October – A Month of Self Reflection

October is, quite possibly, my favourite month of the year. Autumn, undeniably the best season, is in full swing; darker nights and cooler days bring with them nostalgia and self-reflection, a phenomenon which I’ve only just learned is apparently natural among humans and not just my own personal quirk. The best part of October, however, is that it is the month of Halloween, a holiday which embraces the dark, the arcane and the weird, all of which are totally my aesthetic.

The aforementioned self-reflection has manifested itself in the Tombstone Project. One night I got to thinking about this little blue diary I used to write in as a kid, and after turning my room upside down looking for it and being unable to find it, it made me think about the nature of time and change and the documentation of these things being accessible. The rest of that is already documented in my previous blog post. But I’ve also been thinking about some of my lifestyle choices, the things which led to who I am today. I spend much of my free time gaming, something I love doing, and while I don’t neglect aspects of my life in favour of it per se, I have become somewhat more organised as a person for re-assessing how I prioritise my hobby. I also spent some time assessing how and why I’m teetotal and if that’s something I want to change. For now – no. But I certainly use it as an excuse to remove myself from more social situations than are necessary.

The thing about me is that, especially this year, I’ve not taken many risks. After a turbulent 2018 I resolved to just, er, turtle up and remain in my comfort zone. And coming from someone who doesn’t venture far outside of their comfort zone in the first place, you can imagine how that leads into a stagnant lifestyle. So when it comes to social situations, I have no idea what my limits are, and I suppose up until now I’ve been afraid to push myself into testing them. I don’t know. It’s very hard to discern to the difference between my insecurities and my personality; am I restricted by some inherent level of anxiety which I need to work on, or am I just beating myself up for being an introvert? It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this month, and I’m no closer to an answer than I was at the start.

But besides the usual existential ruminations, what have I actually gotten up to this month? Well, given what I just discussed, it should be obvious that I don’t typically get up to much, but let’s see… celebrated some family birthdays, taught my niece how to blow raspberries, revisited a childhood favourite videogame series and made content out of it, grappled with the ethical ramifications of my then-favourite game company causing an international incident, and dressed up as the Mundane Dread for Halloween. (That’s tonight. I’m working. So I’ll be in regular uniform. Funny Joke.) I’ve also decided to starting updating my Instagram and Facebook Story feeds, because more social media can only be a good thing.

Moving forward, I’m going to be taking notes throughout the month of things to discuss at the end of it. Given that I only decided to start this project during the final third of October, it’s safe to say that I’ve forgotten a lot. Either way, though, that’s been my October, or the ass end of it at the very least. See you at the end on November!

The Tombstone Project and Monthly Updates

Hello there! Me again. Been some time, eh? Sorry about that. I have a six-month project going live at the start of next year to make up for it, though, so be on the lookout for that.

That’s in the past (well, future) though. Today I’m here to talk about The Tombstone Project! It’s a potentially megalomaniacal project that will, if successful, span the rest of my entire life. Basically, memoirs, but also, I’m including every self-centric piece of writing I’ve published over the years and putting them into this project too. As I write it’s currently over 64,000 words long and spans over 100 pages, but that sounds far more impressive before you consider the fact that this post is the first piece of original Tombstone Project writing to be included.

So, why am I doing this? Well, fear not, I’m not going to drop dead any time soon. I hope. But for some time now I’ve felt that everyday life, when captured, becomes more interesting further down the line; the mundane is transformed into something precious, a gateway to a past no longer tangible, more reliable than memory and more revealing than aged knowledge. And when I finally do pop my clogs at the age of 97, assuming that I haven’t achieved immortality by that point, it’d be nice to leave people with something to leaf through, not just to learn about me but to experience the average person’s experience living through these years, as we did. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to read a book about my father’s life story, about stories too painful to re-tell or times otherwise forgotten.

And besides, writing lasts so much longer than the life of those who penned it.

Of course, I wouldn’t expect anyone to read the entire thing. I may go back through it and edit out some of the more boring or irrelevant posts, some other time. For now, though… I’ve spent this week reading through 13 year old Kristian’s random and bizarre ramblings, to 22 year old Kristian’s depressing and somewhat cynical rants about the nature of lost motivation and being yet another brick in the wall. I am, somewhat understandably, sick to the pits of myself! But I also learned rather a lot in the process, so it wasn’t entirely an unhealthy exercise.

I learned that I have more in common with my teenage self than I remembered. I learned that despite believing in optimism, my thought processes wavered towards cynicism more often than I noticed, even within my own writing. I discovered that despite having a blog with my name attached to it for six years, I’ve written remarkably little about myself due to some aversion to publicly autobiographical writing. I’ve learned that I repeated the same discoveries about motivations and writing once every two years; that I am a person who is entirely too frustrated by the nature of things they cannot change, and that apparently, I had something against poets? Most importantly, I realised that the slump I entered post-uni was far deeper than I had realised, and that my mind was far darker than I would admit to myself. I’ve since found meaning in creative projects and everyday life, and whilst my lack of purpose is still an issue, I’m far less hollow as a person for it.

Monthly updates, then, are my plan to add to the Tombstone Project going forward. That way, I figure, I won’t be adding too much writing, and it should have a little substance to it. Crucially, I’m not going to force myself to write a monthly update if I can’t think of anything to write for it. But, most relevantly to you, dear reader, I will be posting these monthly updates here on Perpetually Perturbed, starting with this month. These posts should be slightly more autobiographical and less topical in nature, to fit in line with my Project Tombstone ambitions.

So check back soon!