I’m afraid this blog will for a while longer be some kind of weird and vague public journal of self-analysis / self-discovery. I hope I don’t bore you all too much with my tiny or bigger Eureka moments about the inner workings of my mind. I had typed “messed up mind” at first and then deleted the ‘messed up’ bit. One tiny step towards proper self-acceptance and self-compassion and all that. I used to use such seemingly insignificant qualifiers about myself all the time “messed up”, “a bit weird”, boring, stupid and so. In self-talk and probably on here often enough as well. But why? I don’t think I’m that much more messed up than anyone else. A bit maybe, but not as much as I should want to make that the main thing people know or think about me.
There are still a few ideas of what to write about swirling around in my mind and it’s not always just the lack of time or mental energy that stops me from putting those words together. When I payed more attention to what’s really stopping me I realized that part of it is the fear of having readers (hello, anyone out there?) who might even be friends or at least people I know, disagree with me. One aspect also is the fear that my line of argument won’t hold up. But even more than that I seem to have this deep-rooted fear that any disagreement with anyone means that this person won’t like me anymore. Ugh, sounds like something for a therapist to unpack, doesn’t it? Too bad I’m not seeing one anymore so I have to work that out on my own. At least I’m thrilled that I seem to have gotten so far in my self-analysis on my own. Would be a pain in the ass though, if I’ve got myself wrong here. But I don’t think so.
Anyway, especially at the moment with a variety of hotly debated (online and offline) social and global issues, the aforementioned shortcoming in my mental and emotional armour makes me hesitate to write down and share an opinion publicly. I’ll work on that, because disagreement doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing. And we all contain multitudes anyway, right?
I was sure I was quoting some philosopher with this last line, but it turns out: Walt Whitman in “Song of Myself”, 1892.
While I was pondering this, I thought about the many blog posts I have written on previous versions of this blog. I’ve been doing this in one form or another for almost 20 years now. I checked the October posts from ten years ago and from 15 years ago. In a way there was a lot more content then. Lots of posts about watching hockey. Lots of weekly TV show recaps. Lots of updates from travel while I was travelling. Using internet cafes and such. Remember those ? I guess a lot of my ‘commentary’ has been moved to social media since then and as I’m actively trying to cut down my time on those services, it might be a good idea to use this blog more. Once again.
The ‘monkey mind’ in the title though refers more to my sudden idea to maybe give “NaNoWriMo” another try this year. To start writing a novel? Where does that idea come from all of a sudden? It comes from having seen it mentioned by myself in a blog post in October 2013. I haven’t thought of NaNoWriMo or taken part in any since 2017. I had to log into the site and look it up. I even only have a vague idea of what my plot idea was back then. The title was “Josephine”. There have been at least two more “a bit plotted ideas” before that as well, maybe under a different user name? I don’t recall and I would have to look it all up on my desktop hard drive. If the stuff is even still on there. I don’t know. I was able to right away think of a new storyline I might try my hands on. And this all might just be yet another new project for me to while away time with as I’m wont to do. I need to think on it a bit more. If I spend most of my time in November plotting and writing a novel there won’t be much more time for zen-doodling (that’s what I’m going to call it for now). Here is my current work in progress:
And in the corner of my living room my long neglected guitar is silently screaming for help 🙂
