In centuries past, people who were considered to be prophets saw the world, processed what they saw, and passed judgement on it. The judgement they passed often carried predictions of what they thought the future would entail based on the state of the world as it was, and the history that led to that point. We consider these predictions to be prophecies and we judge whether or not they came true as a measure of their credibility and merit. What I find fascinating about this concept is that we only attach the label of "Prophecy" to predictions that were made in the distant past. We do not consider articles in the New York Times or the Guardian that observe the world and make judgements and state predictions of the future to be prophecies. Why is that the case?
If a prophecy is essentially a prediction of the future, why do we only consider those made in the past to be the only predictions that can be referred to as such? Perhaps it is not the label attached to the prediction that is the crux of the problem, maybe it is the person making the prediction. "Prophet" is a word that is heavily laden with religious connotations despite the fact there have been countless prophets throughout history that had no connection to religion at all. Nevertheless the term prophet seems to be a moniker we have abandoned as a species, reserved only for use in archaic deference.
If the only requirements of the title of prophet are that you see the world, consider what you see, and pass judgement, then is it not fair to say that anyone who makes any prediction of the future is a prophet? If you go further and add conditions such as a greater understanding of the world and the way in which it works as a requirement, then again you must ask, how do you define such elevation of consciousness? The average school kid today learns many things which are far more complex than those learned by children of comparable age and standing in centuries past. If they have an understanding of the world albeit shallow in comparison to the populous at large today, which is much deeper than the populous at large of the past, why are they not considered prophets? Does the term demand relativism? Where it's definition requires a level of consciousness that is above average for the time period? Even then we can look to some of the greatest and brightest minds of our age and still yet we find people who have made countless predictions of our future, none of whom have been given the title of Prophet.
That begs the question, if it is a case of being a term used only in reference to those of the past, one that has become archaic, is Prophecy dead? Have we already experienced our last prophecies, and the last prophet? If we still make predictions of the future, what term do we now use to refer to those that make such predictions, if they are not prophets, are they simply predictors? The term isn't quite as illustrious.
I saw the signs!
I have mentioned that I like to leave things up to chance and fate quite a bit in life. I wanted to provide some clarity to my comments as I think they might have given the false impression that I walk around with my head in the clouds. I pay attention in life but I focus on the moment, the present, here and now. I don't tend to dwell on my future all that much, part of the reason why I don't do that is actually ironically, because I don't like the feeling of not being in control - or to be more specific I don't like the feeling of being trapped, I react very badly in those situations. I don't look to the future much because I don't want to see myself boxed into a position with no way to avoid it. I am quite glad that we cannot see the future nor know what tomorrow will bring because like the legend of Cassandra I think that would be my undoing.
I pay attention to the moment, and make my choices and my decisions based on here and now and what I think is best for me. I do pay attention to the signs around me that those choices might not be the right ones to take. I read into things quite a bit as you can probably tell from my ramblings on here, and in a spiritual sense I believe that the Universe is rather like a book, with our lives we live being the lines of text that are being written as we live, but like any good book there's much more information being shared than what is written - you just need to look between the lines. I try to do this with life, it may sound like spiritual mumbo jumbo to some, but I like to let the Universe guide me. One thing I take to heart is the belief that the path of least resistance is probably the path you are supposed to take in life. There will be obstacles at times to overcome but when the path you walk becomes increasingly difficult and the journey gets harder, there has to come a point where you have to stop and ask yourself the question, is it meant to be this hard, or is the Universe trying to tell me something? Is it pushing me back on purpose trying to tell me that's not the way you're meant to go.
I am a programmer. I have mentioned this before. I also studied games technology at University and have developed many games over the years. In my time as a programmer I have come to understand one simple thing - you can reinvent the wheel every time you need a wheel, if you want to, nobody will stop you, but if you have to reinvent the wheel every time, you're probably doing it wrong. With regards to programming that comes down to the concept of reducing and reusing code from past projects. If your programs were well designed you should be able to reuse parts of them without much effort. There are a number of Game Engines which provide their own Integrated Development Environments [IDEs] for writing games. For those averse to these terms, in plain English there are a number of programs designed specifically for making games that allow you to use an existing skeleton in effect that you simply add your own flesh to. That's figurative - although to an extent it can be literal as well but that level of detail isn't relevant here.
