I'd just like to say thank you if you've decided to keep up with my blogs, I've had over 120 views since I started, and right okay I'm hardly going viral, but to those of you who are tuning in, thanks a bunch; I love writing, and I'm incredibly skilled in the art of procrastination, so to do both is pretty good use of my time I should think!
Right so this week, as the title might suggest, hasn't been the best. I won't go into all the ins and outs of my fascinating life because too many blogs are used like diaries and I'm not aiming for that, otherwise we might all be here a lot longer than we planned to be. I'm hoping some of you can relate to the way I'm feeling right now; genuinely unmotivated in every sense of the word, completely useless and generally quite fed up of life at the moment. It must be the time of year, because from talking to a few friends, I'm not the only one! As David Mitchell pointed out in one of his sketches recently, after around the 26th December we all turn into the miserable people of Januaryland, a complete contrast to the wonderfully happy, reindeer loving people of Christmasland. Pretty sure I should be the poster child Januarianism. It was only Friday just gone that I actually had a bit of a thought for this week's blog. I was flicking through ITVPlayer and came across a two part series "Inside Death Row with Trevor McDonald" - sounds so cheerful, right? Usually, I'd avoid these things at all costs, but it had actually been recommended to me by a friend that knew I was interested in Psychology (and Criminology, a little) and so I thought I'd give it a go.
If you want to know what happens, go and watch it, I won't spend ages describing it, but it really goes without saying that bits of it were a bit tough to watch; there were 12 guys on death row in this high-security prison, each of whom had committed unthinkable crimes. Part of me, though, was fascinated by listening to these men speak. For the most part, they sounded well spoken, and if you met one under normal circumstances, you'd probably think they were just respectable middle-aged men with a few tattoos from their younger years. This led me to think about what choices they had made in their lives. These men have nothing but time, they were confined within 4 walls for 23 hours a day, and so a lot of thinking and reading etc had been done, purely because they had no access to whatever might have interested them before.
As I do, I began to think about how this, on a much less extreme scale, could apply to us as average non-criminal people! There are always going to be times when things just don't go perfectly, and we make mistakes, but it's only when we're really forced to (most of us) that we actually go out of our way to try something new, and maybe, during a bad time, that's what we needed. These men obviously made unforgivable mistakes in their lives, no-one can dispute that, and if you watch it, you'll know, but being stuck in a cell for 7 years or so really turned them around. It's just unfortunate that it's too late. If, before, they had read those books, or spent a few days furthering themselves from the world to gather thoughts and contemplate who they really wanted to be, they might not have ended up making those mistakes.
Now, I'm not saying that when you have a bad week, you'll end up in prison for homicide, because even from me, that's a little pessimistic, but I think there's a valuable idea to come out of this; take interest, take time, before you're forced to.
"Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging." - Joseph Campbell
When I was younger, I spent some time in hospital, and it was while I was confined to my bed that I learned my love of drawing, and more importantly, of music. Since I was very young, music has been my escape, and I've always found sitting down at the piano very therapeutic, but what I should be asking is why was i that I didn't make that choice to try something new before I had no other choice?
Thought #3? Try something new, whether it's finding a new game, baking your first batch of brownies, or writing a story, you might just enjoy it, and it might just save you from making a mistake, or getting too wrapped up in the repetitive nature of life that you end up unresponsive the the world around you. A bad week is perfectly acceptable, and definitely not unheard of (!), but take a few hours to lift yourself out of it, can't do any harm, surely.
Right, apologies for a bit of a harrowing post, but I'm hoping I've put a positive spin on it all, here's to next week being better than the last! Keep reading!
S'me. Over and out.
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