Got out of bed a little late, had trouble getting to sleep but the lie-in meant I was well rested. Today is the day I go in to my employer for a meeting during which I will be officially laid off.

I shaved my head and took a long shower. I exfoliated (honestly) and moisturised my face. Deodorant. Shaved and trimmed my beard. I put on a clean crisp white shirt, clean pressed trousers, black socks, boxers and black boots. I draped a black scarf around my neck and slipped on a dark grey suit jacket.
Checked myself in the mirror, and I looked damn sharp if I do say so myself.

If you’re going to be laid off, make sure you look your best when they do it. Make sure your head is held high and your shoulders strong. Make sure the last sight they see is you strutting out that door like George motherfucking Clooney.

I’ve been working 15 years and this is my first time being made redundant (who came up with that confidence-withering phrase anyway?). It’s an odd, sick feeling. While I was always conscious of the fact that it’s a bad idea to put your trust in a faceless corporation, I guess after five years in the same company you do get a little comfortable.

I was working for a huge pharmaceutical company who didn’t make the profits they wanted to last year and consequently nearly half my IT colleagues were laid off just before Christmas. I was very aware that I could be next. So while my first instinct is to take this firing as a failure, I think it’s important to remember that in a large corporation you’re just a number (as odd as it is to admit it).

My plan for tomorrow is to scrub up my CV, drink a great big coffee, hit the vacancies listings and try to forget the fact that it’s a very bad time to be unemployed in Ireland. Oh and if any of you guys need an IT Project Manager (or a comic strip meddler for that matter) you know where to find me.

I’m wearing the Fat Shirt of Shame, I suspect I’m not the only one. I deserve nothing better, I spent the last 2 weeks eating and drinking like a pig and I haven’t done a modicum of exercise.
So out of the wardrobe it comes, drape me in it, weigh me down in it’s flab covering XL-ness, cover me with it’s wide fitting caress of compunction.
This is just what I deserve.

Now I just need to dig out the Sweatpants of Self-reproach.

Sometimes you’ll be at a large social gathering and you’ll be too quiet (for your liking). You might be intimidated by more vocal members of the group, or just too unsure of yourself to get involved. You’ll berate yourself later for your regression to shyness. It leaves a little dent in your confidence.

Conversely, sometimes you’ll be at a large social gathering and you’ll find your place. You may even be center of attention. People will listen to your opinions and laugh at your jokes. You’re king of the (conversational) world! You’ll congratulate yourself for no longer being shy. Your confidence will pop on a pair of dark shades, stick it’s feet up on the table and lean back in it’s chair in smug self satisfaction.

The thing is, neither of these people is you.

Your level of interaction with people in social situations will always have it’s peaks and troughs. That doesn’t mean you’ve returned to your old bad habits. Sometimes you’ll be tired or uninspired, sometimes you might be unwell - this will have an effect on your ability to talk. Opposite to that, sometimes you’ll be full of energy and ideas, talking to and buzzing from the people in your company.
Either way, keep in mind, as long as you’re still pushing yourself to get out there, turn up to events and meet people, then you’re making progress. And I know how hard that is to do, believe me. You should always pat yourself on the back for making that effort.

(update)

It’s something I’ve only become conscious of recently. When I write, when I mange to extract the right words from my head, I get high from it. That, and I experience an immense feeling of satisfaction that no other work gives me. There’s a scale to it too, from lowest to highest buzz it goes:

9. A clever tweet/text.
8. A short blog post or observation.
7. A review.
6. A lengthy blog post.
5. An introduction (see below).
4. A Childrens book (I’ve almost finished one).
3. A song (finished one today prompting this post).
2. A short story (finished one recently and have felt happy about it for weeks).
1. A novel? Screenplay?

I’ve put a question-mark after novel/screenplay because I haven’t written one, but I’ve thought about it for a long time. I’ve a couple of stories I’ve been building in my head for a while. There’s a joke about the Irish that goes something like: “Every Irish person has a story in them, the hard part is getting them not to tell it”.
But considering the sense of satisfaction I feel after writing something short, I can’t help but wonder how I’d feel after writing a book.

