“Are you alright, Glorious N’orious?” my barista asked. Yes, I have a barista. But not, like, a personal servant whose sole task is to make me coffee. That’d be a pretty sweet gig though, considering I only have one a day.

Actually, “my barista” is my collective term for my awesome friends who have been making my workday coffee for so long that they have an assortment of nicknames for me. I was the Notorious Keira D, which was shortened to N’orious, and eventually lengthened again to Glorious N’orious… and occasionally shortened to gn’orious with a silent ‘g’.

I think he made sure he used the full rhyme this time because I looked deflated.

“I’m a bit devo, to be honest,” I said, not-quite-nonchalantly. Can you be semichalant? Non seems too cool.

I’ve spent a bit over a week putting on this brave face. Yeah, I’m cool with it being over. Sure, nothing will ever be as good again, but at least we’ll always have (our equivalent of) Paris. And yes, I still can’t bring myself to change my profile shot of us together just yet. Sure, all the wonderful images come flooding back in my quieter moments, or I’ll find myself smiling or laughing at the hilarious things we said and did back in those heady days when we were so, so happy, only to have my reverie shattered by reality – it was all only temporary.

And, you know, I may have been eating my feelings a bit. And drinking them. There may have been an indiscriminate amount of wine/margaritas/sangria/Listerine consumed. And food of the Italian/Mexican/Thai/Quorn persuasion. And every available kind of chocolate – even the WHITE confection.

I may’ve planned every moment of every day and night since it all ended, just so I didn’t have time to sit alone and think too much about everything we said and did. Maybe I even cried at a kitchen table at 5am when I realised the good times were definitely over and all that was left was running mascara, the stale taste of a cosmopolitan, and my own shaky handwriting in a greeting card in which words like “gratitude” and “wishes” and “monkeys” were scrawled.

Perhaps I feel like this is no ordinary ending and I’ll never be understood nor appreciated nor, I daresay, loved so completely again.

Perhaps… hey, perhaps it’s not even really over. Maybe tomorrow I’ll wake up…

“Gn’orious, we’re coming to see your show Friday – can’t wait. Chookas for tonight!”

In the ’90s, goals were a big deal. It was the buzz-word in education and business and sport. Set a goal. Make it achievable. Make it clear and specific. Then go for it. It seemed you couldn’t so much as order a burrito without having some medium-long-term goal attached.

I got into it because I was studying a lot. Short term goal: Do a 3u maths practice paper. Medium term goal: Get XYZ marks. Long term goal: [world domination]. Easy.

But then school ended and, suddenly, I didn’t give a damn about [world domination]. As you can see, that’s a place-holder. I don’t know what I thought my long-term goal was. Maybe that’s the problem. All I know is, everything suddenly shifted. The century turned and I looked up from my desk and asked “What else is there?”

Then I got smacked in the face with an [anvil]. That’s a place-holder too. Sort of.

Suffice it to say, I’d missed quite a bit while my head was down looking at binomial theorem and international relations between the wars. It was like arriving on another planet. And whatever it was that I thought I could be or achieve was irrelevant.

So much of life is beyond your control. What if your goal depends heavily on the whims, passions, and powers of other people? Are you meant to just ask the universe to make everything align in your favour? And if it doesn’t, is it just that you didn’t ask nicely enough? What if none of these external factors go your way? Does that make you a failure?

I stopped believing in goals. Maybe I never did. For starters, I never understood what ‘achievable’ meant. Achievable for you, specifically? How do you know what that is – especially before the fact?

I don’t believe in lofty goals. I believe in deadlines. I need a given date, a given time and a particular purpose or pay-off. Some say this is how goals should work too, but how often is that the case? Why set the date at August 16th when September 25th wouldn’t make a jot of difference? Why make your word count 50,000 when it could be 49,847 or 68,125?

I’ve never been very good at narrowing life – or even my attention span – down to one thing. Saying yes to one thing means saying no to another. I have immense admiration for people who can set their sights on one sole, spectacular goal, and pursue it relentlessly their whole lives. Olympians, for example. Or ballet dancers. Or worker bees.

But in my experience, not setting goals makes me a happier, and certainly a more sane, person. If I’m not always striving for something, I’m not always falling short of something. Give me a lofty goal and I’ll probably fail. Give me 16 bars to learn by 5pm and it’ll be done. Tasks with deadlines.

Satisfaction to me doesn’t necessarily mean being or having anything in particular. Rather, it comes from completely enjoying each good thing that comes your way. Knowing you did a good job with the task at hand. Being present. Soaking every good moment in completely, and not expecting or demanding anything more of it than it is prepared to give. And letting it go when it’s time, to only occasionally look back with a contented nod that you did all you could and all you wanted. Being grateful.

