Moron.

Somewhere in between the big chunks of missing memory, I can recall a hand-made magazine called The Moron. I even have a copy of one issue, folded away safely in "my sentimental trunk". I must have been eight. Or nine. Or ten. And apparently, every so often - weekly? Monthly? I would produce my own little magazine. I'm not sure if I ever showed it to anyone. I have to rely on other people's memories for more information.

A few years ago, I met another school friend who told me that I had done the same thing a few years later, in boarding school. I would have been twelve. Or thirteen. Or  fourteen. I used to write the issues up, and she distributed them. That's all I know. I don't know what it was called, or what it was about.

I've lost a lot of my writing. I don't know much about it, except from the few scraps I've found here and there in old school notebooks. What I do know is that something in me had to write. Needed to get the words out of my head, put the words down, and then put them out there.

And then came many years when I couldn't, or wouldn't write. For work, yes. Buy Coca-Cola. Fly Gulf Air. Drive a BMW. These were easy messages to share with the world. Not like the words in my head and heart that were truly a part of Me, not a job, not a requirement.

Sometimes, of course, I'd get the better of Me, and write something anyway. And then another Me would get the better of that writing Me, and tear it up. I'd tear it up because I didn't recognise the handwriting. Or I'd tear it up because I recognised I'd put my heart down there on paper, and that made me feel too vulnerable.

But now I blog. I still do remove the occasional post (okay, MANY of them) but I can resist deleting them because I have the option to turn them back into drafts. Mostly, I write, edit a bit, and then take the leap. Click on Publish and let the world have at it.

I don't know what happened between those childhood years when I wrote instinctively and from the heart, and now. Fear, I suppose. It's dawning on me just now as I type this, that maybe middle age is not all crisis and creaking and worrying about cancer. Perhaps it's about letting go of the fear, and grabbing hold of myself again.

I think perhaps my blog here is The Moron of the 21st century. And that's a good thing for it to be.