I’ve taken the Comments function off this diary after some thought. Feedback is always useful, but I now am convinced I don’t want my diary to host discussions or – that dreaded phrase – Internet Chat. The danger of living mostly on the Net, rather than using it to augment real life. Like many people live on their mobile phones. A little backing off from the world is no bad thing for me, I think. This diary started off as secret yet public, and I rather want to return to that.

Wake up under the third Labour term and sigh heavily at the predicatability of English voters. The Greens once again failed to get a single seat, but at least my own MP here in the Hornsey & Wood Green constituency is no longer the pro-war Barbara Roche. The rabid axe-grinder George Galloway has gotten in, and that will make Westminster life more interesting. Anything for a slightly more interesting life I say.

Currently struggling with creating my own website at www.dickon-edwards.co.uk. DIY culture indeed. I fear the site may do strange things on different computers with different browsers, screen resolutions and so forth, but working out how to address that side of affairs baffles me. It would look a lot better and be created a lot quicker if someone else was doing it, but I simply can’t afford to pay a third party for what is, after all, skilled labour.

I know I could always ask a kind friend, but experience has taught me there’s a point where the friend says “sorry, too busy…”, and then disappears from my life entirely, leaving an out-of-date site I don’t know how to access. Fair enough that other people have their Dickon Edwards Phases. I have a Dickon Edwards Phase too. It’s just lifelong. My therapist would doubtless link this to my fear of relationships of any kind.

Favours can only go so far, and website maintenance is an ongoing job. So here I am, banging my head against the desk and generally getting upset. It’s as if I’m learning a foreign language from scratch, which is of course exactly what I’m doing. The site is so basic, yet getting to grips with ‘tables’, font sizes that won’t act strangely when viewed at different resolutions and generally understanding the Dreamweaver program, is for me the stuff of science fiction. I feel I need a life-jacket while the rest of the world is swimming past at high speed. Not uploading but drowning.

It’s a common theme in my life – watching the rest of the world and thinking ‘how do they do it, and why can’t I do it? What’s wrong with me?’ I’ve met many people – usually younger people – who take to computers and site design so naturally it’s as if they were performing simple arithmetic. Mind you, I also have certain friends who have been known to phone me up when they need a light bulb changing.

Anyway, I’ve set up a mailing list on the site, to announce events and projects so those interested don’t have to keep checking this diary. And today I have an event to announce:

====================
Wed 11 May, 7.30pm
The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1
Spoken word appearance at the launch for “DIY: The Rise Of Lo-fi Culture“, a new book by Amy Spencer. Event includes Online Journal Readings curated by Amy Prior. Dickon Edwards, one of the first online diarists in the U.K., reads excerpts from his diaries. Frances May Morgan, editor of music magazine Plan B, reads from her weblog. Amy Prior reads her new fictional story based on texts by a live journal community. 7.30pm. Free entry.
=====================

Calling me ‘one of the first online diarists in the UK’ was Ms Prior’s flattering idea. I have no idea of the history of Internet Diaries, but I do recall that when I started this journal in 1997, before the word ‘blog’ started to appear, it was considered a very strange thing to do indeed.

Question is, as ever, how to convert this so-called achievement, and indeed my so-called talent per se into some kind of regular income. I heard that the inventor of the Web, an Englishman called Tim, didn’t make a penny from his creation. No surprises there. He did, however, manage to carve out a lucrative career on the lecture and talks circuit. I suppose I could try that – give lectures on my experiences as a public diarist, and on the Philosophy of Dickon Edwards. We’ll see.

I badly want to get on with Life, get off state benefits, and get on with some kind of career. I don’t want riches, just enough of an income to live on. I don’t want to get on the Property Ladder – I’m content living alone in a rented furnished bedsit for the rest of my life. This ambition must be pretty modest in comparison with what most people in the developed world want from life, and typically I think this alone means I ‘deserve’ a living. As if it’s a pact – I agree to take up as little space as possible in return for a career. Ridiculous.

The dreaded question is: what exactly am I good at? And good for? It’s an old concern, but I’m sick to the back, front and middle teeth coming back to it all the time. Am I sick of Being Dickon Edwards? No, just riddled with spiralling frustration.