Given myself a little bit of time to churn out a number of words. Bad idea to do at this juncture in my life as it causes little else other than strain in my writing. And everything else, really. So what do I say to that? Where do I go from here?

I go to the writing and I write and churn and churn some more. And then once done churning, I churn some more. All churning, all the time. Get the words written; get the words done. Get everything in an order that makes as sense as it does, much.

I could be editing right now. I could be editing essays and reviews and a bunch of other things that I need to work on. I could be doing that and I’m not and that’s on me. Instead I’m doing this, which right now feels like a waste of time. Still, it’s an enjoyable waste of time and that’s the main thing, really. Or is it?

There are so many ways in which we waste time and in doing so, time is wasted. However, what actually counts as time wasted? A life lived is still a life lived, even if it is between frames. That’s okay. Sometimes you just burn out and need rest, and sometimes you get distracted by whatever it is around you. That is okay. I need to tell myself this. I need to tell myself that it’s okay to not be as productive as I would like, and that I can rest here and there. I don’t tell myself that nearly enough. Not a good move on my part. It happens.

So what do I say from here? I’ve said what I feel I need to say. I’ve written plenty about wasting time. I don’t need to say more. I need to not drag this out further than I already am. I am wasting more time. I need to get on with the getting of the on and move toward wherever and whenever I do that I need to make sure that I get there in as may pieces as necessary.

Okay. Now I’m feeling something push its way out of me, and it certainly isn’t gas. That… could be a good thing? I don’t know. I feel it and it is coming and I feel it rising out of me and it is coming to you in the form of text as represented by images known as letters that form structures and on a screen of the digital variety.

Imagine writing all of this out by hand. No thank you.

Where was I? Oh right, so you know when you’re on a couch in a room lit not as bright as it could be, and the walls are weatherboard and the joint smoke curls around the space, and you’re not down for it, but because you’re at a moment in your life where you don’t give enough of a shit, you partake anyway? Yeah, that was a good time. Was a bad time, too, but it was a good time. Laughed about pointless shit and didn’t get on with much of anything. Got food delivered from a restaurant that was around fifty metres away. This was a good few years ago now and they’d always get a little confused because we were so close, but that’s the way it goes sometimes. It was a good time and a bad time, and that room had a dinginess to it, but it was clean.

The day me and my housemates moved in, the place was crawling with roaches. Had to bomb it before we could actually move in. Had to wait around for one housemate to disappear and return as they didn’t want us moving stuff in before then, for some reason. Who knows. Who cares at this point.

Somewhere around then I’d stumbled upon The Mark of Cain and a few other things, and I was with the ex that broke up with me, which helped get me moving on writing again, all those years ago. I was stressed and already not wanting to live with the people I was living with, but I hung on as I’d had not much of anywhere else to go. It was a tough time. These people cost me a place I wanted to live in and cared about. It wasn’t the best of places, but it was a place I liked.

Since moving out of home I’ve lived in eleven places. Ten, depending on if you don’t count a short stint at Ewe and Anna’s place. But that’s a lot, and I’ve collected a lot of time spent doing very little. A lot of time wasted. A lot of time depressed and empty and full and stressed out, and I wonder if, perhaps, if any of that has to do with the likelihood that I have ADHD or not. I think about it, but I try not to think about it too much. Need more money before I can go through the diagnosis process as it’s a bit expensive here. Probably expensive in a lot of places to do this as an adult. But I don’t know. I don;t know much about that stuff; I just know that I feel more functional when I’m looking after myself, though my procrastination still reigns supreme. Just not as supreme as when I am not tired and all that stuff.

But yeah; this place had cockroaches and we bombed them and then we still had cockroaches. You’d get food and have it in your room and they’d gradually start coming out of the walls wherever they could find space and you’d try to deal with them however you could. Once food was gone they’d usually disappear. It was an unpleasant house to live in, but it was a pleasant one at the same time. The kind of place where you become a little more tolerant of housemate behaviour, because you’re united in your loathing of the real estate you’re renting from. You tolerate housemates being shitty at you because of rent reminders coming through because of your pay not aligning with the time the rent is required. You tolerate them being angry at you despite your telling them that it’s fine, and you accept their apologies when you get a letter from the real estate showing that, yes, it doesn’t matter so long as the rent is paid.

It was a place where I tolerated a housemate coming home from work and losing their shit over not being able to find where their weed was, and when they finally found it, calming right down and acting as though nothing happened. It was a heated place; a heavy place, where little in the way of creativity was done. It was a place of disaffected existing and emptiness, where days sort of blended into each other, and little changed. A lot of wasted time.

But some of it was good. A lot of it was definitely bad, and like anything in my past, something I am quite happy to never revisit, but some of the time there that was wasted, some of it was good.