I want so to write something of substance in my blog for a change. It is at this point no more than an itinerary of sorts, a published log of my daily doings. As it is supposed to be, perhaps. A blog: a web log. Yet this is not what I find myself wishing it to be. Not a log. More of a journal is what I’m hoping for. I don’t want this to be a mere log of my actions, but rather one of my thoughts. How difficult that might prove to be for me. To actually wirite, and not just list. It would require me to look into myself, to grab ahold of the fragile substance within, to grasp it and attemp to understand it. What then? If I am even able to get that far, to come to understand something that I keep so deep within and never share? If I come that far there is still so much more, so much trouble and effort. To convert my thoughts to words would be such a task. How does one ever truly perform such an act? Is the result ever even remotely like the original? How can it be? Thoughts are so much more than can be expressed in language. Language is too limiting for it. My thoughts are not so…..linear…..that they could conform so easily to the confines of language. My thoughts are like an endless moving web devoid of the constraints of time or space. Past and present, future and timelessness are forever exchanged one for the next. The thoughts bob and weave, overlap and tangle until at times they seem to blend together. They exist at times one alone then suddenly piled together, each thought relying on every other. It cannot be understood one apart from the rest. It is a part of those others…..is what it is because of its connection with the whole. So how then does one express such thoughts in words? Language is by nature a linear and constrained thing, confined by both time and space. A single thought, a word, can exist in each instance, one after another in a regulated order in an assemblage to create the whole. It is like converting something of the third dimension, the fourth in fact, to the second…..to the first. To straighten it and flatten it…..assemble it into a line. It is understandable, then, that the product would be much unlike the original. How is one to truly understand the novelty of a sphere when only one plain is visible – when one only views the circle? And if it’s just the line that one sees? – then the substance of the original is almost impossible to grasp. And so it is with my thoughts. In putting them to words one must concentrate on one solitary thought alone…..must separate it from the rest and string it all out in a line. In doing so I often will lose all the rest, and the one separated will be dimmed and distorted in its solitary confinement.

In this, then, lies one major reason my blog has been left void of posts with substance. Yet I fear that this in many ways is further serving as an excuse for myself. Suppose the issue of the confining and degrading qualities of language were not an issue? Would my blog in such a case suddenly be filled with my thoughts and concerns rather than the pointless itinerary? I fear it still wouldn’t be so. There is still more to it. That lies in me. To publish my thoughts to the world, to let people see my thoughts, to know what it is I think about……for those I know to have the opportunity to see beyond whatever walls I may have constructed, know my insecurities and worries – it’s a rather frightening idea. I tend to avoid anything about myself. I hate talking about myself, it’s something that I try to avoid at all costs. I hate being the subject of conversation (good or bad). I hate the feeling of someone looking at me. I hate it when people compliment me – I don’t take compliments well at all – I think because it’s focused at me. I try to keep the focus off of me. I listen to other people, let them confide in me, yet I very rarely reverse that role. I rarely tell people my opinion, my thoughts or feelings about an issue event or person. I don’t confide in people about stuff but rather tend to keep it all inside. I try to deal with it all myself. Perhaps it’s that I don’t want to be a burden to anyone. I don’t want to feel that I’m being selfish or want attention. Or perhaps it’s the vulnerability of reveling oneself to another. I think I’m afraid to need. I’d rather keep it inside, deal with everything on my own. Otherwise I’d be at a point of relying on others. And oh the vulnerability of that! Why not keep everything inside where it’s safe? The Epicureans were correct, I think, when they said that one lives in such a manner as to reduce pain. Perhaps this is all that I am doing, really. Avoiding pain. For this is what I expect if I come to need, leaving myself open and vulnerable to pain. I do not wish to be hurt. Who does? And so it is, I believe, that I keep myself distanced from others, that I don’t bare my soul easily. It is a safety net of sorts, one of self-strength, of independence, of power over myself. It allows me to lose something, to lose someone, without losing myself, without being hurt. It lets me live on in a way that I wouldn’t be able to if I had made an emotional attachment. Or so the excuse goes. I wonder sometimes, however, if that safety-net is no more than a dilusion. It may give me the impression of safety, make me think that I would not then be hurt. I’m not so sure how effective a net it is, though. For I do find myself hurting when I lose something, when I lose someone, no less than if I had shared myself. However it becomes a pain born inside with everything else, and thus one that others are not aware of. A mask then? Perhaps that would be a better way to describe it. I do not want others to know that at times I hurt, that I have regrets and scars hidden within me, that I am not invulnerable but actually tend to be quite sensitive to what happens around me. I care what people think of me. Deeply. But it is not something I want others to know. I don’t want them to see how easily I can, at times, be hurt. And what good would it be for others to see this? I would so much rather have them see me happy, see me smiling. Never hurting. It is much more necessary for others to see me like this. How else could I help others when they need? How is one with troubles, one who is hurting, be helped by another who so obviously is hurting as well. Rather difficult it would seem. To help one needs to listen, to focus on the other person. One cannot be busy thinking of himself, cannot turn the subject, purposely or otherwise, to himself instead. It doesn’t work that way. I like to cheer people up. I like to see people smiling, not hurting. No one likes to see the people they’re close to unhappy. So why would I do that to them? And how is one to cheer others up if they themselves do not appear to be just as cheerful, or more? There’s nothing like a good smile to make others follow suit and smile as well.

