Ha! Made you look

Well, this is my first blog. Guess what? No introduction from me. It's a waste of time. Either you'll read what I write, or you won't. Personal details won't make you want to read more or less. Except that my name is Guy. And I'm not going to go into why am I writing this blog apart from saying I'm writing this blog in the hopes of entertaining you a bit, perhaps making you think, but possibly the most important reason, to get my ideas out of my head and onto paper... so to speak. Hey at least I'm doing it in a green way. Not that I really care, if I'm going to be honest.


So whats in my head today? Apart from having created this thing. Well my therapist, a really awesome person by the way, suggested that I abandon the majority of my hobbies and select two to focus on. I have completion issues. You see the way I have been working in the past is by 'Ha! Made you look'. By always producing stuff. By making you look at my work, you're not looking at ME. Classic abandonment issues arising from my father have resulted in me not wanting to form close bonds with people. So the way I avoided that was by entertaining people. Everything I did was designed to entertain because the audience falls in love with the character on stage, not the actor. At least that's what I thought. But likewise: The actor does not relate to anyone else on stage, the character does. So in effect what I was doing was wrapping myself up in a coccoon of fantasy. Isolating the real me from everything and everyone around me with a performance. In fact my entire existance has been to live in fantasy: I play computer games, read history books, play role playing games, and work in the film industry...go figure I didn't notice this before therapy?

Which was on the whole a completely time comsuming process (ask any of my friends). I was always busy. Learning strange facts, listening to mature classical music and scorning my peers music, always trying to be this character I'd created for myself: Professor Mature. Mature acted like an adult, never did the wrong thing, never tried to buck the system, but instead was a model citizen of planet Earth. To the point that I helped get a friend expelled from high school because he broke the law. Mature saw it as a point of order, not something for which he could have kept quiet because the violantion was minor. Not as someone who would build a relationship with, and defend his friend. Mature also never went out to clubs, joyed his peers in anything remotely resembling something hip or trendy because of this terror of becoming emotional involved. Naturally I was totally unaware of this before I went into therapy a couple of weeks ago (I should say Therapy = Good but only if you are willing to explore everything that goes with it).

And that is the point of this post today. As humans some of us (only a few don't) put on shows for others. We try to impress our bosses, show-off for our new girlfriends/boyfriends, act like a man in front of our buddies. We are constantly changing who we are for the percieved acceptance of others. Those who don't put on shows, who don't adapt the 'when in Rome' principal seem at once strange and unique, but also refreshingly open and honest. They attract malice from the very best performers who are envious, but mostly they attract the rest of Earth who feel free in their company. Truth is, we are all free, we just don't let ourselves go, because of a societal pressure. But since we MAKE UP society why don't we feel we can change it? Since my last few sessions in therapy I have been actively trying to stop pretending. I am trying to kill Professor Mature. I want to be a 28 year old who doesn't know all the answers, who listens to anything, who might get a tattoo (watch this space) just because he thinks its cool and rather arty in it's own way. I want to be ME and fuck everyone else (who tries to keep Prof. Mature alive). Professor Mature is not screaming though. There is no violent battle raging. I'm not mad, just emotional mal-adjusted. You see Mature is no fool. He's worked for years keeping our little secrets (being gay, wanting to be a kid but being afraid to, not liking certain people, pretending to be interested in others etc) from becoming public to simply roll over and die.

Professor Mature is throwing up all kinds of subtle arguments, all kinds of little mental images to keep me from exploding out into the world as who I am: ME. Little 'but they won't like that, or you' and 'if they only knew how disgusting that is and how much you like it' are all used to try to keep him alive. And it's only be stopping and consciously asking myself if I want to do it, or if I don't want to do it because Prof. Mature said so. If it's because Prof. Mature said so, I'm inclind now to actively rebel and do it more so. I'm becoming my own 13 year old rebel. I'm starting to pick up my life at the point where it surrended and turned into Professor Mature's. My therapist is happy. I'm totally excited and nervous and scared and nervous and happy and excited and nervous and feeling freer and happier than ever before. Fuck Professor Mature!

To most of you reading this you might think I'm totally derranged. Sometimes I agree. However I wouldn't have found the pleasure of just talking to someone without having to entertain them if I hadn't started just being ME. If I hadn't dropped the act long enough to realize that joy. You can't have fun if you are busy working. You can't make fun. Fun just happens. Fun is the opposite of shit. Both happen. (I copyright that thought. It seems to me to be both funny and profound.) The freedom of just saying what I want to say because I thought it, not holding back because it might be stupid, or inappropriate or whatever. As my therapist said: You have a right to be you because you are here. No other reason. In other words my dear reader, I have been given permission to just be me. And so, as I end off now, I would hope that you take from this perhaps the idea that going into therapy might be a good idea, or that perhaps I, Guy, have given you permission to just be YOU and screw the rest of the world, because, and here is the fundamental reason:

You'll suddenly be able to have real, substantial fun, and everyone else around you will as well.

And that is the meaning of life. Or not. But at least life will be more interesting that just sitting and wishing it was. Right?