Okay, so maybe it’s been a while since my last post. I’ve been busy though, rather than just hiding under the table! Work is going well and I am doing better than I have in a long time. It all seems to be fairly stable too, which is the most important thing. Little bits are getting added back into the mix, slowly and steadily, and I’m letting it all settle before adding the next bit.

After much thought, I am finally doing some of my own website projects. This is huge for me, as I tend to think about things for years and never do them, but I am determined to dust off some of these old ideas and get moving on them. Some of them have since been done really well by other people, so I’ll probably not bother, but others still seem to be unexplored. Those I will be doing something about. One new idea is already up and running so I seem to have broken my tendency for procrastination! More on all that soon.

My next focus has been on creativity. Ever since I started to create Second Life sculpture I have been looking at how I might express my creativity in real life. I shall be doing some drawing, possibly painting. My camera will be seeing the light of day again. I’m working on some poetry and short story ideas, even a novel. I’ve begun to explore making various kinds of physical things in real life, from Fimo buttons and decorations to wire sculptures and dragons - perhaps the beginnings of a fantasy chess set too! I’ll do some photos on that in the next couple of months, and will be aiming to sell some of this stuff locally and online.

Music is yet another area that I have dabbled in but never had the confidence to actually do anything with. I’m going to be doing some mixing and DJing again soon. That might be just for me and daft podcasts on here at first, but I plan bigger things. I’m working on composing something for Emma at the moment, as she loves singing, but I got the urge today to just have a play and record something, anything really, and put it “out there”. I need to do more of that, and be less critical about everything I do. I can;t sing but it shouldn’t really matter if I am just having fun. So, in the spirit of fun and new confidence, here’s my first “published” experiment in multitracking and balancing:

Wolfie : A Capella 1 (just for fun)

Lots more posts, positivity and laughter soon, I promise.

If you are still here then thank you, for your patience, your faith in me, and all your love and support. Love you all so much!

Both of these videos have moved me immensely in the last couple of days, in very different ways. I shall be watching both almost every day I think:

After my torrent of posts for a few days, at least by my standards, I’m back to being quiet again. I’m not sure why. I’m not even sure why I am writing this. Maybe just because the silence is more than I can bear at the moment, so I need to say something, somewhere, quietly, even if no one hears it, and then I’ll have a good cry and put my shields back up again. Lone wolf. I did it for years, and I will somehow remember how. Tomorrow is a positive day, and I will be very happy.

Don’t worry, I am not about to reduce my blog to the mundanity of being a weather report, but I just wanted to say how happy I am that the sun is back today. Gorgeous, but incredibly cold at the moment - LOL.

Hey, what happened to the weather? It was gorgeous yesterday …

… and now, it’s cold and rainy again!

A day for staying in, working and playing EVE I think - LOL

Regarding my last post, it did occur to me, instead of explaining in detail, that I could just have put:

“I have been a total asshole”

but somehow I thought it deserved saying properly.

{very wry wolfie grin}

This is the hardest thing I think I have ever written, but I need to write it, I need to put it here so I cannot forget, and because there are people who deserve for me to admit this here.

For years I have felt like a good man, a mostly selfless one, a kind and loving one, tortured, literally, by a fundamental self-doubt and self-loathing that came from some unspecified hurt when I was young. I have felt it there, that unloved, despised, core that has made me so insecure, so needful of other people’s love. That constant voice that whispered “life is bad because that is what you deserve”. It is certainly there, but I finally unburied the truth of it this morning - as perhaps I have in a few moments past but then quickly reburied, because I was not ready or able to face it, and because I did not understand it. Behind all the doors in me, below the floor, deep in the earth, I buried it, a long long time ago.

I was unexpected. A treasure, I think, I truly believe for the first time in my life, an unexpected treasure. Life was hard, for them, my Mum and Dad, very very hard, and it made them both unhappy and very ill. I thought for so long that it made me feel guilty and responsible, and perhaps it did, but that is not why. Like all young children I wanted love and attention most of all, and they worked so hard to just survive that it simply was not possible to do all that and give me all the utter love I craved, I know that. I have been there as a parent. I know how hard it is!

