Wednesday 4 July 2018

WTS XXXI

So I opened a Twitter account yesterday and tweeted a link to this blog, but I have since deleted the tweet. I still have the account and may use it as an alternative account to my main one. I deleted the tweet because even though I wanted views on the blog, it's a case of being careful what you wish for. Quite a few of the views were from Ireland, and I did not like the thought that some of those people were people who know me IRL and there's me going on about my photophobia, my period knickers and my feelings about my family situation. 

Why put these things on the internet anyway? Ironically partly because I had read an article on Swedish Death Cleaning and I didn't like the idea of dying suddenly and having whoever cleans out my house reading through the paper diaries I have kept since the age of nine. I can't bring myself to destroy the old ones, but at least this is a way of reducing the amount of new ones. This may seem at odds with my announcement a few days ago that I would discuss the big development in my paper diary rather than on-line. But it's not the thought of some-one discovering my musings on the big events of life that bother me: it's the embarrassment of them reading my compulsive recording of trivia and my cringe-inducing enslavement to the self-improvement industry. 

Looking at previous entries yesterday in the knowledge that other people were seeing them (a good few got themselves reverted to drafts) resulted in self-accusations of narcissism. I suppose narcissism has two elements: one is inflated self-regard, and the second is obsession with the self as opposed to more healthy engagement with the outside world. The two go together in some respects. There is definite evidence of the second, but what about the first? I think it's there to some degree. It's the belief in the possibility of Great Things, that I would be living a fabulous life were it not for the fuck-ups of myself and others. That I am only living this particular life as a result of a series of unfortunate events. And from that comes a sadness and an anger and lots of resentment. 

There is a contradiction in feeling a failure at being extraordinary and simultaneously a failure at being ordinary. Why couldn't I manage the simplest, most normal thing of all for a woman and have a child? Why has no-one ever wanted to marry me and for us to have a family together? Why am I so ridiculously sensitive? 

There are no self-help books on how to recover from narcissism, which is pity because it's probably the one trait that most negatively affects the consumers of self-help advice. The phrase "self-help" itself carries connotations of narcissism. A quick search on Amazon reveals lots of material on dealing with the narcissist in your life (a case of the mote and the beam?) but not a single one on how to become less narcissistic. Maybe such a book would be an oxymoron. Or maybe I've just discovered a gap in the market.......

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WTS Day XXXVI

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