Im not exactly sure what it is that I am aiming for as I sit here to type this. I just spent today procrastinating and finding any and all excuse NOT to sit and type an essay as I should have been doing. I did not wish to write and I said many times that I hate to write, that I would much rather take a test than write an essay. And so it was that I never wrote that essay, and instead spent my day doing absolutely nothing, by doing everything and anything that came up, in order to avoid actually doing something more productive. I did not wish to write; to think. And yet here I sit, writing just to write, though I had claimed so adamantly hours earlier that it was the bane of my very existence. But there is something that I want to get out. It is this that I have trouble with. I think much when it is not the necessity to do so, and yet I am so often unable to put those thoughts to words adequately enough. It must be for this that I loathe writing. I cannot do it well enough. It is a degrading process, in which my thoughts, in an attempt to put them to words, are butchered and destroyed as a direct result of that action. Understandably, then, it is not a very enjoyable task for me.

And yet I wish so to be able to write my thoughts. Of course that would first require some understanding of those thoughts. That is the problem I believe. It may not be so much that I am unable to transcribe my thoughts. Rather, the problem lies in my inability to grasp the substance in my thoughts. I am not even at the point of a clear thought, in fact. It is still just….. a feeling….. it just… is; without any connection to language. It is too deep. I cannot say for sure what it is that is inside of me; just that it wants to get out. I am not one to talk about myself when it can be helped. What I do say is often no more than the surface value of things, within the top layer at most. I do not try to dig in much deeper, though I feel it often. I get in these moods sometimes, when it just seems to burn inside of me. It’s a good feeling, like a moment of clarity. Or rather the remnants of such a moment. Just the feeling left over once its passed. It’s a feeling that I wish……. to share. I want others to know what it is that I feel. I want them to feel it as well…… to understand and connect through this thing that is so hard to grasp. It makes me want to just sit and write, to draw, whatever. I just need in those moments to get it down. But it is so hard.

I ramble. That is what I do when I cannot think how to explain something. I explain instead to that inability, I allude to some abstract nothing that cannot be understood, even by myself. So I will move aside. You understand the most important part I assume: that I am unable at this point to say what it is I am writing this to say. So I have decided that until I come to the point that I might be able to do so, I will just write. Whatever rambling thoughts that come into my mind I will attempt to put on here. I will practice putting my thoughts to words, and hopefully doing so may help me to understand those thoughts. And with that understanding might come a greater ability for me to grasp that unknown I kept alluding to. Hopefully I will come to a point of understanding and I can at that point eventually add to this space the substance for which it was initially designed. Just bare with me until that point.