Journey to Nothing

[LastThursday]

What is reality?

Imagine a block of cheese.

Imagine something carves that cheese into different shapes.

Reality is the cheese, the shapes, the carving strokes, the tool that carves, and the intelligence that decides where to carve.

[LastThursday]

On 25/06/2020 at 9:01 PM, LastThursday said:

What would you do if you met God? In the street?

Ok let's tone it down.

What would you do if you met your celebrity crush? In the street?

I think there would be many reactions to this:

• Disbelief
• Joy
• Embarrassement
• Walking on by pretending nothing's going on
• Sign the T-shirt I'm wearing. NOW!!
• Selfieeeee!!!!!
• "...Kiss me gosh darnit..." blush
• Don't do anything Ms Celebrity, just keep looking at me me me

Ok Zooey you get the picture. I mean... Anyhow.

How would you even recognise God?

Does God even bother to inhabit a human body anyway? Isn't God some sort of aloof asshole who decides to interfere with your life when you least want it? Didn't God die anyway, wasn't it Nietzsche that killed him, I think...?

Questions. Questions. Questions.

Fuck. What if you are actually God. I mean everyone else is just a normal run-of-the-mill human, but you are actually The God, The Creator. All those poor souls you interact with every day, the people you love and hug and talk to. And all that nature and all those cities and animals and plants and humanity and oceans and stars and galaxies and all that fucking empty space.

What are you supposed to do with all that stuff? Why you? Why this peculiar body with two arms and legs and a head? Why any of it?

What would you want God to actually do, if you met him or her in the flesh?

I just want God to look me in the eye and say "Hey, don't I know you?"

I came across this YouTube and was reminded of my old post. Keanu and Sandra are so clueless. Nicole Kidman? I would actually die. We're just people doing people things.

 

[LastThursday]

Almost exactly a year ago now I voluntarily gave up working. 

Working for other people has never gelled well with me. It got so bad at my previous job that even just talking to the boss would induce a fight or flight reaction, and I was losing sleep at night. It was a real shame in a lot of ways that I came to the decision to quit, the job was perfect in a lot of ways. The office was down the road a less than a ten-minute walk away, but ridiculously and amazingly I got to work from home four days out of five. And, I mostly knew what I was doing very proficiently. What spoiled the broth was me changing job positions within the company about a year before I quit.

I had been doing work for a particular client (which I'm sure I've written about in this journal), but then that client decide to collapse (their company was sold up) and my job position was gone, my bosses since they ran another business moved me over to retain me. But in that move the whole complexion of the thing changed, most of the work I was to do would be directly for my boss and not for a client. Every relationship is different and this one didn't work out so well.

In many jobs I've had many managers who basically treated me badly. Despite having obvious prodigious ability in coding there is something about my character that rubs people up the wrong way. I essentially know what that is: I'm my own person who doesn't tolerate bullshit, I have a lassez faire "mask" to my demeanour and don't do getting flustered or standing to attention. Some bossy people don't like those attributes. And so I get maltreated as a response. I'm reminded of a little competition we had once in one of my previous jobs where we were to design a spinning roulette wheel for a gambling game in HTML. I ended up being the only person to complete the thing in the allotted time - did the bosses award me the prize? No.

So what have I been doing for a year? Not much. That "not much" has to be qualified however, I have been working consistently since 1996 and the last stretch of non-work I had was around 2001 for about 18 months when the dot.com bubble burst. A year of "not much" is nothing, in fact I want to get another year in if I can, and indefinite is my dream. A friend suggested a job opening at his place in London for mega-bucks with the possibility of working from home. I can't bring myself even to contemplate it, it's just more of the same and it fills me with dread.

