Without Good Reason

As I stepped off the Luas and on to the pavement outside St Stephen's Green, I began to think about the year gone by. So much had occured that had affected me I thought, and yet it all felt somewhat one year behind schedule.

My year out consisted of creating career options and dismissing them, finally realising that there were only two real options - to write songs, or to write period. Either way it wouldn't matter. Either way the final quarter of this year had seen my work released in both forms.

Time however, seemed to be something that I had not yet grasped nor accepted. I often feel like Hugh Grant in About A Boy, dividing my day into segments. Half hour coffee break, fifteen minutes to read Music Week, ten minutes to read the sport, approximately 16 hours to think. I find that when I don't engage in my daily rituals, my balance is entirely offset.

As I wandered through a Christmas-lit Grafton Street, I realised that in the past year intimacy had been limited to one person. Though had it not been, would it have been so-called? This was true, valid intimacy. Sure, mistakes had been made, but nothing that couldn't be solved by 20 seconds of eye contact, 20 minutes of chat and 20 further minutes of passion.

"Are you sure it's passion?", a friend debated recently when speaking of heated relationships. The question could surely be answered effectively by a quick visit to my word-bank. Search: problem or passion? Resulting terms: Most Definitely Passion.

The problem, in reality, had been pretty much immediate. I entered into what I felt was an immediate rebound. So did I sabotage my previous relationship to be with this apparant rebounder, I wondered. Or is that total bullshit?

I didn't know, but as a I stepped on to the bus home, with my rain-drenched everything and my once white socks now brown from the dye of my decks, I was sure of one thing - the certainty that no matter what problems existed in life or in love, I had never been the kind of guy to let go without good reason, even if that did mean being a full year behind schedule.