Older, but no wiser

I don't know where I'm going with this blog, or whether it matters where it goes, or whether it matters whether I know or not. I'm conscious it has become disjointed; random pieces here and there with little coherence other than an underlying sub-plot about my experiences in counselling. Those experiences are obviously personal and I suspect mean little to anyone else.

I noticed something peculiar about my sitemeter statistics: in the half year following the start of this blog, the number of visits grew rapidly, reaching a peak in January of this year that has never been surpassed, not by a long way. Up until that point I was still engaged by the sheer novelty of blogging; it certainly never occurred to me for one moment that I could write, or wanted to write, other than to try and communicate those fleeting thoughts throughout the day that bring variety and interest and occasional insight. But around January this year I had the crazy notion of "being a writer". Not that I thought I was particularly good at it, but it seemed to fulfil something I'd been missing, seemed to fill a gap, provide purpose. It felt a good fit with who I thought I was - or with who I could be.

The funny thing was, from that point on, sitemeter readings plummeted. Of course, that wasn't the only change around that time - I also began going to counselling in February, and the focus of my thoughts and writing shifted to an even more introspective view. Come to think of it, those two changes - writerly declarations and starting counselling - weren't unrelated, in fact one followed directly from the other. The whole reason for going to counselling was to try and resolve the conflict that I felt, feeling like two different people - one who does a job of work and one who writes - who were unable to coexist, leaving me feeling like a Jekyll and Hyde character. To do my job effectively, the person who writes stuff had to be suppressed since if I gave that person full reign, my job felt so irrelevant and worthless that my output dropped alarmingly (yet the worthlessness of the job was perhaps proved by the fact that no-one noticed that I was doing so little productive work).

But I'm a conscientious soul; I couldn't carry on feeling guilt about my lack of commitment to work, so over a period of months, and without any clearly planned intent that way, I seem to have drifted back towards a greater commitment to work - and a consequent withdrawal from writing; even from thinking the kind of thoughts that lead to writing. I believed for a while that I wasn't writing because I didn't have time, but I found that even when I did have time, I had nothing to say. The writer's voice had almost been silenced.

So, I don't know where this blog is going. After nine months in counselling, although many issues I wasn't even aware of previously have surfaced, been examined, and if not resolved then at least partially understood and accepted - yet this swapping heads issue seems no further forward.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree?