Day Four :: Empty Lives Waiting to Be Filled

A lot of the course today was about marketing, which is my Achilles’ heel. And it’s a horrible heel, covered in thick layers of hideous hard skin, broken only by a rash of outrageous verrucas. Which is to say, even the thought of marketing makes me feel terribly uncomfortable.

Tellingly, this was the first time I baulked at a couple of the exercises, but I will prevail. I have prevailed in fact. Almost totally.

Also, I’m excited by a couple of ideas I’ve had over the past couple of days that are quickly becoming established in my head. Indeed, if I were to get nothing out of this course, I am already very grateful to it for inspiring me to come up with these. I’ll tell you what they are too.

One is a writing project – a big one, and I had sworn off big writing projects because of the poor money-to-time ratio. But there’s no hurry with this one and it’ll be fun and useful to research and compile. Essentially, I want to write a funny self-help book.

I know, I know. I can already feel your excitement.

This has been fermenting for a while. I’ve been thinking about the life coach trend, and such a trend definitely exists. Not sure what to do with your life? Easy. Start teaching others what to do with theirs. And so people do courses that teach them how to do courses that teach other people how to do courses, and at the heart of every course is the message that you can do anything you want to do, especially if it’s teach a course based around the message that you can do anything you want to do. I’m being glib, yes, because it’s fun. But I’ve been thinking about how this trend and this – shudder – market could be exploited. (Shudder.) And being funny about it is I think the way forward.

So there’s that.

The other thing is much bigger and is still very much in the early stages of consideration, but the idea excites me and I think I’m going to make a go of it. Ready? Drumroll.

I’m looking into moving to Amsterdam.

I’ve wanted to live in Amsterdam since I first visited in, I think, 1995. It occurred to me again recently, and I’m at the point where I’m going to have to lay down a root or two somewhere, so why not there?

I’m thinking, June 1st would be a pretty good day to aim for relocating. One, because it’s the day after my next birthday. Two, because I’ve never moved anywhere in the summer before and that sounds like a good idea. And three, because that gives me three months to organise myself.

That might not seem that long – suddenly it doesn’t to me – but there’s no point hanging around. (Thoughts of which got me thinking about the passing of time, and all of its sickening crimes….)

Oh, and I have another happy thing to report. There was a woman handing out leaflets outside Peckham Rye station yesterday about something called a Bike Train, organised by Southwark Cyclists. I talked to her for a minute, got home and pitched Peckham Peculiar, who want me to write a little news piece about it. They’ll even pay me a little money.

I’m kind of cockahoop. You know why? Because it makes me feel like a proper writer.

Until tomorrow.

Have another song. You deserve it.

x

Filed under: TRAINING Tagged: Amsterdam, marketing, Peckham, Peckham Peculiar, self-help, Southwark Cyclists, The Smiths, The Temper Trap