Children deal in different ways. Some are injured by it, some hide from it, some … well some survive by being angry and selfish. Many of them grow to be angry and selfish adults. That’s natural. As are the injured ones, and the hiding ones. We deal, in the best way we can. We find a way to survive. All of us. Because none of us can have all that we want as a child. We want everything, all of the love and attention, we are like little emotional sponges. But none of us can have all of it, all of the time. We cannot possibly understand why at the time. So we deal, as best we can, until we are old enough to understand and release it.

So all this time, I have been a hidden and injured one. Limping through life, craving love I never had. So I thought. But here is a different story. Here is a very sad story, that has to end, that has to go a different way now.

This one child became selfish and angry. He had a little brother and he bullied him and resented him. Simply because the love he got was easier for them to give, not greater, but easier for them. They had experience at being parents by then. He resented that, and because he was angry he resented sharing their love at all. But beside that, growing in him was a great belief in doing good, a code, a knight’s honour, a desire to be better than that. It became a battle, and it wounded him very badly. Scarred him. He hated his selfishness and his anger, and wanting to follow his strong father’s footsteps, he buried it, aimed for better things, for helping others. His father was a fireman, a hero. He wanted to be a hero. His little brother was full of fun and laughter, and he had no way to understand that because he had buried that half of himself, perhaps far more than that. He lost himself in books, and deep down, buried alive, was that little “angry selfish” child in him that he loathed. He wasn’t able to understand the why of it, he had no way to deal with it, so he buried it and hated it. He loved with all his heart, threw his soul at people, to compensate for it. Looking for someone who could give him the love and understanding he needed. And he hurt them, tore them apart, trying to understand how they worked, how they could be happy, how they could love him. He learned so much about how people work, but he could never address that utter self-loathing and loss and emptiness in himself. And all the time, that anger and selfishness was there too, fighting to get out, fighting to emerge, and it lashed out at times, awful, destructive, violent. Like Jeckyl and Hyde.

There is a child in all of us. A vulnerable, fun loving, wonderful magical soul. I thought I had met him before, perhaps once I did, but I could never understand why it didn’t feel right, why I could not seem to hold him or even hold his hand for very long. I understand a little of it now. I buried him, a very long time ago, and loathed everything I thought he stood for, simply because I did not understand why. Like some malignant thing, the anger and selfishness grew in parallel to the greater good I tried to do. But I lost so much more than anger, when I buried him, so much more than .. just so much much more. It has taken a long time. It has taken being a parent to two different families. It has taken the loss of love and the near destruction of other people, to get to place, where finally I have been able to face this, unbury my child, hold him and rock and cry and tell him truly that it is ok. That he was and is treasured. That I understand his anger and selfishness, and that it is ok, it really is ok that he felt that way and explain it to him in a way he can understand. And to tell him how very very sorry I am.

I have been a selfish, angry, man who has tried so hard to compensate by loving with all his heart and being the best man he can be. In doing so I have also done great harm and denied it. This is not about forgiveness, it is about being finally honest, because there are people who really deserve that from me. None of them are perfect, they all have their own issues and their own selfish needs at times, but I have been very impatient with that because I would not admit my own.

I hope very much that from now I can at least see that selfishness when it arises, and understand it, before it becomes a demon. I do not hate myself anymore, or any part of me. I deeply regret the harm I have done, but take some small comfort that I did good at times too. I will be a better, more whole man. Not because I feel the need to, by any honour or code, but because I have learned a little understanding.

Having had no way of knowing how to begin, I now have no way of knowing how to end.

There are some I have hurt a great deal, and one in particular has believed in me more than any, despite the fact that I have hurt her more than anyone. I truly believe I have a great deal of love to offer, and, I hope, a lot more understanding, but it may be too late for that. So most especially to her, to Judith, and to E and J and R, but also to those others who have seen something wonderful in me and borne the storm for as long as they could, and to Tasha for being a quiet listening friend all these years. And of course to my parents who treasured me, and still treasure me, despite everying. I love you all, with all my heart, and I thank you so very much for all you have done, all you have given, in bringing me here to this place, this forgotten grave, and helping me to open it and recover something precious.

