Welcome to my world...

Hey, thanks for stopping by.
For many, in this early crawl of the year - with the fleeting daylight and picking up the tab from the holiday season - it is a time of SADness and introspection.
And in these so called troubled times, one has only to pick up a newspaper to realise that we are all inescapably and irretrievably doomed. Regardless of geography, belief system, social standing or favourite member of Take That - despair will seek you out, hunt you down like a rabid dog and drag you kicking and screaming into the bloody abyss.
Cheery stuff, no? My solution? Well, for one - don't pick up a newspaper...
In the coming weeks and months I aim to use this forum to scrape away the bile and all pervading cyniscism from day to day living. I'm not proposing some grandiose manifesto or an uprising of the people. I'm not Che Guevara. For one I really don't suit the hats. Even though the t-shirt royalties wouldn't go amiss.
What I'd love to get back to - with you like minded folk - is the exuberance of youth, regardless of any inherent naivety that suggests.
Because as we get older and bob like flotsam through turbulent times, I feel often we become so self absorbed with the minutiae of just making it through the day, that we cease to find the wonder so abundant in this fantastic universe we have been gifted as our playground. Isn't that just a smidge more than just a wee bit sad?...
We are here but just a gnats heartbeat, so why merely watch the clock?...
In a world obsessed with celebrity, the big news always seems to be what others are doing in their lives - and who they are doing it to. By tuning out our own daily grind, we snuggle into a vegetative state, apathetic to changing the world around us, of cheering on our fellow human, or sucking the very marrow out of life. Wouldn't we make our 6 year old selves sick to their sherbert and soil lined stomachs?
Einstein once said: Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand...
Yeah, well easy to say when you're a genius in the first place, but a point well made. Many of the true wonders of the universe aren't that recondite and can be unlocked for example by the untethered flinging of paint or the shameless abandon of embracing a complete stranger.
Of course it's not just about being the smartest ape in the room. Generally as a species we are conditioned to be incredibly hung up on overall aesthetic and the ephemeral concept of being filthily healthy. And yet last time I checked at the gym, they had yet to introduce an exercise to open the mind. What's good for the body isn't necessarily tonic for the soul.
(That's not the reason why I don't go to the gym, incidentally. Call me old fashioned but I'm just not that motivated by the determined stink of others).
I hear a lot of folk chime on about their quality of life, which in many instances equates to the amount of stuff they fearfully lock up tight at night. In the words of one our greatest contemporary poets, Seasick Steve; I started out with nothing and I still got most of it left... Startlingly my quality of life seems all the rosier for it.
For a super evolved species, are we so focused on the Sight Chart tacked to the wall not to appreciate the cinescape view from the optometrist's window?
So what are we waiting for? For the media to tell us our life is over? For our bank balance to be a barometer for our happiness? For the suffering of others to be a cautionary tale and not a call to action?
We are all wonderful, powerful, sentient beings. We have a huge creative capacity for compassion and warmth and love. And if we are are complicit in the world's ills, it is by a resolute passiveness to the way of things .
As I say, I'm not trying to lead an uprising. I'm not striving - a la the powerfully allegorical movie Network - for you to go to the window and yell; I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!
Just something like it...
Thus, back to the original point which in my own very long winded Ronnie Corbettesque style has taken some rather tenuous detours - I plan to use this forum to - in the words of the song: accentuate the positive... eliminate the negative...
Not that I'm advocating homicide you understand.
Positioned as the antithesis of the popular media (and by this I don't mean I'm striving for unpopularity, though if you blog it - it will come) I aim here to share tales of and for those still harbouring a highly tuned sense of wonder. Because the world and our fellow ape needs folk like us. And like a stone in a pond, wouldn't you love to have your ripples felt?
It will no doubt be a gnarly evolution. So strap in and I hope you enjoy the ride.
In the meantime - baby steps. When was the last time you just took off running for the heck of it? The sheer weeeeeeeeeeee! factor of it all? Try it. Stop the second it starts to feel like exercise. And if you can - chew bubblegum whilst you do it (though try not to swallow it - I hold myself in no way culpable for medical insurance claims).
Then let me know how it feels.
Have fun x