But that same friend and I were discussing little project that we had in mind to work on. He wants to create a paid or subscription service to get high-school maths questions posted every month for those parents out there. I had an idea for a phone app for hiking. ChatGPT has been instrumental in getting both these ideas off the ground, my main friction being I've never developed for Android or iOS. But I have a working app now, and have been wrangling with 60,000 UK place names and Welsh don't even talk to me about Welsh. But I hope to push something to the Play Store in the next month or two. If I could make a few thousand a month: an app a month say, then I could stay afloat indefinitely. Please god make my dream come true 🧎🙏

[LastThursday]

Things I cannot let go of.

I had another of my weird synchronicities recently. There was a period in my life when these used to happen fairly frequently and I had a love/hate relationship with them. I've never particular been spooked by synchronicities but damn they're very inconvenient at times.

I remember parking up at a friend's once with the intention of just popping in and seeing them for a few minutes. They live in a quiet residential area, but parking is permit only, which she had but I said but I told her I would be quick and not to worry. In the space of those ten minutes I got a ticket. Bear in mind a physical person would have had to give me the ticket. There was no one around when I parked up, and there was no one around when I left!

Aside from synchronicity, there is the weirdness with people. It's particularly hard for me to put my finger on it, but it's mostly the I-think-about-them-and-they-appear effect. Many times I will start thinking about someone absent-mindedly and they will contact me soon after or I bump into them in the street. It could be brushed off as coincidence, in that I think about a lot of people a lot of the time, but those particular instances have a "feel" to them that are different, like a feeling of something imminent approaching. At times it's got so bad that I have to purposefully not think about people! As you can imagine that is quite difficult to do, but thankfully I'm adept at both distraction and quieting my mind.

When I was younger I used to attract a lot of weirdos and randos in the street. I would be minding my own business and they would come up to me and ask me for cigarettes, or money, or directions to some random place I've never heard of, or want to invade my space. My girlfriend at the time in fact used to get so annoyed by the whole thing that she would blame me for "looking at them and encouraging them" - my retort was to say to her "what the hell should I look at then?" lol. But I think it was more than that, there was some kind of vibe I was emanating that was being latched on to by others in need. In fact was I followed by someone like that into my workplace lobby once and security had to deal with them - obviously, I got blamed for that too, for "bringing them into the building", all I could think was WTF? Thank god those days have left me behind. People mostly leave me alone nowadays. Although I did have an odd experience on a train a few years back, which I've written about here already.

Then there are the "bad feeling" vibes I get. One especially salient experience was leaving my car in London (where I don't live) to go on holiday. From the get-go I had a bad feeling about leaving the car there, but for the wrong reasons. The area I left my car in was a little rough and I was concerned it would be broken into or whatever, but I kept telling myself it would be ok. A week later I returned and it was absolutely fine. I needed to reverse out of the tight parking space to get out, and realised I might hit the car behind me and slammed on my brakes - at the point there was an almighty crunch and I thought I had in fact hit the car. No. But now I the car wouldn't move, I tried the ignition the engine was going, but the car was immobile. It turned out that transmission drive shaft - which is a big hunk of metal - had broken in two. Nice.

The great question I cannot let go of is, is this shit real? I think it is. The greater question is can I control it and if so how? I have my theories and it's largely about being in a certain state of mind, attentive, but inattentive, focused but unfocused. It's certainly slippery to grab on to.

Anyway, what was my latest synchronicity? I'd had an odd thought pop up about a YouTube channel I watch called Tokyo Lens. The guy there does a lot of stuff about the culture Japan and what it's like there - I like his energy - but he's not from Japan. At one point though he decided to learn to fly and was going through why it was such a difficult thing to do in Japan etc. That was years ago though and it kind of went cold. Earlier in the week I thought "I wonder what happened to this guy's flying aspirations?" At the same time a friend of mine said he'd lined up some sort of surprise for me, as a thank you for all the hours and days free work I'd given him working on his house etc. That was supposed to be Tuesday, then he said no make it Wednesday. I had no idea what it could be. Lo and behold Wednesday morning this Tokyo Lens guy drops a video about his flying lessons and explains that all those years ago there'd been some sort of accident possibly involving him and it was all on hiatus in Japan - he'd instead gone back to Canada to take up flying lessons again. That synchronicity made me laugh.  Of course the other synchronicity was more ridiculous, my friend had got me this flying lesson the same day:

 

 

Edited September 25 by LastThursday

[MuadDib]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2UTSgMoJp/

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DbLZk36oD0w/

[LastThursday]

@MuadDib I do enjoy your right-brained responses as an antidote to my wordiness, I'll let it marinate.

