Trying again to get back into blogging (attempt 3)

Every few months or so I promise myself I’ll get back into writing stuff and then I give up. I’m not sure whether its because I feel I’m writing for other people to read rather than for my own benefit but to be honest, I’m pretty convinced that it’s more to do with the fact I don’t blog in my professional life, only my personal.

Taking that into consideration – maybe I should read into this a little that I need that fresh challenge and interesting stuff to write about in my professional life, otherwise blogging seems rather reflective, self absorbed and opinionated for opinion sake.

I have blogged on and off for 4 years. It a large number of places. I still have a blog I update elsewhere on a less than regular basis and as a tool, it’s helped me in many ways.

This blog, linked to my website, is available for most people to read and as a result I’m going to link to it via Twitter and see if I end up getting more into it as I tell people it’s there.

Plus, I’m looking hard at my career at the moment and looking to kick forward over the next year into something new. As I do, I’ll try and write about that and go from there.

Lull before the storm or seasonal reform?

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a damned thing. Mainly this is down to being on holiday and away from work but it would appear that during the last three weeks I have broken a taboo in my life for the first time. I spent time off work and didn’t feel so bored that I wanted to go back after 5 mins.

Now to me this is a revelation, but to many people it sounds like common sense. Why wouldn’t I want to just get on with enjoying my time off and instead of worrying about what to do next, just go with the flow. Easier said than done up til now. Time off in long stints was like grating my face on sand paper, something that I literally loathed with a passion. But why I hear you ask? Who knew it was simply a case of fearing time in my own company. Without the distractions of daily life I was left in the company of my own mind and this was something not to be enjoyed either for me or for anyone around me.

But this holiday season and recent short breaks seem to confirm that after two years of soul gazing and a relentless schedule of self scrutiny I’ve managed to find enough comfort in coming to terms with who and what I am that I can stomach spending time in my own company or in company of my partner/close friends for three weeks without any particular sense of purpose.

However, what I can’t tell is whether I’m simply less stressed than I have been for two years and therefore just unwinding or whether I’m genuinely content to be with myself for long periods of time – mainly because these periods have been spend amusing myself in a banal fashion on the Nintendo, reading books and for the most part looking at the outside world through the window of social networking like a dog waiting for its owner to get home. There’s no doubt that I’m calmer this season and the last week has seen me snowed in with little access to shops or other people unless I walk, being trapped with myself hasn’t felt half as bad as previous years. Which has been good for the soul.

However, I do wonder if I’d not been trapped by the snow and able to gaze at everyone else in the same position through the social networks and News 24, would I have reached the same point of feeling stuck on a merry-go-round of monotony and boredom as with every other holiday to date. The long standing detachment between who I am feel I am at work and at home seems to be changing. If anything, I think I’m starting to role reverse a little and feel better about who I am rather than define myself by what I do.

2010 could prove to be an interesting chapter. Plus, whilst in Bruges last week I came up with an idea for a novel. Best get on with that. Happy New Year y’all.

p.s. I’ve just written this inside a programme called MacJournal which is going to allow me to post it directly without having to go online. Intrigued to see if it will work!

Sprouts or Beans

        Date:        10 January 2010 14:00

        Topic:        Sprouts or Beans

I never really thought I’d be convinced to start a blog, but to be honest it’s about time I did.

Having just started a new job, had a summer full of sadness, left two very close friends and questioned my existence with the help of a plethora of ‘specialists’ at three seperate funny farms, I’m reasonably well placed to have an opinion on this life and not feel bad about it right now.

It’s funny how you think you know people until they turn out to be crazy and then all of a sudden that someone ends up being you and your own state of mind. It’s a horrible feeling waking up one day knowing that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you whilst at the same time being acutely aware that everyone around you saying ‘you’re depressed’ and ‘you really need to get some support’.

Truth is, that having spent time, energy and effort finding out whether it is me or them that are right, in the end the notion of whether my head is full of sprouts or beans matters not when you inject new life into an tired mind. Changing jobs, leaving people I have grown to care for and not having the time to question myself for the first time in months has been rather refreshing. Blogging could be another route to cleansing or the first step in a new avenue of rambling about shit I really don’t need to think about.

Either way, be sure that the opportunity to connect to other people is something that this 4-week-away-from-30 year old simply can’t resist the lure of.

So, hello world. I wonder what you’ll make of me.

Triggering change

        Date:        10 January 2010 14:00

        Topic:        Triggering change

It’s strange how things can effect you in unexpected ways.

