Who Is Andrew Beattie?

Hello there,

I hope you are extremely well, in the extreme.

Its Saturday morning and whilst pondering my life over a cup of coffee and listening to a bit of morning Parisian Swing, in Crosby and in bed, it dawned on me that my life seems as uncertain as the current state of British politics, hung, and unfortunately not hung in the sense that I’d hoped. My life then is a hung life?

You see in my usual manner I have been pondering, pondering what to write on here, pondering why I write on here, pondering what path my life is taking and pondering if I’ll ever do the stuff I set out to do, pondering the cost of living the life I want to live, which is just life, or so I’ve pondered.

Take this website for instance, who is Andrew Beattie? What was I hoping to achieve by it? I mean I charged myself with writing little snippets from my life, an online diary, revealing my inner most thoughts to the world, or at least a small corner of it, but to what effect? I’ve been doing it for nearly a year now and I’d kind of hoped that by writing this kind of shit down I could stop, for a moment, the million thoughts of Rocket Ships, Time Travelling Men with old dusty arm chairs and Love stories, usually involving me and any female I come into contact with at any given moment even the ones I don’t speak to which is most of them, all racing through my mind at the speed of light or much much faster and colliding a million million times a second, and allow myself a moment to get stuff done, live a life.

I don’t feel that I’ve achieved this, not in the slightest. For a start I don’t come here to write enough, there are large gaps where I allow the thoughts to race and even larger gaps in my little rambling updates where I miss out the things that I have done. As such I have left a really shitty patchwork blanket effect of experiences over the year with large gaping holes and worst of all I still have no idea who the hell Andrew Beattie is which is rather troubling considering I’m him, he is me and we are one.

So, taking this website of mine and piecing together its fragments and snippets of me I am left with several pieces key of insight. Like a really crappy detective I have pieced these together with a little sellotape and I can now say for certain that I am pretty sure Andrew Beattie, at this present moment, is:

1. A list maker

I see two clear lists here involving things that I hope to do. I will either forget these lists ever exist shortly after making them or in most cases I will beat myself up, both literally and metaphorically, for not doing the things on the lists that I have made to try and make some sense and add some direction, any direction, to my life. See Writing and Travelling.

The list

The other list

2. A writer who does not write, except very occasionally

This could have easily been ‘the chief procrastinator’ as that in reality is the reason I write so infrequently. I dream of writing, I long to write, I long for the days when I can sit and just write, all day, about things that I have entirely made up, I long for that day to be today and whilst doing this longing and dreaming I never actually write. This, in terms of being a writer, or an aspiring writer, is a problem, albeit a pretty simple one to overcome, which I won’t, but I must as I fully intend to….what?

Am I a writer?

The first chapter of a book I’ll never write

3. A traveller, who has travelled but once

I long, there’s that word again, to travel, and I’ve almost certainly mentioned this. I long to take myself off with a little bag, a pad and a pen, a camera, which I won’t use, and wander around this planet we call home to meet, eat, see, smell, feel and ponder. It’s a dream, a wonderful, wonderful dream of unparalleled happiness. In terms of making and breaking plans it would appear that this is pretty high up the list. Will I ever wander?

Sober and in need of adventure

The Cheltenham-London Express

4. Lonely

It would appear as I look back through the depths of a year that I am, or at least feel, quite alone. It’s clearly not the case, I am very rarely actually alone although I do my best to be, but I do feel in a sense, and every waking hour, that I’m missing out on the biggest prize that life can offer, the L word. Like everything, my constant pondering often leaves me, well pondering, whilst missing the living part, the travelling part, the life part, that allows this prize to be given, earned and won. A pattern is emerging.

One is the loneliest number

Love and a small moment for reflection and a lonely hearts ad

5. Quite possibly an alcoholic

Or, almost certainly, quite definitely and without doubt an alcoholic. See, a huge gap where December should have been and the following:

Remorse

Abstinence

Only once in a while

Never again

6. Panicking

I have no wish to tempt fate with this one as I haven’t had a massive, hospitalising massive, panic attack for a while. The evidence of this in just one year of writing is startling.

Panic attack hospital trip

The two week panic attack of the morris dancers

7. A dreamer

See, “the million thoughts of Rocket Ships, Time Travelling Men with old dusty arm chairs and Love stories, usually involving me and any female I come into contact with at any given moment even the ones I don’t speak to which is most of them” and just about every other possible scenario and situation possible, impossible, unfathomable and downright ludicrous. See also, writing to aliens.

Happy thoughts from an Indian Summer

Dreamer

Letters to space

If there are any conclusions to be drawn from this it’s that, there aren’t any conclusions. You see, the one key issue here is that whilst I ponder the stuff I want, aspire and long to do, I never actually bloody go and do them. I wonder why I should do them, I ponder how I should do them and I consider when I should do them. The answers are simple: that I should do them because I’ve set out to do them in the first place, that I should just bloody well do them and that I should fucking well just go and do them right bloody now, this instance and without another moments delay.

There it is, there it bloody well is, its part of the answer, it’s the key to it all. It is isn’t it?                         

On that rather pondering note, I’ll be off now to go and visit some friends for lunch and then go to a party in Liverpool in which she could be there and they almost certainly will. Why am I doing this, because…why I am I doing this?

Thank you for your infinite patience and until next time,

Be great.

Tally Ho,

Andrew Beattie