Blogging is a hugely selfish thing for me. It started out as something I did for a viewership (of 1. Hey Azza, dunno if you still see this even!) and myself so I could store memories of camp and boarding school and holidays and later on university. My first entries recounted long periods of time and what I did and who said what much like the way most of my 14 year old conversations flowed.
Of late it's therapeutic. Studies have shown that creative outflow is a really good way to combat mental heath issues. (This is a huge paraphrase from something a gunner girl I may or may not be envious of tweeted about psych one time.) But hey, much as I've loved music, my instrumental talents are... eh. Much as I love my solo dance parties I definitely do not feel the music in my bones. Or at least not in a productive way. I can't draw for shit. This prose is my only creative outflow. This is how I sort my thoughts.
The number of blog posts I had always tends to spike over periods when I'm on holiday. In some ways this might just be because I have more time to post, but I think it's also hugely that I have a lot more time to think. Especially in Jeddah. For many years Jeddah was home and every time I was here it felt like I was feeding my soul, but in recent years I don't know how true that is. Being here means I have too much time to think. I fade into myself and have the constant circular arguments in my own head. I think that's definitely been a problem of late. Too much thinking and not enough doing. I told one of my best friends recently (and one of the first people mentioned on here) that I felt like something was wrong with me. She asked if I was sure that it was that, or if it was "just Jeddah."
I read somewhere (read: a sad tumblr) a quote about kids being like glass.
*edit: I found it because I was butchering really badly*
“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.”
I'm not shattered. There are many smudges, maybe a few cracks in some areas and I'm willing to admit that. But I have it good, better than so many. You always tried to get me to admit that things haven't been easy for me and I have my share of sorrows, that it's not all unicorns farting rainbows. Thank you, you taught me well. I agree, it is fine to acknowledge sorrow or difficulty, but what I've been doing lately is wallowing. We both do it, you know I've been doing it lately and you know when you do it as well. Acknowledge sadness and failures so that you can learn from them, but don't let yourself drown in them. That's not learning.
Those people that I admire so much, whose seemingly full lives I envy? It's not their thoughts I'm looking at. It's their actions. It's them smiling at a fair or a party or laughing with people and doing things. Doing things is important. It means you're living life. Their lives are by no means perfect, to them or to me. Are all those people whose lives I envy, consultants reknowned in their fields, on this and that board, with a huge salary and a nice house in a beautiful multicultural city, with someone to love and several cats and four boys who sleep in ikea bunk beds and whatever else my pipedreams are made of? Definitely not.
So I want to live more and worry less.
Do more and contemplate less.
Thinking is fine, but let it be productive happy thoughts.
I will acknowledge my struggles, there is no weakness in that, but I don't want to wallow.
So here's hoping there's less of me blogging in the near future with happier, more active times coming my way :)
P.S. On a vaguely related note, I'm scarily good at finding stuff out about people using the internet. (Some call this stalking, but I don't like that term). I should be feared by cheating husbands and hired by the government. Just saying.
