Author: hamishmacdonald

Yesterday afternoon, sitting in a coffeeshop while it rained outside, I finished Chapter One of Finity. All that pressure, fear, and resistance beforehand gave way in the end to the simple act of telling a story, which is just fun.

I have Strategic Coach work to do today, but I’m going to figure out how best to post the serialised chapters, then send this first one out to the readers as soon as possible. Trust me, I’m not going to sit on it at this point. I was starting to feel like one of those people who talks about the book they’re going to write and keeps describing the plot to test it out on other people, but never actually sits down to do the work. But no, I am the king cat of self-discipline (which, to give away the secret, is always about finding the fun in the task).

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My friends have been great lately for listening to me and handling me gently, talking me down from my tree. On Friday, though, I had a conversation over Skype with Cosgrove that was one of those Big Talks, the kind that alters the whole trajectory of life after it. He really unravelled my whole relationship thing, and, at the end of an hour, something completely different was possible. What a relief.

What’s great is that Patrick is also getting very skilled at listening through what I’m saying and calling me on my junk. It’s annoying, because it requires me to be the best potential version of myself instead of the lazy, automatic, reactive human machine I can default to.

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On Saturday, Chris and I went out wandering in the rain and did a photo shoot. I always get horribly self-conscious during these things and end up making funny expressions unintentionally as my face tries to deal with the scrutiny, but I think we got a couple of useful shots. And the cover of my most recent book no longer has a nine-year-old portrait on it!

I’m coming face to face with stories in my life — things I’ve been repeating about myself and the world — that I’m discovering aren’t true.

Some of them are mild shifts, like discovering that, despite the fact that I’ve been saying for years “I hate to cook and have no confidence in the kitchen”, I actually can cook. Recently, I’ve had a number of occasions on which I realised I’d just cooked something good. I really enjoyed what I’d made, and so said several other people, like my parents and Patrick. (And my parents were still relating to me through the filter of “he eats pasta every day”, which used to be true about ten years ago.)

Then today, Chris invited me to the theatre. My first instinct about theatre is “Don’t go. It will be disappointing and make me angry.” This was my experience of it for a long time: people overacted in completely soulless, disconnected ways, the staging was bad, the play was obvious, and so on. I trained and worked for years as an actor, and had very high standards for myself and what I thought it meant to do justice to the possibilities of theatre — rules which I’d seen violated too many times.

But when Chris asked today, I thought, “What the hell” and said yes. He provided me with a totally different experience. The play was incredibly clever, and each of the four actors was wonderfully subtle as well as fully able to make their character’s emotional journey in a believable way. And we were even sitting close enough for me to get splattered with stage blood! (Okay, just a drop.) So the story “I don’t like theatre”? Not true.

Then there are other, more deeply-rooted stories, and with the help of friends and other important people, I’m learning that they’re also total rubbish that brings me no good.

So, as I finalise the outline of my novel, I see that it’s time to take responsibility for the authorship of my life, too, and be more careful with the stories I tell myself about the way things are. Some of the old ones are closed-minded, angry, and not very interesting.

So this thing I’ve been imagining for a month finally turned into an actual date on Saturday night, and it did not go as I’d hoped. I left feeling like I’d fallen down the stairs while trying to hold onto my heart (and dropped it through a grate at the bottom). So I spent yesterday feeling sorry for myself, and pretty down on myself for managing somehow to go in the course of an evening from being someone this guy thought he might like to being someone he didn’t. Or “might, later”, which is essentially the same thing, because it doesn’t ever work like that in reality. Attraction is a binary thing in my experience. Only on sitcoms that have run too long do people later discover that they’ve always loved someone.

Geez, what happened to my rule about not talking about this stuff on here? Ehh, I need the catharsis. (Will anagnorisis follow?)

Today, though, I find myself feeling a lot better. It helps to have such good, supportive friends — who pick me up and brush me off time and again. I like that they also don’t resort to name-calling about the other guy, ’cause I still think he’s great, and that kind of sour grapes never works anyway.

It also helps that I figured out the plot of the book and got a big fat pay rise last week!

