For reasons I may never fully understand and wish I could reverse, my future is wide open once more, teeming with possibilities I’d rather not have.

The last month has been the hardest I’ve had in a long time. The way I feel at the moment, the next week or two could be worse.

I hope you haven’t noticed.

Spinneyhead’s never been that kind of blog, and still isn’t. Let’s just say that most of my hopes and plans, long and short term, no longer hold and I’m feeling lost.

But this isn’t the kind of post that burdens you with the details of my angst. It’s about the future.

Where I go, spinneyhead follows (occasionally it leads, there may be more of that as time goes by), so where do I want to go?

Right now I need money. I also need something that gets me out of the house and keeps me from brooding. But the temp agencies I’ve registered with are shit and can’t find anything. I’m applying for proper, permanent jobs as well. Despite efforts in the past I’ve never had a proper, permanent job. I guess it’s something I should try at least once. However, I can’t go back to the sort of rubbish I’ve been doing since 1998. I need to do something more creative, with better prospects. I’m looking into web design. I have a lot of practical experience of it, if not wide ranging and formal, and there’s a course at city college I can take as an evening class. It might take longer, but it’s better overall.

Of course, in the really long run I want to work for myself. I say that to people and they get a worried look. Some of them come straight out and say what they’re thinking, “Isn’t that a bit risky?” The answer is no. As an employee you have a number of people above you, any one of whom has the ability to take away your livelihood for reasons of budget, spite or stupidity. With a range of clients or, as I plan, products for sale across a number of shops, no one person has that power over you.

Hence spinneyhead’s growing tail. The number plate transfers have sold well this month off a little publicity and the photo backgrounds for renders and artwork are doing better than expected. They’re nowhere near making enough to pay the rent, but I’m a lot closer to one of my key targets- average $3 a day, totalling $100 a month- than ever before. As I add products, income grows. As income grows I can afford/justify more time creating products. Expect more photographic backgrounds and the repackaging of Adrift and Heavensent as pdfs.

Income from the tail is almost location independent. Anywhere I can get a fat enough connection to the internet will do. So, when it’s long enough, I’d like to take it abroad. America doesn’t interest me any more, maybe somewhere in Europe, for a year or two at least. You can only really know a culture by participating in it. I’d like to be a bit French, or maybe Spanish or Italian, the Mediterranean beckons.

But that’s a long term aim, I need some things to do in the next couple of months. Job hunting and work on the tail have started already, as has the Presents project, something that I wasn’t planning to start for a few years that’s come to the fore in the last month. We’ve had our first team meeting and stuff is moving. I’ve taken a few days off, but next week will see me location hunting and trying to round up one last actor so we can have read throughs and start filming.

By the end of the month I’ll be out of the flat and casa spinneyhead will become a floating thing for a while. With deep gratitude to Damian I have somewhere to stay until work gets sorted and I can afford to move properly. After that, hopefully I can find a shared house.

I want to share not just because it will be cheaper but because it’ll help me meet new people. My friends have been great and supportive, but there are some things I want that will likely involve someone I don’t know yet.

I’ve composed this over three days on my phone, editing furiously. Likely I’ll go and delete it in a few days. Let’s see.