There are so many thoughts buzzing around my hyperactive mind that it is hard to channel them into coherent narratives that make for interesting and enlightening blog posts. This is the main barrier I face when challenging myself to blog more.
As I try to type up the reflections I conjure up in reaction to events that happen to me or are happening in the outside world, I am constantly jumping over inner self created hurdles. In the end I am left exhausted by the whole process and I digress so far from the main point of the blog post that my prose is nothing but an incoherent stream of nonsense. If I am to compose concise, succinct and insightful blog posts that are fun to read and connect with even one person out there in cyberspace then I have to overcome my inner confusion, the misty clouds of noise that break up my initially focussed thoughts. I am essentially need to learn how to believe in myself, now what I really believe in, accept that what I am saying may not be popular with those around me, or even those I love, but that this is how I feel and think at this moment and therefore I will put fingers to keyboard and post my true inner thoughts and leave a trace of myself on the blogosphere for time to judge. That is easier said than done, and the amount of effort it takes just to think straight is why I end up starting blog posts, but never completing them, and therefore never posting them. I also dislike the boring activity of editing, which takes me ages as I type as fast as I talk and leave a trial of spelling destruction behind me.
Going back to the source of my inability to focus and stick to the point, I have always allowed external forces to influence me far more than is good for me. These wide range of forces exert far too much power over the direction my life ends up taking. I am currently in the process of riding an emotional rollercoaster, as I try to unpick the source of my life’s misdirection. Why do I always ending up taking jobs I hate and doing things I loathe instead of focussing my energies on activities that fulfil me and that I feel passionate about? I am sure that this is a question many people ask themselves constantly in life. I tend to run away from asking myself this, and it only pops up after many weeks of forced suppression fail to quell that constant need for an answer.
I always use the excuse that I don’t have enough time, and whilst that is true in many respects, the reason I have no time to develop the true side of me and follow my passions is that I waste time on fulfilling responsibilities that I feel I should be carrying out. Whether or not I really should be doing these things, which are usually for the benefit of other people and institutions, is something I have never really deeply challenged. I only started recently, after years of therapy finally clicked in my little head and made me realise one of the sources of my inability to succeed in leading a more fulfilled and stable life, dedicated to the pursuits I feel passionate about.
Trying to live one’s “truth” is always a challenge, but it helps to at least realise this is an important path to be on and that one has to find out one’s truth rather than build up a false personality. That is basically being the person you think everyone else wants you to be, which is how I have lived most of my life so far.
There are many diverse and often conflicting external forces controlling me. These range from the voice of my father from my youth, my extended family, my current family, an increasingly alienating, materialistic, capitalist consumer society, my more ruthless, materialistic, shallow and greedy “friends”/ peers, a patriarchal, traditional, communal and confused “culture” as my background, and the voices of those people I work with as a finance analyst/ accountant, people whom I don’t really relate to or engage with and who have a very different, more black and white world view than I do. All these voices/ forces and more enter into my conscious being and are absorbed by my anxiety ridden and insecure soul. They battle with my natural inner feelings that are more independent minded and less rigid. When I want nothing more than to escape to a forest by the stream they tell me to hop onto a crowded old commuter train, wearing a suit that strangles me into claustrophobia and sit behind a gamma ray emitting PC screen crunching numbers to make evil corporations richer at the expense of honest, hard working people. Anyone who tries to buck the trend or live a different type of life is seen as eccentric and an outcast. That is how I see it, but of course that is not true, even in a world without objective truth. Yet the fact I struggle to escape the voices and ideas of other people on a daily basis makes composing blog posts that are true to my heart an emotionally draining experience at times,. However, it is one that I feel is worth it, as in the end it will help me understand myself, my true self, and the true forces working on me better. It should hopefully also help me learn to type more effectively and learn to spell for once!
Hopefully my next blog post will be less psychologically intense, sillier and light hearted.
