Those of you who were hoping for part II of Pope Shug will I fear be disappointed this evening, whilst those of you who thought part 1 was crap, will no doubt be overjoyed! Shug will return though, never fear.
As those of you who have seen my FB status today will have seen, I've been in a 'odd' mood today, not my usual self. Mostly tiredness, mixed with some insecurity, and a bit of 'je nais sais quoi'. There is a lot of stuff happening in my head at the moment, and no, I'm not going to go all Emo and turn this into a therapy-by-blog session for a few reasons: 1. Who cares? I mean really. 2. I cringe when I see others do it, and 3. It's just not me. I internalise what ever is going on and try and work through it that way. The best way of doing it? Probably not. But anyway, as I said, this isn't therapy, this is just me, writing some words.
I did however, think to myself "why did I start a blog, knowing full well that there will be precious few readers?" What do I have to say that other people will find interesting? It's a good question and not one I can easily answer. As I said, I keep things to myself, so I'm not going to be laying bare any deep dark secrets, mostly because I don't really have any! I conversation with someone last Sunday made me think about my past, and if there was anything in there which worries me, and I have to say, my closet is pretty much skeleton free! Are there things I would change given the chance? Hell yes. Is there anything I'm ashamed of, no, not at all. Is there anything there which would worry me were it public knowledge? Nope. Is that a sign of a life not lived, or a sign of a life lived carefully. Chances are it's probably somewhere between the two. It's also made me think about the part of my life yet to come. Do I need to take more 'risks' - to a certain degree almost certainly. It took me a long time to figure it out, but there is a lot to be said for the concept of "better to have tried and failed, than to always wonder 'what if'".
So, it turns out, despite earlier promising this wouldn't turn into an Emo 'no one understands me, I'm off to look at trees' type of post, I guess that's kind of what it's turned into. So, now that I've voiced my thoughts in a vaguely incoherent way, I guess I may as well go the whole hog and give voice to some of the aspects of being me that I probably need to change. Those of you who know me can either nod or shake your head as we go along!
1. Be less negative, particularly about myself. I think pretty much everyone who knows me will have commented at some point about my habit of self-deprecation, poking fun at myself and my physical and mental shortcomings. Yet, I keep on doing it. I'm fairly certain I have a positive side, and maybe one day I'll find it (see, even when I'm admitting I put myself down too much and should really try to not do that, I wind up doing it! Deary me..) This is probably not a good thing. When I say probably, I mean certainly. It would actually be quite interesting to hear other people's opinions on my weaknesses/shortcomings, to see how they stack up with my own.
2. Don't let the past influence the future. "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc". I'm sure everyone knows what that means, but just in case there is someone whose Latin has briefly escaped them, it means 'After it, therefore because of it', or in other words, because something happened in the past, it's going to cause something else to happen in the future (actually, it doesn't quite mean that, but I like the phrase (thank you The West Wing) and thought it was close enough). This is pretty closely tied in with #1 above, negativity and past failures have led to the assumption that trying things in the future is futile - they are destined to fail. But that on;y becomes the case if I let it, and all you normal people will be surprised at just how damn long it took me to figure that out!
3. Focus. This wasn't going to be the original #3, but being cursed with the attention span of a goldfish (which is actually something of a myth, studies have shown that goldfish can retain basic information, they can be trained, but I mean really? What the hell are you going to train a goldfish to do?) the original #3 managed to run out of my head as I got distracted by a music video (Bring Your Daughter... ...To the Slaughter by Iron Maiden if you must know). , which is a recurring theme with me. A quick look through my school report cards will quickly establish a theme... "Stuart must pay more attention..." "...Stuart would excel if he would stop daydreaming" "...Stuart's attention span is frustrating, he is capable, but lazy". I can't argue. I did ok at school, but I know I was capable of much more.
4. I'll come back to this. If there is more than just this sentence when I hit 'publish' then you'll know I remembered what I was going to say. Don't hold your breath though.
5. Life is short. This wasn't going to be 3 (which turned into 4), so I will keep it as 5. Everyone will have heard, or said, at some point, 'life is short'. The irony of course, is that life is the longest thing any of us will ever do, but from a philosophical viewpoint, it's true. The universe is an estimated 13.4 billion years old, the earth around 4.5 billion years old. By those standards, a human lifetime is barely a blink. Don't we then owe it to ourselves to try and life that short, precious life in such a way as makes us happy, with those who make us happy. Which actually, brings me back to...
5a. Be more positive, make the effort. Sounds easy, doesn't it. Six little words. I know you are thinking "wasn't that covered in 1 or 2 above?" Kind of, but not quite. This is more in tune with 5 above, with a health degree of "don't sweat the small stuff - and it's all small stuff'". I always say to people "don't worry about that which you can't control". But saying that makes me a bit of a hypocrite, because I do worry about things I can't control. And I shouldn't. Yes, I started a sentence with a conjunction and yes, I can be a bit of a grammar nazi, so yes, that makes me a hypocrite too. Back on subject - I need to take my own advice more, and let go that which I don't control. I can only do, what I can do. It's something I need to be more cognisant of. The make the effort part goes back to "it's better to have tried, etc etc etc", so yes, that part was covered before, but I felt it merited a point of it's own.
So, where does that leave things. I don't know. I've thought long and hard about publishing this, if you are reading it, then I opted to hit the button. I'm being honest (one of my few redeeming features. Damn, there I go again!) when I say, I'm already pretty much sure I'm going to go for it, but, until I've hit the final full stop, I'm not 100% sure. Part of me feels like the Emo-blog-therapy that this has turned out to be has been a positive, part of me is yelling at the other part, something along the lines of "man up!". We will find out shortly which side won I guess! I'm actually slightly glad that this blog has a very small circulation, I've given an insight into the almost real me, that I'm not sure it's a good idea. People at work think of me as this big, bombastic ball of chubby confidence, little realising that a lot of it is an act, the real me is, I hope anyway, deeper than people realise. I'm shy, I can be insecure, I can be easily hurt, I can be... well, lets leave it at that.
If you have made it this far, well done, and thank you.
I think I'm just writing for the sake of it now, so I will stop, as soon as I've added my customary 'Jerry Springer' moment.
Everyone has the right to be happy. As cliche as it sounds, life is, in the grand scheme of things, short. So live it. You don't get a second chance, make this one count.
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