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I suppose this is as good a time as any (the Birmingham University clock tower has just rung - it's half past two on a cold Wednesday morning in November) to reflect on and consider why I'm bothering to write these posts, why I worry what people I know and love, and those I don't know, might take from what I'm putting out here.

It's been a confusing time lately. Many highs, a fair few lows. Pretty standard for anybody, particularly those interested in words, meanings, feelings and what makes us behave the way we do.
Pretty much every second of every day I draw meaning from one thing, anything, and relate it to something else - perhaps a past memory or lesson learnt, perhaps a lyric or word I remember and tie to a certain moment, a fragment of life I've recorded forever in my head

All this, this writing, streaming of my thoughts, feels very self-indulgent. Especially as it's not being written in a diary no one will read, it's here for anyone who happens to click a certain link to read - whether you might enjoy and appreciate what's here, or choose to discard it as worthless perhaps, or at least pretentious and self-absorbed.

Perhaps it is.
I suppose that right now I'm as unsure of what this is for, what purpose there is behind the words I use to express myself (whether in spoken conversations, emails, text messages, poems, letters, diary entries, articles, posts or academic essays and book reviews). Language, the utilisation of words to create meaning, communication, have always had a great impact upon me. Often, I can vividly remember and accurately recall specific lines from books, songs, conversations or articles that others might have forgotten or discarded as irrelevant. It's true that I often hoard things too much. Cruel words that people have used, or beautiful ones, I find hard to let go of. I will hold on and on to something, when those involved will totally forget it. I suppose I could say that I try to absorb the majority of meanings around me in order to record the essence of what emotion, feeling or atmosphere was there at the time.
I can be very nostalgic, often overly so. In fact, I can be so reflective and buried in the past that those with me in the present can tire of me completely. I understand this, and acknowledge it as mostly a flaw. Though at times my drive to archive the things around me (the events, emotions and words) can bring back something beautiful. It's a very human thing to preserve history. Though I then wonder and worry that to think of my life, with all it's shallowness, transience, fickleness and immaturity, is a very High and Mighty way of thinking, that might take away from my understanding of the things around me.

I don't know. I think I'm confusing myself. It feels good to be writing this down though, at least somewhat fluidly. Usually thoughts will come to me, ideas or ways of explaining my meaning, that are really just fragments of what's in my head.
I usually rely on the thoughts and expression of others, especially in songs - there's always been something about music that has captured something more than I am able to express with just my own voice or writing. That's why I post songs most regularly on here. A song is able to capture a moment or feeling or meaning so effectively in such a short space of time, that I will always hold any talented musician in the highest esteem. The cultural phenomenon of Rock 'n' Roll will always make a strange kind of sense to me, and to most people, I guess.

In the morning I expect that I'll read this back and regret having posted it. Putting these very personal thoughts out in such an anonymous, yet public and open, space makes me feel quite nervous, quite vulnerable to judgement. I can be very open, like a picture book at times, but also very defensive of and insecure in my own thoughts and ideas about things. I need to re-build my confidence. I guess this shows that I'm doing just that, piece by piece - word by word, even.

I just need to remember that this is for me. And that I'm not actually, confidently, expecting anyone to be directly interested in what I write here. Not even the likes of my family, close friends, even my Boyfriend.
Yet, I do doubt that I'll feel as if this post is worth deleting or editing extensively - I guess that on here, once it's shared, even if someone I never knew reads it, then it's permanent. Like a writer seeing their name in print, or a musician hearing their work played on the radio for the first time.

This blog, for me, is a stream of consciousness. Pure and simple, or, false and complicated. I'm not 100% sure. 
One thing I do know is that I'm incredibly passionate about the study of literature, particularly the C20th American literary canons of Modernism, Post Modernism and even Post-Post Modernism (with the ideas of nostalgia, realism, experimentation in narrative style, and stream-of-consciousness running central to my understanding). Many of the writers I'm studying now have already influenced me greatly in my ideas about language, meaning, interpreation and varying forms of expression. 

So, I now feel I'm free to express myself here at whim, in whatever form takes my fancy...



[If you bothered to read this all the way through, I guess that I hope you see something in it.]