This blog goes against everything I believe in. All the random stuff people have told me about marketing and traffic and content and pillar articles and giveaways and… and… and…
And you know what? I like it anyway. Most days I don’t even know what I believe until I have read back the words that fill these entries. The truth is I struggled to know why I even bothered to log in and write in it for the longest time. It wasn’t for the traffic or the readers (as much as I appreciate you all). It isn’t for the advertising revenue generated by the token adsense ad on each page. It isn’t particularly to prove myself as a writer. This blog has become everything I raged against as a younger version of myself. Its the journal I didn’t bother keeping as a child, except in rare instances of poetic flourish. It is the place I put all the random thoughts that have nowhere to go. The place I collect all that extra static in my life. It is a kind of therapy.
I wonder at times if scheduling an appointment with an actual licensed therapist wouldn’t be equally helpful. Certainly in the last couple of weeks my confidence has taken a beating. I don’t know why particularly. There seems to be a vague pattern though I cannot see the forest for the trees and there is a temptation to become so analytical as to only see the splinters. Did it start when I started to really think about my religous beliefs? Somehow the Christian beliefs I was imbued with as a child morphed into pagan beliefs as I reached my late teens. They were interesting. They really were quite thought-provoking. But I couldn’t shake off the general feeling that I was just believing something for the sake of having something to believe in. My experiences of Christianity were mostly unpleasant ones so Paganism seemed the obvious flip of that particular pendulum, but even still I realised I was still quite programmed ‘to believe’ in something. Over time it felt silly. In the same way I feel silly even now when I remember myself as a teenager coming home after another day of schoolyard torment and, literally, screaming at the sky.
But in more recent times the Paganism and the Christianity have given way to more metaphysical ‘new age’ and personal development ideas. The personal development is lovely in as far as it goes. It is practical and helpful, and it intersects into business and marketing pursuits – which have always interested me. The other stuff, the metaphysical stuff, I am not so sure about. The Secret was an interesting movie. The transcripts of that movie were turned into a clumsy and awkward book. But the ideas there were not ‘secret’ or even new, people had been talking and writing about them for eons. Many of these writers doing so much more eloquently than this succesfully marketed contraption. Wayne Dyer comes immediately to mind. I used to read and listen to him and feel like I was enjoying an intellectual-stimulating spiritual meal. And, yet, somehow while I was impressed by his manner I never really embraced the ideas he represented. I offered all my Wayne Dyer books, cds and tapes for sale at a recent garage sale. None of them sold. They were later given to an unsuspecting second hand store.
Even Louise L. Hay, whose publishing empire Hayhouse Books has given rise to this whole genre of reading, seems completely lovely and sincere. A woman with self-esteem issues and a history of abusive relationships who apparently found herself and life through being kind to herself and reciting personal affirmations. Can it really be that easy? The truth is of all the various pitches that revolve around religion and self-help and personal development, for me, Louise’s was the most compelling. It seemed kinder and gentler than anything I had experienced even in similar genres. Certainly it was much kinder than I was able to be to myself. However even in Louise’s books and talks things capture my interest and confuse me.
Louise assures that the best way to start loving yourself is to never ever criticise yourself, not ever. Being judgmental keeps us separate, she assures us, from other people. She says this and then tells that she’s spent her own life not being judgmental of other people, but, rather, ‘seeing the truth of their being.’ Is it wrong for me to wonder if this isn’t an exercise in semantics? Have we dusted off a whole library of old ideas and retweaked them for the more discerning tastes of the modern age? I’m sure we’re all familiar with the running gag that the only difference between pop music and Christian music is that you change the word ‘Baby’ to ‘God.’ Is that what we’ve done; changed ‘religion’ to ‘new age’ and ‘God’ to ‘The Universe’?
Part of me, despite all I represent, would actually really love to think there were a God. That in my moments of quiet desperation and social isolation there was some one – or thing – lurking in the shadows, sympathetically listening to my thoughts. Another part is secretly seduced by the idea of Ivan T. Sanderson that, actually, the earth itself is a giant organism; that maybe ‘The Universe’ isn’t another linguistic representation for ‘God’ as we’ve come to know that concept but rather that the super intelligence (should such a thing exist) actually be the cosmos itself, not some Man-like deity.
But from whichever tradition I approach my dilemma there is always one constant. That is the complete lack of certainty. There is no way of ‘knowing.’ There really isn’t. At least not one I can see. I realise that might seem offensive to some of you. This is what ‘faith’ is – belief in the absence of evidence. Certainly many people may have had very powerful visceral experiences that have reinforced their beliefs and frames of reference. And then the rabbit hole goes down another burrow, one that leads into the realms of human psychology. Yet this does nothing to help me. Not really. I still don’t know why we’re (collectively) here. Or why I’m individually here.
Because, actually, this isn’t a religious priligrimage. This is about me. I don’t really feel like I know who I am. Or who I am supposed to become. Or what it is that I am supposed to be doing here at all! I keep secretly wishing some divine plan will emerge and I’ll go, “Oh! It’s so obvious to me now. That is what I am supposed to be doing.” Frankly I don’t even know what I want at this point. Everything seems difficult and thankless. I secretly wish I was one of those people who knew they wanted to be a teacher or a lawyer since age 10. I wish some opportunity would present itself and the universe would shake me violently to get my attention. I just want some reassurance. I just want some feedback. It was easy in school. One way or another, teachers would let you know – and actually in a practical sense if you could appease your teachers, your schooling success was a foregone conclusion. Now suddenly I have to set my own work and mark it and prioritise it? It should be a no-brainer. I should run out and do everything I’ve ever wanted to do and just keep doing it and refining it until it is superbly accomplished. Somehow it hasn’t worked like that. I don’t know why it hasn’t worked like that. I imagine The Secret and Louise Hay would say I am not ready to receive, I do not feel deserving. That might be true. I don’t know. Maybe I am being persecuted by unseen nonhuman forces for various and sundry sins. Maybe my low self-esteem is the spanner being thrown into these works. Maybe I have ineffective strategies. I mean any of these could potentially be true.
Perhaps all I am seeking is certainty. I was unhappy in my previous position. But at least there was a routine in place. I knew when I had to be there, I knew when I could (approximately) leave. I knew how much money would find itself into my bank account every fortnight. I chose to break out on my own and do my own thing. Freedom is exciting, freedom is liberating… and freedom is bloody frightening. Even the few things I attempt to do in a routine fashion can (and often are) thrown out of the window since the only authority I answer to is myself, and, actually, if I am being honest I am fickle and moody and lazy. I don’t really feel as though I know anything for certain. There is no guarantee that the friends I have today are the friends I’ll have next week, for example. There is no guarantee if I make something, anyone will particularly care.
I suppose for now I shall have to console myself with the knowledge that I certainly need sleep and that I certainly intend to go out for breakfast tomorrow morning. And know that I certainly have this blog to flesh out other random thoughts at equally random hours.
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This is easily the best blog entry you’ve written.