Why is it the moment I sit down to write a blog post, my body decides it’s time to visit the bathroom? It’s almost like my body is better at procrastinating than I am. When conscious that I’m about to get on with something, it pulls a joker from it’s back pocket and whispers “you might want to think about doing this first”.
(a minute passes while I answer the call of nature)
I’ve had something on my mind the last few days - since the last blog post. I’m not entirely happy with the direction the posts have been going just recently. Rather than tell stories about my day - no matter how trivial - I’ve begun pointing pointy sticks at “the man” (read: everybody I don’t agree with), and becoming the worst part of myself. The worst bit? I know I’m doing it.
Perhaps this is “getting older”? In the spirit of the wonderful poem by Jenny Joseph “When I am old, I shall wear purple”, I sometimes catch myself enjoying a good rant about anything people will listen to - and yet it’s the singular thing that rubs me up the wrong way when others do it. I really don’t like listening to people complain, pedal badly informed bullshit, or blame others for the situation they find themselves in.
I think some people just like complaining. They enjoy it.
So. I’m going to pull this blog back onto the “straight and narrow”, and focus on me. It’s obviously not going to be as exciting as pointing sticks at anybody, or spitting foaming invective at “the man”, but at least it will be authentic, and perhaps a bit more relatable.
It’s Sunday. A quiet day filled with chores, pottering, picking up after others, and being the “unseen” hand that magically enables others.
Upon finding myself alone in the house - or so I thought - for about twenty minutes this morning, I tidied the living room up, made a coffee, and sat down to listen to a record on the record player. After leafing through my meagre collection of vinyl albums, I pulled out “The Immaculate Collection”. “Cherish” got turned up to 11 while I gazed out at the garden, wondering if I could get away with not cutting the grass until next weekend.
After “Justify My Love” ended, and the stylus bumped over the middle of the record, I lurched back into the real world, put the record away, and put the kettle on - thinking “I’ll grab my laptop and go sit in the (now tidy) living room and write a blog post”.
While waiting for the kettle to boil I took some rubbish out to the bins. On my return my eldest daughter and her boyfriend had surfaced (who knew they were even here?), had taken over the living room, drawn the curtains, and put a movie on.
Bugger.
I’m starting to understand why people take their laptop and sit in café on their own to write. Or have a shed at the end of their garden. I wonder if they lock the door to prevent the rest of their family from appropriating their bolt-hole?
Kenny Rogers is singing about gambling again on Spotify. He does that a lot. Dolly will be along in a minute - mark my words.
It’s funny, isn’t it - how we “know” what track might come next after a few listens of a play-list. Of course, growing up with albums, I have entire sequences of tracks burned into my subconscious - as one lead out finishes, I’m already humming the intro to the next. When it doesn’t happen it’s quite jarring.
The funny thing? While I invariably know what tune comes next, I don’t remember lyrics past the first line or so of any particular song. I sometimes wonder if that’s a male/female thing. Probably more a “me” thing.
Anyway.
I guess the “major thing” I achieved this weekend was back-filling my bullet journal with events of the last few months. I had been experimenting with various mobile apps - I’m easily influenced by shiny new things - but almost always return to pen and paper. I have quite the stack of notebooks lined up on the shelf in the corner of the junk room. It’s interesting to pull them down from time to time, and find out what I was doing or thinking about in the past.
I sometimes look back at old blog posts too.
It’s a double edged sword - looking back. While a part of me smiles - with perfect knowledge of what was to come - another part ends up wondering “what if”.
As Stanley Tucci’s scientist in “The Core” once said, “what if it’s made out of cheese?”.
I think Tucci’s line should be asked of anybody wondering if they’ve made the right decision about anything - but particularly me - given the inconsequential rubbish I worry about almost every day.