undone homework

I've always been obsessed with going back in time & the other morning I was sorry to miss an especially beautiful sunrise, (I just caught the end of from the window inside) I remember a really beautiful one a year ago when I filmed myself reading Ian Curtis lyrics for a youtube video & I tried thereafter before the rot set in last year of getting up regularly before 5am to see, but never caught another that beautiful.
I still value sunrises & sunsets & phases of the moon, so that is valuable and something to get for, tho I rarely do now as I'm sleeping better as I'm tired all the time. I do value a sunset and though I don't fill my days with adventure, learning, writing, sex, anything really important, I AM still alive and that blessing isn't lost on me particularly with having lost dear, loved friends a lot younger than me in the last 2 years. I feel as guilty about undervaluing life as I do wasting a day. No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn, to quote the Doors song!

I spend a lot of time these days being a sad case watching old tv episodes of Heartbeat, Lewis, Foyle’s War & Robin of Sherwood on some of ITV3 & 4,(although not Frost, Vera, Midsummer or Piorot!) & usually on the +1 channels. Also) These are accompanied by ads targeted at old people where actors cheerfully talk about funeral plans, the funniest being one where whilst a discussion is going on about cremation between father and son,  burning toast in the toaster sets the smoke alarm off! A new phenomenon are these instant no fuss cremations, which you might describe as 'pick up & glow' where we're told we can have a party with the money you save from having a depressing old funeral. I quite like this one as the only RIP that funeral directors  do is rip off the bereaved.
​Anyway the +1 channels simply got to thinking if only there was a remote control where you could go back an hour in time, if no more! Anyway I was inspired to write one of my silly & fairly frequent. #shitterpoems on the site for the first time in a while, (which I won't repeat here as not proud) which inevitably plays on my 'long whinged for need for a squeeze' from a plus one too! Predictably sad.

I haven’t written on here in ages & what I did write on here last year was largely the product of a troubled mind. I do as I’ve said before find therapy in writing. And although these blogs won’t be readable to strangers, nor anyone who knows me for that matter, frequently depressing & self important meanderings as they are still from the heart and have or did aid my mental health. I've tried to write many times since almost a year ago & just abandoned it or just not bothered anyway because I felt just writing about just existing was too introspective even for me. Also there is a worry that negative blogs written on my professional acting website even if no one else is likely to read them don’t reflect on me well to potential employers! Even now I am making myself write something, so this maybe the most boring bit of navel gazing ever committed to my vanity website! 

I do want to live & stop appearing to whinge on here about how depressed I am, when there are millions of others feeling like this and to instead try to spread a little joy.
I wrote about depression last year, so there is a sense of plodding over old ground here, but without over dramatics I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. I feared I’d lost my attachment to life, still do a bit but not quite as much as then. Seemingly I was wallowing in negatives, letting the blues overshadow any chink of positive.
For a number of years after I’d left school, in fact right up to about 10 years ago, I’d have this reoccurring dream about having got behind with a massive backlog of class work at school & I was about to have to face the music. But when I awoke from that dream it was with a huge sense of relief that I’d didn’t have anything to worry about anymore. I’d left school as well, indeed still the happiest day of my life. In reality I’d given up on school than last year 1979-80, certainly didn’t work, sciving off, refusing to wear a blazer & burning my tie! I got well behind in the work, pretended I didn’t care at the time but I guess I worried about being in trouble. So yes a huge weight off my shoulders to leave. It was new beginnings, the first & most exciting crossroads in my life, but sadly I hadn't the courage to meet them, even less think about the best route.
So yes last year I felt life had got on top of me, a backlog of mess, too much to rectify, from teeth to taxes! It seemed like the future was fearful & an escape would be a relief, just like waking up from the bad dream of being behind at school & getting bollocked. Even if that escape meant never waking up!

That seems terrible now the thought of losing my life. I was scared of that thought. I'm not a natural survivor & my greatest fears of last year might seem nothing if I was told I had say cancer or was told I had onset of dementia. Sometimes depression doesn’t let me see straight, far from it, but the feeling of release from burden, worrying & of course suffering is what drives people like me to taking their own lives. I can understand that. Even though I think this is all our only chance of life.

