In real life I have just heaved a big sigh.

Sometimes, oftimes in fact, my sighs are just me emptying my lungs in a noisier manner than usual, this big sigh was because I was about to start writing.

Big pause and another big sigh.

My relationship to writing is a lot like my relationship to exercise, I really enjoy both of them…when they stop. But in order to stop I have to start, and therein lies the problem.

The real reason I do not post as often as I think I should isn’t because I don’t have stuff to say, it is that too much stuff passes through my brain and I have serious doubts whether any of it is postable.

I read other people’s sites and, even when they go off on rambling tangents, they all have a coherent theme and style…I do not.

When I finished work last year I told people there was a good chance I would go back into some sort of higher education, because I love to learn, but that hasn’t happened and not just because of a certain global pandemic. Nope, that hasn’t happened because I cannot decide what I want to learn about from one day to the next, let alone for the next two, three or four years.

So far (since New Year) I have done courses in Monozukuri (the Japanese philosophy of craftmanship), Creative Thinking – techniques and principles, Meteorology and Weather Forcasting and, finally, Philosophy and Critical Thinking. I watch astrophysics documentaries while I eat my dinner and binge educational podcasts whilst cleaning the kitchen.

But I also sit cross legged for hours, knitting super chunky cushion covers and tiny fiddly Rothko designs for Etsy. I ponder whether learning to crochet would add to my enjoyment, or drive me mad because I hate learning stuff I feel as if I should already know. Would knowing how to cook local dishes from Kerala make me a better person, or would adding to my already enormous collection of fine line pens finally push me into creating more arty-fart?

Should I plant potatoes again this year, even though they are far cheaper from the supermarket? When should I prune my new cherry tree?

Is it really possible to repair your own car’s alloys? Would the noise from doing that annoy my neighbours too much?

Can I train myself to taste the difference between several single origin chocolates?

How hard is it really to find backyard meteorites?

All of this adds to my suspicions about my own neuro atypicality (probably not a word). Neuro atypicalness? Neuro atypiocity? Being neuro atypical.

But as well as not wanting to ramble constantly about the many and varied topics wandering through my mind, I also don’t want to write every post as a rant. Even though I do manage to avoid significant amounts of ‘news’ I still get to hear about the violence, stupidity and cruelty of the world. I am determined not to add to that fear-mongering, even through rants that attempt to counteract it.

So this has turned into a post about not knowing what to post, which I am sure to have done before and may well do again, but it is also a way for me to use picking up a (metaphorical) pen to see if it helps me to get over my reluctance to pick it up more often.

(No photos on this post because, as has been mentioned by everyone else on the internet, WordPress has some ‘issues’ after it’s latest updates, but trust me, they had really amusing captions).