[LastThursday]

Quote

I am your lover. I am your secret affair. I am the bandit, the pirate, the gypsy. I am the Bedouin riding hard across the desert in white and flowing robes. I will gather you up, my love, I will adore you, I will adorn you, I will praise you, I will serenade you, and when the lights are quiet and your serrated beauty flickers in the shadows, I will caress your hair and lay you down upon silk, upon clouds, and I will put the full weight of my body on your body, and you will bear witness to the picture-perfect reflection of you and me together. This I will do and more. I will delight in your delight. I will give you everything, everything of myself to you entirely, an exhilaration of you and me. You understand all this, don’t you, my love? Yes, I can see in your eyes that you do.

The Alabaster Girl

Damn you Zan Perrion. You may wear a costume, but I can sip coffee.

Quote

 

... the white of the milk slowly sank into the coffee, at first reluctant to mix. But slowly we become entranced with the swirling motion, the tendrils and filigree of forms dancing one inside the other. That physical swirl of beauty in itself becoming ever finer with cycles within cycles until in the limit it seemingly became one motion, one substance. And yet, there was a knowing that the dance still continued at all scales of that microcosm within a cup, never quite one, never quite two, but nevertheless something new and unexpected. We both took to that simple elixir its sensations indelible from our tastes for ever more.

LastThursday

 

 

Edited September 27 by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Ever since Saturday I've been feeling kind of tired.

I went out Saturday with friends about an hour and half away to meet at a country pub, we ate, drank, went for walk - all very pleasant. How many of those of you outside the UK get to stroll by someone's house in a little village that was built in 1637 and talk to the owner about its history? We're spoilt so many ways in this country.

But come Sunday I felt sleepy the whole day. And that tiredness hasn't left me, I want to return to my sprightly self. That phrase has been niggling away at me. I have a love hate relationship with this forum. Yes, part of it is to do with the idiocy of the way the forum is, the people in it, but also that the forum is insignificant in the same way that a cafe down the road is insignificant - and yet I seem to keep returning to it. It gets under my skin that I choose to get embroiled in its stupidity, I AM above it, both in maturity and common sense. It is not the place for me and I get no substance from it any more. I suspect I'm probably one of the oldest guys here too - I really do have a different perspective from everyone here.

The main thrust of why I do so is that I know that I need to keep introspecting, something within me compels me to do it. It is a way of forcing my hand. But when I do so it sucks the little life I do have out of me. It's like holding up a mirror and seeing my reality for what it is and I don't like it. I don't like it because I have no answer for how to change the bad bits. At 53 years I've run out of steam, I've done so many things in my life that the excitement and freshness got drained out me. I remember that optimistic, excitable, energetic and flirtatious youth I was. I was immature yes, but I was also more vibrant and full of life. 

Earlier this week, I was minding my own business, but found myself idly curious about a police-woman walking on the other side of the street.  She was older, tanned and chiselled in her features, very serious. But we made eye contact and for an instant I could see her soften, nearly smile, before she realised what was happening, and carried on looking away seriously again. THAT. That is the real me. That I miss. I used to flirt with anyone who'd care to pay attention to me. I wasn't trying to pull - although sometimes I was - more like I was saying "this is me, let's play". A friend of mine calls me "The Wolf" and for good reason, he remembers who I was before. Maybe I was a wolf, I like to roam the outdoors, I like the chase!