What is relevant however is the fact these programs allow you to be more effective in your design. They allow you to package smaller parts of your programs to make them reusable. They don't stop you from doing everything from scratch every time you want to do it, but if you try to do that you quickly realise you're not doing it the way it expects you to. Sooner or later you discover for yourself that the tools to make things easier for you are there, you just need to look for them, and learn how to use them.
I take that mentality from my profession and apply it to my life. No matter what we do in life, almost everything we want to do has been done before, by someone, at some point, and they will have documented that process. There is a wealth of knowledge out there for you to tap into, you just need to learn how to access it. With technology and the Internet that becomes a lot easier. When it comes to life however and the journey we make it becomes a lot harder to find reliable sources of information. You quickly learn that most people offering you life advice are really only interested in selling you their books, or other products that the claim will make you happier, healthier, and make you live longer.
The conclusion you draw, or at least the conclusion that I came to, was that the only experience you can rely on is your own. That provides a foundation for you to build upon, incorporating the things you learn from others, and the advice they dispense, where both of these fit into what we already know, or they cause us to stop and question what we have already built. The hardest part of that whole process comes when you're presented with something that invalidates what you have already done, then you are presented with the choice, to tear it down and rebuild, or to ignore them completely and keep doing what you were doing.
The question then evolves, it's no longer a case of whether or not the signs are there - the answer to that one is simple, they are, the signs are all around us, the real question is how do you know which ones to read and which ones to pay attention to? How do you know what to incorporate into your own system of beliefs, and what to ignore?
I pay attention to the moment, and make my choices and my decisions based on here and now and what I think is best for me. I do pay attention to the signs around me that those choices might not be the right ones to take. I read into things quite a bit as you can probably tell from my ramblings on here, and in a spiritual sense I believe that the Universe is rather like a book, with our lives we live being the lines of text that are being written as we live, but like any good book there's much more information being shared than what is written - you just need to look between the lines. I try to do this with life, it may sound like spiritual mumbo jumbo to some, but I like to let the Universe guide me. One thing I take to heart is the belief that the path of least resistance is probably the path you are supposed to take in life. There will be obstacles at times to overcome but when the path you walk becomes increasingly difficult and the journey gets harder, there has to come a point where you have to stop and ask yourself the question, is it meant to be this hard, or is the Universe trying to tell me something? Is it pushing me back on purpose trying to tell me that's not the way you're meant to go.
I am a programmer. I have mentioned this before. I also studied games technology at University and have developed many games over the years. In my time as a programmer I have come to understand one simple thing - you can reinvent the wheel every time you need a wheel, if you want to, nobody will stop you, but if you have to reinvent the wheel every time, you're probably doing it wrong. With regards to programming that comes down to the concept of reducing and reusing code from past projects. If your programs were well designed you should be able to reuse parts of them without much effort. There are a number of Game Engines which provide their own Integrated Development Environments [IDEs] for writing games. For those averse to these terms, in plain English there are a number of programs designed specifically for making games that allow you to use an existing skeleton in effect that you simply add your own flesh to. That's figurative - although to an extent it can be literal as well but that level of detail isn't relevant here.
What is relevant however is the fact these programs allow you to be more effective in your design. They allow you to package smaller parts of your programs to make them reusable. They don't stop you from doing everything from scratch every time you want to do it, but if you try to do that you quickly realise you're not doing it the way it expects you to. Sooner or later you discover for yourself that the tools to make things easier for you are there, you just need to look for them, and learn how to use them.
I take that mentality from my profession and apply it to my life. No matter what we do in life, almost everything we want to do has been done before, by someone, at some point, and they will have documented that process. There is a wealth of knowledge out there for you to tap into, you just need to learn how to access it. With technology and the Internet that becomes a lot easier. When it comes to life however and the journey we make it becomes a lot harder to find reliable sources of information. You quickly learn that most people offering you life advice are really only interested in selling you their books, or other products that the claim will make you happier, healthier, and make you live longer.