I’ve managed to recycle romantic discouragement into lots and lots of written pages in the past: even negative energy is still energy to use. I missed my writing session yesterday, though, ’cause I just couldn’t muster up the spirit to do anything but lie in bed, and watch Thelma and Louise with Patrick over dinner. (Note: this movie is hard drugs to the mind of someone who’s just been unlucky in love. Happily, I don’t have a driver’s license and am nowhere near a desert.)

Today, though, I feel worlds better. Maybe it’s ’cause the situation existed so much in my imagination. I just feel kind of stupid for having spent so much mental energy on this. I scorn people whose lives are so predicated on romance that they feel empty and bored without it. But here was me, getting all dreamy, thinking of travel and domesticity and… And I suppose it says good things about me that I can still care.

Maybe someday. In the meantime, I have a world to destroy. Chapter One is not far off.

“Yeah, yeah, your psyche, poverty, blah blah blah. What’s happening with the book?”

Funny you should ask. Over the past few days, I’ve been wading back in, going through all my notes, which suddenly didn’t seem so diffuse and complicated. Everything came together, and I find myself with one single plot-thread that ties everything together.

I don’t know that this one is going to be particularly deep. It looks like it’ll be significantly shorter than the last one and less — I dunno, epic. It’s got less interiority. But it should clip along and be fun. That’s my commitment.

So I’ve got the arc, and this afternoon I did a rough plot-point breakdown. Soon, very soon… actual chapters. Send me an e-mail if you’d like to be an advance reader (if you haven’t already).

I’m totally high on coffee. How do people drink this stuff regularly?

This morning I drew a map of the world my book takes place in, I went to a coffee shop and wrote an article for work (a neat Strategic Coach take on motivation, for Strategic eNews, which I write for them), then I mapped out the story-arc of the book, came home and cleaned the bathroom, hoovered the carpets, and…

What? Now what? I’m vibrating.

Tonight I’m going to the movies with the Friday Gang. Whee!

I found a website called Kiva.org, which is storefront for a microcredit network. They find aspiring entrepreneurs in the developing world and give them interest-free loans toward their projects. The money comes from individuals who make donations through the website.

What’s fun about the way they’ve set this site up is that you can pick a project that interests you and give whatever you want. I’ve been saving up money for a while, for nothing in particular, and what strikes me about these projects is how easy it is to blow the whole outstanding balance for a project out of the water with one donation. And you get the money back. (Microcredit has a history of vastly higher successful repayment rates than commercial bank loans. Go figure: who do you care about, the bank that posted a 2.5 billion pound profit last year, or the group of people who helped you open a food market in your village?)

Here’s the pre-rolled message from their website, which says it all:

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Hi!

I just made a loan to someone in the developing world using a revolutionary new website called Kiva.

You can go to Kiva’s website and lend to someone in the developing world who needs a loan for their business — like raising goats, selling vegetables at market or making bricks. Each loan has a picture of the entrepreneur, a description of their business and how they plan to use the loan so you know exactly how your money is being spent — and you get updates letting you know how the business is going. The best part is, when the entrepreneur pays back their loan you get your money back — and Kiva’s loans are managed by microfinance institutions on the ground who have a lot of experience doing this, so you can trust that your money is being handled responsibly.

I just made a loan to an entrepreneur named Johnstone Mativo in Kenya. They still need another $50.00 to complete their loan request of $525.00 (you can loan as little as $25.00!). Help me get this business off the ground by clicking on the link below to make a loan to Johnstone Mativo too:

http://kiva.org/app.php?page=businesses&action=about&id=9546&referralId=

It’s finally easy to actually do something about poverty — using Kiva I know exactly who my money is loaned to and what they’re using it for. And most of all, I know that I’m helping them build a sustainable business that will provide income to feed, clothe, house and educate their family long after my loan is paid back.

Join me in changing the world — one loan at a time.

Thanks!

Alistair Hamish MacDonald
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What others are saying about www.Kiva.org:

‘Revolutionising how donors and lenders in the US are connecting with small entrepreneurs in developing countries.’
— BBC

‘If you’ve got 25 bucks, a PC and a PayPal account, you’ve now got the wherewithal to be an international financier.’
— CNN Money

‘Smaller investors can make loans of as little as $25 to specific individual entrepreneurs through a service launched last fall by Kiva.org.’
— The Wall Street Journal

‘An inexpensive feel-good investment opportunity…All loaned funds go directly to the applicants, and most loans are repaid in full.’
— Entrepreneur Magazine

I went up Calton Hill with the gang last night for Beltane. It was a perfect evening, with a huge pastel rainbow sunset above the expanse of old and new Edinburgh. The features on the hill seemed to stand in sharper relief than usual — Nelson’s tower like a big upended telescope, and the Folly’s Acropolis front looking like part of a giant stone playpen the city had violently outgrown.

