It's a simple process that I've done many, many times before. Here I am, back in front of a computer, blogging. But what gives me pause is the sheer number of times I've done this, the different locations, the times, the situations, and the years.
Blogging is a mirror for life, it seems to me. Whereas social media; that's been a mirror for oneself. Or should that be one's self? Anyway, it quickly ended up as something altogether more narcissistic than its original potential. Which, to me, has always been a source of immense anguish. It's a missed opportunity, isn't it? All that guff about being an "influencer". When blogs started, there were pages and pages of lists - people's blogs, their lives. I can recall choosing a few randomly, and each one was glorious: a window into another life.
Now - you have to follow people's insta. While you're doing that, they sell you things: items, food, clothes, and themselves. It all seems so dreary to me; I just can't abide it.
I don't really want to sell; I just want to tell. Dumb shit about my life, what it feels like to be me. Or, at the very least, what I think it feels like.
As I sit in front of this laptop, typing away, I can feel all the other keys of all the other computers. Sitting in my flat in Shepherds Bush or on a table in Queen's Park. At an old wooden bench, in my place in Brighton. Fragments of my journey, all playing instantly, simultaneously, in my head.
Some of what I've written has been dull. Some of it was done while I was absolutely drunk out of my mind. Some more still, while I was in the throes of a divorce, some whilst I was falling in love.
I like the fact that there is no "narrative arc" beyond that chaotic arc which bisects all our lives: a messy, undignified scrawl across the sky. Here's to more of that.
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