Version 2

If you've been following my blog for a while you'll know that this year has been one of change for me, not by choice but because of incidents and circumstance, most notably my health. Discovering my allergy to Rapeseed Oil [Canola Oil as it is known in the US] has fundamentally changed my diet, I haven't eliminated certain food groups entirely though, as some people suggested. I think there was an expectation from some that I would go the route of Gluten-free Vegan Non-Dairy but to be honest that is far too much work. Instead I've tried to eliminate Rapeseed Oil from my diet as much as I can, and accepted that some of it will make it through regardless and I just have to mitigate the consequences.

The unintended side effect of reevaluating my entire diet was the subsequent reevaluation of my life itself. I don't mean that in the sense of ending it, although if you have read some of my recent posts you'll know that idea weighs heavy on my mind anyway and has done long before this debacle. No I mean reevaluing my life in terms of trying to figure out what I actually want. Trying to rebuild my diet with substituted foods forced me to think about what I like and dislike about the foods I was eating, the flavours, the tastes, the textures etc, things which I hadn't paid much attention to for quite some time.

Some years ago I wrote a blog post about the taste of olives and how I hated them as a child and held onto the idea that I still did for decades only to try them unexpectedly and enjoy the taste - ironically trying to substitute Sunflower Oil which in the UK now contains Rapeseed the main alternative I switched to was Olive Oil so there is a running thread, the Universe is quite poetic at times.

That mentality of considering the things I built up as part of my identity for years spilled over into almost every other area of my life. Movies that I would watch on repeat have been axed from my routine when I stopped to think about whether I actually got any enjoyment out of them or whether they were simply a comfort to me because they were what I already knew. The same held true for games, and books, and to a lesser extent music as my listening habits with that at least tend to move along with what is new, there's definitely a recency bias in my top 10 most listened tracks for instance.

I bought new clothes, new shoes, changed my haircut, changed my diet, deleted a tonne of files that I was holding onto that I will never conceivably use again. I also looked back, I spent days looking through old photos of me and my family, my teenage years, my childhood, and photos from my parents' teenage years long before I was ever born. I've reconnected with some of the things I liked when I was younger, that was partly to explain for my search for Casper as noted in a previous post.

I've also admitted to myself that all things considered good and bad, the time in my life when I had the most freedom and independence, and enjoyment from life was when I lived in London. I'm exploring my options when it comes to the possibility of moving back there but it is unlikely to happen any time soon due to my financial obligations at the moment.

This blog was first set up to promote the LGBTQIA+ Fiction that I write but I haven't actually mentioned it much other than the few articles I have posted detailing each book that I self-published. In the end this blog took on a new life when I aggregated all the old content from almost every blog I have ever had and uploaded it here. The domain name remains the same S J Doran being the pen name my works of fiction are published under, to avoid conflict with the text books I published under my real name teaching people how to program in Java.

I have gone back and reflected on these publications though, I still want to write but my motivation and my inspiration for fiction is lacking right now. I used to write as a form of escapism, to inhabit unrealistic worlds and get lost in them for a time but not to sound trite, the real world has become increasingly unrealistic to the point where reality itself feels like the work of fiction. The whole Simulation Theory is appealing because it would provide a sense of comfort to know this circus was in some way orchestrated. I don't actually believe in an Illuminati for the simple reason that getting a group of people in a room to agree on anything is at times asinine, the idea that a cabal of elites came together to control the world feels ludicrous. If the Simulation Theory did prove true I think the controller of that simulation is more than likely some form of deity or a computational construct that is perhaps itself nested in another layer of simulation.

None of this really matters though. When I wrote about reincarnation there is a concept that some believe that the only choices in life that matter are choices of consequence, everything else is ignored. If a decision doesn't have a lasting impact you can pick whatever you like. To that end, whether or not you believe in any theory however grandiose or minute, if it doesn't actually impact your life it doesn't make a difference so why should you care?

I've found myself letting go of beliefs as much as I have let go of physical and digital possessions. My personal spiritual outlook on life is in a state of flux, agnosticism is tempting as a definition except I do actively believe in a God, I just don't believe in religion. That's a complicated statement to make and the ramifications are even more complex to navigate because you find yourself in the same headspace of trying to sift through everything you know to decide what you actually agree with and what you don't, in order to decide what to hold onto and what to let go of and try to move on.

I watched a Smosh video where Anthony Padilla mentioned that although he doesn't believe in "The Secret" or the "Law of Attraction" - neither do I - he said that he does believe in focusing on a goal or destination and making decisions that move you closer to that goal, worrying less about making right or wrong decisions and less about the path to that destination as a whole, instead focusing on moving closer to it as any movement at all is better than no movement. That's something that has been playing on my mind. There are things that I want that I have no idea how to get, and although I can't see a path that leads to them from where I am now, I'm choosing to make decisions that provide some movement at least, in the hope that a clearer path emerges in time.

I don't know if that will work but I know that stagnation won't get me anywhere other than the same place I've been for the last 15 years.