I read the signs of things that go on around me, my tiredness is just that, both a literal and figurative one. It would be nice to sleep and start dreaming a different dream from this one. Don't worry I'm not suicidal, I've been through all that and out of the other side. No, there is no easy escape, instead I must go through it. Other people depend on my presence, my dad, my sister, my nephews and nieces, my friends; and I decided a long time ago that  I couldn't do it to them. In fact I couldn't bear it going wrong either, I don't need that hell.

I find it useful to get out my thoughts in this journal. I could just as well make a private one for my eyes only. But I always was a bit of an exhibitionist by nature, it all fits together with those other things I mentioned above. I really don't care if no one responds to what I write, it's enough that others see it. My energy, the good, the bad, and the ugly is held up for scrutiny, and disseminated for others to make what they will of it.

It's not all bad. The large tract of introspection and self-scrutiny I've gone through has sharpened my wits, made me see far more clearly, and made me a lot wiser than I once was, even in the short time I've pissed around on this forum. I'm less of a try-hard than I used to be, I do actually flow in life and my interactions with people day-to-day, something that I've always sought after, mostly overcoming the autistic hurdles I was born with. In fact I just don't care if I'm awkward, absent-minded, or that my "mask" drops at times. Social interaction for me - as much as I've always loved it - has always been hard work. Only now at 53 can I say that I've nearly cracked it FFS.

I need more. Yet another phase in my life. I want it to start now. But I'm a bumbling idiot who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. I feel like I've hibernated for long enough now, and I'm desperate to stretch and wake up. I don't know what that looks like, and perhaps it isn't going to be handed to me on a platter either. But I know one thing, I need to have a word with that younger me, mug him, and steal back that flirtatious, playful energy I once had. Cheers to that!

Edited September 29 by LastThursday

[Yimpa]

On 6/2/2026 at 3:13 AM, LastThursday said:

What is reality?

Imagine a block of cheese.

Imagine something carves that cheese into different shapes.

Reality is the cheese, the shapes, the carving strokes, the tool that carves, and the intelligence that decides where to carve.

nom nom nom

[LastThursday]

You've got to love that tasty non-dual cheese.

 

I slept, I breathed heavily into a brown paper bag. And, I've still got my wonky humour at least, I didn't lose that. What will happen, will happen organically and without too much forcing (keep breathing). Whether I chose to stay on this forum or not is irrelevant to the great scheme of things. It will stop when it stops. All of life is ephemeral and grabbing on to things too tightly is a recipe for suffering. Constantly having to letting go of potential and people is also a recipe for suffering. Being alive is both - suck it up Guillermo. Carry on...

 

[LastThursday]

Quote

 

Let's return to the main point of hemisphere difference, division versus cohesion. Since the notorious Cartesian subject-object divide, philosophy has grappled with the spectre of solipsism. To know something is to encounter something other, and know it as separate from ourselves. If all I am certain of is my own existence (cogito ergo sum), how does one ever cross the gap? For the solipsist, there is nothing to encounter, since all we know stems from our own mind alone according to Wittgenstein, the solipsist is like someone who tries to make the car go faster by pushing against the dashboard from the inside. There is a paradox here, too: the position is self-undermining, in that it nonetheless demands another mind, another consciousness that can constitute the solipsist (as Hegel's master needs the slave in order to be a master): to use the term 'I' requires the possibility of there being something which is 'not I' - otherwise, in place of 'all that is, is mine', we just get the vacuous 'all that is mine, is mine'.

The Master and His Emissary - Iain McGilchrist

 

Entirely my take on it too. Solipsism is entirely like the "this statement is false" paradox. The solution is to take the 'I' out of solipsism, but then it becomes something else: a self-defining field of consciousness entirely without ground.