I have the usual hang-ups that hold me back, mostly it’s the standard: What if it’s awful and nobody likes it? A couple of things have spurred me to over-ride this pointless concern recently:

1. I’m 35 and suffering from early onset middle age crisis. Seriously!
   I’m (Probably? Hopefully?) a little under half way through my life. I already regret not doing a whole bunch of stuff and not taking a whole bunch of chances. I’m 100% certain I’ll regret not writing, more than giving it a shot and failing miserably.
2. The second confidence boost came from the foreword I wrote for the Garfield Minus Garfield book.
   I guess you could say this was my first paid writing gig. Paws Inc commissioned me to write a 1,500 word long introduction. I was a bit nervous about it. What the hell can you say about Garfield/Jon for 1,500 words?! I spent a couple of days writing and sent the first draft off to Paws. Mark Acey (Paws Inc lead writer)  got back to me immediately and said he and Jim Davis really liked it. Then, to my utter amazement, the foreword made it through their copy-editing process to print with no amendments.

So I’ve got a couple of goals at the moment: I’d like to do some sort of writing course (address all those bad habits I have), and I’d like to lock myself in a cabin somewhere for a weekend (some place with no internet access!), with a couple of books, a lot of coffee, some pens, a bunch of post-it notes and a laptop.

First and foremost though I really need to clean this desk.

Inside we pushed our way through the crowd. The venue was jammed with people, the air sweaty and scented with sugary liquor shots. Neon and mirrors shone behind rows of bottles. Somehow she managed to sequester a stool by the bar. I stood beside her and we roared at each other over the loud voices and pumping music.

The music pounds and you lean in close to each other to try and discern what’s being said. You brush skin. You smell the scent of each other. For a moment, for a fraction of a moment you dare to wonder, what would happen if I just kissed her now? Would she slap my face? Would she kiss me back? Would the world around us run in slow motion as we taste each other’s lips? Our hearts beating faster, our hands reaching out to stroke each other’s backs and arms. Could it be that this is what she’s thinking too? I humour myself and entertain the notion. Then let it go.

(Excerpt from a short story I’m writing at the moment)

Today it was the hardest
Today it hurt the most
I dreamt of you and then I woke
to nothing but your ghost.

In every greying memory
In every darkened sky
I try to find the lines and curves
and colours of your eyes.

Now the night is close
A snap will draw your blinds
I take a step to walk away
and leave a love behind.

It’s not easy to get moving on a Sunday evening, but with tickets to see Teenage Fanclub in the intimate surroundings of The Academy, Dublin, I managed to drag myself off the couch. By 9pm The Academy was absolutely (claustrophobically even) jam packed with an audience of mostly 30-somethings and Teenage Fanclub hit the stage to huge applause. What struck me most about the bands’ middle-age appearance was you could be forgiven for thinking someone had made four clones your geography school teacher and ushered them on stage, perhaps to teach you the importance of columbus cloud formations through the medium of song.

Unfortunately during the first few songs it became apparent we’d been lumped with a tone deaf sound engineer. The vocals were buried under bottom-end-bass murkiness, so much so that the sound engineer tried to compensate by pushing the volume on the mics, which just lead shrieks of feedback. Truly amateur stuff. I’d been to The Academy recently to see The Lemonheads and the sound was crystal clear, so this was a disappointment.

However (and I think this is testament to Teenage Fanclub’s polished performance) the songs were still very much enjoyable. Great catchy guitar riffs and beautiful melodies; Teenage Fanclub have their delivery down to a fine art. Their sound is clean but at the same time it’s easy to see why Kurt Cobain considered them one of his favourite bands, their chord formations are beautifully clever and instantly accessible, meaning you can sing along even if you don’t know the song.  If you’ve never heard them, imagine someone put Crowded House at one end of the Large Hadron Collider and The  Byrds at the other, then smashed their molecules into each other, the resulting gooey hybrid would be Teenage Fanclub.

Surprisingly, exactly on the 60 minute mark, the band finished up, coming back a few minutes later for a perfunctory 10 minute encore. With a total gig time of around 70 mins, I was a bit pissed off. Perhaps I’ve been spoiled by too many 3 hour Springsteen concerts, but I expect more than that, especially from a band with a 20 year back catalogue. I guess in their defence the tickets were only €25 (2 pints however, cost a pricey €10.50 on the night) but if I get my ass off the couch on a Sunday night, I expect at least a 2 hour gig.

The short set, cramped surroundings and dreadful sound quality, means at best I could only say this gig was average, which is a shame because the band played beautifully.

Teenage Fanclub’s new album, Shadows, is available now.

(I first posted this to culch.ie on June 2nd)

Confidently proclaiming something will not happen, in the hope that by declaring it won’t happen, you’ll coerce fate into actually making it happen.

Examples:

“Listen man, I just know there’s no way I’ll score this weekend”

or

“I know for sure I won’t pass that exam next week”