Hello there, it's nice to see you again. Welcome to my not so triumphant return to the blogging world, please make yourself comfortable and I will try to entertain you for a few minutes whilst you come to terms with the reality of another day of filling time and keeping safe. For those of you who are alone during these uncertain times please know that we are all still connected if not physically, we have so many different ways to communicate remotely. Before I get silly and immature I want to say to every single person reading this, pick up the phone, open the laptop, unlock the tablets. Now more than ever you are so important to someone and you don't even know it. Check in with friends, family and work colleagues. Give them the time that you have been given in this strange and unprecedented new way of life we are all experiencing. Forget conspiracy theories and blame games and just look out for each other, above all look after your own mental health, have a giggle and stick to a routine. I for one have been on furlough for just over three weeks now and am still adjusting to not seeing my colleagues each day, not having a work-based structured day and even looking forward to coming home....because I am already here!! OK on with the blog, I am a little rusty so bear with me. On 27th April 2020 it will have been a full 5 years since my last blog entry and on 14th September 2020 it will have been 9 years since my first entry. Now is as good a time as any to try and start things up again so here goes nothing, please fasten your seat belts and prepare for a long overdue Captain rant...
I am now 35 years young and I still cant seem to shake the desperate urge to say something inappropriate for my own entertainment. You will all be disappointed to learn that I have developed a filter over the last few years which I am not proud of. I am a lot more considerate in reality than what my brain actually feels like doing. When meeting new people I am polite and friendly but inside I am constantly saying things to myself like, "Don't mention dead babies," or "I have no interest in completing this conversation so I will nod until they leave." New people that get thrown into my life generally have about 10 minutes to hold my attention without making me say something inappropriate to end the exchange. The problem I am finding is that this tactic sometimes backfires and what I say makes the boring piece of shit laugh. If they do laugh I respect them more as I clearly said it to insult them but they are mature enough not to take themselves too seriously and appreciated the fact that I am up front.
People have always tried to work me out and I am pretty sure it is a dead-end because I have tried to work myself out with less than satisfactory results. If you were to slice the different sections of my brain you would only find confusion, indecent thoughts and casual non-offensive stereotyping. Let's unpack those three above, please note that family members read this blog so the indecent thoughts will be skimmed over rather than over-analysed.
Let's start with confusion, what would I be confused about? You would have thought that after 35 years on this floating rock I would have worked things out and know what is going on however, you couldn't be further from the truth. So much confuses me that I have only learned really to develop a confident look in my face showing how much I understand but beneath the chubby cheeks and cheeky smile there is a lost little boy still climbing to get a look over the fence at what the rest of the world is doing. The only thing that makes sense to me is that nothing makes sense. My approach doesn't help because I try to be pragmatic but I only succeed in allowing tangents to form in my head without the trail of breadcrumbs that brings me back to the original point...this blog post may well be an example of that.
The time alone has allowed me to get lost inside my head for longer periods of time. This in-turn allows my imagination to wonder into a world of thoughts and hypothetical scenarios which should never be communicated to anyone. One thought which was clanging around in my head last night was about the concept of countries and borders. The more I thought about it the more ridiculous the concept seems to me. Humans are fiercely territorial creatures when you look at our behaviours, even among allies and friends. We all like our own space with our own identity and we have to label literally everything. We are all caged in a way, even more so presently. As I was thinking more and more I started to wonder if we are not just a weird exhibit in some superior species' zoo. We are segregated in may ways like animals in zoos, we think that we move freely but we are documented wherever we go, whomever we interact with and whatever we purchase. If you visit a zoo the majority of the animals were bred in captivity, it is all they know. They don't wonder what is beyond the fencing because they are conditioned to stay where they are. They are fed, have plenty of company and want for nothing...sound familiar? Then I stopped thinking about that and started thinking again about why we have borders, why we need to label every piece of land, why we conform to the traditions of the country we are in just because we happened to fall out of a vagina in that particular place. Then I stopped thinking, opened the laptop, did what needed to be done with headphones over my ears before slipping into a four hour coma.
This brings me onto my last section which is non-offensive stereotyping. I will say before we start that they are non-offensive to me, you may have a different view but that is your issue, please do not bring your issues to me. I genuinely don't care if you are offended, that is your hang up not mine. I am not responsible for your feelings, get over yourself it is not all about you!! I look at people in an objective way sometimes which is unfair but it is the way society has programmed me. If I call a plumber out I expect him to be in overalls, red top, mustache, red cap with an "M" on it and an Italian accent...those kinds of thoughts immediately enter my head. Does that make me a bad person or someone that really wanted a NES growing up? Either way I still think it. It is the same situation where I would expect a doctor to be from the sub-continent or a rapist to be from Mexico...It is the way I have been conditioned by society and the 45th American President. Of course the last one is a joke but I have to explain that as sarcasm isn't conveyed well on written text and I don't want to be banned from Mexico any time soon.
I am not sure how to end this, to be honest I never really am sure how to end my posts as I could keep going but I like to keep this as lite reading rather than a dissertation. If you are going to take anything away from this please let it be the staying in tough part. If not to help others through this then do it for you own well-being and sanity. Thank you for reading and I will be in touch.