[LastThursday]

I held the Moon in my hands, her once subtle illumination extinguished. I did not understand how this could be. Hadn't I wanted to cherish her beauty and hold her tightly, so dear to me as the thought was? She, the Moon, weighed heavily in my hands, cupped. I slowly opened my hands and watched intently hoping for a sign of redemption, there was none, she had disappeared. In a melancholic panic I searched hill and valley for her until the dawn drew closer and brighter. And in my tiredness I slept by the river; a full day passed, waking only in the darkest part of night. And there! In the water reflected shone a silvery light I knew well. I cupped my hands once again and drank the cool water and at once looked up, whilst she looked down at me.

[LastThursday]

I have to lean into my God given intelligence instead of trying to hide behind it. What I mean by that is that I've used my intelligence at times as a kind of shield or weapon against the nasty old world. It keeps throwing difficult things my way and I've never been the brutish or dogged kind of person, instead I improvise and parry with my brain. It requires a sharpness of observation, mental rehearsal and a great deal of experimentation. This journal is a microcosm of the way I deal with the world. Experimentation makes me chaotic at times, as this journal shows; there's a constant kind of probing of the world around me to see what happens when I poke it. 

I do have a strong academic kind of intelligence born out of necessity with fitting into society and school and university and work - but I've also always had an inherent joy of symbolism and its magic for its own sake, the culmination of which is the life-giving ability to survive by manipulating symbols as my job: information technology.

However, I also have a strong intuitive intelligence which is not based in symbology. My academic brain doesn't find it particularly easy to categorise that intuition. I have a strong affinity for music, for art, for theatre, and for all those non-verbal forms of intelligence. When I sit at the piano and noodle, I employ both types of intelligence, I learn the symbolic musical score and learn pieces that way, but I also improvise and create intuitively. It's the same with writing, I adore the letters and shapes of words and how they fit together (the how), but also my intuition largely guides what I write.

I know intimately how a large part of the world around me works. I'm largely silent about this with others because despite that understanding being largely academic, the real-time expression of that knowing is intuitive and doesn't need words to explain it. This is especially so with the understanding of human nature I have, but I've got to admit unlike the understanding of a machine such as a computer which is finite, humans are anything but - they are an endless form of learning that I'm still embodying, I even don't fully understand myself yet. Reality is absolutely insane.

My intelligence both the symbolic and flowing strands gives me a lot of frustration and I sometimes feel like it's always ready to explode, there's a lot of inherent inner tension to it. I feel an impulse to constantly raise my intelligence to push it as far as it can go, it has a natural momentum to it and very regularly surprises me, especially the intuitive aspects of it. Other people have muscles, determination, hard work, self-worth, conformity to rely on, my identity is my intelligence, intelligence is my identity. I both fit into this world and don't fit into this world, intelligence is a double-edged sword. Society is hungry for it, and yet the masses care more about those other things: using intelligence rather than embodying intelligence.

But my intelligence isn't mine. I am honestly humble. I was just lucky to have had some iota of it when I was born into this world, and my intelligence has been its own springboard - I don't lord it over others and I try and give mine freely if I can. There are greater intelligences than mine, different intelligences, beautiful intelligences, intelligences I hardly recognise, a whole community of them. And of some of those, mine is pallid next to them.

[LastThursday]

It's interesting to me to see how to try and use metaphorical language effectively. I don't think this is particularly natural to most people me included, even though English is full of metaphorical phrases and sayings such as the goose that laid the golden egg. It's a little bit of a complex idea but I'll see if I can explain its usage. 

The first time I encountered this sort of thing was about twenty years ago when I did several NLP (Neuro-linguistic Programming) courses back-to-back. NLP is a hodge-podge of techniques garnered from different experts in the field of therapy around the 1970's. One of those experts was Milton Erickson who mostly used language and metaphor to hypnotise his patients into recovery. It's a bold claim that this is even possible, but Erickson was by all accounts very effective. The founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, essentially mimicked these experts in their mannerisms and use of language and found that they too could perform the same miracles with patients. They went on to deconstruct and turn their findings into a coherent picture.

