Castle Walls

So.
Long time, no speak.

Let us rid ourselves of minor salutations and pleasantries and kick off with the pertinent questions de l’heure.

“S’appening, brother?”

To which my reply would be first, take off that crooked New York Yankees cap, you look ridiculous and secondly, despite your syntactical idiocies, the verve of your question does have some applicability in this context. I haven’t really been around much lately (To quote Scroobius Pip “I haven’t really been around much lately, it didn’t seem like you wanted me to be…”).

Nah, there hasn’t really been a reason for it, I just haven’t had the inclination to write. There’s been a definite lack of spark for me to draw upon. An absence of willing, if you will. There’s been plenty to write about; hell, I’ve been living in what seems to be a dilettante’s playground, a bachelor’s dream, a young and exciting person from a hip television show’s hopes, for the last month. But alas no, nothing jumping out at me, taking my fancy in a way that would bring me to take pen to paper. Or, more specifically fingers to shiny new MacBook Pro keyboard (Hark! A braggart doing what one of those does best).

I mean, there’s been the interesting new turn around of events in my life; there’s been some very interesting and inspirational news stories such as the Chilean miners (not to be confused with the Chilly minors who are having a terrible time at school with no heating during these tough times); the student fees debacle and the protest to go with it. There’s been strange and weird and fun and wonderful things that I’ve noticed in day-to-day life as well. But damn it, nothing that just makes one want to jump up and inform the world/ my extraordinarily minute online readership.

Your mind is wandering now. Your thoughts are straying. You’re wondering why I’m still rambling aimlessly. You’re thinking about that person you like or considering getting tickets to that thing you love. You’re curious as to why I haven’t got a reasonable or interesting blog post to deliver.
Fear not, I’m talking in the second person as a device to attempt to corral your mind back to where I want it.
Something I’ve discovered recently is that it seems that the last person to find out about my idiosyncrasies, foibles and habits is me. I’m not quite sure as to why that is, but my closest friends have been showing me parts of my personality I’d either done my very best to ignore or simply hadn’t spotted.

In past posts I’ve spoken about how ideas seem to come to me almost fully formed quite often. As if I’ve got a processor that acts on my behalf without my knowledge. I quite like that idea but at the same time it’s a little… unsettling that I’m not fully conscious of what’s going on. Obviously we’ve all got a subconscious that works behind the scenes, keeping everything tickety boo, but how can I be so blind to it all?

An example: with recent developments going on, my friends have alerted to me that I may not exactly be the most ‘commitment friendly’ of gentlemen. To the point where I’ve got massive castle walls protecting me from the menace, so it doesn’t try and attack me and take me to the floor. With it’s big sharp teeth. And a snarling intensity for my flesh (Alright, that’s the end of that semantic field).
Now, I’ve known about these actions for a while, certainly. There’s a conscious decision from me to not be too focused on things that aren’t helping towards my academia. My Mother and Grandmother remind me, near constantly, how I’m the first person in my family to go to university and do A-levels and whatnot. And they do their best to remind me that I’m here to get a degree, not play (as they put it) ‘Silly Buggers’ with a young lady. So that’s my goal. I hadn’t once thought about how that affects me.

I’m a pretty confident person. Some would say overly confident, a bit in your face. They’re probably right, for a couple of reasons. I don’t really care what ‘the public’ or just other people think about me that much. I don’t think that someone else’s opinion should influence how I operate daily. That isn’t to say there aren’t people who’s voices I avoid, simply that the vast majority of people don’t affect my decision making. I think I’ve talked about this before. Another reason is because I have faith in myself. The people who I care about: my close family and a select group of friends. They tell me, actively or passively, what the general assessment of I is. I mean passively because I hold my friends in very high esteem. If I didn’t think I was worthy of their company, I wouldn’t have half as much faith in myself.
Another way that I analyse how I’m doing is just thinking about all parts of me objectively. Think of yourself as a Top Trump or Pokémon card. To make a difficult decision, we’re told it’s best to make a list of pros and cons. A Fors-And Againsts of what you’re thinking about. I don’t write it down but I think about it a lot. On paper, what’re my characteristics? How would a friend describe me to someone? How would I be described to someone by someone who doesn’t like me? I think everyone does this to some extent. You see it when you read someone’s Facebook profile and he or she have got ‘I’m a nice guy/girl. Bit strange but a lot of fun’ or some such vapid drivel. Another example of it is someone’s conscience. I’m bound to have spoken about my (overactive) conscience before, my Jiminy Cricket who wields a large hitty stick. Surely a conscience is nothing more than a large scoreboard on the sport pitch of your mind.

“Ohhh, look at Perkin duck and dive through the field, evading all comers with some sort near psychic reflexes. He dives for the try line, he flies through the air, arm outstretched, ball on his fingertips! He’s almost there, AND HE SCORES!”

Or, conversely:

“The opposite team has the ball. A strong defense is needed here to maintain the home team’s lead. Perkin’s sprinting across the field, his eyes set on the full back, a brand new face. Fresh on transfer from Toulouse, his debut at this level of the sport. But what’s Perkin doing?! He’s still gunning for the young boy. He’s going straight at him! It’s to close to call, is he going to go for it before the Frenchman gets to the try line? HE IS! HE’S MADE A HARSH TACKLE ON THE UNSUSPECTING EUROPEAN, THE REF WON’T LIKE THAT. As expected with this level of foul, the referee was none too please. 15 minutes in the sin bin it is.”

You see?
Now, where were we?

Hmm.

I got lost.

Fact of the day: gibbering aimlessly about myself is a defence mechanism, a barrier.
Let’s see if I can get back into the swing of it, my castle walls are pretty low at the moment.