Currently residing at Diamond Harbour, Banks Peninsula, NZ.
My first degree was an Arts degree, English Literature, and all I wanted to do was write. I started down the same track as your wife, by the look of it, but crashed out of my Master of Arts, only one month into the first year, at the cruel and slippery hands of Lacan, Derrida and Foucault (well, them and their army of feminazis and socialists (same thing really) at Canterbury in those days). Even then, and I'd not heard of Objectivism, or even Linz, yet, I knew those gentlemen were the death of what I loved: language and literature. (Actually, to be honest I'm a bit murky on chronologies - see stoned period, following - I might have been reading Objectivism around this time, or at least, it was Linz's radio show that put me onto it, so if that was 1983 to 1986, or thereabouts, then I may have been. If so, I didn't fully 'get it' until later, when reading all the business literature for the undergraduate accounting degree. In some remembrances I feel Linz was responsible for my dissatisfaction with my Masters program; don't know.)
So, between part time jobs I lived in a bach at Birdlings Flat for about eighteen months, writing, mainly a novel. Although I got poetry published twice in Landfall (not telling you which ones, they're awful - as in clever, but empty tosh), I never got the novel finished, in fact barely started, as I spent most of my time stoned. Nice, but not productive ...
... this is going to take ages, and I have to get to bed. Abridged.
A bunch of idiot city bikers used to vandalise the public toilet at Birdlings Flat once a week, leaving me to only a bucket which did not fit in with my prudery, fell in love with a good woman (they'd not always been), washed out or cut off the dreadlocks, they always itched like hell anyway, took out all of the ear rings to get in that money making frame of mine, did two accountancy degrees, career, with aim: retire, or semi retire by 45'ish, then write and do the things I want, in comfort, and on my own terms. See world. At 42, looks like I'm going to make the semi-retire part on time. Have always kept diaries, etc, but the career took 80 hour weeks (because you have to keep up), and single minded focus, so only started writing shorts seriously again over last year and a bit, which I'm starting to send out now. Trying not to torture the language too much, but only middling success, and now at the behest of Big Daddy I've got to write some press releases and stop annoying Sandi, well, possibly stop annoying Sandi (if Sandi stops annoying me) ...
If a short gets taken, or a middling or a long, I'll let you know, otherwise they won't see the light of day.
Sorry, I suspect that was boring, but I've written it now, so may as well post. I didn't realise that if you watch Sky channel 5 at 2.25 in the morning they play all this really awful soft porn stuff. Strange. Wouldn't people who might want to watch this be doing it at this hour?
(Never got a tattoo, thank God. For a period around 1985 I had the best three tiered, bright blue, white tipped 15cm spiked mohawk in NZ. As I said in another post, went through a confused period Smiling )
I reckon I might put this up to my bio - I wish people would write up decent bio's in here, as I find those interesting.
Sometimes I get fixated on things. I call it stubborn, but really, it's just fixated.
I don't feel sleepy at all. More a sort of manic energy if truth be told.
