Two Out of Three Ain't Bad

"When I started pushin' thirty, it started pushin' back." Gary Allan, A Feelin' Like That

The most astonishing thing about turning thirty is that I don't feel it.

Today marks three decades since I was delivered into this world, but in terms of self-confidence, I seem definitely to be stuck in my late teens. I don't feel like a 'grown up' even though the date on my birth certificate indicates that I am!

I looked back on the blog-post I wrote on this day last year - which seems a million miles away now (when, in fact, it's exactly 3462.1 miles, door to door) and I realise how much things have changed.

I wrote then that I had three ambitions to accomplish before I turned thirty:

1: Move to America
2: Get my first book published
3: Earn a living writing

Astonishingly, both the first and the third of those I have actually managed to achieve. Here I am, living in America and working as a writer. A copy writer, I admit - but still a writer!

And the second ambition... Well, my writing has fallen on the wayside for the last few months, but this last year did see me finish off 'The Bootleg Boys' which got a pretty broad thumbs up even if that did indicate that Adventure Eddy (of which I was so proud) was totally crap.

It just goes to show that ambitions can be achieved. Whether through luck, inevitability or sheer stubborn belief, if you set your heart on something, the only thing stopping you achieving it is yourself.

Unless your ambition rests on a redheaded rogue called Eddy.

Candid Self Portrait

Meow!

Stop the World - I need to pee!

"Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you." Lisa Alther.

The teetering brink of autumn constantly reminds me that time is screeching past.


It was around this time last year that I first returned to America, to a wonderful week spent with Tina's family. That climaxed in an early Thanksgiving and this year, it looks like we'll experience the same thing. Tina's parents are coming up at the end of the month for a family get-together.

This time, of course, we won't be 'just visiting.' We're here to stay.

Moving to America was one of my three 'things to do before I'm thirty.' And I've managed it. Hooray! I also managed to achieve my second ambition - to earn a living by writing. But the third - to get a book published - stays tantalisingly beyond my grasp.

The arrival of Autumn is a harsh reminder that time is running out. I've got barely four months to get myself published before I turn thirty. That's just not going to happen.

It's a bit of a disappointment, but writing has been firmly on the back burner for almost a year now.

Following on from our visit to America in 2006, I settled into writing big time - and got stuck into Nanowrimo, a month-long writing competition in which you aim to complete 50,000 words in less than 30 days.

I managed to achieve that target - just - with my Adventure Eddy story Bootleg Boys. But my writing sort of teetered out once Nanowrimo was over. Work and the move to America diverted my attention.

Which means that Bootleg Boys is still unfinished, languishing on my hard drive. The problem was the ending. Nothing quite 'fit.' I have about four different versions now and not one of them is the 'definitive one.'

The realisation that I haven't written anything significant for almost a year is not a comfortable one...

(Well, actually, I have written dozens of successful radio adverts, a smutty story published worldwide, some national advertising and marketing copy, an Internet article linked to by the Wall Street Journal Online and my articles on 'being ginger' got my mug on a BBC documentary)

...so I have decided to spend October finishing what I started.

Bootleg Boys will get finished, by hook or by crook. And it'll be good. In fact, it will be miles better than Adventure Eddy. It might not be good enough to get published - but it will be a step closer towards that goal.

And in November, when Nanowrimo comes around again, I will start off a 50,000 word adventure about something completely different.

But until then?

Adventure Eddy rides again.

Dmo's 21st Partio Tercio

Happy Birthday!

Today began the inexorable countdown to the big 3-0.

365 days to do all those things I'd promised I'd do before I was thirty.

Really, there were only three of those.

1: Move to America (almost there.)
2: Get my first book published (well, at least I've written it)
3: Earn a living writing (you call this a living?)

I'm completely astonished at how fast time has gone. Especially the last couple of years.

Where have they gone? What have I become? How come I look in the mirror and see somebody I hardly recognize? Can anybody tell me where the witless, but well dressed adventurer went and who this chubby, scrubby writer is?

During our week in France, I found a big box stuffed with photos. Pictures of my from years ago, when I was a kid living in Hampshire. Then more, from school in Devon, lots from university and then piles of smiling photos of me, looking sleek and well dressed for perhaps the only time in my life, with my arm paternally around the shoulders of myriad American girls with beautiful tans and big teeth.

Hard to think I spent my last summer in Paris over two years ago - and that was the end of an era. Since then I've become a veteran of the radio business. I say veteran - this is the kind of show in which people have short, glittering careers and then go a bit nuts and drive their cars through the door of their radio station. However the REAL vets, like my old boss Gordon Drummond, have been in it for donkey's years.

Anyway. Now I work in Media. I wear jeans to work. I don't shave every day. I have got a bit tubbier. I get grumpy if I don't eat lunch.

It's so weird to have 'grown up,' because I don't feel I have at all. My insecurities and ambitions burn just the same. I keep thinking I've got all the time in the world - but days like this make you realise it's trickling inexorably away.