manamoeba

[manamoeba]

Spring

I've finally given my freelance clients notice that I'll be leaving - it's unlikely I'll have to stay as long as the end of April, but that's the notice timeline that I've given them.

It is astonishing how free and optimistic I feel. I hadn't realised that I was the frog in the pot, slowly heating up, and over the last number of years the water has ticked closer and closer to boiling. I'm exhausted all the time, worried all the time, stressed and behind and struggling to find the time or energy to keep up just all the time, and now, suddenly, I won't be any more.

As it stands, every moment that I'm not in work or engaged in a direct childcare or housework task belongs to my freelance clients; sometimes literally, like the late nights or crammed in meetings or hurried reports, and sometimes only figuratively, like the time taken to rest or stay clean and still spent worrying constantly about the work that isn't being done at that very moment. Rest and self-care have become outlets only for the prevention of collapse. It's no way for a person to live.

The idea that my time will become mine, that I'll be able to go to the allotment and write my prepping resources and improve the house and go to the gym and tick off the to-do list and just sit on the sofa in the sun and enjoy being alive? It's absolutely intoxicating. I can't wait. I wish it was today.

See you soon,

Dan Written at a cluttered kitchen table in the final weeks of his digital marketing freelance career, on a day when the sun has come out from behind the clouds and the wild garlic is beginning to bloom

[manamoeba]

Let Them Bring Forth And Show Us What Will Happen

I love trying to predict the future. I am extraordinarily bad at it, but I can't stop myself. It's an excuse to be a cynic, to feel smarter than the average bear, and to tap into the omnipresent mystical instinct that drives people to buy crystal balls and develop 40-step sports betting predictors. It's fun.

I have almost never been correct, but I am still going to make some predictions for the coming year to look back on at the end of 2025 and laugh at. Three of them have already come true at time of writing, though one of those was a lay-up to get the year started on what is technically a win for me. For the others, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Dan's 2025 Predictions

My sister gets married

Elon Musk crashes out of the US government in embarrassing fashion and possibly gets in legal trouble over it

UK riots in the summer

UK shooting attack

Massive cyberattack on a developed country's infrastructure

Resurgence of atheism in the mainstream

Attempt made to oust Kier Starmer

Neuralink human trial goes horribly wrong

US aircraft shot down somewhere in the world

US makes overt reference to annexing or attacking Canada

Hayao Miyazaki retires/unretires

Food price riots in the developed world

Dick Van Dyke still alive

Ryan Reynolds fall from grace

Blade movie finally cancelled

"Hamilton" movie announced

"Nightmare Before Christmas" live-action remake announced

AI fraud among vulnerable people drives push for regulation

At least 3 corporate whistleblowers assassinated

"Woke" loses traction as a political catch-all and conservatives largely stop using it

Start Prepping UK gets enough traction to begin opening opportunities outside of the internet

Anyway no matter what happens, let's just get out there and try to have fun with it. Good luck guys!

[manamoeba]

Vulneribus Confectus

The Romans had a term that we sometimes see discussed when they talk about fighting; vulneribus confectus - "worn down by wounds".

It's not used to mean a single debilitating wound, but rather an accumulation of smaller injuries, collecting up until someone can't fight any more. He isn't necessarily dead, and in the usual context it refers to a fighter who is still very much alive, just so worn down and dismantled that he can no longer resist.

I post this on this freezing, exhausted, burnt-out November morning for no particular reason.

[manamoeba]

The morning after Halloween, Liverpool, 2024

[manamoeba]

More Beautiful Every Day

October 21st, 2024

I can feel the approach of Halloween like the onrushing sunset. Time to reclaim some energy. I've been tired for too long.

Time to dig where the old loves are buried. Imagine the life you could have. The self you could be. It's very close. It feels more possible than ever before.

In the dusk light of October I feel like the world gets more beautiful every day.

[manamoeba]

[manamoeba]

The Beautiful Gloom

October 1st, 2024

I have waited such a long time to write this. Almost as long as I've been waiting for October. I wanted to write it all September, but I'm busier than ever, and art has to take a back seat to work. Being a starving artist is only cool if you don't have kids.

I always think that the world feels brand new in the Autumn, which is odd, because Autumn is harvest time and dying-back time; it's a season where the things that are already in the world begin to leave it again. Nothing grows in the Autumn except me.

