Yesterday, I celebrated my 56th rotation around the planet. Notably this year, a number of people whose good wishes could be guaranteed (even when I have been very variable in my continued ability to be consistent) were absent. It then occurred to me at 5am this morning, waiting for the painkillers to kick in for my jaw, that all things will inevitably come to an end. Expecting to have friends for life might be the aspiration of some, but it’s not something I’ve ever managed with confidence. To be fair, up until the last five years or so, I’ve not been that great a bet for friendship anyway.
I have really struggled with consistency, lurching from one crisis to another, since I was in my early teens. It is only recently that it’s become apparent that, most of the time, I’ve been the problem. It is very rarely other people, but my often disastrous inability to judge how to deal with situations. The trick, it seems, is just to be lovely to everybody and not worry about anything else. Who knew? The problem, such as it is, becomes the terrible toll that this then takes on someone whose default state in most situations is just to be blunter than a VERY blunt thing and to tell everyone exactly what I think, at that moment.
Change has been in the wind since the start of the year. As I begin to gain traction with my work, where it is easy just to be brutally honest and pass it off as art, it is becoming more obvious with each passing day that the online spaces in which I ply my trade are beginning to become unfit for purpose. The lines of integrity and advertising are becoming increasingly blurred, and morality is easy to sacrifice, if it means an increase in personal Twitter hits and a light on your ‘brand’. Therefore, it really is time to come back to blogging, where most people liking this are spiders. I know you’re not real. It’s perfectly okay.
If you are one of the (very few, that’s great) Real People here, then HI. I didn’t come back in this capacity to preach at you, nor indeed as a cheap alternative to the now ‘must come as standard with promotion’ newsletter option so many creatives fall back on. I’d just like somewhere to talk where if you make the effort to come and engage me, it will be rewarded just as conversation and not as a means of upping my follower rate. This mind was grateful yesterday for three good meals and a walk in the rain. My personal happiness should not become a spectator sport. I’d like to record it as just that, and move on.
I’ll start by trying to do this every Monday. Let’s see how that goes.
The Internet of Words 