Just how do we connect to people? is it every day-ness? is it sex? is it 'love', the feeling of connection? It is baffling to me how bridges are formed, maintained, left to rot and eventually collapse.

As a married man I have often wondered this in my quest for betterment. It is not easy task of course and it requires at least a degree of insight and understanding. I am not sure I understand anyone, let alone my wife, her dreams and wishes but the aim here is to understand us and our dynamics and that is where the connection comes from.

Reading back on my entries it would be easy to imagine that I have somehow contracted a horrible mental illness slowly dragging me to the pits of depression, insanity and ultimately a slow, deranged death. I mean they are hardly uplifting and for the life of me I cannot understand why they are not.

Every time I start writing with the best intentions and then all this comes out. It could be my idea of therapy and I 'exhale' all these negative thoughts but obviously there is something wrong with my surroundings or with the way I process all this information. I have this constant feeling of 'let-down'... somehow... somewhere and an unfaltering sense of betrayal. I am not sure how to explain it. Hence my writing comes out all twisted and out of shape. Because I am funny... I mean I write funny, I laugh a lot but lately everything has been decreased and I am tired, just tired of fightin...

OK so blogging is like sending an email to noone and everyone at the same time, one of those random 'spam' emails we receive on a daily basis from friends and friends of friends of friends, in the address book of whom our emails simply appeared... It is also therapy, an instant gateway to cyber universe, like opening a window to a starless night sky. The truth is that blogging is everything and none of the above; I am actually writing more or less regularly even though I am convinced and I in fact know that noone is reading any of these posts or at least most of them.

So why go on? Because writing is about sharing to a very grand scale, and i write and i will post it up here even if noone gets to read what I am writing. I would love for everyone to read this, I cannot tell a lie but it would it make a huge difference to the content? probably not... what it would do is give me pleasure, and lots of it, but somehow I was not destined to derive pleasure from my literary skills... which is kind of a bummer really, because deep down I would have liked to... really really really liked to....

oh what a beautiful morning...

So how are you this fine day? I must say as I get older the variations in my mood become more acute on an hourly basis and they are almost always reflections. I find myself in bad moods because others are in bad mood around me and I seem to absorb stress and bad moods. I also absorb good moods so in light of positive energy I tend to reflect that too. But alas? Where is positive energy to be found aplenty?

On the phone to a friend of mine living abroad this morning I realised that the day is coming closer that we might have to wave goodbye to our current country of residence. I have no preconceived notions of home, that much I accept. Home is where our stuff is... and we make our home where we can as long as we have those we love around us, at least some of them. It might be time...

I wanted to write today, felt the urge after a particularly horrific day yesterday and then I read this, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/26/aa-gill-shot-baboon. So I will not write much as I stand dumbfounded by the level of cruelty among our human race. Just when we think we have seen enough, new heights are reached.

I will not write any more today, I will let you all read this article in the Guardian.

I realised over the weekend that I had never REALLY heard anyone utter my name the way my son does... and I don't mean that cliche that it puts everything in perspective and nothing else really matters. A lot else matters but we learn to prioritise; so a lot else matters but I am now pretty certain that nothign really matters as much and that for me is a huges realisation. It was merely a suspicion but I know now. And I think every parent knows when they realise that their own life has become that little bit less important.

I guess there are a lot of people around expressing their views on parenting and the everyday complications and pleasures of it all, but I think we all fail in our insights to truly grasp 'their point of view'. I mean if you are short and overpowered and unable to express yourself clearly wouldn't you be frustrated? Let's face it, we are lucky that toddlers are as calm as they are given what they have going against them. But somehow, somewhere they make a breakthrough and they let us know what they are all about... and then we get a glimpse of their world imagivnary or not.. It is full of stories and running around and opening drawers and trying out new things, a neverending appetite for all things new. It is truly a magical quality to have and one that remains fundamentally human, the curiosity to understand the world.

People tend to experience pressure differently.. the same amounts can have different effects and what is important is not how much pressure we are under but how we perceive it.

Pressure can cause you to unravel, lose your sense of direction and ability to regroup and I fear I am living with that and it is not nice. Love should protect us from unravelling, maybe in a perfect world, but it does not, perhaps it adds to the pressure... perhaps...

the rain in Spain...

We are in the middle of the rain season it seems... and we are all the better and 'cleaner' for it. And there is plenty to wash away trust me.

But that is not the big issue of today, we are in the middle of cosmic rearrangement it seems because after 12 years in the workforce it might juuuuuuuuuuust be likely that I will be getting an office space all to myself. I am almost there right now but sharing is somehow not the same. I am therefore thinking that all this could very much change my own approach to work, I mean it is possible. I am very much into spaces around me and very much into defining them so that they do not end up defining me! I must say that is an interesting development, although it appears that it is raising eyebrows and it might not even happen but it is good to dream and somehow this little void of an event has created joy out of nowhere... just joy... is that not very very bizzare?

life in the fast lane or not....

People around me keep commenting on the values of leaving the 'big city-living' behind and going off to a village somewhere and let the kids grow a bit wild, as they should, picking berries and climbing pine trees in the wilderness. It sounds very appealing, I even know a couple of acquaintances who have 'dared' to take the plunge and go for it. Whether they look back or not I am not sure about, but nonetheless it is a decision filled with anticipation and awe, at least in my eyes.

I am fed up with cities; have been living in them for most of my life. And now I have a choice to play house in big-time suburbia, I have been thinking about it in earnest and it is something that my wife and I have discussed in varying degrees of sincerity. But I am not convinced that children will thank me for it. Something about small-town mentalities scares me, makes me apprehensive, because it is one thing moving to a picturesque village in your 30s and quite another growing up there, having known nothing else as home, quite different. Am I ready to deprive my son of the choices I had as a child or a teenager and present him with a host of other opportunities. Do I even have the right to make that choice?

There is a sudden crashing realisation when faced with the middle-class reality of our existence. Middle-class status is really a burden on the mind and one is faced with ugly choices. For example when my income was really really low I knew and accepted that my choices were extremely limited so I was essentially 'satisfied' with my lot. I presume that really high incomes can afford a wide variety of choices that exceed the usual "paying rent and bills" and buying a couple of sweaters.

But middle incomes and middle classes are faced with this: "we will be ok, we will make do, we just need to cut from somewhere else".... In other words, we start entering a phase of financial rearrangement when it comes to our lives and our children's lives. In fact having or planning children forms part of a greater middle class equation... shall i? can i cut from somewhere else? should i? could i? It is a terrrible choice and one that burdens me almost daily... this is not a sweater, this is not a choice about a new car or a pair of shoes... it saddens me to think that giving life is reduced to measurements, how much i make, how big is my house, how much do i pay for rent??