My 2023? Some good books and trips but mostly a waste of time!

Some of my best reads of the year:

Only Americans Burn In Hell by Jarett Kobek

ATTA by Jarett Kobek

George Michael’s Faith: 33 1/3 by Matthew Horton

The Employees – a workplace novel of the 22nd century by Olga Ravn

Weird Fucks by Lynne Tillman

The Four Gated City by Doris Lessing (Children of Violence #5)

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn

my body would be the kindest of strangers by fiona helmsley

LOTE by Shola von Reinhold

All of the Charlaine Harris True Blood novels I’ve read this year (a scandalous six lol)

Play The Devil by Scott Laudati

In The Shadow of the Springs I Saw by Barbara Adair

Pleasure Beach by Helen Palmer

City of Illusions by Ursula K. Le Guin

Conditional Tense by Antjie Krog

Dune 5: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

Mermaid Fillet by Mia Arderne

Drive Your Plough Over The Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk

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Everything Other Than Reading

2023 was probably the best year for traveling – both domestic and international – that I’ve had for years.

Taking advantage of easy post-COVID travel (and having some disposable income again!), I visited numerous places that were brand new to me (Varanasi! Kruger National Park! Glasgow! Bristol! others), as well as returning to some of the UK’s top spots (the Lake District! the area formerly known as Snowdonia! Others), but far from this meaning that 2023 was a great year – as I imagine many people who had had similar experiences would lazily claim – it, to me, speaks of a great malaise and an absolute failure to make, maintain and live within a sustainable and meaningful life.

I.e. the fact that the best things I did this year were detached from my day-to-day life reeks, evidences and catalogues a serious, significant and potentially irreconcilable inability to live well, to live happily, to be a functioning whole, rounded, person.

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I’ve written at length here this year about my failure to live with integrity, and this is what I keep coming back to.

When escape is not only necessary, but the only time one feels close to self-hood, then problems are afoot…

If your best times are your vacations, you’ve fucking fucked up.

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…I have taken classes and I have passed exams this year, both in Spanish and in wine, yet I don’t feel like I know either of these things better than I did before, and in both I am (I suppose) more conscious of my ignorance than prior to studying at a higher level and perhaps this erodes confidence? Or possibly being fucking depressed erodes confidence and the ability to retain/recall information? Possibly being too bored and fucking frustrated to feel aware of self-knowledge?

…Cramming rather than learning, studying how to pass exams rather than studying the subjects the exams were in…

Scraping by and gaining certificates and qualifications but nothing that matters, nothing that escalates, nothing that helps…

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I saw some good shows this year – Kim Noble at the Soho Theatre may be the best live performance I’ve ever seen – and I even saw two productions of Shakespeare plays that I didn’t hate.

I saw an experimental cello gig that I accidentally fell asleep during.

And other things.

I just about maintained an exercise and prestige drama practice, though this has got harder as my mood has continued to drop over the past few months and I have instead sought brief respite and pleasure more in playing with music, something that both gives joy but feels like a waste of time afterwards; a masturbatory act, tho I could spend much longer fingering my synthesiser than myself…

I ate well this year, too. Though I didn’t cook as much as I would have liked to have done.

I’ve spent a lot of time this year trying and failing to move house. It has been an irritating and frustrating process, made harder by the fact that committing to extending this period of return to London repeatedly reiterates to me my total failure to live somewhere I feel positive or – I’d take this – not explicitly negative about…

Is that even possible? I don’t fucking know.

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There were things I enjoyed this year!

