There’s a fluttering just beneath my sternum, as though someone is kicking ripples in there. It’s like a gale ripping along a piece of taut fabric.

I push my fingers against it to hold it in, and I feel it push back. It feels like a rodent’s head burrowing out from my lungs.

It’s a very peculiar feeling.

I actually have some time to write something. Unheard-of recently.

This is very much a work-in-progress.

Spencer woke early that morning, his limbs disobedient after a night of heavy stillness. He rolled over and patted the other half of the bed; the realisation that it was empty flushed the grogginess from his mind.

Of course it was empty. It had been empty for six weeks and two days (he crossed off the days in a cheap pocket diary), but he still could not adjust. There was something in his life he couldn’t rely on any more, and the absence still stunned him.

He wrote in his diary of his life “spiralling out of control,” of “emptiness, numbness” and so on. He didn’t really believe these things at all; his brain told him that he should, so he substituted them in. As always in these situations, his heart dutifully succumbed.

He squeezed his fists and thumped the bedside table.

By some strange twist I found myself reading an article about exactly what I’ve been thinking about recently – quitting the day job and devoting myself entirely to the creative life. Not having enough time to do both really gets to me, because I usually have loads of time to do enjoyable creative things (this is going to be dealt with in another post, “Hard Lessons to Learn”), but not recently.

The gist of the article is that you have to have the balance between job and hobbies. I want to disagree and say that it’s possible to turn a hobby into a job, and that a great many people have done it, continue to do it and be successful with it. Sure, it might not be the solution for everyone, but there are people that manage it, so why not me?

I think this article’s real “meaning” (inasmuch as it is) is that there is a need for balance in life; you can’t have all sex and no cash, more’s the pity. The thing is, and this is probably my naivete coming through, I’d much rather have a life with the balance on the sex, and not the cash. Working’s important, I know that, but happiness, achieving personal goals and being satisfied with yourself is infinitely more important to me.

Clearly I still retain idealist tendencies, and my optimism is still here despite everything, which is very encouraging. As much as it seems a teenage dream to design and create video games for a living, for example, a great many people do it and will continue to do so for years. to come. Maybe I will be one of them.