Wolfie wx wx wx wx

Just thought I’d share a photo of my favourite place to sit and smile at the moment

I numbered it cos I expect I shall make a few in the life of this blog - LOL

A couple of days back I wrote about “more harm than good” and that I had finally realised that I do more harm than good in trying to help, and that I should just live my life for me. Looking back and reading it again, I wonder if that came over wrong. I didn’t mean JUST for me, I meant that I needed to stop trying so damn hard to help other people. I am never going to stop caring about my friends, family and others I love, but to throw so much at someone only to find out that it the opposite effect is a painful lesson, but one I really needed to learn. I knew this a while back, but (as I’ll keep saying) sometimes it takes a while to get from head to heart. I’m awfully bad at taking my own advice you know {wry grin}

Anyhow, as I have repeatedly been told by a very patient friend, I finally realised that I can help best by being there, happy and getting on with my own life, and just offer a hug, an ear and a shoulder, when it’s needed, and a laugh and passion for life when it’s not. That is what I was trying to say

I’ve been thinking about this blogging thing a lot lately. I’m a very talkative person - do I win “understatement of the week”? LMAO! Anyhow, yes I do like to talk, and I’ve been thinking a bit about that. I get excited about things, passionate about them and just as passionate about other people’s journeys and excitement. I think life can be incredibly hard and painful sometimes, but for the most part it’s something to celebrate, and I do, whenever I can. I’m doing some work at the moment on my vulnerability which I hope will allow me to deal with painful stuff more easily and quickly, so that it doesn’t keep me (or anyone else) from celebrating their lives.

Now, dear reader,  don’t think that I am indulging in tons of introspection here. I’ll admit to having been caught up in my pain for a while again, but I realised last night, as I watched something funny, that I am feeling my celebration back again and I’ve missed it. I’ve been able to celebrate other people’s stuff a little, though not always as much as I wish I had - my two very closest friends have wonderful stuff going on in their lives and I am excited by all of that, but haven’t been a good friend in showing them that excitement lately. Enough of what I have been though

Where I am now, is squarely back in “strokey beard” mode, as one counsellor called it. The fact that I say “one counsellor” kinda gives away that depression has been a problem for a long time doesn’t it? LOL. Well I am genuine incredibly happy to say that I keep surprising myself. I used to crash badly for months when anything really painful happened, but these days even the worst of things only has me out for a couple of weeks. I’d like to reduce that further, but it’s still a hell of an improvement in where I used to be.

I’m rambling somewhat, but nothing new there

So, this “strokey beard” thing. The idea is to allow yourself to gently ponder upon something, perhaps your feeling or your reactions, in a philosophical musing, beard-stroking kind of way. It’s immensely useful, though it does have to wait until you are able to do it obviously! It would be easy to use that waiting as an excuse, but for me it is simply a wish to get there faster. I like to understand things, as best I can anyway, and I do finally accept that some things cannot be understood, they must just be accepted. So this gentle pondering has proven very powerful for me. I also know that it can take a long time for something to get “from head to heart”, so understanding a negative behaviour or emotion will not automatically fix it.

Given that I am just coming out of a couple of weeks of hurting like hell at letting go of something, which is entirely my own fault by the way, I am going to be doing some beard stroking and gentle pondering upon my behaviours, looking at which I know and am waiting to reach my heart, which are new understandings, and which perhaps can not be understood, for now at least.

One of the first that has come up is looking at why I write stuff here. I know that there are people with huge readerships to their blogs, who will link back and tell all their friends about it, and that is cool. It’s a wonderful way to share your life with your family and friends. I’m always flattered and surprised when someone new pops up and says hi! For me, though, and for countless others I expect, it is as much a matter of having somewhere to talk. We have friends, if we are lucky, who listen when they can. I have two of them and I value them both immensely, but they cannot always be there in the moment when something needs to be said. Both of mine are largely caught up in their own lives, in a wonderful positive way, at the moment - which I do really love by the way, their journeys make me smile - and I would feel bad talking to them about some of this stuff anyway, in case they felt they had to “answer”. It doesn’t need answers though. It’s really not like that. I never used to get that about other people, who just wanted me to listen. I think I do now. And it’s because of the “strokey beard” thing.

