Writing and the State of Mind.

I saw a YouTube video recently in which it was said that INFJs – of which august club I appear to be a member – are often driven to write because their odd way of seeing the world attracts too much derision in routine conversation with the mass of normal people. Well, whether you give credence to the MBTI system or not, it maybe explains why writing has been so important to me over the last twenty years or so. But there’s a problem:

Over the past few weeks the old depressive tendency has dipped to a new low wherein the more apposite term might be ‘desolation.’ By that I mean the unpleasant sensation of feeling like an empty vessel which has nothing to offer to itself or life in general, and the fallout from this has been the seeming loss of connection with the blog.

I could, of course, have knuckled manfully down and written a few posts on various subjects which I would normally write about, but there would have been a vital ingredient missing. I’ve always strongly believed that in order to have any worth, a blog of this kind must be more than merely the relaying of facts; it needs to factor in other elements such as humour, irony, sarcasm, deep reflection, outrage, and even the occasional foray into the enigmatic and the absurd. I need to do that for my own sake, but such elements arrive instinctively off the top of my head, and the feeling of desolation raised a firm barrier against them. Somebody once told me that it wasn’t so much what I said that she found appealing, but the way in which I said it. Quite so, and that’s why the connection seemed to have been lost.

So will it come back? I don’t know yet, but I hope so. Times change and the mood of the moment is ever in a state of flux, so maybe or maybe not. And I do realise that while my writing might be of substantial importance to me, it matters not a jot to anybody else. Nevertheless, it seemed only fair and considerate to offer this little explanation to those few who have done me the honour of checking in now and then. I hope they understand that I do appreciate and value their interest. Here’s looking at you, kids. (See what I mean?)