Erickson's shtick was to use stories about seemingly completely unrelated things as a vehicle for recovery. For example in one instance there was a patient, a florist, with a malignant growth who was in great pain (more here: https://www.ericksoninstitute.it/en/38/palliative-care/one-day-at-the-time/). He used a story about growing a tomato plant as a metaphor for their patient's real-world facial growth, to give them pain relief. There is the canonical series of books on his techniques: Patterns of the Hypnotic Techniques of Milton Erickson (I and II) for more information.

The main thrust of (Ericksonian) metaphorical usage is that it mimics something concrete or mundane and turns it into a story. The Hero's Journey is an archetypical metaphor which dresses up something mundane like "getting things done" as a mythic quest. The genius of this is that our brains latch on to stories a lot more easily than a series of instructions or a procedure, but we are also extremely good at interpreting metaphor and applying to ourselves. In some sense it flies under the radar of our normal day-to-day reasoning, and allows something to be absorbed with less friction than it would otherwise. The ancients used story telling as a vehicle for memorisation and transmission of culture, think of the Icelandic sagas or Greek epic poetry.

I'm reading The Master and His Emmisary at the moment, in which Ian McGilchrist explains how the two halves of the brain actually work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pvr_gubcWUk ). He argues that the left half of the brain deals with categorising and deconstructing the world, and the right half deals with the world in whole, its context, and it understands humour and indirectness - one half narrows in, the other expands out. Whilst story telling has procedural elements (left brain), it's the right brain that interprets its context and relationship to everything else, it's the right brain that understands metaphor. So in a strong sense Ericksonian hypnosis largely bypasses the left brain and targets the right.

This way of transmitting information is extremely useful and effective. I'm reminded of Buddhist Koans which work in exactly that way, and politics runs largely on storytelling and "ideals" to excite the masses. 

Now, I don't go around hypnotising everyone with my language, that would be ridiculous. But it has made me much more aware of when others use metaphorical language and get confused by it. The confusion occurs because they take the metaphor for reality rather than a description of reality, they really become the hero on a quest. This forum of full of this sort of thing, this-is-that metaphorical equivalences, because essentially we're trying to describe something that isn't describable. We're describing right-brain holistic views with left-brain categorisation and metaphor is the bridge between the two.

I've experimented with injecting more story based and somewhat poetic and metaphorical stuff on occasion here. I'm not sure it lands, and it's hit and miss as to whether what I want to get over is actually understood, but that is the case any way with normal prose. I'll persevere and experiment as it fits in with my theatricality, and its fun!

Edited yesterday at 08:46 AM by LastThursday
typos, style

[LastThursday]

I'm going to splurge out some thoughts this morning. I'll write till I run out of steam.

Thinking about some of the posts on magick in the forum has made me realise that instead of consuming ideas about it or cogitating over it, that I should actually just do it. It's not something I've ever consistently dabbled in. So since I've got large expanses of free time on my hands, I'm going to spend the next month actually practising what I know. Typically, I'm attracted to Chaos Magick since that effectively involves a pick-and-mix approach to things which is me all over. My sole intention is to use it on myself (inwardly) rather than to affect people (outwardly) - self-change, but if this causes changes in my externality then so be it. I want to employ ritual, as well as more mental aspects, working with entities or whatever comes. However despite my general randomness in approach I need a mythic (metaphorical) approach to give things some structure and to bypass my doubting Thomas of a chattering mind. On my walk this morning I came up with several phases:

Consolidation - reappraise myself, my past, my connections with people, my current circumstances, my history, the structure of my current psyche. Highlighting any emotional tensions, resentments, regrets. Thinking about what I want and what's needed in future.

Death - letting go, severing and saying goodbye to those things that are holding me back, restricting me, not serving me well. Remove any psychic blockages, anything potentially being imposed (supernaturally) from others, mental obligations from others being imposed on me from afar, removing ill will past and present. Creating a circle of protection from any future incursions into my psyche. Creating a tabula rasa.

