An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 85. What Am I Doing?
I feel that I do. I’d like to simmer it down into a single simple sentence — just a few words for clarity — though.
For me, it involves seeking a sense of flow while engaging in cultural production (though maybe that’s more the process than the mission), leaking a few counterintuitive ideas into the culture, and staying on the front foot.
Hmm. I’ll have to work on phrasing it better than that.
I do seem to spend a lot of brainpower churning over things in my life and trying to work out some big picture sense of mission and direction. I’m very much on top of that at the moment, but sometimes it can be overwhelming. I think that’s probably natural when you’re an Escapologist: you steer your own ship in a way that many people do not. The “high-level decision making” usually reserved for upper management is something you do as a matter of course every single day.
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An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 84. 2025 Review.
The year started badly. I’d intended to take a sabbatical and I got one in the form of a long illness. For five months I was housebound with an unpleasant case of TSW, some weeks of which were bedbound. It was very shit.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 83. Marrow.
Dear Diary, my troubles lie ruined and in my wake. After a long period (almost six months) of debilitating illness, I seem to be well again.
I visited my parents in England last week (the change of scene alone being just the tonic), was reunited with the crew to actively work on the film again, and now, at home, I work quite happily in a way unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
This boom in pleasant activity is coupled with a thrice-weekly hospital therapy. It’s too soon to say if the therapy is helping (I think I got better naturally) or will help to keep the condition from returning, but I enjoy the walks to and from the hospital. It takes me through a leafy neighbourhood of beautiful townhouses and, since the weather has been good, these morning walks are accompanied by glorious birdsong.
In terms of creative work, I must not overexert myself lest doing so should lead to a resurgence of the illness, but I’m so keen to make up for lost time. Finally out of bed, I want to eat the world and suck at the marrow. And that appetite in its own self feels good.
So I’ve been working on the film as I previously mentioned, socialising somewhat, closing in on the end of an editing project (the first major thing I was able to pick up, editing being easier than writing during a medicated brain fog), and lining things up for an 18th print edition of New Escapologist. On that note, please chip in to the Kickstarter if you have not already, as everything depends on its success.
There are meds I no longer feel obliged to take, the ones that make me fall asleep. This is good. The step counter on my phone has numbers on it again. Green shoots!
I have shaved off my beard of convalescence! I’m enjoying dressing well when I go out, so utterly tired of ointment-caked PJs.
All for now. I just wanted to register this development in the diary, to announce that I’m moving on from the shitness of illness, that, suddenly, everything seems possible. And not a moment too soon.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 82. Signs of Progress.
Dear diary, not much has changed since my last entry. I’ve been ill for over two months.
Read the rest of this entry »
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 81. Crash.
As you know, dear diary, I am on sabbatical. I’m taking it easy for six months as a restorative measure following a busy 2024. How, you might ask, is it going?
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 80. A Doss Time
Dear Diary,
I’ve been taking it very, very easy for 11 days.
I’ve been playing video games for the first time since 1996, reading unedifying literature, gently strolling along, sleeping late.
Today I took a very cheap bus to Edinburgh to mooch around some free art galleries, and then to stay up late watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on a friend’s comfortable sofa. It’s like the the 1990s are back.
This is all according to plan. As I announced in the Idler this week:
For the next six months, I’ll be doing practically nothing. I’ve been telling others it’s a “sabbatical” because that’s a word people seem to recognise and broadly approve of, but really I’ve just had enough and I want a proper skive.
2024 was a busy year. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed most of my 2024 activity and I’ll benefit from the fruits of it all, hopefully, for years to come. But having something scheduled every day – somewhere to be, something to achieve, something to cross off a list – is no idler’s design for life. It’s not mine, it’s not yours, and if it ever seems we’ve veered off course, drastic action should be taken.
Hence the next six months. Corrective action. Or, as the case may be, inaction.
I hope you enjoy that blog in which I explain myself. If you do, by all means come along to my episode of “A Drink with the Idler” live Zoom thing on January 16th, the only thing on my to-do list for the next six months. Or, you know, don’t.
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Loaf! New Escapologist Issue 17 will be reprinted if we can get enough orders. Issue 16 and many other items are still available in our online shop.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 78. Travel in Pictures.
This series of posts — starting with a 2009 escape and running to the present moment — answers the question “what would I do all day without a job?” in a sarcastic level of deatil.
It’s the end of 2024 and I’ve been on the road for almost two months. Here’s where I’ve been, in tantalisingly (pointlessly?) context-free pictures.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 77. Escritores de Lisboa
Last week saw a short trip to Lisbon. What an anarchic city. People talk about the ceramic tiles on the fronts of buildings but nobody mentions how it’s all up-and-down and higgledy-piggledy. The cube-shaped cobble stones fan out from their groundings like madmen’s teeth. Near the place we were staying, some graffiti read “Alfama, don’t break your ankles.”
At another spot, the graffiti said “clean is boring.” The city isn’t particularly unclean though: this being continental Europe, the streets are cleaned often enough and the people are evidently proud or smart enough not to drop much litter in the first place. There’s a lot of messy graffiti though, mostly unimaginative tags at shoulder-height. They’ll get that fixed one day: it’ll be the big cosmetic change that makes the city super-liveable like the sandblasting of the tenements in Glasgow in 1990.
I’m not down on the anarchism of Lisbon. I like it. The energy, the hustle and bustle, is great. It feels a bit like being in Asia in some ways. Africa feels tantalisingly close. My walking boots were up to the challenge of not breaking my ankles. I like how the old-fashioned wooden trams rattle around the hilly streets. You’ll be in a café somewhere when the light changes suddenly as the tram blasts by the window.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 76. 2023 Review.
Baboosh! Time for an annual report to my imaginary shareholders.
But first an excerpt from last year’s report:
I had the privilege of working hard and attentively this year […] though I have nothing tactile to show for it yet. Soon, my pretties, soon. Next year’s review will be massive.
Indeed. I don’t mean to brag (though to brag is better than to humblebrag) but 2023 was probably my best ever year. I was happier and more focussed than any year since 2016 and possibly any year before that one. It was full and fun.
An Escapologist’s Diary: Part 75. Boat!
As part of my ongoing hostelling adventure, I slept on a boat!
We’re looking at existenzminimum again:
You get a private cabin (privacy being a plus in hostels) reminiscent of the cabin you get on a sleeper train or an overnight ferry.
Since the boat is on an Amsterdam canal rather than a life on the ocean waves, you feel no watery motion while sleeping at all.
But if you open a curtain in the dead of night… you might see a duck. 🦆
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There’s a little more about the minimalism of hostels in Issue 15.