The conclusion you draw, or at least the conclusion that I came to, was that the only experience you can rely on is your own. That provides a foundation for you to build upon, incorporating the things you learn from others, and the advice they dispense, where both of these fit into what we already know, or they cause us to stop and question what we have already built. The hardest part of that whole process comes when you're presented with something that invalidates what you have already done, then you are presented with the choice, to tear it down and rebuild, or to ignore them completely and keep doing what you were doing.
The question then evolves, it's no longer a case of whether or not the signs are there - the answer to that one is simple, they are, the signs are all around us, the real question is how do you know which ones to read and which ones to pay attention to? How do you know what to incorporate into your own system of beliefs, and what to ignore?
Do As I Say, Not As I Do
I'm one of those people that others find easy to talk to, a character trait that people in my family call "the gift", something that many people in my family have had. I get people telling me all manner of things about their lives that I assume they never tell anyone else. I've had a complete stranger on a bus turn to me and tell me she thought her marriage was ending. I listened to everything she had to say. That wasn't the first such experience, there have been many, but through it all I usually just sit or stand and listen to what people have to say, often times all they want is for someone to hear them out.
When it comes to people I know, who know me quite well, I often get to the end of their flow of everything they have to say and I am then met with that questions of all questions "What do you think I should do?" - I've grown tired of that question, not because I don't want to help, I do, it's just that those who ask it rarely want you to actually answer the question. When you do offer advice and say what you would do in their situation, sometimes they ponder it, but often they dismiss it, with some excuse lined up as to why they can't take that advice, therein lies the reality of the question - they've already drawn their own conclusions about what they can and cannot do, and what they are really asking for is an answer that they could not have possibly thought of before turning to you. The trouble with that as an honest question is that often the only answers you can give that they would not have thought of, are answers that won't solve their problem, if anything they will probably create more.
I'm not a therapist, I'm a pragmatist, and often my advice comes down to practicality and how to overcome, or get around, issues and the problems they create for us. My advice doesn't usually tackle the root cause and take it away, not because I don't know how but because I have learned from a very young age with this "gift" that people never tell you the full story. No matter how open they may seem, no matter how trusting of you they may claim to be, there is always more to every story than they tell you. It's not always a case of deliberate deception, if anything it's usually a case of them not connecting two things together in their mind that are relevant. In any case, deception or not, without knowing everything you can never make a fully informed response.
Ultimately therein lies the truth about life - we each live our own and only we alone know our whole story and only we alone can make informed decisions about our lives. The advice we seek of others is to see how their lives and their experience would shape their response to the same situation, but we often come to realise their advice would only work for them, not for us - the ultimate irony here is that they themselves rarely take their own advice which reduces the whole thing to a completely pointless exercise where everyone is simply asking you to do as they say, not as they do. The sad conclusion to all of this is that if you want to solve your problems, you really have to do it yourself. Seek therapy if you find that an overwhelming proposition but know in doing so that whatever they suggest you will always be the one to decide in the end, nobody can decide for you. I think that is one of the reasons some people are so averse to the idea of seeing a therapist, because they have the misconception that they are going to tell them what to do and they don't want someone to do that. The reality is a therapist won't do that - unless they're very bad at their job - they will instead explore the reasons why you have not been able to come to a solution yourself, and what is preventing you from doing so, and help you find a way to remove those obstacles.
When it comes to people I know, who know me quite well, I often get to the end of their flow of everything they have to say and I am then met with that questions of all questions "What do you think I should do?" - I've grown tired of that question, not because I don't want to help, I do, it's just that those who ask it rarely want you to actually answer the question. When you do offer advice and say what you would do in their situation, sometimes they ponder it, but often they dismiss it, with some excuse lined up as to why they can't take that advice, therein lies the reality of the question - they've already drawn their own conclusions about what they can and cannot do, and what they are really asking for is an answer that they could not have possibly thought of before turning to you. The trouble with that as an honest question is that often the only answers you can give that they would not have thought of, are answers that won't solve their problem, if anything they will probably create more.
