Strange Notations From a Laborious Life

 Agatha Christie was once asked what it took to be a good author. She replied, “write, write, write!”
 If that is the case I should be Ernest Hemingway by now! This is my 65th blog post and counting.
 I originally started this blog because I seemed to be getting a bit bogged down in the minor details of my life and wanted a creative outlet. It has certainly provided that. I also wanted to make my own little mark on the world. My own little piece of the internet. The history of Matthew Sumner I guess. So here I am.
 I have always liked writing. I guess like everything else I have ever done though I haven’t been dedicated enough to really get my head down and do it.
 I find writing fiction really hard although I have done it. With a blog I seem to be able to get onto a subject and roll with it whilst writing fiction I get stuck on minor points of grammar, plot, pacing etc. Maybe I haven’t lived enough to be a fiction writer. I have written a few short stories that have been fair to middling which are on the website “booksie” and in the notes section of my facebook page if anyone would like to look.
 I always wanted to write a book about the Canberra Mail Centre. I kept a journal for quite a long time. In fact I started it just days after the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001 so that is obviously just over ten years ago. I had copious amounts of notes about things I had done, people I had known, incidents that had occurred involving me, plenty of scandalous stuff about my private life etc, hehe. My own opinion on my life and I guess other people and their lives.
 I kept writing in it well after I moved in here at Wanniassa but it got to a point where I had written so much that was personal and really private that I shivered at the thought that someday someone close to me would read it. It would be a shock for some after going through my personal effects after I have expired to find it and some of the internal thoughts that I had put to paper, particularly since I often wrote after a drama to release the inner tension.
 So I trashed it. I was a bit sorry about it but figured it was all for the best. Then I read “Post Office” by Charles Bukowski. He is quite a famous writer in the States and people may know him from the novel “Barfly” which was made into a semi-successful movie but he has written a lot of notable stuff  that will jog the memory if people care to look him up. A very talented writer.
 Charles Bukowski worked for the US Postal Service for 12 years and wrote a book about his time there which became his first novel and brought him to prominence as an author. A good read if you can get your hands on it.
 The silliness he encountered at the US Post office reminded me so much of my time at Australia Post I began to regret ever having thrown out my journal. The blockbuster I could have written would have set me up for life I’m sure. I may have been sued by certain people but it would have been a ripper of a yarn none the less. I would have had to change the names of the main characters and others to protect the innocent but I could have made it a titillating read!
 Alas, “Confessions of a Mail Officer, Recollections from the Canberra Mail Centre” will never be written. My memory isn’t good enough to write it from scratch. And maybe that’s a good thing because it would probably cause me more trouble than it would be worth. I doubt Australia Post would be too pleased. I guess I can just satisfy myself by dreaming what may have happened had it been written, become a best seller and been translated into a movie adaptation. I may have been able to force the producers to hire George Clooney to play my character! Haha. I’m sure my mate Dave would plump for Brad Pitt for himself. As for Neal the supervisor? Hmmmm. Will have to think about that one for a bit.  I’ll have to sound out my workmates.
 So for now I will just keep plugging away at my blog. Who knows, you may be walking through a bookstore one day, (or browsing for books on the net which is the way things seem to be going!) and see something with my name on it. You may not want to look too closely though. You might be in it!