Mr Omneo Blogs…

A happy ending or a broken heart? If you could skip to the end when you met someone what would you hope for? Some people reading this will say, “happy ending” without ever considering that you would want the other but I’m sure there will be some who long for the broken heart.

As always, a tune wandered thru my head which prompted this entry. A few things have been milling thru the old grey matter and I realise that this is as good a place as any to empty them out in. It’s a slightly strange feeling making an entry here as there are an increasing number of people I know reading this. I guess it was only to be expected, you make a blog, post it on your site and sooner or later people will find 10 minutes to kill and read it. At first I thought perhaps I should censor myself but then thought, why the hell should I? It’s my head and they are my thoughts so surely I can disperse of them as I see fit?

For many years I was stuck in a rut, I did and thought the same way for many years. When I met someone, particularly someone I liked, I skipped to the end in my head and only ever saw the broken hearted ending, often that was before even saying hello! I worried about what to say if I did speak with someone, constantly I was thinking, “If I say this and she says that, what will I say then?” this of course led to multiple scenarios and in the space of 5 minutes I’d talked myself out of saying anything at all.

I remember explaining this to my shrink and he asked me a simple question, “Why do you feel you need to know what to say? Why not just wait and see what happens?” It was so simple and straightforward, why hadn’t I ever thought of it? There I was for 15 years or so believing I had to ‘know’ what to say… so bloody stupid and idea but an idea I seemed to cling to like a comforter (Like that reference? It’s to make American readers feel more at home!)

And so it is today, well it was yesterday when the revelation hit me… For the past few months I’ve been busy thinking about this and that and getting my head in a right pickle when I remembered what the shrink asked me. Here I was again thinking ahead, forgetting that there may be an enjoyable journey in front of me but I was too busy skipping to the end to notice it. I sometimes miss my shrink, I miss that ability to just talk without fear of being judged. It’s hard to be completely open with friends as they are always going to be biased and no matter how much you ask them to be 100% honest, they feel they need to ‘be nice’ so only ever tell you 90% at best!

It’s all about conditioning, I have to condition my brain to stop getting ahead of itself. It’s time to enjoy the flowers that are currently blooming instead of thinking about the onset of winter and how everything will look in hibernation mode. I’m liked and I like people, that’s reason enough to be happy, is it not?

So, are you still reading? Were you wondering what the song was that I was thinking about? It was The Futureheads – Skip to the end, feel like a listen? Here it is

Well, what a bizarre weekend I’ve had and it’s only just hit Sunday!

The week itself has been a strange one, lots of thoughts being processed over and over again and each time the end result is marginally more confusing than the previous time. Needless to say I am as further forward now as I was 20 years ago.

I have no idea what I want in life, the moment I thought I did was really only the moment I realised I was still a lifetime away from figuring it out. I think/would like to believe I know what I want, based upon what I know I can realistically expect to achieve. Romantically I have had to spend time sorting my head out and accepting that perhaps my ‘first’ choice is always going to be unattainable so I should stop day-dreaming and move further down the list. The only thing is I just long for the one I now tell myself I can never have. The problems with being a romantic fool are many and varied, trust me on this one!

I’ve been asked for my hand in marriage and the hand in question would get £750 in used notes from my Australian wife who desires to stay in the country and is looking for an off the peg husband de jour. The problem is I feel I’m worth a little more than £750 so I think I’ll say no but who knows, a few sambucas and she may well talk me into thinking it’s a great idea?! (I know she’s too tight to buy the sambuca so I guess I’m safe!)

Regular readers will have read about how I planned on meeting Amy in April and in the end we didn’t catch up. Well today, after six and a half years, we finally caught up with each other in Oxford Street and had a drink and a natter. It was most strange, this was our first meeting since Jan 2000 and whilst we’ve chatted via MSN and the telephone since, it was a strange meeting. Part of me felt like I was sitting with a close friend but the conversation was a little tricky as I realised subconsciously that I didn’t really know her. That said I can easily see what it was that attracted me to her in the first place, she is so refreshingly down-to-earth you can’t help but think the sun shines out of her pert backside (not that I was looking!)