I'm not a therapist, I'm a pragmatist, and often my advice comes down to practicality and how to overcome, or get around, issues and the problems they create for us. My advice doesn't usually tackle the root cause and take it away, not because I don't know how but because I have learned from a very young age with this "gift" that people never tell you the full story. No matter how open they may seem, no matter how trusting of you they may claim to be, there is always more to every story than they tell you. It's not always a case of deliberate deception, if anything it's usually a case of them not connecting two things together in their mind that are relevant. In any case, deception or not, without knowing everything you can never make a fully informed response.
Ultimately therein lies the truth about life - we each live our own and only we alone know our whole story and only we alone can make informed decisions about our lives. The advice we seek of others is to see how their lives and their experience would shape their response to the same situation, but we often come to realise their advice would only work for them, not for us - the ultimate irony here is that they themselves rarely take their own advice which reduces the whole thing to a completely pointless exercise where everyone is simply asking you to do as they say, not as they do. The sad conclusion to all of this is that if you want to solve your problems, you really have to do it yourself. Seek therapy if you find that an overwhelming proposition but know in doing so that whatever they suggest you will always be the one to decide in the end, nobody can decide for you. I think that is one of the reasons some people are so averse to the idea of seeing a therapist, because they have the misconception that they are going to tell them what to do and they don't want someone to do that. The reality is a therapist won't do that - unless they're very bad at their job - they will instead explore the reasons why you have not been able to come to a solution yourself, and what is preventing you from doing so, and help you find a way to remove those obstacles.
A Rhetorical Question
"Life isn't about the destination, it's about the journey"
Some people live by this, and others don't, but it got me thinking about the idea of closure, or the belief that a question needs an answer, that a question cannot exist without one.
Some questions we know don't expect an answer, as in a rhetorical question. These are questions that are asked with no expectation of an answer to be given, but is that because one does not exist or because the person who poses the question believes it's unfathomable for an individual to actually be able to find an answer?
I've struggled with this concept in my life as I am rather socially awkward and it's not that easy for me to tell when someone actually wants an answer to their question or not - to the point where on social media and in group settings if a question is not directed at me personally, even if I do know the answer, I'm reluctant to give it. I feel this way because when you are mistaken, and answer a question someone intended to be rhetorical, the reaction is usually one of judgement.
Here's the thing though, is it actually possible to ask a truly rhetorical question? I don't mean a question that is nonsensical, or deliberately designed to have no possible answer; instead I mean a question that could have an answer, but that answer could never reasonably be expected to be found, to the point where the person asking it doesn't actually want to know the answer?
It's easy to come up with questions that have been long unanswered, but almost all of those that I can think of, including the cliché "What is the meaning of life?" question, are all questions that people would actually want to know the answer to, if you found it. It's also easy to create nonsensical questions like the infamous "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" from Alice Adventures in Wonderland - which curious enough during research for this post I found out there was originally an intended answer to that question. The trouble with these questions is unless the creator at the time of creation also creates a canonical answer to the question, you can't verify whether you found the right one therefore making it an impossible question, not a rhetorical one.
So that brings us back to the original concept, what question do you think no-one can or will ever know the answer to, for which you don't actually want to know the answer?
The closest I can come to this is the question "What is the value of Pi?" as it is a question that an answer could exist for, but no-one is ever likely to find it as Pi is an irrational number and attempts to calculate it seemingly run to infinite decimal places so a precise value can not be found - the trouble with this as a rhetorical question is that it doesn't meet the criteria of being a question nobody would actually be interested in the answer to, as many people have dedicated their careers to researching it.
Some people live by this, and others don't, but it got me thinking about the idea of closure, or the belief that a question needs an answer, that a question cannot exist without one.
Some questions we know don't expect an answer, as in a rhetorical question. These are questions that are asked with no expectation of an answer to be given, but is that because one does not exist or because the person who poses the question believes it's unfathomable for an individual to actually be able to find an answer?
I've struggled with this concept in my life as I am rather socially awkward and it's not that easy for me to tell when someone actually wants an answer to their question or not - to the point where on social media and in group settings if a question is not directed at me personally, even if I do know the answer, I'm reluctant to give it. I feel this way because when you are mistaken, and answer a question someone intended to be rhetorical, the reaction is usually one of judgement.
