I'm writing this, tired. Swirling thoughts have meandered through my mind for the past few weeks. I didn't think I was going to sit down and write it. Not now anyway.
Yet, here we are. There's been a massive blackout across the Iberian Peninsula. It's taken me two and a half hours since to settle down, crack a beer, and get on with writing something that requires little connectivity outside of myself.
In short, up until 31 years old, I was a blob. Maybe earlier. I can't quite put my finger on the exact year.
Essentially, a few things happened during my thirty years of being a blob. Like any good blob, I was mainly blobbing along, minding my own business, bumping into other people, soaking up life experiences. Generally, being a really good blob guy.
Some of those life experiences would be great, some of them hurt. However, my blob-like brain keep on blobbing around, absorbing. You see, it hadn't quite reached or realised its cerebral potential yet. It wasn't fully formed. It was as if I was drunk the whole time (partly true) or just really stupid. Looking back, I now feel like I didn't exist at all.
Perhaps, this is just the way that it happens to everyone. I do feel though, after talking to many people, that I've somehow managed to age 10 years after all of my peers, definitely in the anatomical sense.
For example, I had some friends who looked 30 when they were 19. Whereas at 30 I still felt like a some newly fledged inflamed amoeba, stuck on autopilot, not really able to make sense of the world. A true battler. A self-sabotaging people pleaser. A distracted doolally.
Now, I'd say the contrast is stark. After many missteps and lessons along the way I feel like I'm getting there, on my journey to manhood.
What does that mean in today's language of manosphering and mysogyning?
Well, I think for one it means that you have your impulses under control, in all aspects of life. You're calm and considered.
Another thing I think is that you stop caring so much about what other people think about you. Freedom.
I had always thought that I had my mind under control. Many times I'd recounted the Seneca quote "we suffer more in our imagination than in reality". However, there was an undertone of a societal grip on me. I didn't realise. I cared too much about how people would feel based upon my actions, to the point where I was sabotaging myself.
Simply put, I was a pushover. I had no clear boundaries. I lacked assertiveness in my personal life. Work Mike was different, but personal life he was fluffy and blobby.
For example, for a long time, I couldn't say the words "I want...". Partly, because this comes across rude as a British guy, but also because I didn't know what I wanted. That's mad.
I think a large part of our culture in the UK is self-sabotage. We think too much about what others think of us. To the point where we end up on a merry go round of placating each other, instead of someone hitting the big red STOP button and actually saying what they themselves want to do. Not, "would like" to do, "WANT" to do. Stick their neck out and likely get called a dick for it in the process.
To wonder when and what actually makes you become a man is an interesting one.
I don't really know as I'd say it just continues to happen. At the same time, I now live in the much renowned Peter Pan city of Barcelona. Man-children aplenty. Then there's me, floating on through, obsessed with connecting people to where they live, harbouring my future Dad energy for when I'm through this current messy middle—for when I find myself in the correct headspace and financial position to do anything about it.
In the end, I'd say it's a beautiful evolution of oneself. One day a glitch wakes you up. Then you start on your final leg to become man...previously blob.
Yet, here we are. There's been a massive blackout across the Iberian Peninsula. It's taken me two and a half hours since to settle down, crack a beer, and get on with writing something that requires little connectivity outside of myself.
In short, up until 31 years old, I was a blob. Maybe earlier. I can't quite put my finger on the exact year.
Essentially, a few things happened during my thirty years of being a blob. Like any good blob, I was mainly blobbing along, minding my own business, bumping into other people, soaking up life experiences. Generally, being a really good blob guy.
Some of those life experiences would be great, some of them hurt. However, my blob-like brain keep on blobbing around, absorbing. You see, it hadn't quite reached or realised its cerebral potential yet. It wasn't fully formed. It was as if I was drunk the whole time (partly true) or just really stupid. Looking back, I now feel like I didn't exist at all.
Perhaps, this is just the way that it happens to everyone. I do feel though, after talking to many people, that I've somehow managed to age 10 years after all of my peers, definitely in the anatomical sense.
For example, I had some friends who looked 30 when they were 19. Whereas at 30 I still felt like a some newly fledged inflamed amoeba, stuck on autopilot, not really able to make sense of the world. A true battler. A self-sabotaging people pleaser. A distracted doolally.
Now, I'd say the contrast is stark. After many missteps and lessons along the way I feel like I'm getting there, on my journey to manhood.
What does that mean in today's language of manosphering and mysogyning?
Well, I think for one it means that you have your impulses under control, in all aspects of life. You're calm and considered.
Another thing I think is that you stop caring so much about what other people think about you. Freedom.
I had always thought that I had my mind under control. Many times I'd recounted the Seneca quote "we suffer more in our imagination than in reality". However, there was an undertone of a societal grip on me. I didn't realise. I cared too much about how people would feel based upon my actions, to the point where I was sabotaging myself.
Simply put, I was a pushover. I had no clear boundaries. I lacked assertiveness in my personal life. Work Mike was different, but personal life he was fluffy and blobby.
For example, for a long time, I couldn't say the words "I want...". Partly, because this comes across rude as a British guy, but also because I didn't know what I wanted. That's mad.
I think a large part of our culture in the UK is self-sabotage. We think too much about what others think of us. To the point where we end up on a merry go round of placating each other, instead of someone hitting the big red STOP button and actually saying what they themselves want to do. Not, "would like" to do, "WANT" to do. Stick their neck out and likely get called a dick for it in the process.
To wonder when and what actually makes you become a man is an interesting one.
I don't really know as I'd say it just continues to happen. At the same time, I now live in the much renowned Peter Pan city of Barcelona. Man-children aplenty. Then there's me, floating on through, obsessed with connecting people to where they live, harbouring my future Dad energy for when I'm through this current messy middle—for when I find myself in the correct headspace and financial position to do anything about it.
In the end, I'd say it's a beautiful evolution of oneself. One day a glitch wakes you up. Then you start on your final leg to become man...previously blob.