The first sign of madness

I talked to myself a lot as child.  I would act out TV dramas on my own, playing all the parts, goodies and baddies (but obviously romantic entanglements were out because I couldn’t play women, and there was no such thing as ‘gay’ when I was growing up), always timed to last as long as the real programmes themselves, including ad breaks (where I’d go to the toilet or have a snack).  I was frequently overheard, because your childhood bedroom is never the soundproofed, reality-protected haven you hope it is.  For these crimes, I was always described as a “Cadbury’s” (as in, Fruit and Nut) and threatened with the “wee green bus”, the one that comes to take you “away”.  The threat was never rescinded, as I recall.

I still do talk to myself.  Sadly, the threat of the straitjacket never stopped me.  Not only do I talk to myself, I answer too; the first and second signs, they always said.  I still catch myself mid-self-conversation, no matter where I am.  Usually it’s around the house but it can just as easily be when I’m walking a busy street, alongside traffic, where drivers, passengers and commuters can see me and judge what they see perfectly adequately.  I get mildly embarrassed at the time but it goes away.  The wee green bus to Bedlam hasn’t pulled up quite yet.

Blogging is a bit like talking to yourself.  If you’re not famous or not part of an appreciative network of instant subscribers, all you’re doing is putting your stuff out there into the void.  You do it because it’s in you, because it’s something you need to get out.  There is an audience somewhere, usually an accidental one, but is being read really the point?  Do people want to read what you say?  If they do, are the words that important? Or is it more important to just say what you have to say and content yourself that you got it out anyway?

Blogging, in itself, may be old hat to many people but I find it joyful, albeit in a miserable, gloomy sort of way.  I keep a personal diary too but more often than not it inspires thoughts like these, things I want to scribble down here.  Blogging is becoming the social networking equivalent of the quill and parchment, an idea which only attracts me all the more.  The notion that no one’s listening is far from a discouragement.  Strangely, the suggestion that blogging basically is talking to yourself makes it more inspiring.   It’s the means to an end.  As the great Bard said: “just do your best and don’t worry.”