BUT WHAT’S IT ALL FOR?

I’ve been thinking rather a lot lately, as I suppose that I often do, about why it is that I sit here doing this thing that I do which might just qualify as being what others might call “blogging” (although it resembles the true understanding of the meaning of that word only obliquely) and then choose to hit a button marked “publish” and share these vague thoughts potentially with the whole world, although in this case, “the whole world” can probably be defined as three people who’ve actually met me and haven’t found the experience so traumatic that they would prefer never to have anything to do with me again.

People like that are as rare as hen’s teeth and are to be treasured, even if only in that massively inadequate way I have of never actually getting around to actually seeing them in person or anything.

That of course is totally my loss and not theirs.

But in many ways it is for those three people, and I suppose, as I may have stated before, the occasional visitors who “ping” their way into my “pageviews” data whilst actively seeking out something more gratifying and who then seldom hang around for long enough to actually digest these strange words I write, that I (until recently) remained sitting here during the “wee small hours” that have proved so productive for me during these last sixteen months or so, poised over my keyboard and trying to find something to entertain them with.

My God, that was a long sentence. It actually made sense, but I would be an idiot if I expected anyone to take the time and trouble to unravel it.

That is, I suppose, one of the problems that have been nagging away at the back of my mind during these past few days when the words simply wouldn’t come. It’s not, of course, for the want of trying. Indeed in front of me there are countless scribbled thoughts upon that very matter that have all failed to coalesce into anything resembling a rational argument or a slightly entertaining and pithy outlook upon my own rather bizarre view of the world which we are all stumbling hopelessly along through.

A dozen or so pieces from the back half of last year remain in the “unpublished” list because their content made me fearful of being thought of as offensive or simply just plain weird. The thoughts were there but reading them through just made me anxious and I decided to hold them back and rethink them for perhaps another, more appropriate, time, and so they sit there, festering and unloved, much as their author is sometimes prone towards feeling, waiting for their day in the sunshine.

Strangely enough, however, having suddenly stopped writing, the numbers of people taking a moment to see what it is I’m going on about has remained almost exactly the same as if I had been continuing, which has made me rather wonder what the point of actually writing stuff down actually is. That probably doesn’t help when you’re staring at a blank screen across an untouched keyboard and hoping that inspiration will strike. Perhaps the strange notion that nobody had even noticed that I was no longer there was sapping away at my commitment, or maybe I was still feeling rather bereft that, despite all the hours of effort and intimate baring and sharing of the content of my tortured soul, I still remain resolutely “unrecommended” as an interesting read to anyone outside our cosy and intimate circle. Somehow, I have begun to fear that my wretched vanity is starting to manifest myself again which tends towards my bad habit of slamming the door upon the world, throwing the baby out with the bathwater or just saying “Sod it!”

However, some words did start to come at least. There are about four half-written mutterings and musings, which all tended towards the bitter and twisted but which failed to transform into anything that I really felt it was fair to share with any of the wider public who might be tempted to think less of me because of their content. Those I shall mull over, edit and possibly “share” on some other, bleaker day, and I’m sure that, if you continue to pay careful attention, you’ll recognize them when you see them.

Perhaps I should offer a prize…?

No matter. After all we are not here for the glittering prizes, nor are we here to polish a bruised ego. There is something that we are perhaps here to polish, but, as we try to avoid such obvious vulgar imagery whenever possible in these parts (and I use the word “parts” with much caution), perhaps I should gloss over that metaphorical reference and move on.

You see how jolly difficult I’m finding the wrangling of my words since the new year turned…? Indeed, perhaps it was the thoughtfulness and introspection that the new year tends to bring along with it that has caused the problem. I’m mulling things over, do you see? And sometimes I’m really not liking what I’m finding when I turn over those mullstones in my mind.

And yet… the sentences still won’t form, the argument won’t structure itself and so the reasoned debates that I choose to have with myself, and which I try to explain to those ever so loyal few of you, just tend to fall apart before I can string them together. It’s not like there hasn’t been much to consider. Racism and the consequences of it has reared its ugly head in various places across the start of this year, and I have some very strong thoughts upon it, but I’m finding it very difficult to believe that anyone would honestly be in the slightest bit interested in what I might actually have to say on the matter.

After all, why would you? You’ve got perfectly valid opinions of your own, I’m sure and you don’t generally go around typing at keyboards about them and choosing to tell the whole bloody world about them, so why on Earth should I think that my opinions are any more interesting than anyone else’s? After all, I don’t generally have a lifestyle that is truly worthy of much comment, I’m not doing great works or changing the world in any way for the better. I mean I barely leave the house unless I absolutely have to. So why do I feel the constant need or even have any real right to comment upon such a bland and moribund existence?

Of course, I suppose that the fact that I do take the time to write my nonsenses down and share them with a few interested souls, where other people choose not to, or just blab about their thoughts in other, perhaps more accessible venues, is, I suppose, rather the point of the blogiverse, as indeed is the right of everyone to choose to ignore them if they so wish.

Which brings us back to the question sitting so absurdly at the top of this piece. What is it all for? I certainly don’t profit from writing these things, other than getting a few tiny crumbs of human interaction from the process and that is always counterpointed by the slightly crestfallen feeling I get from scrutinizing the numbers and noticing, both in that and in other ways, how few lives I appear to touch despite having spent nearly half a century scuttling around pointlessly upon the surface of this tiny planet. I could insert a couple of dozen other reasons which I don’t do it for, but that would be to avoid getting to the point of why it is that I do, and recently, that answer has been becoming rather less obvious than I once thought it was.

Over the course of those last few months I was somehow finding the time to write something substantial (if not necessarily actually very interesting) almost every day because I got some pleasure out of doing so. If anything, I write because I like the process of writing and I delight in words and language, however ineptly (or possibly pompously) I might choose to entangle them. Somehow, however, over the course of the past few weeks the pleasure seemed to just ebb away out of it and it became, if not exactly a chore exactly, something that conspired in some small way to leave me feeling, if it is possible, both disappointed and disappointing at precisely the same time.

Still, they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and so maybe that is the way to go…

A Squash that looks like I sometimes feel...

Picture.

Caption.

Another day’s blogwork done.

But surely that would that just be a lazy way to go and ultimately be rather unsatisfying…? If not for me then certainly for you, and, perhaps, in the end, in some ridiculous notion of my own place in the grand scheme of things, it is you I convince myself that I’m doing it for, even if, as you might even now be already thinking, I probably really only do it for myself.

I’m sure that I shall want to return to more regular postings in the fullness of time if I am allowed to by circumstances, but, for now, it’s just stopped being fun and, as wiser heads than mine have often pointed out, if something stops being fun perhaps that’s the time to stop doing it.