I only have one tattoo. It’s a dragon clutching a shield and embossed on the shield is the futhark rune called Thurisaz, commonly associated with the god Thor (and can be taken to represent Thor’s hammer, Miolnir) although that’s not the reason why I chose it. In script, Thurisaz can be transliterated into two letters that just so happen to be my initials which is kind of convenient but in runecasting and divination, it’s known as the “Gateway” rune.

The gateway is the point where your past behind you and the future ahead of you, the place between “heaven” and the mundane, life and death and the crossing from ignorance to enlightenment. It is a rune of non-action, calling for contemplation of future intentions, consideration of past events and reflection and examination of the external and internal forces at work around you. It can also represent the division between order and chaos and like all good divinatory tools, the interpretations of this are obscure: do you shake off the bonds of order defined by the constraints of your upbringing, your conditioning and the influences bearing on you before escaping into the unpredictable adventure that chaos brings or do you make sense out of the chaos, introduce order, consolidating or severing all of the different forces that are pulling you in different directions?

Pretentious, new age ramblings aside, I sometimes forget to take a step back and meditate on my life. Looking around at some peoples blogs, there are a lot of reviews of achivements and goals that were set in 2007 and lists of plans and intentions for 2008. Typically my own personal list, year to year, reads something along the lines of “Get through the year without killing a) myself or b) other people.” I live, at best, week to week but generally day to day. I know full well where I am but I have very little idea about where I’m heading to. I find myself rapidly approaching mid-life and wondering why I seem to have made so little progress in areas that I want to. Invariably the answer is procrastination with an added dose of blaming spurious external events for my own shortcomings.

Take, for example, the Revelation screenplay I’m writing. I finished the first first draft about 4 or 5 years ago. Hell, I had the original idea nearly 9 years ago and yet despite that, I’ve essentially done nothing about it. (Another film idea that I’ve had and which I think would work very well was first conceived of 12 years ago and I’ve done fuck all about it since!) I’ve come unstuck with the current draft I’m working on because ever since I realised I needed to change the story, I’ve been able to push on with it - even to just get it done. I managed to write about 10 pages (if that) over the last month and a bit and found that the characters sat down in protest and refused to do anything until I sorted it all out. They even started discussing the lack of coherence in the second act with each other which wasn’t a good sign.

It made me seriously question my ability to tell a story - something that could probably be considered a prime requisite if I want to write at all. It doesn’t take much to shatter the glass tower of my hopes, dreams and aspirations. Yet all I need to do is accept this and move on. I shouldn’t even be writing the feature at the moment - the only reason I started on it was because I applied for Metlab. As I’m not on that, I can go back to my original plan which was to finish two or three short film scripts and get them (or at least one of them) made before starting on plans for my features. Cool. A plan. I love it when one of those comes together.

However, the plan coming together does need to take into consideration the following factors: a) the new arrival in May and c) making sure there’s bread and butter on the table and a roof over our heads. Also, I need to track down an errant b). See - that’s what happens. I find obstacles in my path and rather than find a way of removing them or conquering them, I hide from them instead. Why couldn’t they just be a 30 foot high stack of hay bales instead? Instead, I feel like I’m standing at the edge of a bottomless chasm. On the other side I can see the Emerald city - my ultimate destination - but at the moment I can’t find a way across the chasm. It might be possible to jump over it - if only I trusted my ability to do so or it might just require a simple leap of faith (that’s ’simple’ is in ‘outrageously fucking risky with failure leading to certain doom and a bad headache’). The question that remains is how much do I want to get to the other side?

I’m well aware that such introspective navel-gazing isn’t comely or attractive but I have to do this otherwise I’m just going to step back into the shadows once again and let the shattered tower lie in the dust rather than try to reassemble it. (If I carried on this analogy, I might start thinking about foundations, good structure and better support - all of which is relevant but really is taking a cat-o-nine-tails to an equine quadruped in an advanced stage of rigor mortis). Writing is writing and even this crap will warm me up for the main event. Tell you what - let’s not call it navel-gazing, let’s call it contemplation. Yeah, that works. Sounds less emo in my not-that-humble opinion.

Last year I walked 100km for charity. The worst time of that, the time when we all wanted to just lie down, curl up and go to sleep, was at about 4am in the morning at the bottom of hill, just before crossing the A23. We’d been walking for about 20 and a half hours and had covered about 75km at that stage. The four of us sat down for five minutes and scoffed a bag of jelly babies in exhausted silence. We didn’t know it at the time but worse was still to come at 6am at the start of the longest leg of the route when the heavens would open and turn the solid ground into a quagmire and we’d be forced to trudge for two hours in fucking ghastly conditions but at 4am we all felt ready to give up and call it a day. But we didn’t. We pushed on and eventually finished the course another 9 hours later. That’s where I am at the moment - not able to face going up the next hill but knowing that if I do, I’ll be glad that I did but if I don’t even try, I’ll always be wondering what was on the other side.

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Morpheus: The Matrix