Life Unfolds

Life unfolds in mysterious ways, following paths we cannot conceive and revealing to us truths that were never known of ourselves. Such is the way of the world we live in, perpetually chaotic, ever changing, and we seek to control it.

I cannot rightly say I plan my time down to the minute, doing everything as I intend. Far from it. I set aside a week of my life to write a book and finished the actual first draft with a half a day to spare. I planned to spend only a day on the cover and the book trailer, and spent a day and a half at it. I planned to spend two days editing, and took the second day to format. The impossibilities at organising my time follow an inability to know what life will throw at me, difficulties in surviving an anti-social period of time, and trouble with the tools of my trade.

Yet, I survived that week, mostly unscathed, to release a book. (You can find out more about that here: http://paulcarrollwriter.com/balor/) This post is not about that book, because there will be so much about it to come in the next week. This post is not about my time on camera, mysterious myths, or the actual writing process.

This is, for all intents and purposes, about my inability to decide some of the most important factors of my life. I cannot decide who remains my friend, and I cannot stop those doubts plaguing my mind. I cannot decide when others are available to do anything. I cannot decide who I get to talk to and when. Life is too chaotic for this, and it remains to be seen how, outside of a day structured by an institution, I will ever find the means to maintain the relationships with those who matter to me.

Survival has thus far depended on the various institutions that govern my life and time, and an ability to let my own desires fall into place with those of others. This, I imagine, is how most relationships develop, when one person out of two can fit his or her time and desires around those of another. In the animal kingdom, those like me may be determined as part of the pack, while those who make the plans are the alpha males (or females). In a more social observation, I call it a means to an end, submitting to another's requests for the benefit of both parties.

Where does this leave me? In one instance, my attempts to formulate plans with another fail. In another, by submitting to another's availability, I ended up finding the means to do what I have wanted to do for some time now: I am to visit a haunted castle. This may kill me. We've been joking about it for some time.

However, it arose over a cup of tea over two months ago. This idea has developed into something wonderful, out of nothing, and it has become central to part of my life: when I will be able to fulfil a social desire.

I did not make these plans, just as I did not plan for a number of things over the past few months. Life, however, unfolds at random. The things we take for granted can tear away, while unexpected events can unravel before we realise they are happening. Every fold in life has the potential to be deeper than we imagine, hiding secrets from us, and it isn't until we realise that each life is connected, that each time one person's life unfolds, it is usually and often the result of another's decision.

There are no alpha males in this life. Order is often difficult to grasp, and more difficult to understand. Life is a chaos guiding us towards an un-knowable end, unfolding at a pace we can never determine. Keep going as you are, and let it unfold around you.

The Name's Frye!

Some consistent readers might be familiar with the concept I apply to keeping friends' names secret: I used pseudonyms. One of my friends went, for a long time, by the name Ferris Bueller. You know, because he was very much like him in my eyes.

What I didn't expect was that I would start considering myself Cameron Frye.

For those of you who haven't seen the film, Cameron is Ferris's best friend (I'll get to that in my life, later.) On the one fateful day - the day-off - Cameron undergoes a change in his life and expresses his frustration with his parents, specifically his father. While his life isn't exactly a bad one, it's not suitable for Cameron.

In much the same way, I disagree with my parents' views on life. To paraphrase Mister Frye, they're always pushing me around. I'm expected to do all the boring things in life when it suits them. It's the second part of that sentence that really gets me, because I totally understand that there are certain boring things in life that must be done. I get that chores need to be done. I just don't agree that my parents should decided, at this point in my life, when I do said chores.

I say "chores". It feels like an American word, to me. I've only ever heard it in American shows and my own head. Anyway, I digress. It's things like hoovering the house, or emptying the dishwasher, or sorting out the boxes of things that had been dumped on my bedroom floor while I was at college. These are things that don't have to be done immediately. Yes, the dishwasher needs to be emptied before the remaining plates and glasses pile up. Yes, the hoovering has to be done to stop the house looking filthy.

But the boxes on my floor? I didn't put them there. I had been getting ready to bring everything up to my room to sort out at my own pace, organising them as I went along. Now they're not only on my bedroom floor, they're in an incomprehensible order. I need to literally unpack these boxes of odds and sorts to put them away again. It would take a whole day, as opposed to the few hours it would have taken before.

These are small things. It's the rest of my life that's the problem. My parents have ideas about my life that don't concern my own free will or interests. I think every parent does it.

I don't think it's a secret that I want to write for a living. I know it would be hard to get to a point where that's possible. I accept that. But it's what I want to do.

The problem, of course, is that to my parents the writing comes second. To everything. Remember those chores? Yeah, they're more important than the chapter I happen to be writing, or the poem I'm trying to reconstruct. If it's not college writing, it doesn't count.

The director of The Rest is Silence had to ambush my parents to force them to promise to go to the show. They speak out it begrudgingly, like it's such a difficult thing for them to get in the car, drive to the college and watch an hour long play their youngest son wrote. An hour. That's it. It's purposely short because of the content. The lead cried during rehearsals. Heck, we all cried. Can't have two hours of that.

So, it would take two hours out of their night, including travel time. That's assuming they show up right on time and leave immediately.

And how does this relate to Cameron Frye? Well, that's where Ferris Bueller comes in. When we speak of my parents - heck, when we speak of either of our respective parents - we come to the conclusion that they're kind of insufferable and detrimental to my health. I think they drive me insane. A lot of the time he then takes it upon himself to talk me to the point of doing my own thing.

Now, this isn't a case of rebellion. I'm not about to kick my dad's car to crap. I'm not about to run off for the day for no reason other than the fact that my friend is bored. Heck, he works too much for that to even be possible. But it's a case of standing up for myself. It's about doing what I need to do with my life, and not letting them decide for me.

And as for the "best friend" thing. Well, I wouldn't claim to be his best friend. I know who is best friends are, for a start. I've spoken to one and I know where another lives (because he's my friend's next door neighbour...). I'm neither of those people. I don't expect to ever be called his "best friend". But we have a particular type of friendship that allows for a lot of honesty, a lot of philosophy, and phone calls at two in the morning. They're my "day-off".

I just gotta take a stand, right? Just face up to the people who think they're in charge of me. As my
pseudonymous name-sake says, "I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm gonna take a stand. I'm gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I'm gonna defend it."

Just call me Frye. Cameron Frye.