It has been a while since I sat down to think about something, let alone write something to share with anyone, via this neglected collection of thoughts and babble spewed from my brain box, who might be remotely interested in the lumbering merry-go-round that is my progression through this thing otherwise known as life.
A while since, despite by most recent post where I was sure I had got back on track. How wrong I must have been.
Insight is funny thing. When I don’t have it, I am often reminded “you don’t have insight”, “take a look at yourself”. As is often the case the thing doing the ‘reminding’ is my own brain. My own unforgiving internal monologue. The cursing, spitting sometimes corrosive mental noise.
Which reminds me of what I always wanted installed above the hand basins of a day centre for homeless people I once worked in. I recall chatting to a couple of colleagues about the almost ubiquitous attempt of individuals to apportion blame of their circumstance on someone else (who hasn't done that?), something else (again who hasn't done that?) and never really accept their situation as a result of choices they had made.
My proposed solution was to install mirrors above every handbasin emblazoned with the message “you are looking at the problem”. Of course it was a bad idea in as much as it would simply have pointed the finger of blame, rather than a good solutions-focused chat. The idea was dead.
That idea ended up on the same scrap heap as the idea where, to reduce the level of harm sex workers in Medway were exposed to, I proposed to offer a facility for them to make use of premium-rate phone lines offered by our charity. A kind of self-employed, work at home, route out of street work using the same skills they might already have possessed.
I can see now that was a minefield and the Board of Trustees were right to have kicked it into the long grass. There is a funny story attached to that too, but we can leave that to another time.
Back to the insight. When I think I have it, I later realise, that was a delusion, an oft mistaken doppelgänger for something which seems like insight, but is otherwise more insidious, since inertia feeds off delusion like a leech.
Anyhow, I have not written lately since I have been busy, making myself busy doing loads of stuff, which now I am trully back on track, I will go into at another time. There are dozens of great things to share, but all for another day.
My inertia mostly related to this blog, and although it only really has a low number of followers, it does appear to have been looked at, if not 'read’ by a host of people from across the globe. If I need an excuse to get cracking again, now I have it.
A couple of days before Christmas, and a day or so before leaving the little crop of rock perched somewhere to the top left of the European continent which I call my birthplace, a friend of mine (GG) gave me a book.
“So?” you might ask. And you’d be right to ask. “So what?”. Well, the book is called ‘642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT’.
Well, in that simple gift giving/receiving thing which happens every year around the anniversary of (strictly speaking its originally the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. Later to be incorporated by the story tellers of the man Jesus Christ with their inclusion in the story of his birth of gifts, namely Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh, given by the Magi and even more recently usurped by the giant corporations and their armies of merchandisers and marketeers who simply want us to think about things like discounts, offers, seasonal promotions and their profits) the birth of the King of Kings, son of God etc.
Back to the book, the gift, '642 THINGS TO WRITE ABOUT’. It’s a great book for anyone who hopes to write anything other people might read and I suppose something which anyone who enjoys the sometimes pointless process of generating collections of words, even just for their own amusment, might benefit from. Why not check it out? It’s brilliant.
Over time, I guess you’ll see the results of the gift. Will it inspire? Will I get into the habit of adding a few lines to this blog regularly. It certainly has got me to write this and so…even though only time will tell…their is already a positive effect.
Right now, I have energy and focus; the doting parents of determination and I believe I will do this; write more. Thanks for reading this and in case no one has genuinely said it to you of late; I wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.