Tomorrow I’m off to some wildlife park/zoo… no real idea where it is just know I have to be ready at 10am for my lift… edit I went to Whipsnade Wild Animal Park, first time there, was great! Photo’s

In closing let me ask you this… when you think you know what you want, even after you’ve told yourself it’s impossible to attain and you go for it…

what do you do when you get cold feet shortly after starting? Is it OK to feel like you shouldn’t have bothered as you knew you were always going to fail and is it OK to think yourself an idiot for giving up at the first sign of something non dreamlike?

If I get what I want now, how on earth can I plan for the future when I will no longer have control of what the future might be?

Not many people I know have ever heard of Clifford T Ward, those that I do meet usually know his song ‘Homethoughts from Abroad’, which I first heard Terry Wogan play on BBC Radio 2, that encouraged me to harness the force of the internet and do a ‘google search’ – notice I didn’t use the term that Google would rather we didn’t use? I mean who still says they Googled anyway?? It’s sooooo last season

So anyway, I found the website of the Friends of Clifford T Ward and discovered that Clifford developed multiple sclerosis at the age of 43 and died of pneumonia in 2001 aged 56. I bought Gaye and other stories from their site and enjoyed most of it, I got a bit depressed after a while, sad songs say so much.

I was sitting today, taking a break from organising my mp3 collection. A year ago I messed up while stoned and deleted about 40Gb of mp3′s so now, as I’m been converting some CD’s to mp3 for the umpteenth time I decided it was time I correctly labelled everything and put it in order (with the help of a great piece of software called The Godfather), in preparation for the shiny new hard drive I’m going to buy to store just mp3′s so that I don’t(at least less likely to) fuck up again! While engrossd in the art of updating my ID3v2 tags when a song by Clifford T Ward came on i-tunes playing happily in shuffle mode, I realised then how long had passed since I had listened to the album, on account of the fact that I rarely felt like listening to it all in one go, shuffle mode can be good.

The song in question was “I’m not waving, I’m drowning” the title kinda gives away the fact it’s not a cheery song but listening to the opening line made me think about something and in turn made me think it an appropriate title to this blog entry. It’s strange how the mental process works isn’t it? I mean did you really need to read this far? If you had skipped these few paragraphs and started at the next one would you notice? Would you care? I mean, how important is a title? I still have to ponder my subject headings for emails and get disappointed when I receive an email with a blank subject header or worse, “No Subject” how can you write even the shortest of emails and let people think it not worthy of a subject?! Anyway, I digress… this was the thought process that went into choosing the title of this entry. I’d been thinking of writing one for the past few weeks, more so these past few days but for one reason or another I’ve never been bothered enough to get around to it, the lack of a title was also a factor.

I recently met someone for the first time and we spent some time together, both of us relative strangers both looking for something, perhaps both unaware of what is being looked for. When we were talking I asked how i came across, no sense in beating about the bush as I missed the lesson at school that taught us how to do the whole reading body language thing. They explained that they thought I was difficult to read and because of that they considered I must be a lonely person. I shall have to re-consider asking for peoples opinions It made me think, both then and now. I knew that until a few years ago I was lonely. I had spent many years denying the fact, I travelled a little, some say a lot and knew I was doing it to cover up the fact I was lonely tho it didn’t occur to me then that if I perhaps stayed one place long enough I wouldn’t have been so lonely?

So, I don’t think the lonely part is as relevant as the ‘difficult to read’ part. This made sense, I probably am difficult to read as I’ve spent years, more than I can remember, erecting a hugely efficient system of internal walls to keep things away from myself, as well as others. After taking a sledge hammer to most of the other barricades I’ve set up around ‘me’ it seems only appropriate that I should set about this one as well and I think I’m pretty much done. As with most things it seems, fear has a lot to do with why it started but I’m slowly realising what some have known for ever, there is really not much to be afraid of, not really. I’ve been so used to being afraid of something I now no longer remember what it is I was afraid of in the first place, not the real issue, I just know I don’t like doing this or that for a reason but have never stopped to question that reason.

If I hadn’t asked my question, who knows how long would pass before I thought to pull down the wall? I’m still wondering if being honest with ones feelings is such a good idea but I figure if that allows people to ‘see’ me then that’s all for the best as I don’t want anyone to have the wrong impression of me.

So, we turn full circle, this is me, like it or not I am getting more and more comfortable in my skin. I’m not drowning, I’m waving.

And as a treat for those who have made it this far here are both the Clifford T Ward songs I mentioned earlier.

Homethoughts from Abroad	I’m Not Waving, I’m Drowning