Why?

I studiously avoided any connection with social networking until just a few months before I started this blog but once I started a Facebook page, it became irresistible to record my views, thoughts and opinions as status updates.  I found this practice both rewarding and internally liberating.  I finally had an outlet for my unresolved need to self-express, which is something that I had not been able to explore since retiring from the workforce towards the end of 2010.  Facebook, the world of one-line messages, may not be the best place to vent ones inner person but, having very few ‘friends’, it didn’t really matter who, if anybody, read or took any notice of my musings.  That may well also prove to be the case here, and again it doesn’t really matter, but the possibilities of reaching a wider audience, I find quite intriguing.

Why use a blog title of ‘Not Something Else’?  Well, for the entire 67 years of my life so far, I have been aware that I do not fit into, at least in my own self-perception and (as far as I can tell) other people’s perception of me, any of the general ‘categories’ that most other people seem to regard as being ‘normal’.  I do not feel, and never have felt, at all comfortable in thinking of myself as being ‘one of the crowd’ or of ticking all the boxes in any of the lists of generally accepted social attributes.  I am comfortable and have grown ever more comfortable as time has passed, with being ‘different’, or an ‘odd-ball’.  This is not to say that I am bereft of social graces, or that I am a social outcast.  I have for example achieved some academic success, been married twice and successfully raised, to the extent that I was able (and by that I mean that none of them have become axe-murderers or the like), six children.   I have achieved reasonable success in my various chosen careers and have always been sought after for my integrity, knowledge and reliability.  So how am I different to anyone else?  My answer to that is that I have never had nor sought to have anyone that I could consider to be a close friend.  Someone that I could call on for advice or comfort.  Nor has anyone, that I am aware of, ever sought to be my close friend.  This is not a complaint, whinge or expression of self-pity.  It is who I am.  Me.  Or, as the blog title says, ‘Not Something Else’.  I have long ago accepted who I am and, in many ways, I am very grateful and happy with my condition and situation.  How many people can say that?  I have of course in earlier days tried to be different.  That is all part of growing up.  But none of those attempts lasted for very long.  It is too much hard work, not being yourself.   I have always been very big on watching, observing, listening, analysing, integrating the good, discarding the not so good, building the inner self, nourishing the need for self-reliance.  I am known for not doing a lot of talking and I avoid social occasions whenever possible because I can only tolerate a social chit-chat situation for a few (5-10)minutes, after which every fibre of my being starts screaming to get me out of there.  Not the greatest conversationalist, me.  But put me in front of a keyboard, alone, or in a place where I can shut out the noise of the world around me, and the words simply flow from my two fore-fingers.  Yes, even after 30+ years in the computer profession I still type the two-fingered way.  It will ever be the same.  I don’t have a brain that can co-ordinate more than two things at the same time.  I have never excelled at playing musical instruments, dancing, sport or any other spatially oriented activity that necessitates a degree of physical co-ordination, for the same reason.

So, I plan to record the contents of my complex wandering mind here from time to time about such things as my increasingly simple life and how my observations and readings tell me the future can be expected to unfold and whatever advice I can give in that regard plus anything else that appears to me to be potentially beneficial to others.