Even though we’ve all been going to the event for the same number of years, Liz expertly led us from one station of the procession to another, finding corners that nobody else had noticed, so that when the singing, dancing, drumming red, blue, and white-painted people came around we were perfectly situated. (If our Friday Gang was a Japanimation robot, Liz would be the part that says “And I’ll form the head!”)

I had a plastic bottle of pre-mixed absinthe with me, which essentially served as my lobotomy for the evening. There seems to be a chemical truth to its romantic reputation as an arty drunk. My friends did that thing of looking at me with a smirk while taking care of me, leading me around. I was overwound (yet run-down), and they tended to me like excellent watchsmiths. This also goes for friends abroad, who know how to talk me out of my crazy tree.

I don’t know why, but I smell like meat this morning. Funny things happen at Beltane. I must shower when I’m finished this.

[EDIT: Liz’s pictures are up!]

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(More pictures in the Pics section to the left. But they’re all out of order ’cause of the wonky uploader I used. And unfortunately, our friend Olivier, who was there with us for the first few days, doesn’t really make an appearance in them, ’cause a day’s photos got deleted from the camera — oops!)

Barcelona was lovely, but I have to admit that there were challenges. My folks and I saw great things and enjoyed each other’s company, but we also had some stresses to deal with.

I’m also not good at being in constant company; I’m an introvert — solitude gives me my energy back — so two weeks kinda made my batteries flat. I love my folks so much, and I’m so conscious of making all my time with them count that it actually makes me weird, like I can’t just take things as they are because I have this mental template of how special our time together is supposed to be. Cosgrove pointed this out to me in an instant message (I love how technology allows people to be in my life without having to be physically present). He said “…stop making yourself wrong for not always having a ‘FABULOUS GREAT TIME’, which occurs as somewhat fake and desperate anyway.” Patrick’s also been great, like some kind of boiler technician, letting out my steam.

What really turned up the pressure, though, was that I met someone just before I went away on this trip. This always happens: things take place just before I go away, usually to Canada for a month, then there’s nothing I can do about them but think and think and overthink.

I won’t say more about this, except that I nearly wrecked it through this overthinking. I call this the Jack Russell Terrier Effect: I’m a smart little doggie, and if you leave me unattended for too long, I’ll tear up the furniture.

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p>Romance plays into a horrible confluence of my personality traits. In most situations in my life, these are good things, but in this domain, they’re dangerous. To whit, here are a few:

Characteristic	Elsewhere	Romance
Impatience	I get things done. I write books, I make things, I jump over deadlines like a border collie clears hurdles.	I exist in a kind of hummingbird time, in which the other person is occupied with regular life things, but I seem to have extra time to obsess.
Persistence	I start and finish projects. I can be relied on to do what I say I’m going to do.	When there’s no action to take, nothing I can do, my brain just won’t leave things alone, and goes into ‘hamster in a wheel’ mode. And then I make decisions or take action based on, well, stupidity.
Imagination	I draw, I write, I say funny things.	I make things up from scratch that have no basis in fact. I imagine that things have ended, which often precipitates making that happen in reality.
Communication	I express myself in detail, and find just the right words to say. I’m unreserved about saying everything I think.	I say too much, too early.

I hate to play the gay card, but when you grow up with a fear of people seeing who you really are and hating you for it, it’s hard to shake off that pattern of thought. What’s odd is that, happily, many of my gay friends don’t have this. Patrick, my closest example, is completely free of gay angst. What’s particularly annoying is that this old closet has been completely emptied out — the contents have been burned in the yard, and the monster I imagined was in there turned out to not be real. But that pattern of thinking is always there for me, waiting for a chance to reactivate itself. So, paradoxically, as an adult I can be a person who’s confident to the point of egotism, yet have this dread fear of having my worthlessness discovered — even though I don’t believe it’s true.

