bookmark_borderLess less less

I don’t set resolutions but I always end up with some, this year is turning out no different.

Last year the theme seemed to become ‘be healthier’. Whether that was in body (eating healthier, trying to get more exercise) or in mind (avoiding ‘drama’ wherever possible) it seemed to work.

That theme remains for this year but more by way of habit, although I do need to re-enforce it a little better, and it already seems like this year the theme is around simplicity.

My new role at work is seeing me involved in conversations about processes which seem overly complex.

I’m slowly decluttering my flat, my possessions to remove as much of them as I can. I just don’t need so much ‘stuff’. Case in point, I received my Pebble smart watch and promptly sold it. Why the hell do I need to receive SMS and email notifications on my watch? Yet another thing that I would end up just switching off.

I’m about to ditch App.net too, Twitter suffices, and Facebook remains useful as it encompasses a different set of people.

I’m also learning to let go of some things, leave them in the past where they belong. My own expectations of me, the expectations I place on others, well they’ve tripped me up in the past but more recently I’ve seen how destructive they can be and so I’m slowly finding ways to let them go.

Now, who wants to buy an XBox 360?

bookmark_borderReading

bookmark_borderUntitled

And so he starts again, the silence punctuated by the staccato tap tap tap of the keyboard. He moves in his chair to find a comfortable pose and starts to ponder what he might write, what prose he may be able to dredge from his flaccid imagination. Prose indeed, he thinks. Another helping of scorn to add to the pile.

He knows he has to start, that the act is as much a part of the outcome as the words, that until he starts he won’t know where it will go nor where it will end.

Every step is a journey.

No, every journey is a step.

As ever he enjoys playing with naivé imagery and constructs, twisting and pulling to find something between the cracks, weeds of ideas that may have been growing there and maybe, one day, a wildflower will bend into view, gloriously colourful and new.

But not today.

Today is not for the new, but for the act. The tap tap tap of the keyboard gathering speed as he realises all he needs is to keep writing.

He ponders the story of the building, the King like nature of an untold and sinister power. Basic, rote, not worth following but worth revisiting, perhaps there are some seeds there he can cultivate.

Faltering already? It seems so but he remains happy that he started once more.

He is never sure of where it will take him. He knows he enjoys the process regardless of the outcome, most of which remains hidden away, trashed.

He is writing again. For now.

I am happy with this.

Posted in UncategorizedTagged

bookmark_borderAlternative

I spent the weekend with some alternative friends.

What a strange phrase that is, alternative to what? My regular friends? No, just a different grouping of people brought together by a different bond. Although I’d pause at saying some were friends, acquaintances perhaps? But that’s beside the point.

Just as my best friendships all stem from the time we spent together drinking with nurses doing charitable good deeds at Hospital Radio Lennox, so this other group of people are forming around the part of my life I don’t really talk about. In fact none of us really talk about it except to each other, mostly. That sounds very insular, in fact it’s largely the opposite.

There are other definitions of alternative, he said in an attempt to gloss over that last paragraph, and they suggest things which aren’t defined as being the norm.

Which is fine by me. I’ve always enjoyed being different, being on the edge of things rather than part of the crowd and the more I discover about myself, the more I realise it’s a fundamental part of who I am.

It’s easy to fall into a life which is comfortable and easy, that you end up with a happiness that you deserve. That’s no bad thing, but in the long run, for me, it wasn’t what I needed.

Change is never easy, and it’s taken me some time to come to understand how I fit in this little alternative world I find myself inhabiting, but after a couple of years I think I’m beginning to figure it out.

At least until the next new experience where, maybe, everything will change again and, if it does, that’s fine by me. I’ll figure it out and have fun whilst I do.