Let's do it Ted!

I keep on getting the urge to blog. Urge is urging me on - but where? Backward? Feels like maybe backward. If so then so be it. Backward is generally underrated, and entirely OK with me. Anyway, I've decided not to do what I've done in the past when the blogging urge has appeared, and overanalyse the question utterly to death, weighing up pros and cons and casting around for the best way to get the verbiage flowing freely again - this time I'm just going to do it, and to hell with it all, all the weighing up, all the concerns justified and otherwise, for ever and ever, or at least until I get bored, or till I sate whatever this need is.

 Beating on, like a boat against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past, a.k.a moonwalking back to a lost golden age of having immense fun writing loads and loads of crap on the internet, is entirely in keeping with one aspect of where I find myself inner-self-wise these days. Everyone of a certain age has a tiny and parasitical ancient mariner growing somewhere about their persons. Recently, mine is getting more vocal - not just internally, but to other people, who are mostly fairly patient with me when I bang on and on and on about whatever piece of dusty trivia I am momentarily preoccupied with - and slicker with the retrieval and articulation of memories from a long time ago. Five years and counting of of psychotherapy has, beyond a doubt, trained me up to an elite level in performing whatever mental movements are involved in recovering bizarro relics among the storehouses of memory, and turning them into something useful for here and now.

What really is a bit surprising about the way this process has unfolded of late though, is how my relation to the past has (apparently inexplicably?) shifted from being mostly analytic or dispassionate (as far as it makes sense to say that about reviewing one's own life and experience) to being violently emotional. It doesn't take much of a trigger, (music, sometimes, is all it takes [and not 'old' music either, just music I like], or a chance remark overheard - but there are more personal triggers too of course) and there I am, immediately back in what it's like to be a teenager again - gusts of raw emotion - feelings of pain, sadness, shame, joy, elation, longing, desire - that are incredibly physical experiences, and often quite hard to endure. It's kind of exhausting. Two things make it manageable: serotonin from physical exertion, and a kind of waiting it out that I've learned from yoga. Breathing, I guess.

Anyway, I am on leave from work right now and also my doctor is on holiday, so I suppose the time and opportunity for introspection is heightened at the moment, and this won't last. I intend to use what's left of this time to bang out as many blog posts as it takes to get me back onto the horse, and with any luck, exhaust the self-conscious angsty layer and get down into the really worthwhile vein of the bloggable. On the last work day before Christmas someone said to me, have a good holiday and don't do anything stupid - well, I am grateful for the kind friendship thus expressed but honestly, fuck that. Here's to doing as much really stupid stuff as humanly possible!?!