What a week...

Well well, two blogs- I now have a Funtrivia blog as well as this, but the two will hardly overlap as this is the raw material straight from the hip, and Funtrivia is a private site with rules, regulations and hundreds of friends participating. But it's interesting having two different areas to contribute to, and I'm sure I'll get to know a load more people there (as we all will) as a result of the new blogs, which have proved incredibly popular.

So, back to this one. It's been a pretty dead week. Apart from getting the bare minimum of little jobs done and managing some nice walks when it hasn't been stormy weather it wasn't a particularly mentionable week events wise. Nick Roach has been helping me through some of my blockages, especially saying enlightenment can be felt in a basic way when feeling what's here and now, and by staying there it can deepen. That makes sense to me, and even though I rarely feel anything special feeling here and now, the thoughts do slow and sometimes a peace and detachment takes over. So I will do more and do it more often.

One phenomenon I've seen, an extension of reading things reported in books, is the internet reportation phenomenon. It has to be checked before it becomes more important what we can report about our lives online than what actually happens. The balance is easy to switch but not realistic as who wants to live primarily on a screen? It's easy to slip into with hundreds of times more people seeing what we do online than in real life, but we don't live to tell people about it and go over the details afterwards, we are supposed to live in the moment and hopefully enjoy it if we're lucky. So it's fine to then report the high and low parts online, and go over questions it raises, but it's too easy to watch most of what we do more with an eye to reporting it later than living it at the time.
Good writers have always been able to make the banal and ordinary events of daily life sound far more interesting than they actually were. But if you were with them for a day you'd be as bored as they were, though once reported sounded far more interesting.

Pictures are a crossover though. Picking the high spots and interesting corners are valid anywhere as they have been selected to be interesting. The simple buildings and gardens I see every day hold so many artistic angles that I may never run out of new views to take. No two places can be identical, and as no one can visit every part of their own neighbourhood let alone every place in the world, sharing our lives in pictures can never be underestimated.

And meanwhile I enjoy trying to make even the most stultifying (thanks Vicky for that word) events here worth reading about, I must remember not to read similar attempts and imagine that person's life and district is any more interesting than mine. I am sitting in a room in front of a computer with the radio on, no one in the house except a cat on the desk, and surrounded by books. That is probably 99% of all bloggers more or less, except fewer are alone the whole time. But our lives (combined with our age groups) are not going to be that different. Work can almost be eliminated as when I was working I doubt there was more than one paragraph worth mentioning in five years. My current work is confidential anyway so I can't talk about it at all. But apart from work what do we do?

This is where I differ from Tommy Boyd (as we had this exact conversation). He said each person's life is drastically different, and went into his 'I've done this that and the other' routine. Besides probable exaggeration, without having a chance to reply, so have I. In my case at around 40 I changed gear and moved into a creating rather than exploring mode. I'd been to ten countries, theatres and films to a comprehensive degree, studied in various colleges full and part time, and had been to a number of spiritual and psychic events and lectures. But the things I hadn't done were waiting for me, and are taking the new decade over. I had painted but not professionally. I had never spoken on television, one of my main ambitions. I had never had a thing published. Since then I must have had about ten articles published, got 6 pictures in a gallery (unsold but acceptable to show) and will be speaking on TV in a week. I hardly go out any more compared to before, hardly see any friends (not my choice though) and haven't travelled for ages. But I have in the past. Besides the lack of friends I would rather lead my new life than carry on those parts of my old. I've been there, done that, and now rather than watch celebrities perform I am finding ways of meeting them off duty with great success. In another ten years who knows what I'll be into, but going on TV will hopefully be a start of a career rather than a finish, and where I hope one part of my future will lie.

Of course I will always want a family and marriage but that isn't a phase, it's a progression and one I may never make .