Opening - probably the most vulnerable part of the process. Opening up my body's energy to the universe. Heightening my awareness. Being more receptive to my externalities. Being outward facing. Allowing myself flexibility, fluidity of thought, character and appearance. Being open to new experiences. Pushing myself out. Letting my latent talents, abilities and core character out and giving them all breathing room, acceptance, allowing.

Rebirth - letting the new things bed in. Getting comfortable with any new changes. Taking stock of the process so far and if more needs to be done. 

The above stages are WIP and may change in order or character, don't know yet, I may have to just roll with it.

I won't document my process as I do it, for fear of disrupting the work. But I may well document things afterwards if there's anything I think will be useful to others that I've learnt. Watch this space. I start tomorrow.

Edited 11 hours ago by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Do you think you could land a plane? 

This video made me think about all the sometimes impossible situations that life throws at you, and makes you realise that in the moment you will react very very differently to how you think you would. I once watched a person being run over and thrown up in the air like a ragdoll, what did I do? I froze like a rabbit in the headlights.

The lesson is that it's ok to not know what to do sometimes, things can get beyond your control or abilities and you're not a worse person for it. The other lesson is that it is possible to cope in nearly impossible situations, humans are resilient.

Could you land a plane?  A jumbo? Absolutely no chance without help, and nearly no chance with help. A small plane, possibly, if you know the controls already:

 

Edited 11 hours ago by LastThursday

[LastThursday]

Consolidation

I've never openly talked about my sexuality with anyone. How is it I've gone 53 years without ever discussing this with anyone? 

To my mind there a several confounding reasons why I've never been open about it. The main one is that my internal world is sovereign to me and has absolutely nothing to do with other people. I don't want my inner world warped by other people's prejudices and labels or even advice. There's a strong sense of defiance and self-worth involved in that stance. My fear about being out is exactly that stigma this attached to being different - I have a strong need to fit in without having to defend myself constantly.

Other reasons are that even if I were to be open about it I would still get "pigeonholed" into one category or another, and I would forever be pretzled into that shape. I would very strongly need to maintain my flavour of sexuality against that conformity.

Thirdly, I don't have a strong mental model of what my sexuality is. It isn't something that I've thought about to any great depth. Its expression is fully in the realm of the non-verbal, in other words it is hard to think about. But here I am trying to do just that and hoping that some clarity about what I should do comes out of it - if anything.

Most of my early years were spent around females. The prominent people in my life were my mother, my grandmother and my female teachers in school. My father whilst I looked up to him was only constantly present in my very early years, and was and still isn't very masculine in character - he wasn't my role model at all, not consciously. My default working mode was feminine in character. This sort of thing is fine young kids they're mostly not inherently strongly gendered in any case, other than that being enforced through clothing and stereotypes about what a boy and a girl are. I grew up in the 70's and 80's when gender conformity was a lot stronger and expected than it is today. And that is a salient point, that delineation into boy and girl is embedded into my psyche, and so was never a point of contention for me even into my 30's.

However.

Even into my late adulthood I was somewhat more unconsciously feminine in some of my character traits. When I was young, say five or so, I would often get confused as a girl by my mother's friends and she would often have to reiterate that I was a boy. I suspect my mother always wanted girls and wasn't much interested in boys, at least she had my sister! But I'm pretty sure this had a subtle effect on things in general, and others were picking up on that energy. And possibly that energy also ingrained itself into my young mind. 

One of my best friends at high school turned out to be gay. In many ways it was an odd friendship, totally non-sexual mind, but he really was a social butterfly and I was the straight man (in both senses!) being mostly very introverted and somewhat out-of-place mostly. But whatever, there was some underlying tacit knowledge there between around sexuality.

