Into the Wild

Tonight I am inspired to drop everything and go. I have watched a favourite film of mine: Into the Wild.

I think I like travel films especially. I think I would really like to travel. I just don’t have any money to get myself going. I often feel this way, as if I can’t or don’t want to deal with ‘normal’ existence. A job, a gym membership, a mobile phone contract. The laptop and internet connection I’m using right now. I am, and we are so convinced that we must have these things that it’s almost impossible to imagine not having them. The thing is that when we have to put up with not having them for a while that, actually, it isn’t that bad. There is life outside of Twitter and treadmills, believe it or not. 

‘I just don’t have any money to get myself going’. I typed that almost without a second thought. But I’m pleased to say that as I typed it I realised I was perfectly exemplifying my tendency to make excuses for myself at times and in places when and where I am daunted by something I desperately want for myself. ‘Be sensible’, says my head, both my parents’ voices talking at once. As I crave some sort of escape or other adventure I simultaneously tell myself ‘Ben, don’t be so ridiculous’.

‘Get a good job and earn good money’, says Head.

‘I don’t particularly want a lot of money’, says something else. 

I don’t particularly want a lot of money. Do I? I don’t know. ‘The future’ still seems far off to me. It’s obscure and I can’t make it out. How much money will I need for what I’m going to want? Isn’t there a manual for this? I have no idea what I’ll want in five or ten years’ time. I’ve changed inside so much in just the last few years that there’s no telling what state my head and my ideas will be in come my thirtieth birthday. People buy houses in their thirties, right? I can’t even afford to buy myself a coat right now, and it’s getting cold.

I just want to do something. I don’t want to be Mr Franz in in fifty years’ time.

Inactivity is a slippery slope.

I have spent a long time not writing anything, except the odd adjustment here and there to my ineffective CV, and really all I want to do is to put down into words the things I am thinking. In other blogs, I have tried and failed to keep up a journalistic style of writing. I don’t want to be a journalist. I don’t want to tell you what I think you will find interesting. I don’t know whether I want to tell you anything at all. I just want to say things. I like talking to myself, but chatting to the dishes as I do the washing up only means pouring my thoughts into the browning water without the ability of ever fishing them out again. I feel as though I need to do something. Create something. Make a stamp with my head. Give myself a release. Spunk, so to speak, before I drive myself down into a tight, dark hole of frustrating expressionlessness.