Sometimes we need to ponder out loud. Perhaps its because forming it into words requires us to filter it, analyse it just a little, sift out the chaff, and (sometimes stumblingly) get it outside of ourselves. We can certainly do that on our own, but my “strokey beard” thing has had me doing a little experiment. When we talk to ourselves, we don’t take the same effort to sustain the process that we do when we talk to someone else. We can roleplay talking to someone of course, which is hugely useful for dealing with things like anger, where you know it is a momentary thing, but we still let our minds wander because rationally we know that no one is listening. Which brings me back to blogging. We can day a day to write a blog post, though I try incredibly hard to sustain mine for the reasons described here. I think most people intuitively understand these things - I feel better when I blog about stuff - but for me, especially at the moment, it’s important that I understand why I am doing it, and especially why I am blogging about what I am.

My depression, as I have know for years, is rooted in self-doubt, and that has me questioning a lot of what I do. Actually, if I am, honest, given it’s own way it would question EVERYTHING I do, and what right I had to do it. It doesn”t get its own way as much as it used to, and it gets quieter every day, but it’s still there. And it has had me questioning what I write here, and why I have written it. Have I done it as a healthy exercise in verbalising my thought, to clarify them, or has it been because I was trying to communicate something to someone else? One post I have written was largely to communicate to someone what they have meant to me, and always will, but that was a different post to write. It felt different at the time, in the same way that writing silly ones about demo limiting feel different, and the same way that my very odd musings do. So what of these soul-searching ones? What are they for, why do I write them?

I said earlier that by putting things into words, we sift out the chaff. I think in real terms, we focus the emotions and identify which are truly attached to the experience or thought we are relating, and which are actually there by association, past similar events, and so forth. That’s an important process, I think, as we all want to learn from our experience but we don’t want to be driven by past emotional reactions to a similar experience. Recognising that a situation hurts and wanting to avoid the same again is natural, but without thinking about it we never allow ourselves to see that a situation might be different. Much more importantly, we need to allow ourselves to recognise that WE have changed, grown, moved forward in our life and our views. As animals, we learned to be afraid of threats. As people that instinct remains but gets misplaced and misdirected, but it is still very real. I believe that is why we engage our rational minds and vocalise thoughts, put them into words, and put them “out there”. And that “out there” bit is critical.

Everyone has had the frustration of not being able to verbalise how they feel about something, that horrid dizzying confusion, trying to explain something that is tied into childhood, adulthood, emotions that have nothing directly to do with what you have been talking about. It’s incredibly hard, perhaps impossible, to convey an emotional reaction to someone, or to get them to convey theirs to you, and God knows I have tried! Judith and others have had to bare that on many occassions, and for that I am truly truly sorry. So we know we cannot convey emotions well, in more than simple words like “anger”, “frustration”, “worry”. They cannot be understood, they can only be respected. That took me far too long to understand. And I got here by recognising that the healthy thing to do is recognise that and use it to your advantage. And the way to do that is to see that externalising and verbalising your ponderings will, by necessity, leave much of the emotion behind. It’s still there, and it needs to be embraced and dealt with, but it is no longer in the way of looking at an experience and truly learning from it.

As I am sure many of you have experienced, this blog post has not gone where I expected it to. I have allowed myself to ramble, without editing, and I won’t go back and edit it. The process of writing it, putting it into words, has clarified what began as a simple thought, and pulled out much else with it. Stuff that I also wanted to think about, without the nest of writhing emotions in the way. It’s a cleansing process, to put it out there, to learn from it. And it has to be done with sustained effort, because it’s hard work to explain something, to take an experience or thought and put it it into words, and our emotions do not want to let go of it! Our instincts do not want to be overridden.

On that basis, and the reason why I do some of my deepest soul-searching (and beard stroking - LOL) here at the moment is genuinely not because someone, either specific or otherwise, will be listening, it’s because if it is here someone COULD be listening and so I make the effort, and by doing so I do what I need to do to understand it for myself.