Grxss Roots

Thankyou to everybody who have given my scrawling a window of time in your day.

More is on the way.

Have a look if ya haven't!

Year Zero After an extended hiatus away from writing, Daniel Tomlinson documents in fine detail what he has been up to for the past year. Having flown the home nest and moved to start a new life in the City of Leeds, he documents and journals his journey through Year Zero.

YEAR ZERO
https://www.grxssroots.com/2020/categories/year-zero

We're live.

1. The Painful Twenties
2. The Rest of My Life
3. Imposter
4. Growing Pains
5. Making an Honest Living
6. Love in the Information Age
7. Lyra
8. Academia
9. Don't Call This Number
10. Calmness in the Bohemian Lands
11. The Hecticity of It All
12. Year One

Hey, stranger.

I've been a little quiet, haven't I. Off the radar? You could call it that.

At 6pm tonight, twelve new posts will go live on the new and improved Grxss Roots website.

Intended as a means to pass an assignment on my Master's degree course, these twelve posts have taken a toll on my creativity. They discuss at great length both, the thoughts in my head and the events in my fingertips over the period of the past year. Life in Leeds; fleeing the home nest; settling in as a student, an employee, a partner, a petowner, and a man of the house.

It has been an arduous time. It has left me mute on so many fronts, and hard to reach to so many people - friends and family alike.

Finally, all will be discussed tonight at 6pm.

Thanks for your patience.

Let's catch up then.

grxssroots.com

https://www.grxssroots.com/

We've got some work to do.

Creative Spxce | Grxss Roots An online portfolio showcasing the expressive stylings of creative writer Daniel Tomlinson. Grxss Roots is not just a blog, but a hub for his works to reach, inspire and elicit reactions from readers and writers alike.

Praha I.

It's been a long time since I was last here.

268 days, by the use of a very handy website - its name timeanddate.com.

Much has changed. The lights are low. I am sat on a stiff leather black couch in my living room. My back is resting on these abysmally gaudish off-white couch cushions that have what I can describe as black tribal tattoos on the back of them. We leave them face-turned-down for a reason, by the way. It's for the best. It's no good for my posture, but you've got to work with what you have, right?

So it's a Saturday night, and I am sat in my living room. I can't help but look around at all the lavish s**t I have now sometimes. A sweet black stand sits in the distance, with this huge 50" Smart TV I got yesterday. There is furniture here, like, real furniture. Half of it is mine, it's a possession; but the other half, I don't even know who the hell thought this furniture was a good idea. Our landlords have a real patent for "generic" and it shows.

Much has changed. I don't live by the coast anymore. I am in Leeds.

There are two relative connections to who I was when I started this brand, this entity - and who I am now. I have a pintcuppy labelled "Grimsby and NE Lincolnshire" filled to the brim on my right. I have a speaker playing the rampant, rambling hardcore punk stylings of a New York band named "Show Me The Body" in the background. This new TV serves fantastic ambience in the form of my PS4 main menu screen - it has for the past two hours. S**t, I need to think about electricity bills now?

I'm beckoned back to April 2020, and when I thought this would be a great idea. Let's build a brand, it's all the craze. Let's take the Internet by storm with a series of walls of texts, and maybe one day establish a brand to the point that I can make some money from a creative hobby. Like some guy on OnlyFans, or some gal that sells jewellery on Etsy or some s**t.

Well, that's why I'm here. Or partly.

It's been eight months since I landed in Leeds, almost to the day. This city was like a home away from home for so many years. I saw my favourite saddest bands here, from Citizen to the Wonder Years, to Basement to Code Orange and Tigers Jaw, to Knocked Loose and to all your other heart-throb bands "you might not have heard of but will be a big deal in a few years".

I live with my significent other. My soulmate. We were long-distance through the pandemic, we met, we moved in together - and we even moved the cat in. This is one of my favourite stories to tell people that are visibly looking to pass the time conversing with me.

We're here, we're happy. I love her with every ounce and fibre of my being, because she gets me. It gets me excited sometimes at random intervals, that somebody can even understand me let alone love me the way she does. This is the time of our lives, yet I feel like I haven't said a lot in a while, to you guys. Those who follow me for ramblings such as these.

I don't understand why, either, because I'm pursuing my dream after so long of a creative writing course. I live within walking distance of ITV Studios, and you bet your ass I'm going to be applying to that place in about six months time when I have a Master's degree. But what's the endgame to this?