Here's the thing though, is it actually possible to ask a truly rhetorical question? I don't mean a question that is nonsensical, or deliberately designed to have no possible answer; instead I mean a question that could have an answer, but that answer could never reasonably be expected to be found, to the point where the person asking it doesn't actually want to know the answer?
It's easy to come up with questions that have been long unanswered, but almost all of those that I can think of, including the cliché "What is the meaning of life?" question, are all questions that people would actually want to know the answer to, if you found it. It's also easy to create nonsensical questions like the infamous "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" from Alice Adventures in Wonderland - which curious enough during research for this post I found out there was originally an intended answer to that question. The trouble with these questions is unless the creator at the time of creation also creates a canonical answer to the question, you can't verify whether you found the right one therefore making it an impossible question, not a rhetorical one.
So that brings us back to the original concept, what question do you think no-one can or will ever know the answer to, for which you don't actually want to know the answer?
The closest I can come to this is the question "What is the value of Pi?" as it is a question that an answer could exist for, but no-one is ever likely to find it as Pi is an irrational number and attempts to calculate it seemingly run to infinite decimal places so a precise value can not be found - the trouble with this as a rhetorical question is that it doesn't meet the criteria of being a question nobody would actually be interested in the answer to, as many people have dedicated their careers to researching it.
I remember you!
I have met a lot of people in my life. Some I knew briefly, and some I knew for a long time. Only a few have managed to hang around for the long haul. When it comes to those with whom I parted ways long ago, every now and then I will see or hear something that makes me think of them. The latest moment of memory was triggered by seeing a trend on Twitter - "Monkey Dust" - the actual trend is about a drug and is rather grim and not the point of this post. The name however is shared with an animated TV show produced by BBC Three between 2003 and 2005. The series was very dark, very macabre, very black humour - in essence, very British.
The series was introduced to me by someone I met online through an online forum. We parted ways many years ago, mainly due to arguments that would crop up every now and then due to fundamental differences in opinion. Ultimately we parted ways before things descended into an abyss. The friendship we shared encompassed many more positives than negatives that I wouldn't want to take away or write off entirely. It was better for us not to talk anymore rather than let everything be torn apart.
I find it interesting though how pockets of memory can be isolated in our minds. This person doesn't cross my mind day to day as we never actually met face to face and we came from very different places and backgrounds to the point where it was conceivable that the two of us would never have actually met if it weren't by chance through that forum. It takes something just as random as this, a trend on Twitter, to actually trigger those memories and make me think of them and everything we bonded over.
I'm not one to fight the past. There are a lot of things I would never do again but in the moment they were always the decisions I thought were the right ones with what I knew and what I felt. I try not to regret anything in life for the simple reason that when I look back at myself and all the things that I did, I am doing so with the knowledge and the experience that I have now. I firmly believe, in most cases at least, if I had both of those things at the time I probably would have made different choices. That doesn't mean I should regret what I did or how things turned out, because I didn't have that knowledge or that experience at the time and arguably it was only by making the choices that I did, that would eventually lead me to the place where I am now, where I can look back and say yes, that was stupid, or I could have chose this or that and it would have went better.
How things ended were the way that I wanted them to end given all that I knew and felt at the time. I wouldn't go back and change that, no more than I would go back and change anything else in my life. I still have the capacity and the capability to reconnect now if I wanted to but I choose not to. The fact we have never crossed paths since, I take as a sign we aren't meant to. I leave a lot of things in life to chance and fate. I know that some people really hate that idea but it is something I have always tried to live my life by and for the most part it has served me well. I tend not to make big decisions, I focus on the small decisions and let the big ones take care of themselves.
The series was introduced to me by someone I met online through an online forum. We parted ways many years ago, mainly due to arguments that would crop up every now and then due to fundamental differences in opinion. Ultimately we parted ways before things descended into an abyss. The friendship we shared encompassed many more positives than negatives that I wouldn't want to take away or write off entirely. It was better for us not to talk anymore rather than let everything be torn apart.
