31/08/25

Twelve years since I posted anything. I got one of my lyrics stuck in my head earlier today, and tonight went searching for it on my PC, but remembered that I lost it when I reformatted my external hard drive a few years ago, so I searched my old Blogger, searched my sent items on 3 email addresses, then gave up. Half an hour later I thought of this diary. Found the lyric I needed and saved it to a Word document. I’ve also contacted support and asked them to email me my full diary as a PDF, so I can have all my posts (and lyrics) saved on my PC, in case OD vanishes (again) for whatever reason. Hopefully they follow through with what they say on the help page, but looking at the bots filling the home page, I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway, my son was born 17 January 2014, which makes him 11 now. When he was 2, my wife decided to move to the other end of the country to be with a man she’d known when she was younger. Originally was taking our son to visit her mother near London – a sort of holiday. I stayed home to work. While she was down there she text that she wasn’t coming back. She kept our son for about six months (I got to see him at weekends), then agreed that I could have him. He and I moved in with my parents and they’ve helped me raise him for the past 9 years. He starts high school next week. Has a few health issues but nothing we can’t handle. Sees his mother very rarely, and when he does it’s me (or my parents) taking him to her. She chats to him via WhatsApp and plays Roblox with him for an hour every few days. She’s engaged to someone else now, and living only 45 minutes away by car – better than the 2-3 hours it was to meet her half way, when she’d first left. Those were not fun times.

I’m still in the same job. Keep thinking of moving on – I commute 2hrs by train door to door – but I don’t have the confidence, want to stick with what I know. Keep hoping my writing takes off – I have self-published 3 books on Amazon under the name Dged Parker – I can’t post a link so you’d have to search – not that you have any reason to go to the effort (and not that anyone is reading this anyway).

It’s the same Keeping Faith saga I wrote about on here when I was a teenager. Completely re-written now, but the story is the same. Future fiction action adventure. Themes of devotion, valour, trust, responsibility, belief, hope, love, the human condition, etc. I’ve written all 6 stories, so the saga is complete, but I’ve not got the motivation to get them all online, since I don’t get any sales of the first 3 books.

Keep telling myself to go back to other stories, which are mostly completed from when I was in my twenties, but need to be rewritten by adult me. Makes sense that the more I publish the more likely I am to be read, and the more people read, the more likely I am to get fans and make a living out of it.

But again, it’s such a long shot, and I’ve so little free time. I only really have the 2hrs I spend commuting to work. I don’t get a seat on the train home, so can’t write then, and once I’m home I’ve got my son to think about.

Give it another ten years and maybe he’ll be off living his own life, then I’ll be able to live my own life again in turn. Hopefully I’ll go back to writing all night. I enjoy it when I do, but it almost never happens anymore.

Something tells me I won’t make it another 10 years. I’m 40 now and feel worn out. Probably I’m being melodramatic – when I was at uni I told people I wouldn’t live past 23, but I’m still here now, and people older than me with laugh that I think I feel worn out now. “Just wait,” they’ll say.

Meh. I don’t feel anything, really. Life has numbed me. I used to be incredibly melodramatic, romantic (see: creepy), sensitive. Nowadays I’m just stoic. Have a breakdown every year to eighteen months, but then pull myself back together and carry on. One foot in front of the other. Never achieving anything except that I advanced another day.

Such is life. It could be more, but I’m asocial, anxious, pretty sure I’m autistic (I mean, everyone is to some degree. I’m not way out there, but further out than most). My misophonia stops me enjoying things and my growing cynicism and lack of faith in humanity stops all the more. And this is what’s left. This disappointment. A space filler. A boring, unfeeling shell.

Quarter to one in the morning. Only been getting about 4hrs sleep recently. Staying up late to get some time to myself, and it’s catching up with me. How long before I burn out? Who cares.