Sunday 28 February 2010

Running on empty

This morning was my fourth early start in a row, and I've still got 2 more to do yet. Not to put too fine a point on it, I'm knackered. I know there must be a reason for my carrying on coming to work .... oh yeah, if I don't, I don't get paid, can't pay the mortgage, etc, etc. At least the weather's not as awful as the forecasters predicted - we were supposed to have heavy rain & gales today, but nothing like that has materialised yet.
I suppose I'm like a lot of people in that I daydream about winning the National Lottery, and what it would mean if I did. To be honest, I'm not especially materialistic in the sense of wanting lots of things, but what would really make me happy would be the freedom from the treadmill of work day in, day out, being able to spend my time doing what I wanted to do instead of what I need to do. In other words, what a lottery win would buy me above all else would be time - maybe that need is linked to my getting older, a sense that as I approach my next and landmark birthday, my store of future time is running out all too rapidly.
Most of the blogs I've been reading recently are written by younger people, and the life and enthusiasm of most of them is refreshing and infectious. I guess I was more like that at a similar age, although, even then, I had a tendency towards the introspective. The point in my life I've reached now was so remote from my teenage perspective as to be almost unimaginable - even the year 2000, which some of us talked about back then, seemed impossibly far away, and that's now a decade in the past. Perhaps it's a good thing that we can't see our futures too clearly when we're young - I'm sure there would be more depression in the world if we could.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Friday 26 February 2010

Not enough hours in the day!

Having started the blog on Wednesday, I haven't had any real chance to add to it, because I've spent most of the last 2 days at work. I'm on my weekend of early shifts, which means I have to get up at 4:15 each morning. I worked a 12 hour shift yesterday, then up again this morning at stupid o'clock, albeit only for an 8 hour shift today. By 8:00 at night, I'm too tired to do anything except go to bed - I went to bed later than that when I was 7 years old!
I've often said that I don't think there are enough hours in the day, and that if I could give up either work or sleep I might be able to fit in everything I want to do. No prizes for guessing which of the 2 alternatives I'd rather give up - I'd retire yesterday if I could afford it!
Hopefully, I might be able to write a bit more over the weekend - I'm not supposed to use my laptop at work, but there's not usually any management staff around on a Sunday, so I'll probably add some more then.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B


Wednesday 24 February 2010

Who & Why

After a considerable amount of hesitation, I've finally taken the plunge and begun a blog. My name, for blogsphere purposes, is Sammy, I'm 50 years old in a few weeks time (hence the second half of my blog's title), with a lovely wife and an almost teenage daughter. The latter two people are the reason I'm using a nom-de-plume and a Hushmail address - I love and care for them both very much, and there's no way I want to risk them being hurt in any way by anyone taking exception to anything I might write here, because I suspect some people won't care for some of my opinions and predilections - assuming that anyone bothers to read what I've written, of course!

There are a few reasons why I want to keep a blog, the simplest being that I enjoy writing and have done for most of my life, but only really for my own amusement up to now. I like to think I'm fairly articulate, and hope that I can write something that at least a few other people might find interesting. My intention is that this blog will become a mixture of ' real life', for want of a better phrase - what I'm doing, what I've done that's led me to where I am now, and, for what they're worth, my opinions - and, speaking very loosely, 'creative' writing. I've tried coming up with fiction and poetry over the years, and, if I might be excused a little bit of vanity, I'm curious to see if anyone else thinks there's any merit in any of my efforts.

The other principal reason for my starting the blog, and perhaps the answer to the question 'Why now?' is that I feel I need in some way to share my thoughts and feelings about a number of issues. The immediate catalyst for beginning deserves a little explanation. Over the last 6 to 9 months, I've been reading a considerable amount of fiction online, much of it falling into the categories of gay erotica and romance. As I've already said. I'm married and I love my wife, but I'm well aware that, since my early teens, I've also been attracted to my own sex. It's taken me the best part of 35 years to work it all out and to come to terms with my sexual orientation, but I think I'm finally able to say conclusively that I'm bisexual. Ironically, now that I have worked it out, it's fair to say that I'm not really sexually active at all, due to one or two health problems that have developed over the last couple of years, so I suppose you could say that I'm only theoretically bisexual! As a result of my wanderings through online fiction, I came across the 3 interlinked blogs that have inspired me to being my writing. The first is a blog-novel called 'Twinergy and the Boys of Clear Lake' which I've been following avidly for a few months now, and through which I found the other 2 links in the chain which led here, a blog called 'JJ's Yacky Box', written by a very interesting and articulate young man, and another called 'Grown Up Wrong' which was really the ultimate reason for beginning my blog. I thoroughly recommend reading all 3 blogs, even though the circumstances surrounding the third on my list are dreadfully upsetting and affected me deeply by reminding me of a terrible time in my own life, which I hope to be able to write more about before too long.

As an introduction, I think this post is probably a lot longer than it should have been, so I'll leave it at that for now. I'll do my best to produce more easily digestible portions in future!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B