Winter in Hospitality

It is four in the morning on a Wednesday in December. The road outside is beginning to grow traffic but the sun is still some time away from rising. The birds don’t seem to know any better, and nor do I. Downstairs the tree is up and there are lights we turn on every morning when we open up. There are fires we light and doors we open and people we welcome inside for drinks and lunches and conversations about how cold it’s getting, and how England are getting on in the winter World Cup. There are all these things, that together make it sound something like home; but it isn’t home. Home is a little further away where there’s a different tree and a different fire and the people that we open the doors to in the morning aren’t strangers we just happened to meet across a bar. It is Christmas in hospitality, and once again I won’t be going home for the Holidays.

I’m struggling to sleep again. I’ve been on and off the wagon since I left Northampton and moved away to a new job four months ago. As I write this I am on the wagon, and so I’m awake at four AM listening to the birds and the rain and the growing hum of the daily commute. I have a later start today, so I can sleep in. But tomorrow I have an all day training course followed by an evening shift. The days are long and I am often tired though unable to rest. Things are in many ways better now; I like the people I work with and they like me. I enjoy the place I work and the people I serve are for the most part good to be around. I earn more money than I did before and for the most part I have fun earning it.

I am yet to meet the love of my life, though I have found myself interested in people again. For some time I had no intention of meeting a woman and sharing a life but as I find myself getting older I’m discovering that the hopeless romantic I was in my late teens and early twenties was less of a phase and more of a fundamental character defect. There is one woman I have found myself glancing at for a few moments more than I do the rest, but I haven’t managed to say much to her as of yet. I’m not even sure she’s available. I haven’t got the confidence I had when I was that younger romantic. I’ve gained several pounds around the middle, several lines around the eyes and I’ve lost three teeth to cocaine (which I have no current interest in you’ll be pleased to hear). Once upon a time I would look into mirrors with a smile, but nowadays I do my best to avoid them.

I haven’t written anything for this blog since I was twenty-eight, though I’ve continued to pay for the URL. I am thirty now much to my chagrin. I described here the age of twenty-eight as an age I never thought I’d get to; an age I never intended to reach. I can’t say that my nihilistic approach to ageing has changed much since then, but it didn’t sicken me to enter a new decade as much as I imagined it would. A lot has changed since I last wrote a post for this website and yet not much has happened. I have taken a step forward in my career, but not in my personal life. I have not yet written the great novel, and I am still unpublished. I’ve started to wonder if I was ever supposed to be a writer at all. Besides the weekly quiz that I write and call here at my new pub, I rarely ever open a word document and start to type. I have filled my journal in only a few times over the last year and it’s been months since I wrote a poem. Perhaps I simply ran out of things to talk about. Life moves pretty fast when you’re standing still.

I've met some good people here, and I think I could do well if I applied myself and dedicated my mind to change. I still suffer random waves of depression, anxiety and anger but the episodes are less frequent now than they were a year ago. Leaving my old job was definitely the right choice. I have all the support I need here, it’s just down to me to take the opportunities and run with them, and not to squander them as I have done historically. It’s almost Christmas, and so it is almost a new year. I don’t believe that a new year means a new person or a new life in any such silly and sentimental way, but I am hopeful that the coming months hold something worth my time. I’d like to start writing again and I’d like to find something in my life outside of work that gives me a reason to get up and smile when the sun rises. Be that love or friendship or even a rekindling with literary passion, it would be nice to have a reason not to stay in bed.

It feels good to write something here again after so long, not that I’ve said much of any interest or import. I’ll try and update this website no one visits a little more regularly. For now, I think I’ll turn out the lights and stare at the ceiling until I go slightly more insane, or better yet actually fall asleep!

That is all, for now.

-W.L