Right, I’ve got this blog (I still hate that word – it’s ugly and boring – maybe I should give my blog a friendly nickname, like – I don’t know – let’s say, ‘Journal’. Yes, that will do. Start again – )
O.K., so I’ve got this ‘journal’ (yea, it works!), but I’m not sure what to do with it.
I don’t mean I don’t know what to write about. I mean I know what to write about but I don’t know where to begin.
There is so much I want to say about so many things, that when I start thinking about one thing I end up thinking about a score of other things, and I find myself swimming in a stormy sea made up of facts, ideas, imaginings, memories, speculations, all crashing against and simultaneously coalescing with each other in a manner which is in no way conducive to any kind of constructive concentration.
The result of this is that I have a series of files building up on my computer, each one taking on a different topic, but none of them even approaching completion.
That’s what comes of having what is known in psychiatric circles as a ‘grasshopper’ mind. And it’s not just about the way I think, it’s about the way I’ve lived my life.
There have been a few central focusses in that life: my love of music, which is a subject I intend to take on, since I have certain opinions abut the way music works these days that I really feel the need to make known; and my political views, which I must either put on record or watch my head burst, so passionately do I feel about them.
But otherwise – and there are a number of similes that suggest themselves as well as the ‘grasshopper’ one – I have flitted from interest to interest as a butterfly flits from flower to flower or a songbird flits from tree to tree.
Some things I have gone into for the pleasure of it: story-telling, poetry, ornithology, chess, football, ship-modelling, cycling, drawing. Others, because I need to understand how the universe works and how I fit into it: science, philosophy, religion, mythology, and of course politics.
There are also many experiences I have had of life which I feel the need to pass on, partly because like all other creative people I want to leave something of my life behind me when life itself is over; but also because many of them are just plain entertaining, be that entertainment comical or tragical.
I am not talking only about the stories and anecdotes here which speak of the many and varied circumstances of my life; I am also talking about the countless observations I have made of the world around me which have impressed themselves on my mind like pictures hung in a gallery: those odd moments when I have seen something that has moved me in some way and which I can never forget.
So the question is, where and how should I go on from here?
Actually, having written all this, I have an idea about that. Let’s see now………