Tag: Monday

Help!

How soon they forget…

I tried to return to WordPress on Monday, having been away for a few short weeks and I couldn’t get on.  At least, I could, but only as somebody else can get on – e.g. not as me.  I appeared as an interloper in my own blog.  I could view, but not edit.  As things stand, I have no idea whether I am actually there or not: whether I can be read or not, whether the me that I see is the me that you see.  Time will tell.  It will have to because I have exhausted my entire IT knowledge on the problem: I have turned the laptop off, counted to twenty and then turned it on again; I have hit ctrl/alt/delete; I have pounded esc until my index finger got numb.

Still, by now I will know, because before I finish this, it will all be in the past.  Tomorrow will arrive before I try again and I’m hoping that by then (yesterday by the vagaries of the schedule button) in the wake of being turned off overnight, my pc might allow me to log on to WordPress as me because – quite honestly – I’m not at all sure that I’m ready to see me as everybody else does.  I mean, what if I don’t like me?  What if I don’t really understand me?  (Ah, can you see where this is going now?)

Taking time out to consider whether you would like yourself if you were not yourself is seldom destined to end well.  Imagine that you rather like the way you are.  Those who encourage self-love have never really taken the time to consider how that might be viewed down the pub.  It sounds great on paper – especially if you were (as I was) around in the 1960’s – but it’s never going to get you a girlfriend.  The phrase ‘He really loves himself’ is seldom spoken as a compliment.

Try making a list of all the things that you like about yourself and another of all the things you do not like (you will find ‘compulsive list-maker’ at the top of the ‘don’t like’ list) and you will discover that one list is very much longer than the other.  Those with longer ‘self-loving’ lists are known as narcissists and will go on to become President of one of the world’s major economies, or a Neighbourhood Watch co-ordinator.  Those with the longer ‘self-loathing’ records will go on to be normal.  Normal people do not go in for self-love.  Given time, normal people will learn to develop self-tolerance.  Most people can just about put up with themselves on a good day.

So, I’m very much hoping that by the time I approach WordPress with today’s little offering, it will allow me to see me as only I am meant to do: that it allows me to extract my foot from my mouth before anybody knows I have put it in there and it allows me to polish up the odd epithet before anyone notices the shabbiness of my syntax.  If it does, you will view me as ever you have and I will be happy with that.  If it does not, I will face some awkward truths with my usual fortitude – and you may never hear from me again…

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody’s help in any way
But now these days are gone
I’m not so self assured
Now I find I’ve changed my mind
And opened up the doors… Help! – The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)

P.S. I do not appear to have a similar problem in reading your posts and I am enjoying catching up with you all again.  Unfortunately I do appear to be having difficulty in making comments.  I am working on a solution and I think some may be getting through.  I am hoping for divine intervention – if it hasn’t all been used up by somebody else…

The Problem

Photo by Tara Winstead on Pexels.com

Monday is always the problem.

Although to be fair, because of the way I do this thing, Monday is not always Monday.  It could, in fact, be any day of the week, but it is almost always the day on which I decide exactly what I am going to ‘talk’ about in my first post of the week.  That being Monday.  I have, furthermore, occasionally written Monday’s post a day or two after Wednesday’s or Friday’s which could, themselves, have been written who-knows-when, but I seldom worry about them.  Even if they happen to be Monday.

Still with me?  You should be very proud of yourself.

Anyway, today being an ersatz Monday, I am here staring at a blank sheet of paper with an open world ahead of me and no idea of where I want to go…  Ersatz.  Now there’s an interesting word.  I’ve no idea of where it came from nor why it came into my head (other than the space was freely available).  Does it even mean what I think it does?  Well, the dictionary says ‘substitute, usually inferior’ so it will do.  As I am writing Monday, then today must be, for all intents and purposes, a substitute Monday, albeit without the foreboding sense of ‘what’s going to go wrong this week?’ hanging over it.  Monday without strings: my own little Pinocchio – only without the annoying little insect on its shoulder.  A chance to let my imagination run free…

…To where?  Yes, well, that’s when the ‘no strings’ analogy starts to unravel like a macramé plant holder…  Does anyone actually make macramé anymore I wonder?  Was a day when every household had a resident macramé-er: plant hangers all over the house, knotted placemats, a cover for the toilet roll.  You don’t see them now.  Maybe nobody has the time these days.  Or the string…  Anyhow, as I was saying, Monday – whatever day it is actually on – is decision day: what to whittle on about (or more likely, given my propensity for prolonged and aimless whittling, what not to whittle on about) this week, because although Monday is only one post, it tends to set the pattern for the whole week.  It sets the tone.

And my wife tells me that I am tone-deaf, although I don’t think I can be, because I listen to music all the time.  Of course, there is always the possibility that, to everyone else, it doesn’t sound like music…  Not entirely likely I must admit.  I was in the choir when I was at school, until puberty robbed me of my vibrato, but I must admit, I do find it difficult to hold a tune these days.  My grasp of key is rather like a politician’s grasp of truth: very fluid.  I once reduced my wife to tears whilst trying to sing ‘Happy Birthday to You’ in a key, and to a tune, that may well have been familiar only in the outer reaches of the galaxy.

I could not function without music.  When I am at home I play it all the time, but now I have started to wonder what I am actually hearing.  Is it the same as everybody else, or is what I am hearing just the same kind of jumbled mess that seems to come out of my mouth when I try to sing?  Do I just imagine that it has some kind of tune?  I never write without music playing, but now the thought that what I am hearing is, in some way, inferior to what everyone else is hearing – ersatz music – really bothers me.  It stops me concentrating and now I have no idea of what I wanted to say.

That’s the problem with Monday…