I find it interesting though how pockets of memory can be isolated in our minds. This person doesn't cross my mind day to day as we never actually met face to face and we came from very different places and backgrounds to the point where it was conceivable that the two of us would never have actually met if it weren't by chance through that forum. It takes something just as random as this, a trend on Twitter, to actually trigger those memories and make me think of them and everything we bonded over.
I'm not one to fight the past. There are a lot of things I would never do again but in the moment they were always the decisions I thought were the right ones with what I knew and what I felt. I try not to regret anything in life for the simple reason that when I look back at myself and all the things that I did, I am doing so with the knowledge and the experience that I have now. I firmly believe, in most cases at least, if I had both of those things at the time I probably would have made different choices. That doesn't mean I should regret what I did or how things turned out, because I didn't have that knowledge or that experience at the time and arguably it was only by making the choices that I did, that would eventually lead me to the place where I am now, where I can look back and say yes, that was stupid, or I could have chose this or that and it would have went better.
How things ended were the way that I wanted them to end given all that I knew and felt at the time. I wouldn't go back and change that, no more than I would go back and change anything else in my life. I still have the capacity and the capability to reconnect now if I wanted to but I choose not to. The fact we have never crossed paths since, I take as a sign we aren't meant to. I leave a lot of things in life to chance and fate. I know that some people really hate that idea but it is something I have always tried to live my life by and for the most part it has served me well. I tend not to make big decisions, I focus on the small decisions and let the big ones take care of themselves.
Someone Else Will
"Well I wouldn't, but as with everything in life, there will always be somebody else who will"This was a line of dialogue I wrote in a novel I am working on, it fitted very well with the mentality of the character who said it, but no sooner had I written had I realised how much truth there really is to their words.
When we are young we are told not to do many things, mainly because of the negative repercussions those actions would have on us. We are told not to drink, not to do drugs, not go to certain places, or do certain things. Underneath all of these assertions that are made however there is something we often forget, that those who tell us not to do these things, whoever they may be, don't do so simply because they would be bad for us, but because someone else has already done it, and they didn't like the outcome.
When we are younger it is easier for us to accept that the negative outcome would be so bad that it alone motivates us to follow the advice we are given. As we grow however we become more critical, the more we learn about negative consequences of our actions the more we grade those consequences with our own scale of severity and what we deem to be the associated risk. As we grow, these two things can diverge far enough from those that were first suggested to us, that we begin to re-evaluate that advice and decide for ourselves whether to follow it or not.
The interesting thing here is that everyone will live their own lives with their own experiences and interpret the world based on those experiences. Two people can experience the same thing with the same starting conditions and come to separate conclusions and separate interpretations. Our individual outlook on life influences the decisions we make in life much more than what we are actually told and the experiences that others share with us. The end result is for those who try to instil some control and direction in the lives of people as they grow, ultimately the decisions they make will be their own, and whether or not they accept your guidance is ultimately up to them, not you.
That poses an interesting question about the nature of education. Some see it as a means to reinforcing behaviours that are desirable from a societal standpoint, but if people will decide which behaviours to exhibit themselves, should education actually focus on reinforcement at all? Would education be better equipped to shape society if it were centred instead around disclosure, giving students all the information they desire and all the evidence that is available, and encouraging the student to come to their own conclusions based on that information as opposed to forcing them to accept the answer to a given question is such, and if you don't accept that answer you are an idiot.
I'm talking here mainly of subjects whose content is subjective, i.e. questions which can be deemed to have answers that are not set in stone, as opposed to subjects whose content is objective such as mathematics where there is a right and wrong answer and one that does not satisfy the problem is not correct.
I find the evolution of education to be something of interest, namely because you can use it to determine what age someone is, and when they studied, based on their answers to certain questions. For example asking someone how many planets in our solar system whether they answer 8 or 9 will tell you a lot about when they learned about space in school, as there were 9 but Pluto was relegated to the status of a Dwarf Planet reducing the answer to 8. Other questions relating to biology, or technology, can give you an idea of when someone studied those as they too are subjects whose content evolves over time with increased understanding and new paradigms that emerge. Something as simple as asking someone how many bytes are in a kilobyte and whether they answer 1,024 or 1,000 will tell you whether they learned about computing a long time ago or studied in recent years, as the answer was previously 1,024 as this is an exponent of 2 given binary is a base 2 number system, however again, the term kilobyte was redefined to mean 1,000 bytes and the term kibibyte was introduced in 1998 by the IEC to preserve the binary counting system.
