What’s In a Like? A Boy Behind The Glasses Update (August 2023)

What’s In a Like?

I often wonder, should I get more ‘likes’ for my poems, if for example, I only get one or two likes for any given poem, does it matter? Does it make it somehow made poorer piece of writing?

My life as a series of Ring binders!

I know that popularity of any kind is rarely a barometer of success, worth or even value. It’s collective opinion, and of course it has a value and I am always amazed and touched when people read my work and take time to comment on it or just react to it. But there is always an inner truth with any piece of writing and that is of course, the real meaning or real value and worth of what you have written. That can only be truly measured in what it means to you personally. In a way that’s the beauty of what you write, true, authentic writing, the sort that may be rough round the edges but comes from within you will always have a meaning and a value that you connect with even if others do not. And as I said before, the rule of thumb for me is that if I like something I have written, then it tends to be that others do not. If I write something I don’t like or I don’t think is amazing, then, inevitably others will like it. That’s a positive though, it shows people connecting what you have written in different ways.

But typing up my writing pads, it can be for me at least, a lonely place. I have thirty years of writing pads to write up, and it has to be done as often and as quickly as I can do it. My rule is at least one a day, preferably two and maybe I will do a few more at the weekends. It doesn’t always work out that way but I find that self imposed rule helps. I would of course love to spend time reading other people’s blogs but I just don’t have the time. I do have three or four writers that I will always pause and make the effort to read but I haven’t got the time to go through everyone who follows me. And yes, I do feel a slight pang of guilt about that, I mean how can I even consider how many likes I have or want or get for my writing when I make little effort to look at what other people write.

I just have to plough on, writing up the pieces I have, going through old writing pads, revaluating my life, learning about my life and coming face to face with the previous versions of me. Incidentally those previous versions of me are in stark contradiction to the self-narrative which I have (had) developed over the years. The self-narrative is at its best, soothing, kind, no sharp edges. The truth is far more dangerous and far more complex with not just sharp edges but may different edges for many different sides.

This picture shows writing pads typed and waiting to be placed in their correct Ring binder.

I always feel when I am reading my words, poems and scribbles from all those years ago that as a person I was always paying catch up with myself. That’s the self-critical part of me, foolishly judging younger versions on me with the pieces of wisdom and experience I have now, at forty-eight years old. But you can’t help it, I can see all my social awkwardness and lack of life skills laid bare. Because you know the consequence of decisions being made and written about, it’s very difficult at times. Of course you cannot live in the past, but when I am typing up my writing pads, I kind of am. Again though, I am lucky to have that record and there is no point for anyone to use former writing as a form of self-flagellation.

I also know that familiarity breeds contempt, I know when you’re posting as regularly as me, then it does become hard to keep up. I accept that typing up what I have has to overrule me promoting myself or my work. But I am always caught, because there is always part of me that hankers after a few more likes.

The box of bits! (is ‘bits’ the right word?)

It would be lovely that if since 1992, every writing pad I had owned and written on had been preserved, that they were all beautifully kept and nicely ordered and dated. But they’re not, I have moved around a lot sine 1992 and it’s a miracle that any of have survived and that I have them. Sadly, some are lost, I know that because I certainly gave one always to a friend going to Uni in 1995 (I never saw her again) and I can remember writing things down, poems and the such like, which I don’t have any more. So, I do have a lot of reasonably well preserved writing pads but I have some which are in bits and need saving, if indeed saving is the right word. So that’s about the sum of the box of bits I have left. Part of this Boy Behind the Glasses Project is preservation and leaving behind a record and a story. Although what someone will make of all this is anybody’s guess, but I’ve left behind enough for something or somebody to pick over in the future.

I’ve found it useful to write up my latest writing, alongside my older writing. It helps balance out the older writing, which can difficult to go through. For example, I have just finished typing up later 2007 into the beginning of 2008. The writing pad ends in January 2008 at a particularly life changing event for me, and as I am reading and typing up my work, I know what is coming at the beginning of 2008. I am also looking at the poems themselves and thinking, what was going through my mind as I was typing them and why wasn’t I writing about events that I know were happening then. There is a sense of interpretation, as I make my way through the months of 2007 and into 2008, I almost take a anxious breath every time I write up another poem. It’s hard living, albeit through my writing, in that place again. So, I mix it up with my latest poems which helps. Equally I am also looking at my writing and making some changes and editing, I am also rescuing where I can those bits of writing I discarded at the time, but on reflection, having read them some sixteen years later, actually work really well.

It’s sad to watch yourself go through a major life event and see how much it is affecting you and tearing you apart and yet, in my writing, as I read it, it’s like at the time, it didn’t matter.  I find that hard to fathom, I don’t understand how I appeared to have just carried on.  Maybe that’s the illusion, clearly, I didn’t just carry on.  It’s strange standing on the edge and being an observer of your own past!

Anyway, that’s one more update done!

Previous Updates here
https://theboybehindtheglasses.com/category/updates-things-and-stuff/