I have a new job, in the real world, talking to real people. I feel suddenly at the heart of my community, and the years have dropped off me in unexpected fashion. My freelance work is busier than ever and finds itself packed into the corners, filling my evenings and spare moments. To make this possible, I've rewired my brain to think of the freelancing as something that I do for fun, and it's actually mostly worked. Of course, this has killed all of the things I really do do for fun, but there's no reason why that should be a permanent arrangement.

For now, I live the sort of life that teenagers romanticise. The sort of thing that you'd find in a rainy town in a Ghibli film. I walk my dog in misty parks, go to work in the beautiful independent coffee shop at the top of my road, get given a bottle of wine from a lost shipment. The people I work with are fantastic. I feel like I know everyone. I say hello to a beautiful puppy on my way out, then I collect my son from his preschool, just across the road, and pop into the little Italian deli next to my cafe for a sandwich. We wave to the tourists on the Penny Lane bus tour, and my elderly neighbour gives me a jar of local floral honey that she bought for us, to say thank you for lending her the baby supplies she needed for her grandchildren to visit from out of the country. She says she saw the little honey jar and thought of my kids.

I read stories to my son and then cuddle him to sleep, and then I go downstairs and work until I'm nodding at the computer. I would have romanticised even that as a child.

Here it all is, in the grey October gloom. I'm very happy to be here. I plan to stay for as long as I can.

Dan At the cluttered kitchen table, at 2.12pm on a Tuesday, stealing a moment from my freelancing

[manamoeba]

July

[manamoeba]

An odd moment this morning, like something from a film. I switched on the live election coverage on my phone, not realising that it was turning exactly 7am at that moment, so the news began with;

"into government. Good morning, it's Friday the 5th of July. The Labour party has won a landslide victory, Sir Kier Starmer will be the next Prime Minister."

The timing was so perfect, it couldn't help but feel like one of those unlikely cinematic moments where the scene has to be set in under 5 seconds of exposition. You don't expect historic moments to really be like that.

[manamoeba]

...And A Red Dawn?

I'm waking up today to the victory of a Labour party that has tacked so far to the right that I can't reasonably support them, and yet, the sense of optimism is much more than I thought I'd feel. The Labour party are back in power for the first time in 14 years.

Walking the dog this morning, the light and air in the park felt fresh and strange. I found myself thinking, "they're actually gone. They're finally gone." It was as though I hadn't allowed myself to believe that the conservatives would really be beaten.

A weird morning. It feels like the wake of the Queen's death. Just a long quiet, a sense of "oh, the era is over. I wonder what happens now."

My cynicism about the party notwithstanding, I still can't help but hope. I want this to be what Labour are saying it will be. I don't think it will be, but I think I'm allowed to hope, however vain.

[manamoeba]

4th July 2024

Thank god Terry Pratchett didn’t have to learn about this, that meteoric-iron sword would be going right through ol’ Neil.

[manamoeba]

One year, or thereabouts, since we lost one of the best writers I’ve ever read. Thanks for everything, Cormac.

[manamoeba]

Am I So Easily Suckered?

Camp NaNoWriMo begins again in July; just 5 days away. Surely I'm not so foolish as to go again? I have too much on and too little money to waste any time on frivolities like art and beauty.

Don't I?

[manamoeba]

My blog is old enough to go to secondary school and I missed its birthday by almost two weeks because I was too busy being an actual father to my non-blog children.

[manamoeba]

Leashing A Storm

I am attempting to instigate a hyperfixation, on purpose, focused on storywriting. If it works, I'll have the borderline-obsession and intense mental pressure necessary to finish my Scout draft to a quality I can accept, and, more importantly, I will theoretically have demonstrated the ability to put a leash on my neurodivergency and ride its abnormal power right to any desired outcome I need.

I do not expect this to work.

It feels like an arcane and sinister experiment. Like something that should be attempted in a stone-walled laboratory. I'm trying to take something that is by its nature unpredictable, untamable, and feral, and evoke it from the depths of my consciousness; and then if it should arrive, I am trying to aim it where I want it to go.

Who knows what will happen?

Probably nothing good.

[manamoeba]

[manamoeba]

A picture of the last known Barbary Lion sighting before their extinction, headed alone into the Atlas Mountains, there to disappear forever.

All roads may lead to the desert but we do not have to walk them all the way to the end.