Expanding

I used to write quite brazenly about my political views or the political news of the day. I suppose as a teenager those thoughts don't get filtered and it is a new and exciting thing to be able to form an opinion about something and share it with the world. But now writing about the divisive, bizarre, confusing politics of today seems, as I've said before, exhausting. Hats off to those who have the energy to work it out and put it into words.

Not only is it exhausting but, at the moment, I genuinely don't know what to think. What I thought I knew and understood is changing for me. I am having new conversations where the opinion differs from mine and we have to work out a path to each other's understanding. And in turn, like I have said before, this is making me stop and think and re-evaluate.

To be honest, I am having to admit to myself that I don't know enough to form a solid opinion. I am also learning that some opinions are not, and should never be, solid.

I feel like I might be repeating myself here but it is such an enormous thing to learn and I am so fascinated by it. To notice one's self growing and expanding in adult life is so different, somehow much more unexpected than it was when I was younger.

So I am taking my time. More time to observe, more time to think. It is really quite nice.
                                                                   

Conversations with myself.

I find myself writing much more frequently to this blog than to my diary. I like that way of saying it, "writing to", rather than "writing for" or simply just "writing" because it often feels like a conversation. I guess all writing is. I may not get a reply in return, or know who it is I am writing to, how large or (let's be realistic) how small the number of recipients is, but I know that in some way I am having a conversation.

In some sense my diary is also a kind of conversation, but with myself. I write to my future self and to the imagined self I address every time I start an entry. Maybe I even write to children who don't exist yet who might find the diaries when I am long gone, in a kind of narcissistic, morbid way. But I write much more carelessly because the audience or the recipient of that conversation is far away or even entirely imaginary. And now I am writing more and more infrequently because I don't have much to say or I find it boring, sometimes, to list the goings on in my life. I have noticed that when I am sad or distressed I have a lot to say to myself, but when I am happy I don't feel the need to explain or describe it all. Maybe I have grown out of it. Maybe I don't want to face a writing which is so secretive and honest because I don't want to find something in my subconscious which is unhappy.

I write this blog with honesty as well, but in a much more structured way. I think a lot more about what I am going to say, I want it to be written well, I want it to be understood. It is not an incessant record of heartbreak or frustration or confusion. It is a much more interesting conversation, even if I might really be having it with myself.

I suppose the other reason for writing a diary is to remember things you might otherwise forget. But sometimes I don't want to force myself to remember pain, and sometimes I am having so much fun, or I am so contented, that I don't want to come out of the moment and write for a future self I do not know.

But I will always want to remember the thoughts I had when writing to this blog. Often it is braver, more interesting, more telling, than the private things I can only tell myself. It is much less lonely, I suppose, to write to another reader. And no matter whether they respond directly to me, knowing my words are taken in, knowing I am part of a larger conversation than my own, is an undeniable comfort.

Fluffy and cosy.

I have just bought a new pair of jogging bottoms. They are so cosy and warm it feels like my legs are being hugged. In a good way. And now I am tucked up in my brand new bed, with a candle burning and the sky turning grey and I can't help thinking that I was really, really looking forward to this.

Funny, isn't it? How we (this might be quite specific to Brits) crave the warmth of summer all year round until suddenly August has gone on "a bit too long" and sweaty nights with the windows wide open letting all the creepy crawlies set up homes in your room is to be done with. The sooner autumn can come the better. Let the people snuggle indoors with fluffy blankets, for crying out loud!

Maybe I am speaking only for myself. I always find the transition of summer to autumn quite hard. I wish it to either be one or the other so that my goodbye to the hotter months may not be so sad or prolonged as I think of all the things I did, or didn't, do. Like summer is always a hot fling you grow fond of, always knowing it can never last, and that final transition causes a minor heartbreak. Autumn brings new smells, surroundings, cosiness, different food, fires, actually being able to cuddle in bed rather than lying as far as physically possible from your partner. Autumn is a distraction from the sad end to summer and is so full of life, albeit a life coming to its end, that the darker days don't seem quite so depressing as they might feel in February. And, as we all know, February has absolutely nothing going for it.

So finally, after months of sweating and throwing the duvet off, I am cosy and warm in my bed and it is blissful and great.