V-No. Bi-O. Eh, No.

My assignment was pretty straightforward… ‘Could you please supply a short bio note that can be used for press releases and the cover of your book. Roughly about 100 words. You can decide if you want to be either light hearted or just stick to the chronological facts.’ Sounds pretty easy, should take me a few minutes. Needed for Monday morning, I’ll do it up quickly on Sunday sometime. Off to enjoy my weekend, 100 words, I will see you Sunday.

Foolishness. While I did anticipate that I would probably be hungover yesterday, I never considered it might be a wine-induced hangover. Normal hangovers slow me down considerably as it is. Wine hangovers, as I remembered yesterday, make me embarrassingly dumb. Smartest thing I did was not to leave my house. At least the embarrassment could be restricted to staying within a confined space, and not spread its wings. Most of the time. Now and again it found its way out through the loophole of texting.

I Am... I Mean, Mark Is...

Anyways, I sat down at my laptop at 2 o’clock, during the day, to write up the short bio. By 2.25, I finally came to the conclusion that not a lot was going on outside my window. By 2.35, I had still not typed out one word. Bios, I found out, are written in the third person. Have you ever tried to describe yourself in the third person? While trying to figure out if you should go for light-heartedness, or just the facts? While being under the dumb influence of a wine coma? Initial attempts can be embarrassing. You know it’s bad too when you embarrass yourself, without needing to show it to anyone else. After a few nonsensical, cringe-worthy efforts, it was 3.05 and I was staring at two sentences ‘I am an ape. Mark Hayes is an ape.’

Seeing as that was going nowhere, I put it on the back burner, and wrote yesterday’s blogaruu. Only going to be a short one, more about the music, good to way ease my way into a writing mode. Somehow, all of this took me almost three hours to accomplish. Again, I felt embarrassed by my attempts to string a sentence or two together. Sitting there, staring at the screen. Staring back out the window. Wondering what I was trying to just think of. Thoughts just drifting away mid-sentence and making me forgetting what I was actually trying to do.

At the same time, I was strenuously trying to reply to a few different texts I received earlier in the day. Simple, simple replies. Which were taking me an embarrassing length of time. I couldn’t even get out ‘Yes, it was a good night.’ Giving up on a few replies. Cleverly, I was also attempting to have a conversation with a random girl I met the night before. My attempts at trying to extract her life story in the space of a text or two were, again, embarrassingly dumb (although, now that I think about it, I should’ve just asked her for a brief bio in 100 words or less, preferably in the third person). Knowing that my texts made no sense whatsoever, but sending them anyways. Questions like… ‘What is that you?’ and that would be it. What is what?! Going nowhere fast, but still churning out replies in robotic form in order to save my brain having to work. Pointlessly asking pointless questions over and over. In the end just giving up.

I Can Slice! So Proud

Besides writing and texting, speaking was also proving to be problematic. For some reason I got a bout of mixing up the first letters of words. ‘Over on the tichen kable‘… ‘I’ll dump that rag of bubbish’ are two that I realised I got wrong. There were probably more but they went unnoticed. Weirdly, I did manage to do one thing well, which usually I’m incapable of doing… cutting brown bread. For some reason, I can’t cut a slice of brown bread without the whole loaf falling apart on me. As if I’m trying to hack it up with the back of the knife. Yesterday, I was a pro at it. Perfect slices. Which I also found a bit embarrassing. Unable to accomplish the most basic of functions, it appears a wine hangover improves my ability to cut bread. A great plus.

On the other hand, trying to crack eggs into a bowel was a bridge too far. The lack of egg, along with the amount of egg shell that made its way into the bowel, was also quite embarrassing. Only being able to then stare at the bowel, as if I might be able to will the shell out. Brown bread and scrambled egg shells. Pretty tasty.

Eventually, and I do mean eventually (almost 14 hours after I first started?) I reached the 100 word mark. Decided to go with the chronological facts approach. Like the fact that I grew up on a farm. Or, to be exact, that I was born on a farm. Well, to really be exact, I was neither born on a farm, nor did I grow up on a farm. Did I think this might be funny at the time? Who knows. At least I woke up this morning, deleted it all, quickly re-wrote it, and sent it on its way. My final draft now referencing field mice, gay horses, and wise old owls. Obviously. As I assume most people’s bios would. It is true what they say though… Vino, before a bio, is a no! Brutal.

Song on. The simple style of this song seems to suit my simple day…

Basic Space – The xx

Tags: 100 Words, Author Bio, Basic Space, Dumb, Slow, Texting, The xx, Vino, Wine Hangover, Writing