Nostalgia And All That Jazz

 Writing my biography is an interesting exercise but it is actually throwing up what I obliterated some years ago.  I was prone to reviewing and playing over in my head all the scenarios of things that had happened and was very bad at this constant analysis and reanalysis of situations that had happened because my mind does that, it's a whirr of computational what ifs and I always felt that was why I did what I did as a living.

I one day realised that all this stuff in my head whizzing around being worked on in multiple layers in a parallel type computational way was actually getting me nowhere, no where at all and that really was a problem and somewhere in the blog is the moment I lay down in bed and set fire to my memories and stopped dwelling and what-ifing.  My mind was then free of all that stuff.

Writing my biography has actually brought back some of that (not all I hasten to add) but some key moments in my life.  Well what I felt were key or pivotal.  Maybe not at the time.  These junctions in the road are interesting in an academic sort of way as you can do the "What If?" test on them but I found myself doing that this morning and I must stop it.  In my head are perhaps 8 to 10 moments in my life where I could have done something but didn't, I opted for what I knew, the place of safety and certainty and there's the regret.  I very rarely make a move or decision that I haven't thought through, I rarely do things on the spur of the moment and that is what I can feel being a regret.

Interestingly these are all relationship things.  I could have made a different decision and who knows what would have happened?  Your head and heart now say that something incredible would have happened, something with a romantic and rose tinted view of the world and yet if I really, really thought about it, I'd tend to doubt so.  With the romantic, idealised view there, of course things could have turned out differently and have been all Disney and perfect.  But you and I know that isn't true.  My analytical mind also realises this but that little ego voice likes to thinks that it would have worked out fine, Much better.  

I suppose it is alright to dream a little and in two cases I can conjure up a life that would be massively different from right now.  The fantasy plays out in my head and that's where it will stay but not for long.  Now's the time, after it is written down to get rid of it.  These are not in my biography but written down in another document that could be inserted into it.  I don't think that they should be in there.  I think some could be as it was part of my life and my journey.