about what other people might think about it. Why would that matter anyway. Why should I care? It's my fucking painting anway. So I added to it. Painted it Van Gogh style. It wasn't intentional really. I'd squirted acrylic paint straight onto the painting and had to do quick slashes with the bruch to move and spread it out a bit, you know cover the canves and form the image to how I wanted it. I did that. I went onto the balcony and smoked a cigarette. I saw the sunlight shine off the block of flats in front of me. I thought, you know what I'm going to paint that as well so I did. I went back inside. Poured some more paint onto another 'canvas' realy just another square of wood that I had saved from being thrown out. I'd had another idea for it a skerry boat with a team of people on it riding a wave, this was my pre cigarette idea then when I came in I had my mind changed, the skerry painting came later just now actually. Right before I decided to right about the painting and just stopping and doing exactly what I wanted to do for once rather than doing what it felt like I shoudl be doing. So there. I guess you have it. That's what I've done and so is this. It feels good to feel so lucky for a moment to gave that peace to do soemthing like to accept the moment that I've given my after years of hard work or whatever you want to call it. Now that I'm hardly working I can afford the time to do it. Strange that isn't it. The opposite of what you think you need to do soemthign is actually what matters. I guess that's were over thinking gets you nowadays. I wish that I knew this sooner.