I have decided that I don’t want to be normal. To be fair it was a decision that was made for me many years ago, but I think that it is time to just say it out loud. I couldn’t hit normal with a banjo.

Normal is basically filling time until death, doesn’t sound that much fun really does it? Normal is made to consume, to partake without making any trouble.

Preferably without making anything at all, well I do make things. I am slowly realising that I make things because I like doing it. I have always struggled with that side of me. As I had some success many years ago I always felt that I was a ‘writer’ and that meant that I should be making my living solely out of it. That thought process has led me down many a dark mental alley and given me a good roughing up. I have made some money out of writing, but my day jobs have always kept a roof over my head.

If I have a day job that isn’t writing, surely I am not a writer? That was how I thought, and how I have wasted so much time beating myself up. It has not helped that I also like making music, but I am not very good at it. So I blame myself for spending money on musical instruments that I don’t get the most out of and the time that I have ‘wasted’ doing that I could have been writing. It’s not always nice inside my head.

Well, no more, I am letting myself (gradually) just make things because I like doing it. Not for a reason, not for an imagined audience, but because I like doing it. The more I practice the better I will become, after all, that is reason enough surely?

Some people knit, some fish, some play sports, all good things too* if that helps you be free of the pain of living in this period of human existence. Pain? That is so negative Trev, be positive.

I am being positive that a lot of what we have to put up with is horrible. You know what? It always has been.

A lot of life is pretty bad, and you have to have that to feel the good, the great and honestly the plain average. We have a society that is obsessed with ‘happiness’ as if it is the goal. Happiness can be gained by buying the right things, having sex with the right person and so on. If you were happy all of the time, how would you know that you were happy? Until you were shot with a tranquilliser dart and bagged up and sent off to some institution or other,

What about content? Not in the internet meaning of the word, e.g. filling up almost endless space with guff, no. I mean being satisfied. We could all do with being a bit more content.

I have read a lot about the ‘New Normal’ of late, as we are deep in the Coronavirus outbreak as I write this. The New Normal seems to be being forced back to work and to spend money to prop up late-stage capitalism.

Capitalism caused part of my problem, everything has to have a price on it.

A value.

There is more than one meaning of ‘value’. It also means worth in a non-financial context, we all have things that are effectively worth nothing that we cling to. Things that trigger memories, some that make us smile, some laugh and some cry. If you think that the only value of something is the cost then I am afraid that you have entirely missed the point. I did for many years.

So, I am going to try making things that I like for a bit, for me, whatever they may be and see how that makes me feel. Ironically, because I have been doing things without the enjoyment of doing them it has obviously shown through in what I have produced. It is the fundamental contradiction that things made of love are usually more popular than things that were made for money.

I am me, I am a writer and I have a day job. I can be all three.

*Fishing isn’t always so good if you are a fish.