Quibble, drivel, drip and dribble

I’ve pretty much given up blogging of late. My posting rate went into steep decline when I started working on some of my forsaken ideas for stories in an attempt to polish them into something fit for display. But the truth is I’m not really interested in my own literature. None of my ideas for novels are novel and rendering them into attractive prose is too much like hard work. And my poems are awful. I knew I shouldn’t have learned about poetry. Besides, there’s already many lifetimes worth of excellent reading freely available to anyone who bothers to look. Why should I waste my time writing second rate simulacra when I could be reading the real thing? It’s not like you can make a living from it.

When I feel compelled to write it’s generally as an attempt to articulate myself to myself. Unfortunately I’m usually so obscure I just don’t get it. The conscious justification for this blog was partly to resuscitate the verbal and writing skills that had atrophied during my nine and a half years of despair and isolation and partly as an experiment in finding ways to pass on something of the ‘cure’ for despair I found. Or that found me. I think I’ve pretty much hit the limits of both of those endeavours – the former more satisfactorily than the latter – and my blogging has been providing steadily diminishing returns ever since. Basically, I’ve run out of ideas and am getting tired of repeating myself.

What’s more, as well as reviving my verbal skills blogging has reanimated one of my worst tendencies. My compulsive contrariness. Whenever I’m faced with a new idea I feel compelled to find contradictions, counter-examples and errors. Even if I agree with it. Especially if I agree with it. Maybe that’s why they made me captain of the high school debating team. Maybe it’s why people don’t like me.

To me, ideas are toys. First I chew them and bash them and jump up and down on them. If they survive I fit them together with other ideas into a huge, tenuous tower of wacky rationalisation. Then I kick it until it collapses on top of me and roll around on the floor in a helpless fit of giggles. I don’t do maturity.

So far so good. The problem is that I usually do it to other people’s ideas. I don’t have many of my own to play with. People don’t like wiping my drool off their nice new ideas. They get cross. They get particularly cross when I break them.

Being aspie means I don’t usually worry about that. I hardly even notice. But some people go to the effort of letting me know how cross they are. And making sure I understand. That makes me sad. I may lack empathy but it doesn’t mean I have no compassion. I tell them not to worry about it. It was a silly idea anyway. It didn’t even taste good. It doesn’t help. People are strange. Maybe they like being cross. Or maybe they like being wrong.

But blogging has opened up a whole new world to me. A world inhabited by lots of people who ask the same questions I do. Most are from different societies and cultures to me. Most have a different agenda and gender to me. And most have different ideas to me. Playtime!

Maybe it isn’t fair stealing other people’s ideas and giving nothing in return. Maybe I should offer up my own ideas to the same sort of destructive testing I apply to others. Maybe I should blog more.

The problem is I don’t have many ideas of my own to offer. In fact I’m not sure I have any. Not to worry. I have plenty of ideas I stole from others. Well, OK, they’re a bit frayed and chewed and covered in smegma. But the original owners don’t seem to want them back. So I’m going to make an effort to present some of them to you. Stay tuned to this blog. And keep a hammer handy.