At that point I don't ever remember being conscious of fancying blokes. I was (and still am) very much into girls, and was hung up on several of them at school, mostly just crushes. But there was an unspoken underlying current of enjoying faces in general, male or female. I've always been very curious about and attracted to faces, above all else. There is a very fine line between curiosity and attraction.

I think my underlying feminine traits were often picked up on as an adult, and variously interpreted. At university my sister was convinced I was gay for while, but I just didn't know it. She "arranged" an encounter with kind of friend of a friend of the family. That was my one and only - so far - interaction with a man. But whatever at that particular point in time I was not into this guy in an particular, and there the matter rested any my sister gave up insisting.

My half brother is gay and possibly this is where my sister got the notion from. He used to run a cabaret in a pub in London and do drag. My father and I would visit him at times doing his act, and I would get very noticeable attention from gay men, my father would "defend" me saying I wasn't gay. Hilarious. I suspect I just gave off feminine vibes at times. I laughed and smiled a lot, and flirted with anyone, very unmanly.

 

Sheesh. I must do lunch and watch a friend paint his shed (my life has come to this). To be continued...

[LastThursday]

... the shed got painted. Now where was I? Oh yes, I was outing myself.

Things in general continued this way. But some people noticed the way I was around others, and I was asked outright by my manager (of all people) if I was bi, I was probably about 30 at that time. That really took me aback at the time because it had never even occurred to me that that could be the case. I was so innocent about the whole thing that I wondered "what exactly made him think that about me?".  I outright said no, but a seed of awareness had been sown. There were a few gay guys in one of the departments in the college I worked in, and because I flitted between departments (gathering software requirements) I would talk regularly with a lot of folks. I think my general demeanour and interaction with those guys must have been noticed. But, it was also well known that there was a woman in the finance department I crushed on badly. Hence 2 + 2 = bi.

That characterisation bothered me for a long time. Firstly because I'd been so unconscious about "how I was" around certain people, some men in particular, and secondly about how I would be perceived by women. It broke through the bubble of my innocence. You see it's very hard to see yourself from a detached point of view, how you feel and behave is largely learnt and expressed unconsciously. It's like having a funny walk, you yourself don't think you walk strangely, but it's as clear as day to other people.

That question about being bi, forced me into awareness and made me consciously try to pull back on any behaviours that made me seem "different". I felt a strong need to man up and conform - I just did not want the label no matter what - I'd already spent most of my life feeling different and didn't need any more of that thank you. It was a very difficult process to sort out for me and took many years of watching myself and being aware of my behaviours, especially around men. I mostly succeeded in being more masculine in my expression overall, but I can still slip at times especially with alcohol. Drink responsibly kids.

For a long while also I've found myself cross-dressing, secretly trying on a girlfriends' clothing in their absence. Tights are thing for me for some reason. And if I could just shave my legs and present as a full on woman in public when I was in the mood I would. My face is too masculine for it though, although I'm a bit of twink physically. Women get to wear some cool shit! Is no fair.

So. I know I'm attracted to women definitely. But am I attracted to men? This is a question I find super hard to answer with any certainty. I'm in general not attracted to men's bodies as I am to women's. I am more attracted to pretty looking men, for a flavour of that: Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, David Bowie, Johnny Depp etc. But I can also appreciate a good physique in a man, muscular but not overly so: Bruce Lee. But I'm not gushy about it like I would be with a woman like Zooey Deschanel or Nicole Kidman or Zhang Ziyi. Whether I've overly repressed my attraction to men or not I don't know at all, but I do know it's currently very asymmetric as compared to my attraction to women.  

Would I outright want to out myself as part of my process in the next month? My immediate gut reaction is no, but I may have to shed that in future and take the consequences. This is mostly in the name of authenticity and releasing that tension around suppressed expression. I do know that things are far more accepted now than they were, but it still isn't necessarily easy. My life is built around presenting as a het male, even if I go to that coffee shop just to see that guy. Shrug.