I've been writing all kinds of musings and screenplays, and theatre scripts and stories lately - but my audience is of one or several. I'm writing for my degree, and one has to wonder what purpose that serves. I'm enjoying it, don't get me wrong. But it's enough to nag at me like, what is the purpose of creative courses when it is drilled into my brain constantly that "it's about who you know". I don't know, but the extent of my thinking recently has been "well, wouldn't it be funny if I got a doctorate in something eventually, and everybody had to call me 'Dr. Daniel Tomlinson?'" - not as a bit, but as a genuine title.

There is a long, drawn-out story to this post. I just got off the phone with my Mum after 86 minutes on a Saturday night, where my beloved is out at a gig with the neighbours, and I thought I had a party to get to tonight - but turns out it was tomorrrow. The hilarity - I'm dressed up, ready to go, a beer down, and it turns out the thing is tomorrow. So now, naturally, I am writing about it to an audience that I haven't catered to in some 268-days.

But much like a lot of my former posts, I am thinking nostalgically. Picture this - April 2020, for the first time in approximately three years, I feel unemployed...but wait, I get paid to feel unemployed!? Furlough was a wonderful moment in my life. I got to sit on my money and make some more, under the auspices of a worldwide pandemic.

See, as I was chatting to my Mum for those 86 minutes, I was thinking about memories from some twelve, thirteen years ago. They still don't feel like a year has passed. Maybe mentally I am still sixteen and anxious about the way of the world - only confident and more well put-together. I don't mean to brag... except I did make a pasta bolognese the other night that rocked my life and may never be replicated in such a way, for as long as I live.

But as well put-together as I feel now, after the separation anxiety and the introvertness wore off - swear to god, if you messaged in the last six months, I will get back to you eventually - and as happy as I feel, I still find myself at crossroads.

As it turns out, being a barista at Starbucks for nigh-on four years has incredible demand. Everybody wants a taste of 'the Big Dan'. I was going to be a supervisor, I got trained to be a supervisor, I traded stores to feel "more involved" with the city I live in now - had a breakdown and turned back to my former store. No promotion, just straight VIBIN'. Now, some few months on, I want more?

So I go for an interview with a separate franchise, and they love me. They want me with a promotion. But now I am torn. Do I go with the place I have developed a fondness for the past eight months, or do I go ahead and prosper?

Beats me, dude. I only know interviews. I like to feel catered to and sold to, as I speak nonsense that makes me feel good about the work I've done. That's what interviews are, right? I only know living my life by instincts. Never was one for peer-pressure, never been a sucker for listening to anybody.

So who knows how that will all turn out. All I know is I am sat on my ass, reminiscing on the past few years. Was it all worth it? Am I a writer after all? Or am I a television and film student that fell out of love with the industry and am looking for a back entrance? Nonetheless, I must confess, I am loving this lifestyle I lead.

It's not all ego. I'm living the best life with the love of my life and the greatest cat. We're all just trying to uproot our lives gradually, over time, right? And I think occasionally, I think about the days gone by and who that anxiety-riddled kid was when he was sixteen years old. When he was "going to do David Lynch and Tarantino s**t" spending six years of academic naivete doing film and television studies.

I think about that young Asperger's kid who was diagnosed at the tender age of six, and didn't understand until he was fourteen who he was, or why others looked at him funny. I think about who I was then, and how far apart I am from the person I am today. I turn twenty-seven in twenty days - yet mentally, I look back fondly on being ten years of age, and thinking of it as though it was a mere eight months ago.

Eight months ago, I moved to Leeds.

So hey, welcome back to Grxss Roots dot com. I don't presently have my website due to laziness, or due to being busy with my Master's degree. Maybe in a few years we can look back on this post and think "oh man, what a moment this was, one that we can all look back on and think of it as an 'origin story'". Or, alternatively, one that we can all look back on and think "oh man, what the f**k was he talking about!?"

Either way, that's subjective. The only now is what's to come in the next half an hour, or the next day, or week, or month - or year.

I drink a lot less these days. Those days used to be my favourite creative space to fall into - the only place I could speak openly to my followers, albeit even in a cyberspace. Such as real life, I get to truly open up after a few beers on the couch with you. I cook a lot more, I do a lot more house-husbandy things. It's rad. Life is rad.

The website will be back down the line, and I look forward to seeing you all there. In the mean time, you can expect me to dot here or there to document these forthcoming months. You can expect me to show my face more often. For everybody that has even taken a moment of their day to check in on dumb ol' Dan Tomlinson and his crazy ol' dreams, I love you.

I hope to see you again soon.

Take care forever,

Dan x