Fare thee well, good people of Twitter
I’m taking a twitter break. I don’t know how long for but I reckon at least a month and maybe more. There’s nothing personal to this. No single one of you has affected my decision. It’s the medium, not the protagonists, that cause my problems. 2011 is going to be an important year for me and I need every ounce of mental strength I can muster if I’m to make of it what I need to. Twitter *can* be amazing but it can also be, for me, quite the most depressing thing in existence. I’m sure you’ll agree that I can happily survive without being more depressed.
So what is a Twitter break? Well, there are a few of you who I value tremendously - possibly more than you realise - and whose tweets I can’t live without and those are contained within a nice private list that I can read when I need to. I’ll still receive and respond to DMs and replies/mentions if and when they come but on past experience I don’t expect there to be many. Basically though, my day to day interaction and my tweetings will be curtailed to near-zero for a while.
So have a Happy New Year. I hope that the best of 2010 is the worst of 2011 and finally, I shall be back someday. I shall, however, leave you with a nice stream of consciousness that I wrote a long time ago and which I just re-read. Life may not be quite as hopeless as it was then but it hasn’t improved to the extent that it needs to do. I thank you all, as ever, for your forbearance.
xx
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I can’t get no sleep. Like in the song by Faithless. Insomnia? You bet. A thousand thoughts run through my mind like the children of summer; never knowing where they’ll take me next. I think of him, and him, and him. Him too. Different hims of course but they’re all there. Do I like them? Do I know who they are? Do I have any business even considering this?
But why not? I see people making mistakes. Reinventing the same tired old wheel in a desperate effort to prove that this time they can make it better. An inappropriate metaphor because the wheel is perfect. It does its job in the way it is supposed to do and nothing can take away from that. The ‘wheel’ the people constantly reinvent is never perfect. It’s flawed by human design, just like every other thing. Man didn’t invent the wheel in any case. Man just recognised its power and harnessed it then set about reproducing it.
But what can I do? Because the people in this tale have delusions of happiness which far outstrip any sense of future prediction. To be doomed is a natural state and to be oblivious is merely good fortune.
And what if I’m wrong? Stranger things have happened. But history seems to be pointing me at the fact that I’m not. Too much going on in the world that I simply have to sit back and watch it all fall apart. I am powerless.
Envy? I have it all in carefully measured doses yet never knowing quite what its target is. Do I long for possessions or merely the sense that possessing them conveys? And what is at the route of all of this? A deep and uneasy sense of self-disbelief. For I am nothing to anyone and that is surely of my own making. I crave the self-gratification which causes my short-term happiness and ensures my long-term despair. In this game of life I am merely an addict of my own choosing.
And so the bleedingly obvious fact is that a change must come. And it must come from within. No amount of external influence has any power over me to improve my lot. Have I left it too late? And how. Is it ever too late? As we meander down the paths of our own choosing there is always a chance to turn back. Even as we reach an end, so the beginning still exists; however far. As society advances so the journey from end back to beginning becomes ever easier and yet ever harder, for the incentive to embark is forever overshadowed.
Some call it a moment of clarity; an epiphany. An unmistakeable moment where a dawning of realisation is so powerful as to be singularly and impressively unavoidable. Is this mine? It can be hoped. Is this the culmination of the many hours I spend searching the souls of myself and those in my vicinity? Will I feel easier from this moment forth. Once again, it can be hoped. What’s clear is that I can’t feel any uneasier. My unease with every aspect of my existence is so totally overwhelming that I sometimes thank whoever for the miracle that I can bear it. At times I can’t.
From this moment forth, it is all change. I shall grasp the initiative and allow it to ride me on through. It will be hard and it will be painful, for that is the nature of change. But let no more that embittered and withered soul of my inner voice be one which exists to be suppressed. Let no more my life be dictated by the will of anyone but myself. Let no more the needs of others be greater than mine own. For that is no life but a mere existence. The time has come to find my inner voice and nurture it after so much neglect and to let it be my guide, as is its meaning.
And so, I must withdraw. And then some. For I cannot be until I am. One day I’ll return, when my inner voice sings again.
