For far too long in the past seven days I’ve been sitting around at home, wasting time, shamefully thinking ‘I’ll just read this, or watch that, or listen to that, then I’ll get on with writing…’.  And before I know it I’ve managed to spin out this ugly habit to fill up most of my 7 days off. Utterly deplorable.

Today, the afternoon is starting to look like yet another procrastination write-off, when suddenly there’s an incredibly loud sound of buzzing. Twofold. It’s a huge bumblebee – presumably a queen – accompanied by an equally large wasp, bashing against the window from the inside. The first flying insects I’ve seen this year. They’re complaining furiously, if somewhat justifiably, about the magical invention of glass. So I grab one tumbler (pause to let the joke about circus acrobats subside… all done), along with one side of a flattened cardboard box which previously housed a Cadbury’s Flake Easter Egg. Then I steel myself into valiant insect rescue mode.

The easter egg was a gift from my kind landlady. All her tenants received one.  One chocolate egg, in one box which doubles as a bee rescuing machine.

Watching both creatures fly off into the beautiful spring afternoon, I feel for the first time in over a week that I’ve actually been of some abiding use. Oh, and today someone emails to say how much they like reading my diary. So I take the hint and start writing again.

Why do I let myself get into these do-nothing spirals? It’s such a false temptation. Any pleasure gained from watching that TV programme or that DVD or reading that book or scrolling through The Entire Internet is nothing compared to the pleasure of accomplishment. The feeling of contribution.

The thing is with spending hours on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, I’m just not at my best there. I make a mess of it and feel out of place. I also become disproportionately irritated by the usage of Internet catchprases and slang terms.

Particular irksome bugbears are ‘EPIC WIN’, ‘MASSIVE FAIL’ , ‘who knew?’, ‘what’s not to like?’ or  ‘meh’. It’s understandable coming from young creatures of  high stretch hair and low crotch jeans, but when I read a posting by someone who can remember free milk at school who has a mortgage and a proper career writing things like ‘WTF?’, I become unreasonably irritated.

What’s exposed here, though, is not others of my age adopting a kind of linguistic Botox, but my own reluctance to adapt fully to the ways of the Net. Which is fine, but then I have no excuse to spend large amounts of time in a place where I’m out of place. I should spend more time writing up this diary, and more time writing per se, and more time selling my writing. Otherwise, well, my gravestone will have to read… epic fail.
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I’ve noticed that writing about things here which haven’t happened sometimes nudges them into happening. When I once casually mentioned it’d be nice to have a ‘fetchingly epicene bedfellow’, by the end of the week I met Boy H.  I moaned about wanting a job that paid well but gave me plenty of time off, and soon afterwards found one. And I archly mused about envying eunuchs, then suffered mysterious pains in my nether regions that baffled my GP.

As I was not just writing such half-wishes down but publishing them online, I suppose people might call it an example of ‘affirmation’ or ‘manifesting’, or just a kind of subconscious trick. Well, right now what I really would like to happen as soon as possible is the following. If nothing else, it’s a record of what I’m thinking today, April 13th 2009, aged 37. I’ve saved a Queen today. Maybe she’ll grant me a few wishes.

I wish for the ability to finish the projects I start. And finish them quickly. Starting with the screenplay I’m collaborating on with two others. That’d be nice. To properly tear myself away from all Not Writing distractions and get the writing done. A good habit.

I wish for the ending of another bad habit – pulling at my eyebrows. I started doing this a year or so ago (why?), and have been idly tugging away so often I now have to pencil in the gaps where my eyebrows used to be before going out. It’s ridiculous, and I want it to stop, please. If that’s okay with you.

I wish for writing work which is actually paid. A book deal. I’d quite like to read a few books written by me, and I’d like to find out if others would too. I’ve been on the front of a book by someone else. I’ve written bits inside books by others. I’ve been quoted in books by others. The next logical step is to actually fill the bit between the covers completely.

Greater lifelong wishes, life plans even? Go on, be honest. It’s allowed. You don’t have to be in a bedsit all your life. You used to want that, but not any more. Fifteen years it’s been! More than enough. So what do you actually want?

Really? All right, then. A place in Tangier. Or Paris. Or New York. Or Dublin. Or Stockholm. People manage to live there all the time, I hear. Maybe I could. I used to think that ‘impossible’ thought about London, once upon a time, and found an affordable place in an unreasonably lovely part of the city. I’d like to see if I’d be any good as An Englishman Abroad. I’ll never know unless I find out.

Relationships? It’d be nice to have someone else there. But I equally wouldn’t mind living alone forever, as long as there were always friends to meet for drinks, for tea.

Right now, I’m wearing my first properly tailored bespoke three-piece suit – with a bespoke shirt. That used to be a wish, too.