Living alone

It’s a guaranteed behaviour pattern to permanently engrave counterproductive habits.

I haven’t lived alone for an extended period since 1993, when I was completing my Bachelors degree and spending untold hours in front of a blank off-white wall containing three hairline cracks, searching for motivation to finish any number of essays on French language and literature. If I thought I’d won the battle way back then of talking to myself, then I need to think again. Just shy of a six month solo stint in my apartment at the seaside suburb of Coogee, the outcome on the war against my relentless mono-conversational habit is far from clear.

In fact, along with a plethora of undesirable character traits, I am under siege in my abode against the my most malevolent customs; of verbalising the logic of my own fatuous arguments, chastising myself when displeased about my inability to advance in my career, and habitually giving myself a very hard time indeed about procrastinating. Living alone brings out my deepest anxiety, that of going quietly, incrementally, irreversibly non compos mentis. Just like people of faith.

Staring fixedly at my secretly blinking laptop screen for the greater part of the day assures me that all is not well. At times My Dell delivers indeciperable dispatches from the technological ether. It communicates in a language of blips and frozen browsers I fail to understand, try as I might. My phone might ring once, perhaps twice in a space of 24 hours, hardly enough to keep my faltering space within the kingdom of the social animal. I leave the house for a my first coffee sometime before midday, stroll along the beach in search of inspiration to write, then return to the house where I trawl online news services to obtain that sinking feeling that can only come from second-hand eye witness reports and rehashed releases of press agency hacks. I search the entire world to remain up-to-date on current affairs, and yet my physical existence plays out in a space of 15 square metres. Hardly verysensible.com.

I’ve given carte blanche to my unconscious, to nurture and grow my feelings of inadequacy, impotence and sense of underachievement. The resistance to the 9-to-5 workathon is admirable in principle, but the rent is due three days hence and I am sorely lacking in ammunition with which to hold back the landlady.

Somehow the rampant, inextinguishable resource of common sense among the female members of my family is almost absent in the males. I have the beginnings of common sense but I lack practicality and pragmatism. I can’t seem work out how to do what I love and make a living from it.

Still, perhaps it’s therapeutically beneficial to work through these issues on the laptop. I’ve no doubt that is cuts down on shaving time since I definitely spent fewer minute in front of the mirror this morning, barely argued with my reflection, and splashed my chin clean of shaving foam without once doing a Taxi Driver-inspired rant.

I undoubtedly need a solid, interactive social experience. And I’m well-pleased my mates have invited to join them at Quiz Night this evening.

I may just briefly return to the shaving mirror to go over my opening lines of conversation for this evening.