And yet, I’m haunted by the notion that if you don’t see yourself anywhere in particular in five years’ time, that’s exactly where you’ll be.

Yes, we know astrology is bollocks, but there’s gotta be something to explain away my crises – that is, other than self-indulgence with a dollop of melodrama.  My friendly local astrologer looked at my chart early last year and said my Saturn’s Return would be “relatively pain free”.  But lately I’ve been wondering why I’ve been in a bit of a funk.

Then, I read this on a website:

You may feel weak and vulnerable. You want to move ahead, yet are frustrated by a fear of doing so, torn between a compelling urge to throw off everything connected with your past and an equally frantic need to cling to the familiar rather than brave the great unknown.

Even if your external world seems to be in order, your internal structure may feel as though it’s being assaulted with a battering ram. Nervous conditions, irritability, depression, insomnia, and feelings of insecurity are common. Most people go through some sort of identity crisis.

You can add nightmares to that list.  Disappointment.  Heavy boredom.  And an ever-deepening skepticism at a time when you’d be better off taking a leap of faith.

This is why I haven’t been writing.  I’ve been living on a mental diet of cheese puffs.  I’ve even joined the gym again – not just for physical fitness, but as an attempt to lower my mind-fat percentage.

If this is “relatively pain free”… holy shitballs, Batman.

I’ve just started a course in script writing in which there’s the expectation that we already have a story idea.  Here’s what I wrote in class recently…

Character description

I don’t have even an idea, let alone a character.  I need a freaking idea.  All I hear is rushing wind between my ears.  And the aircon.  This is not good.  At the current rate, I’m heading for FAIL.  *sigh* I’m pretty sure I’m not cut out for this.

Fkety fkety fk.

ANIMATED BOX.  Empty.  Indeterminate age, but made of cardboard, so can’t be too old.  Like, not ancient.  It talks, but is apologetic for what it says.  Because it’s never had an original thought, that is.

SINGLE SHOE.  Homeless.  Not completely worn out, so not old or shabby enough to chuck away, yet not very useful for anyone with two feet.  Unless they like weird art.

Box meets shoe.  It’s a match made in size seven.

Oh ho ho.

Location

Vinnies in Paddington.  I walked past it the other day and it seems pretty big, so nobody would notice if a shoe and a box came to life there.  Unless the shoe was a Manolo Blahnik and a one-legged model walked in.  Hopped in.

Fk.

I’m writing away here like I have something to say.  This is hilarious and stupid.

Inciting incident

The box falls out of a bus.  Miraculously, nobody has stepped on it.  It’s outside the shop.  The shopkeep walks out and picks up the box, thinking it’d be useful.  It’s a nice enough box.

Meanwhile, the lone shoe gets tipped out of a plastic garbage bag, along with a whole bunch of other crap someone has brought in.  There’s an ’80s board game in there somewhere.  The pile of junk, waiting to be sorted, starts wobbling.  The shoe emerges.  It hops around the store.  It even weaves between people’s feet.  Nobody notices.

Meanwhile, the box has been left on the shelf (har de har har) and is kind of looking at people who walk past with objects in their hands.  It opens its lid like a mouth, hoping to swallow something substantial.  Nobody complies.  Someone with arm full of clothes knocks the box off the shelf.  It drops and rolls across the ground.

The box wants to feel full.  The shoe wants a home.  I want to puke.

Let the record reflect that I’ve corrected grammatical issues in this ‘manuscript’.

I’m writing this crap until I come up with a real idea.  Which better be mthrfking soon, or I’m writing a two-minute animation about inanimate objects finding love in a world devoid of a better idea.

And it’s this mindset that has deterred me from even writing in that most indulgent of media, my blog. *sigh*

…Ingredients for vicarious living

1. Keep your options open. If you decide something, that instantly means you have to do something.  And if you have to do something, you don’t get to be a spectator.  So ignore any twinges of inspiration, forget about having a timetable, and stay in those PJs.  Don’t let life get in the way of your doing nothing.

2. Unlimited supply. Line your every surface with stimuli – books, DVDs, music, games – so you don’t have to actually do anything in order to feel everything.  Any kind of adventure or fulfilment you could ever want is right at your fingertips.  Sure, your skin may go translucent from lack of natural light, and your torso may adopt a spherical shape, but those people in that frame/on that page/in that song are doing more than enough attractiveness for you.

3. Cloak of invisibility. If you’re too noticable in real life, you’ll be too busy being you and won’t have time to experience life through fictional characters.  But if you’re invisible – like a ninja or… someone who’s invisible – you’re free to live life to the emptiest.  Free as a dodo or a pterodactyl.