On the trip, both of my parents said things to me that were overwhelmingly acknowledging, telling me how proud they are of me, how much they like me as a person. I couldn’t help laughing inside, thinking, “Some people wait their whole lives for this stuff and never get it.” They give this to me over and over, and always have done. So you’d think I would pay attention to that interpretation instead of the made-up one. And most of the time I do.

Anyway, all this is to say that I’ve been driving myself crazy with hopes and fears about a situation that hasn’t even had a chance to play itself out. But then last night I had a phone conversation that made everything okay, and, while I have compassion for my humanity, I feel embarrassed about my behaviour (most of which, thankfully, happened offstage, in my head, and in conversation with Patrick).

I really wish I could wise up in this part of life. I doubt, though, that such root instincts can be schooled. I think we always remain about five years old emotionally, we just learn to put up blocks and filters and develop tactics for managing ourselves.

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p>…Which underscores, I suppose, how relatively inexperienced I am in romance. It’s kind of ironic, when myself and my other gay friends have had exponentially more sex than our straight friends, yet I can count the number of successful, long-term relationships I’ve had — well, on my thumb.

…a massage and a lobotomy.

On Tuesday I’m heading off to Barcelona with my parents for a week. In case, for whatever reason, you need to reach me, you should be able to get me on my mobile: +447847183931 (011 44 7847 183 931 from North America).

The apartment we’ve let for the week is at Consell de Cent, 283, Barcelona (also known as Calle del Consejo de Ciento).

Yesterday, I finished Kurt Vonnegut’s Bogombo Snuff Box. And yesterday he died. He’d retired from writing books, and from what he’s written about old age, I’m sure he was as ready as one can be for the experience. Still, he was a bright, clear glass lightbulb who burned strong for a long time, and they don’t make that kind anymore. There can’t be another Vonnegut any more than there can be another Hemingway or Dorothy Parker or whomever: we had that; now it’s our responsibility to be the next thing. But somehow it doesn’t feel like it’s possible to stand out like that now.

I picked up another collection of his today, which I’d planned to do anyway (I’m not a fanboy or a vulture, I swear). Bogombo was a collection of his earliest stories, which all took place in a rather normal, Modern (Fifties and Sixties) world. “Company men” and subdivisions and marriage issues only capture my imagination so much — and even he, in the coda, said that he regarded those stories (which he wrote in order to make money from periodicals) as “fake fossils” now. I’m looking forward to getting more of the fantastic in this other collection.

Ooh, and I had a massive writing session last night in which I mapped out everything I have of the novel so far. It’s really coming together now. Chapters will not be not far off.

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p>I’ve been making deliberate choices about the music I’m listening to lately: I’ve bought albums by a few people who are going completely independent, producing and selling their music on their own with no commercial intermediaries. I like that, so I’m supporting it. And it’s not like it’s a hair-shirt punishment, ’cause it’s so darned good. Here are my three recent finds:

• Kate Walsh, Tim’s House
• Jay Brannan, Unmastered
• Van Tramp, Wheels of Fortune

The latter is my friend Tim’s band, and the album is really strong. There are some better-than-radio-sh*te hits on it that have that “personal theme song of the summer” feel.

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p>It would be fun to try just listening to music by real people I know.

I sold a book today. In person.

On my way to the library to work, I went into a local shop that sells design books. It’s a neat little independent store full of slick mags of snazzy styles and books with raggedy type and mashed-up pictures — the latest of what’s happening in design. And they had ‘zines! ‘Zines are such a non-thing here that I was excited to see a whole shelf devoted to them.

I mulled around for a while, thinking about buying a book featuring ideas for promotional materials, then changing my mind (I’ve bought so many books lately, and I have to stop).

Finally, I got up the gumption to talk to the shop’s owner. I told him what I’ve been doing with my micropress, and he expressed interest in seeing the finished product. Because I’ve strong-armed myself into being a prepared publisher, I had a copy with me, and pulled it out to show him.

“I’m really impressed,” he said, flipping through the pages, looking at the flyleaf, then at the rough cover underneath. “It’s not what we sell, fiction,” he said, “but I’d be interested in taking a copy for myself.”

Yeah, it’s just five quid, and it’s really not about the money or selling an object. It’s about reaching across my shyness and my hesitation about — whatever my trepidation about selling is about — and connecting with someone who was into what I’m doing.