I’ve been lucky with the cards dealt to me in life, best mum & dad you could wish for I think, happy & comfortable childhood, although I only knew my dad 18 years, it was enough to grow a life long attachment & love. My mum has supported me all my life, still is doing so now as I’ve been living rent free in her empty house for the last 13 months. I’m lucky I was born in this country, which in spite of not feeling proud of in the light of recent events & craving reformation in the way we are governed & constitution is still better than a hell of a lot of other places.
I’ve made the mistakes, gone my own way. I don’t regret I tried to become an actor, but I do regret deeply not having real success. I do regret even more deeply not having ever found a woman who loves me as much as I love them and I regret HUGELY not having become a dad.
I want desperately to leave a legacy, to count for something, to be loved & needed, to be profoundly missed. To be loved by a new family as much as I loved my dad. And I do strongly believe I would have been a good dad. It would have made me abandon being so self centred & sorry for myself. To have someone who really depends on me I’d push like I never pushed in life to provide. It would actually be the making of me.
But I’m sure & certain now it will never happen. I’m a very unfit 57, over weight, arthritis affected, steroid dependent & with a prostrate seemingly bigger than my ambition, though not my stomach! I hate myself for having become enormous with such a pregnant belly. I Feel at this rate I’ll be lucky to see my 60s never mind my 70s. Nowhere near long enough to grow & nurture my own family!
At this rate! I know I need to turn my life around, but I don’t know how to or believe I can. There seems to be a depressing inevitability of failure & finality to my life. It’s as if I have given up on all the things important to me, acting & meeting my dream woman. In a nutshell all my dreams, all the important things. In fact not fantasising anymore is the deepest damage, I seem to be incapable of it these days & for someone who’s been fantasising all his life that is a big, big blow.
I have had a good life but now it’s like it’s over. The only pleasures I get today are like I said before the short day to day ones of tv & food too. I know I’m
lucky even to have a roof over my head. Makes me want to shake myself unstupid butI haven’t got the energy to.
This is one of those definite crossroads in my life, and has been for some time as I’ve been stuck in limbo at the junction. But a time is coming when I have to choose a direction & not the direction that ends abruptly in darkness.. hopefully. 

Oh give me the strength to turn my life around to believe I can go on, to counter negative depression, rise above affliction, summon powers beyond what I have ever known. To live as I have dreamt to live. Above all give me the strength of purpose.
I’ve often felt that I never gave anything my best shot, not really. If only I hadn’t always lost belief in myself & given up I might be in a different place with acting today., I might have had a family too. With acting I think I got near giving it 100% but it wasn’t for long & certainly not the consistent 110% that I heard Gary Oldman gave at the beginning of his acting. I watched a programme on him the other day & always really rated him one of the best.
I have always lacked self discipline, frequently scorned it, more often just couldn’t be  bothered because I’ve told myself I can’t do it or will do it tomorrow. Never do today what you can put off & do tomorrow! I feel I’ve been waiting all my life, in life’s waiting room, I will do that tomorrow when I’m in a better place & lately I’ve been thinking when I get to Weymouth, I’ll paint mermaids, to use my oft cited creative metaphor,: "I want to go to Weymouth & paint mermaids!" But my life is now.
Years ago I wrote a poem called ‘it’s happening to me now’ which tried (& failed) to communicate frustration with myself at seemingly thinking I had years & then I had a lot more than now. I wrote another at about 18 called 'Time on Earth' pleading for time to do all I anted to, so it's certain even at 18 I doubted I could do things. Now I can’t even see much of a future for me, the immense release from not having done the homework does seem tempting.. 
I know I have to fucking well keep positive, but I can't & frequently don't even want to. I'm bored and tired all the time, I was getting like this even before covid, but this last mad year has made it on steroids, just like me.
Trouble is the things I really need, a lovely woman & a nice acting job, well the lack of them seem like a result of that undone homework come back to haunt me and I never wanted to do my homework, though was scared of the repercussions of not doing it, but after all these years I'm far more scare of ending up alone than of getting bashed for not doing my homework.