This is not the first blog post I’ve ever written. When I was fourteen, I wrote an update blog on the goings on of the fascinating and illustrious club I belonged to, which only consisted of the most elite and extraordinary individuals, who graciously allowed me to be the admin on their webs.com site. (This was of course abandoned after about a month when two of the members of the illustrious club got in a fight over a handbag and began to stand in the cold in a different areas of the concrete outside the performing arts building. There was only so long I could work under these strenuous emotional conditions.)
It is however, the first blog post of this site. I like to think that after my stint of wanting to be an author at age sixteen and writing 16000 words of description driven drivel to prove to myself that I could, that I have learnt some things about who I am, how I write, and what I am actually good at. So, I did something I never used to do, an all-to-stark reminder that I am indeed being dragged into adulthood – I thought it through.
I thought about what writing had always meant to me, how at various points of my life I had either over-indulged to the point of sickness or starved in fear of poison. How I hadn’t finished reading a new book in over a year and that school and university, with their word counts and methodical language, had wrangled me into forgetting that I still had creativity. I thought about how one day I would look back on things and the feelings and perspectives would fade and wither like a burning photograph of a frozen smile, and I felt a little lost.
My deciding factor was this weekend. I have a part time job at a big supermarket, and I only work two days a week to fit around uni. I had, for the first time since last summer, both of those days off. I had a lovely day out with my partner, I had a lie in, a lazy day. I enjoyed myself. Then I went home, sat down, and was hit with the startling realisation that I had no more work to do for uni. I was free, I didn’t need to do anything but sit and watch castle and play Ketchapp games, happy in the guilt free relax mode I had occupied a hundred times before.
I found, to my very great surprise, that this feeling of freedom gave way to a stark realisation – I didn’t have anything that was mine. I had forgotten I was creative, I had forgotten a life without deadlines, I had forgotten myself a little.
So, in the interests of future and present me, I have created a little blog. I hope to post musings and analysis and misadventures of the most dramatic kind, and store a little of me away in a folder not marked ‘onedrive for business’.
monkeysonnitriousoxide
sauntervaguelydownwards 