Having been totally engrossed in a diary that was rammed with new things to do at work, I found myself slowly unwinding in the company of a good friend and feeling pretty positive over a pint of Diet Coke in the early evening.

I’ve been struggling to unwind recently and my brain hasn’t allowed me to switch off from processing all the new information I’ve been taking in. Evidence of this was that two close friends have almost directly said that I seem like a different person, something which distresses me slightly. I know I’ve had the opportunity to change my life having been in the grip of feeling useless for over a year, however, you start to wonder what really is important to your ‘self’ when those you feel for see you change in front of them. More so when you realise it for yourself and can’t switch it off.

So, fast forward to the radio news at 6:30pm this evening (UK time). A story is aired describing the plight of a 17 year old who has admitted to manslaughter for killing his 12 year old sister. The 17 year old male was apparently ‘playing’ with a pistol illegally owned by his mother when the firearm went off in his hands, shooting his sister in the head. She died the next day.

People do change in an instant. That young man’s life will have been utterly altered in the blink of an eye. It’s almost inconceivable the pain that he must have felt the moment that he connected what he was seeing with what had happened, striking his sister in the head at almost point blank range.

For me, it put into perspective the choices we make to alter our lives and that sometimes, playing with things that have a huge risk attached to them can sometimes backfire and leave us with regret we may never quench. Although I have felt guilty that my decision to change my life recently has effected in a small way a few people I care for greatly – I count my blessings that I am still able to meet them for lunch, have a drink with them or text them each night to reassure them I care.

My friend and I discussed our collective need to do just that with our friends. Although I’ve not been able to switch off my brain from being in work mode – at no point have I been careless enough yet to forget the effect changing my life has on others.

I hope that young man will someday come to terms with the accident he lived through and that others will learn to forgive him. He didn’t want to kill his only sister.

I don’t want to hurt my friends by changing from the person they care for. I hope I have the capacity to make sure I don’t.

Affluenza

        Date:        10 January 2010 14:00

        Topic:        Affluenza

A blog buddy recently posted a blog asking which year I would like to have been born in if I could have chosen…..

Bloody interesting question that and to be frank I know the answer. 1895. I would have been young enough to remember the coming of the new century, the death of Queen Victoria, the first plane flight and the age of innocence before the world wars. I would potentially have learnt what it meant to fight for something you feel compelled to protect – what pain and loss really felt like and how brightly the simplicity of hope would shine at the darkest moments shared between friends forced together by battle. I would have grown up to believe rather than doubt, to work hard rather than be distracted by myself, to earn rather than expect and value rather than dismiss.

I would have watched the world change in the collision of an atom, the death of a president, a foot on the moon and protected my family through cold and fearful times. I would have experienced real winters of discontent, summers of love and the arrival of the communication age and then faded away before the prejudice surrounding skin tone was replace by prejudice surrounding belief.

If I could have been born in 1895, the world would still have been a mystery and people wouldn’t have been so transparent. The affluenza that has spread across the world would have been inconceivable for most of my life and by the time globalisation had dawned my sun would have set.

If’s and but’s don’t do us any good, BUT if i had been born in 1895 – I think I would have a greater understanding of how valuable being given the opportunity to live actually is when so many would have lost the choice in front of my eyes.

Jimmy Moonbeam 1895-1996

Beauty & Attraction

        Date:        10 January 2010 14:00

        Topic:        Beauty & Attraction

I’ve had a strange weekend.

Yesterday I met up with a friend of mine in Woking and we had a coffee and chat that was more revealing than I was expecting. Then, following that, I had a conversation with another friend who had decided to sleep with her ex partner the night before and was totally regretting it. Almost immediately afterwards, another chum got in contact and had a big heart to heart which led us to have a discussion about how much we mean to each other and then it was off to a kids birthday party to see friends and their son.

It always amazes me how just when you think you know someone, they surprise you. It may be in something they said, something they do or in the case of this weekend – it’s been the look in their eye that reveals something about them they probably have tried to hide.

In the case of one person, we posed the question of each other as to what made someone attractive. Looking at a picture I then took later that day (see above), I think attraction is as much about the personality as it is the look, but it seems to me that sometimes, the look in a persons eyes gives a glimpse into an enigma of their personal world. What are they thinking? How do they work? How do they perceive themselves and does it differ from the way the world sees them?

