Musings

You may or may not have noticed recently that there has been a distinct silence from The Explorer corner of the web. I mentioned in my last post, which was published about a century ago, that life had been pretty much anything but an easy ride lately. And that is a theme that has stuck. For the past few months I have spent a lot of time trying to figure things out. And failing.

The truth of the matter is that sometimes in your life you stumble over a period of confusion and disruption that can leave you feeling as though you have lost the ability of clarity.

There was a time when I had a clear structure to my life. I felt motivated and on top of things. Over the past few months that has all fallen by the way side. I can attribute this to a number of things but it still feels as though it’s a little out of the blue.

The biggest causality of this being this here little space. Back in June we paid a visit to Budapest. The trip was amazing, we had another city to fall in love with and we had the best time. September is now only a day or two away and I still haven’t blogged about it. Which isn’t like me. When I blog about our travels it is purely as a way of me documenting the trip. It’s more for me than it is for you (sorry). It’s a way for me to be able to look back in the future and truly remember the places we’ve been and the sights we have seen (love a good accidental rhyme). But for some reason I cannot find the motivation to write about it. Fast forward to July and we took a weekend trip to London. I love London, I adore it in fact, but whilst I was there I didn’t take photos. For the first time in months I couldn’t be bothered.

When I sit down to go through photos, write a post or just think about getting something published I feel this overwhelming sense of failing. I can’t write. The photos aren’t good enough. Anything I do write sounds contrived. It doesn’t sound like me. If I sound like me there’s too much. I want to add a thousand photos but people don’t want to see a thousand photos. I want to write about opinion stuff but nobody wants to read opinion stuff. I want to appeal to people but it’s not about the numbers. But what’s the point if no one reads it? I want to have a point, a purpose but people don’t care about purpose they just want pretty pictures. I don’t want to take pretty pictures I want to take good pictures.

I want to take bloody awesome pictures. I want depth. I want hard hitting. I want thought provoking. But I can’t provoke thoughts. I haven’t got the intelligence. I have got the strength of argument. I’m too afraid of posting my opinion in case someone with a bigger one, a better one comes across. And anyway, who wants to read my opinion? I read somewhere “It is OK to change your opinion based on new information” but that isn’t standing your ground, you should stick by your conviction. Especially as a woman. Especially as a woman, what does that even mean?

I am a bloody woman. I can have whatever opinion I want, so long as it promotes women’s rights. I should be more active in promoting women’s right, my rights, I should pick Mr M up when he makes a silly comment about my unshaven legs (married YOLO) <<- - - EVEN THIS HERE. Why should being married change the fact that I change my leg shaving routine?! But if I let him make the comment about my unshaven legs how can I let him sit there beside me with legs like chewbaca? Where’s the fairness in that? Is it even about fairness, what do I believe about hairy legs? I don’t even bloody know. I mean sure if they’re hiding under trouser who cares? Nobody’s seeing them under there.

Everything is a massive jumble.

I can’t seem to find a definitive answer to anything other than yes, I do want to eat that pizza/cake/burger/chocolate bar the size of my face.

I feel as though I should be over this by now. Isn’t this what teenagers go through? Didn’t I just go through this? I own my own home for Christ sake. I have a good job. I own a car. On paper I am a pretty normal human being. But then what is the point of normal? Seriously, what is the point? Normal is going to change nothing. Normal isn’t going to save lives. What if I could do that? Help to fight the injustice. I want to fight the injustice. Let the women wear burkahs. Save the children from having to drown in the med. Help stop rape culture. Stand up and fight when someone is racially abused in front of me. How can I do that when I’m married, have a mortgage, a dog, a cat and own my own car? I can’t give all that up. And that’s selfish. Why couldn’t I give all that up? Because I want to be normal that’s why I want to live in a nice house in a quiet village where I can potter around my garden, bake cakes in the kitchen, dream of a future full of children and laughter. I want to drive my ridiculously ordinary car to my ridiculously ordinary job because that’s safe. It’s known. It’s sensible. It’s right. It’s what I know. But then we shouldn’t always do what we know should we?

Well done if you’ve got this far. I’m not even sure I got this far.

This turned into a brain dump and for that I’m a little sorry. But only a little because ultimately you chose to stick with it until this point (sorry – that was rude? Rude.) I’m probably not even going to read back over this. For my own sanity more than anything. I feel like leaving it like this, in this unedited, raw state is the right thing to do right now. Right for me. So that in the future I can read over this and snort into my head sized chocolate bar about how ridiculous I sounded whilst no doubt feeling the exact same way at that very moment.

I guess the only thing left to do is move on. Eyes forward. Breathe, release and go.

Someone remind how to breathe?!