I had a short film (albeit one I made in 2022) featured in an [online] film festival, I had a couple of pieces of writing published early in the year, though nothing written this year (screeds about self-hatred and self-contempt are less acceptable at the age I’ve now reached… Ennui in your 30s just isn’t very cool (it’s not a good look)), and I haven’t been fucking trying enough…

I don’t have time, outside of classes and work and exercise and walking my dog and making videos and music things and trying to sometimes do fun things, and doing this blog, always, always, always, doing this blog…

If I wasn’t doing this blog I think I wouldn’t exist. I don’t feel like I do exist. I don’t exist. Not in any way that matters lol whoops haha 😂😂😂

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I feel fucking exhausted and like fucking dirt scum and I never seem to run into other people who hate their fucking lives as much as I used to, which makes living a life you hate significantly harder. Like, ten years ago, everyone I met who wasn’t either weird, lucky or un-inquisitive hated the shape of their lives… Now most of them don’t, and that is tiring, for me, to feel like this failure to make a life I want is no longer “normal”, or at least recurring…

What does that make me, then? Someone who has failed to grow up? To grow???

I function, I tick by, I fulfil expectations within our corrupt capitalistic system. I earn money and spend money and I bite my fucking tongue until it nearly falls off so that I have as frictionless an existence as possible.

I clean up after myself and my dog.

I am polite. Constantly polite. So so fucking polite that I don’t know if there’s even anything alive within me that isn’t just a fucking automation exacting politeness and economic function. What a waste what a waste what a waste.

An unlived life…

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Other than my Christmas music video – which did come out very well, I thought – I suppose ultimately my most satisfying experience in 2023 was when I spent a full day working (unpaid) as a boom mic operator for a short film that a couple of comedian friends of mine were in, alongside some more successful comedian friends of theirs.

I didn’t contribute to that in any way other than holding that boom mic for several hours – mostly out of shot – but being involved, even in the lowliest position, in that production was the first time I’d really felt much other than bleak emptiness for a very very very long time.

I was the least important person on set, but I was useful, I was helpful, and though ultimately a metal pole with clamps on it could have replaced me (robot takeover innit), I think it may have been the most valued I felt in a very long time.

Being even tangentially (haha “gential”) involved in a creative project with a team of other people felt explicitly not negative. Obviously, it would have been better had it taken up many days or weeks or months and been paid, lol, but it didn’t matter that it wasn’t because it was something I did on one Saturday when I would have otherwise just been crying, exercising, house-hunting and/or completing Spanish verb exercises that never quite sank in…

What this means, then, is that a radical rethink and a radical reapproach to the way I live my life is needed. I’m under no illusions about this.

I live with an academic, so the idea of more education is something the household approves of… should I go back to school? I don’t know.

Should I seek entry-level long-hours work as a boom mic operator? Probably not.

Should I make an effort to try and get some more original writing published and make sure to make the time to work on this more regularly? Yes.

Should I give up exercising? Go back on medication? Get back into partying? Give up caffeine and alcohol even beyond the “healthy” levels I’ve generally reduced both to? Should I travel even more? Should I post more on social media? Should I post even less on social media? Should I try and start a country band? Should I start playing ambient noise pieces at open mics?

I know I know I know I need to get back into doing poetry readings.

I know I need to make more of an effort to socialise and stay in touch with people.

I know I need to make sure to spend some time most days studying Spanish if I actually want to improve.

I know I need to make sure music/sound/performance is something I regularly do.

I know I need to play. I know I need to relax. I know I need to be better and alive and human, which this year I mostly didn’t feel like I was.

I know lots.

I know too much.

Knowledge is not the problem. Acting is the problem. Belief and hope in actions getting results is the problem.

I need to have a life where I don’t do things that make me feel worse and I do do things that make me feel better.

How? How how fucking how?

2023 scott manley hadley didn’t know how to believe in the self. Maybe 2024 scott manley hadley will?

Let’s fucking hope so.

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This hasn’t been the worst year of my life, sure, of course not.

But it certainly wasn’t a sustainable year. I hope the next one is different. It is nice to travel, of course it is, and I understand that it’s a privilege, but I think not wanting to (or needing to?) travel is something I’m much more interested in achieving long-term. Happy people don’t crave change. I would like that for myself. If it’s even possible…

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To all TriumphOfTheNow.com readers, Happy New Year!

I hope the things you want to change get changed, and I hope the things you want maintained remain as they are.

See you next year…