It’s interesting how the look in someone’s eye can make you want to open them up and explore them. One friend told me she doesn’t feel attractive and would change most things about herself. The same friend also told me that attraction was all ‘in the mystery’. I think she’s probably right, but as I’ve stripped back the layers a little more, I think that the mystery only backs up the fact that she is a beautiful person full stop.

Living

* This post was originally published in 2008*

One of my closest and dearest friends had a bad day today.

She is enduring a shitty time at work and at home and this evening it got worse. A close relative of hers decided for the fourth time that she would try to commit suicide and overdosed on tablets. Both are very sad and although she is ok her relative will be alright, the shock of it was a lot for her to take in.

All to many times I find myself wishing I could effect things I have no control over. I am at my worst when feel powerless to alter the world around me and when it comes to the family I have created for myself – made up of friends I love greatly, I find it even more disturbing to stand idly whilst those closest to me suffer.

I am not use to watching people suffer. Two close friends are struggling with the potential of losing someone they care for and I have spent the last year wondering whether to change my life and leave someone who cares for me for a different life.

Sometimes I surprise myself with a reality check. I wonder why it takes things like this for people like me to realise that some people would give everything they have to not lose people they love. Learning to live with what you are and share that with people and be comfortable with it is a skill I really hope to acquire one day.

Shepperton

* This blog was originally posted elsewhere in 2008 *

Shepperton is a strange place.

Strange in the sense that the parts along the river are absolutely stunning and I enjoy driving along the one way road that travels alongside the bank, the island and out towards the locks but only to get to the house I have had to pay £50 a week to enter for 50 mins to spout out my life.

Now there’s no doubt that I’m a different person now than I was 7 months ago. In my life, 29 years of bollocks have been followed by one of utter deliverance in terms of definition of self. Somehow, all this time has passed and I never really managed to join the dots between those things that had ‘happened unto me’ and the others that I had ‘done unto myself’. Now that I have spent many months drawing the line between those dots a picture has emerged that is altogether familiar but qualified from a different perspective. I’ve looked for many years and not seen the reality of why and how I am.

So what changed? I’ll tell you what changed. I woke up 7 months ago having spent months supporting someone I’ve grown to love very dearly and realised that as righteous as I was about not giving in, not breaking down and taking control of one’s life – that I had never practiced what I’d preached to people. I was the classic example of someone who could hold others up but never admit defeat in themselves. I’ve carried people, admired people, criticised people, written for people, loved people, performed for people, given myself to people but never known what was real and what was fake inside my own head.

Shepperton is strange because it is likely to be the place I will be at when I come to realise that having spent 30 years performing for others, I need to spend the next 30 performing for myself, caring for myself, challenging myself and believing in me. Not too much or too little, but just enough to recognise I’m more than the sum of my past experiences when I change the angle with which I look at myself and feel more satisfied that I’m not just a shit human being.

I’m not there yet but Shepperton has given me more than I was previously prepared to admit.

Sunday is for roasts…..

It’s Sunday.

The great thing about Sunday’s are usually roasts, Grand Prix’s and little to do. Infact, this weekend has been a combination of the traditionalism of all that and the new-wave Sunday’s I’ve gotten used to that involve me deliberating over how to be supportive to people.

Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not grateful to be able to relax and all that jazz, but to be honest, I’m so much better when I’m being useful. And being useful is how this weekend has been spent. I’ve talked, texted, phoned, coffee’d, lunched, dined and snacked with some of my nearest and dearest this weekend and found the last 48 hours more rewarding than most of the weekends I’ve had this year.

The question I have to work out by Wednesday when I will be challenged to answer it is: ‘What would I be with out people to perform for?’ Answers on a postcard please because I’ll be damned if I know.

I guess the best thing about paying for someone to tell you is you don’t have to just work it out for yourself. Oh and by the way, Martine McCutchin is now advertising Tesco Direct with that guy from Spooks. Now, which one has sold out more? Tesco or Martine? Hmm the things we have to worry about.

Off for roast beef and Top Gear……

Things that make you go ‘booooooo’

Evening all,

So if I was to ask you what the greatest feeling you’d ever had in your life, what would it be?

Would it be a moment of great achievement, a moment of physical pleasure, a moment of extreme love?

I’ve never really thought of what my greatest feeling has been before and reflecting on it, it surprised me that I can’t readily remember a moment of intensity that didn’t involve being intertwined with the feeling of others. I wonder if I have already felt the greatest feelings I will or whether the best is yet to come.