The one where I empty my head
I've had so many random thoughts churning around my head recentlyif I don't get them out of my head and onto a page, it feels like they will just drift awaylike i never had them, and then nobody will know just how crazy the internal workings of my idiotic brain are, which would be a shame. Maybe.
FilteringWhile reading about other people's adventures on social blogging platforms, I've begun to notice just how much I filter the subjects I write about. It's been a gradual thing. When I started bloggingback in the age of MethuselahI would just speak my mindno matter how mad, crazy, angry, or spite filled my thoughts were. One of my co-workers saw a few of the posts, and desribed a typical post by me as “foaming invective”. He was right. These days I tend to only write about me, and only about the more abstract stuff.
Over the last few years I have told stories about days out with the children, but even those are becoming rareI can't help feeling that as the children grow up, their story becomes their ownthat sharing my perspective of them in an adventure is gradually becoming “the wrong thing to do”.
It's funny really. I will happily sit in a coffee shop while away with work (it's the only time I ever set foot in them), and write about random strangers wandering pastbut I won't write in a similar vein about anybody I actually know. Am I afraid that somebody will connect the dots? Possibly. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt anybody. Writing about anonymous strangers is safer somehow.
How many pies?Despite announcements to the contrary, I am still cross-posting to all of the popular blogging platforms. It started out as an exercise in curiosity to see what would happen, but it's kind of evolved now into a habitit's just “something I do”. I'm usually rubbish at keeping up with anything involving work with little reward, so I'm surprised at my own tenacity. Maybe it a character flaw. Who knows?I have wondered in the last few days about splitting the blogs into two campsthose with my real name attached to them, and those withoutthe idea being that the named posts are perhaps more abstract, and more thoughtful, while the unnamed posts are the more mundane daily posts. I don't know what I'm going to do at the moment. If I split, I then have to decide where I am writing for, rather than just emptying my head. It's added complexity. I tend to think complexity is bad.
Removing Facebook and TwitterI removed the Facebook and Twitter apps from my mobile phone. I realised I wasn't using them at all, so while doing a factory reset the other week, didn't put them back on. I haven't missed them. I've had a love hate relationship with Facebook for a whileit's useful to keep in touch with family, but beyond that there are just far too many people grandstanding either their own personal drama, or perceived injustices visited upon them (or anybody else, to be honest) by others. Sure, you can sort people into groups, and flick various switches on each person to silence their idiocy, but it comes to the point where you just can't be bothered with all the drama any more. That happened for me some time ago.
Although I've always had Twitter on my phone, I've never really used it as it's designed to be usedin recent months all I've really done is post hyperlinks to blog posts (which does actually draw a remarkable amount of traffic, which surprised me greatly). Twitter just seems like “one more thing” most of the time thoughand has dramas all of it's ownlike Stephen Fry throwing his toys out of the pram the other week.
I guess there's an element of “living life”, rather than posting single sentences about it on my phoneI've never got that whole idea to be honest.
First World LonelinessIn the middle of all the writing, blogging, travelling with work, washing up, stopping the kids arguing, and headbutting my computer at work, I often feel strangely lonely. It's hard to describe. I guess everybody experiences it at different times in their liveswhen your days are filled from end to end, and you have no down-time to look forward to.
I've already used nearly all of my holiday days for the work yearI think I have perhaps 5 left until October (yesmy holiday year at work resets in Octoberdon't ask). Weekends tend to be filled with grocery shopping, washing clothes, delivering children to sporting fixtures, decorating, or gardening. You might think that most evenings would become free, but you're usually so tired by the time the kids are in bed you flake out.
I wrote a post on Tumblr recentlywishing I knew a few more people elsewhere in the worldoutside of my day-to-day lifethat I could confide inescape with late at night now and again. I stopped watching regular television back during the time I worked in London years ago, and have never gotten back into it. Late on an evening the internet tends to be far more persuasive to me than the latest re-packaged version of NCIS, CSI, Law and Order, or whatever Superhero series they have re-booted recently.