All of this demonstrates how as time progresses and each generation grows, there will always be someone who will do thing differently, sometimes others will follow suit leading to paradigm shifts, and at others they will remain as outliers and anomalies that society as a whole rejects and encourages those who conform not to follow suit.
Why do I write?
"What do you write about?" - I get this question a lot, or similarly, "Why do you write?" - usually from people who have never read anything I have written or from people who just have a genuine curiosity. I write a few blogs, one is about my Health, it was originally a blog similar to this where I wrote about the things that were on my mind but slowly my Health became such a focus that in the end I deleted all other posts and decided to devote the blog solely to my health. As for this blog, it has become the main outlet for my thoughts about all manner of things.
I write short stories, and I write longer fiction which usually caters to an LGBT audience, in particular Young Adult fiction which is basically another way of saying "not for children" and I also write technical documents and guides about things I know a lot about - for example I wrote a book about programming in Java and plan on writing others as part of a series.
In terms of the fiction I write, and this blog, they both represent a form of self-therapy. Writing allows me to process my thoughts and my feelings in a constructive way. It also lets me document how I think and how I feel in this moment, so that I can look back on it in the future. I often go back and read my old work and see how much I have grown as a person, how my priorities shift, and how much certain things occupied my mind and the impact they had on my knowing or unknowingly.
Some of the time a piece of writing can contain just one word somewhere within it that has a whole story pinned to it that isn't divulged within the piece but seeing it myself triggers all those memories to come flooding back. Words and places associated with certain people can bring back a flood of memories. I guess you could say in a way that I write as a method of organizing my mind and my memories into pieces that are easier to process. As for fiction and the characters I create, often times those character represent either parts of myself and my own personality or those of other people that I want to confront. By giving it a name and a structure you are able to deconstruct it in a way that lets you tear it apart and look inside without causing damage to the self.
Above all else I write for myself first and foremost. While it is nice to know that people read what I write, that's not why I do it. This is for me more than it is for you, I just happen to post it online for the world to see, in the hopes that other people might see it and recognise something within themselves and realise they're not alone in their thoughts or their feelings which can be very reassuring, to be able to say "well at least I'm not the only one who thinks that" is often enough to make things bearable and easier to get through.
I write short stories, and I write longer fiction which usually caters to an LGBT audience, in particular Young Adult fiction which is basically another way of saying "not for children" and I also write technical documents and guides about things I know a lot about - for example I wrote a book about programming in Java and plan on writing others as part of a series.
In terms of the fiction I write, and this blog, they both represent a form of self-therapy. Writing allows me to process my thoughts and my feelings in a constructive way. It also lets me document how I think and how I feel in this moment, so that I can look back on it in the future. I often go back and read my old work and see how much I have grown as a person, how my priorities shift, and how much certain things occupied my mind and the impact they had on my knowing or unknowingly.
Some of the time a piece of writing can contain just one word somewhere within it that has a whole story pinned to it that isn't divulged within the piece but seeing it myself triggers all those memories to come flooding back. Words and places associated with certain people can bring back a flood of memories. I guess you could say in a way that I write as a method of organizing my mind and my memories into pieces that are easier to process. As for fiction and the characters I create, often times those character represent either parts of myself and my own personality or those of other people that I want to confront. By giving it a name and a structure you are able to deconstruct it in a way that lets you tear it apart and look inside without causing damage to the self.
Above all else I write for myself first and foremost. While it is nice to know that people read what I write, that's not why I do it. This is for me more than it is for you, I just happen to post it online for the world to see, in the hopes that other people might see it and recognise something within themselves and realise they're not alone in their thoughts or their feelings which can be very reassuring, to be able to say "well at least I'm not the only one who thinks that" is often enough to make things bearable and easier to get through.
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