Introducing me

Until late 2017 I’d lived my working life outside reality as an office drone. Having left uni 20 years earlier with no great plan I found myself a job after one last hedonistic summer. The ease of a monthly salary combined with the (false) sense of achievement over time meant that I never realised it wasn’t the life for me. Until recently that is.

There are plenty of paths to take in office life that feel like the real world, but actually they’re all a figment of collective imagination. With a mix of intelligence and hard work it’s possible that the paths can be interesting and even lucrative. I stumbled across the greasy pole when somebody turned it upside down and so I slid down towards the top. Luckily, they realised their mistake before I got too close, corrected the pole and in its mid-turn I found myself shaken free of it. As the pole was re-greased I was set back on the path of true reality with a bag of silver to ease my way.

But the words I need to craft the reality I want for myself are buried deep inside. They have lain suppressed for too long, as old as time but like raindrops fresh and new each time they appear. The pressure builds and a release is needed. It’s hard to explain but it’s like there’s a seam of poetry lava running through me. Every so often it breaks through onto the landscape and this poetry escapes its confines. Mostly it bubbles its way onto real or electronic paper, leaves its markings and lies there dormant once more, undiscovered. Sometimes it’s a true explosion, words are flung out and take the shape of poems in a rush, no deliberate thought directing where they fall, just the raw materials finally finding their place in the world. But still lying undiscovered. Some of them still exist, lying where they fell. Others have been destroyed inadvertently. The emotion of their creation matched by the emotion of their loss.

I’ve used my bag of silver to do what I should have done 20 years ago, except this time with a family in tow. If my destined reality is to be mapped over the top of my previous working life, there’s a large chasm between the two realities that needs bridging for it to make sense to other people. Travel broadens the mind they say. It certainly clears the mind that’s for sure. Erases the memories of well-trodden paths in other reality. Allows the trodden down flowers to grow and flourish, feeding the plants and trees so the old pathways become overgrown, and increases the likelihood of finding a new path, leading to new destinations both literally and metaphorically. It opens ones’ soul and helps people see the bridge between realities.