Frustration.

I have been struggling to find something to write. Apart from the obvious fact that there really isn't much that can top the acquisition of two new pairs of shoes, I just don't feel that there is anything in my life worth documenting.

(I suppose it is rather arrogant of me to assume that there ever was anything in my life worth documenting, but I overcame that particular mental hurdle two and a half years ago when I first began blogging my narcissistic little heart out from behind a dusty desk somewhere in Shoreditch.)

I feel like nothing is happening. I feel bored and frustrated, and sort of lonely. Not in an Anne Frank, there-are-people-around-me-but-somehow-I-feel-lost sort of a way, but in a more straightforward, where-the-hell-is-everybody way. I live too far from my friends, too removed from the social support networks to which (as it has been pointed out in the past) I so keenly cling. I find my life so frustrating, so tantalisingly almost-there, that on a day to day basis I feel like I want to jump out of a window, just to provoke some sort of change. I am, however, aware that self-defenestration would achieve little more than a broken leg and some crushed plantlife, so each day I bravely resist.

Next Saturday heralds change, in the shape of a holiday to Portugal. Eleven of us will blearily board an obscenely early EasyJet flight and head for a villa about forty kilometres from Lisbon, there to reside, sipping heady cocktails and lazing around in the pool for seven days. After that everyone goes home apart from Chris, Andy and I, who heading off for three days of sightseeing so that we can come back to the UK with at least some knowledge of the country whose gin supplies we have been depleting with such merry abandon for the last week.

I am very, very excited about the holiday, particularly due to the fact that it is the reason I have been so dedicated to my temping job for the last few months. I have bikinis and poolside wear all ready to go. I have been refusing biscuits and cakes for well over a month. I will be waxed and primped and preened like the finest show pony. I, to sum it up, am really fucking ready for this sodding holiday.

When I get back, I am going to the Latitude Festival, to which I have managed to secure a guest pass. Then maybe Edinburgh for the fringe. There has been talk of Paris. This gig and that gig, this collaboration and that one. All sorts of talk and so many plans for adventure, success and fun.

I just wish, sometimes, that I had something concrete. I know that I have made a choice that inevitably excludes certainty, and believe me when I say that the certainty of the nine-to-five is not what I crave. I would just like, for once, to be able to say yes, I am definitely doing that. Or yes, this thing definitely will happen.

Even when I read those words back I feel disappointed with myself for wanting such a mundane thing. I want immediately to write long, gushing assurances (mostly to myself) that desiring stability in some form does not negate the passion for which I would give up absolutely anything. I won't, though, because I already know it doesn't. I am just tired of spending so much time alone that the only reassurances I hear are my own. I only have a limited number of ways of phrasing them and I think they're beginning to sound tired.

I know it will all work out. I just wish I lived where I wanted to and felt part of something again. I feel so far away from everything. Frustrated, to put it mildly.

Impish Sophie Sister and I have been discussing a Top Secret Plan, which would involve us both moving far, far away for a bit. It is not yet certain, but is looking very, very appealing. It would end our frustrations without cutting short our musical aspirations. I have butterflies just thinking about it.

For now, though, I shall go off to watch some Charmed and make my bikini-countdown salad for tomorrow. Perhaps make a list or two or send an email. I will find something to achieve so that I won't wake tomorrow morning feeling that I let a day slip by without having made a stamp in it. Then I will sleep and dream of Top Secret Plans and diet-breaking chocolate cakes.