Who I am

Hello, been a while hasn't it?, I'm glad you are still here reading this so I guess I owe you all an explanation really as to where Ive been. I love writing, I love this blog, I'm very humbled by the fact that people have took the time to let me know they follow it and that they read what I have to say, for that I thank you.

Over the past few months I slowly started to fall out of love with writing, it didn't happen over night, it gradually crept up on me over a period of time. At first it was the lack of ideas, then it was starting a post and not finishing it, something I have never done before. I wasn't sure what the problem was, whether it was pressure from work, or perhaps a case of writers block, something I have been lucky enough not to suffer with.

A few weeks ago I posted something on my Facebook page, an argument between 'friends' erupted and one of those 'friends' blocked me and unfriended me. This person has voiced strong opinions on things I had written in the past and I would always apologise for it. Except this time I didn't, I felt a sense of relief that they had taken the step to break the link between us.

At first I was little upset about it if I'm honest, Id met this person a few times, and so I sent them a message once again apologising to them if I had upset them. It wasn't until the next day, and no response I might add, that it dawned on me why I had stopped blogging. I had become something I wasn't and never wanted to be, I had become so caught up in what other people thought of me and what I wrote or said that I was in fact becoming submissive to what they thought I should be like.

I wasn't being 'me' anymore, I was writing the way people thought I should write, I was writing about things that they thought I should write about, I didn't start this blog to write for other people, I started this blog to write for me and I had got caught up in pleasing other people and had lost the total enjoyment in what I did. The blogs had become fewer and fewer, the content had changed, I wasn't speaking my mind on what really mattered to me anymore. I was so busy trying not to upset people that in the course of doing that I had changed from a confident person into someone who always sought approval of others, my cyber friends.

There are some great bloggers out there, people I really respect, their blogs are listed on the right hand side of my blog and I encourage you to read them. I'm not that talented a writer if I'm honest, hell I'm not even the most talented writer in my family ( my dads a published author), but what I am is an honest writer. I pour my heart into what I do and over the last few months I wasn't that writer anymore, I knew something was wrong I just couldn't see it.

One of my favourite bloggers gave me some advice when I said I was going to stop blogging and I would like to thank him for that. He told me to take a break and think about what I wanted to write, to really think about it for the first time. 'Make sure you don't delete the blog, you will regret it if you do'. There were so many times my finger hovered over the delete button and yet I couldn't do it, so thank you Mr London Street for some very kind and generous advice.

So to all those people who I may have offend with my arrogant attitude over the past 6 months, to all those people who I befriend and perhaps haven't taken the care to make sure we talk as much as we should do, I apologise and hope you can forgive me. I know now that what I was becoming was an arsehole, trying to please people who didn't matter to me and looking down on you as if I was better than you, because I got more views and comments on my work than you did. I thought I was going about it the right way, I thought I was doing it the right way, that I was attracting people who were more important than the people that took the time to visit my blog at the very beginning. The advice I was taking was the wrong advice and it took someone blocking me to make me wake up and realise that they aren't important anymore.

I am 38 years of age, a father of 4, a husband, a Dagenham and Redridge supporter, and finally after all these years comfortable with who I am. Comfortable enough within my own skin to know that trying to be someone you are not only upsets you, that its okay to voice an opinion and if they value what you have written they will engage in adult conversation and you can come out the other-side (Yes Philip I mean you, thank you I mean it).

Comfortable enough to know that the people that really matter are the people that perhaps you haven't seen for years, family and friends, work colleagues who give you the benefit of the doubt when your being an arsehole, or people you've never met, but who take time out of their day to give you advice, to talk to you, that expect nothing more from you than the person that you actually are. Most importantly though I am a writer, there I said it, I write because I want to, I write about what I want to write about, that someday you may stumble across my blog and either follow me, or even one day leave a comment, to you I say Hi, lets have some fun. Mostly though I've come out of this a better person and for that I will be eternally grateful.

Thank You

Anthony