Hello, World! Why I've Started A Blog

For as long as I can remember and certainly all of my adult life, a lot of the time my mind has felt like a Newton’s Cradle.  Well, more like a million of them, all swinging in different directions at the same time.  One minute I’ll be wanting to divert my energies towards x and the next y.  I’ve forgotten more passing interests than ones I can remember having.  Some have lasted days, some weeks, some months, some years.  Some itches were fully scratched never to be repeated and others are more ever present, and I bounce between them depending on my mood.

I’ve also spent millions of brain hours ruminating on the meaning of life, the politics of the day, relationships, the environment, business ideas (that within a week I’ve over-thought out of existence), family etc. and all of that I’ve kept inside my head, banging around with an audience of one and rarely, if ever, shared.  I think through a combination of family stuff growing up, being bullied a bit at school and a messy relationship in my teens (+ my genes) I’ve had my real brain, my real thoughts locked away in an impenetrable box since my childhood.

I’ve known I had this problem for a long while, I think one of the positives for me is that I’m pretty self-aware about all my ‘negatives’ (well at least I think I am).  In fact, I went to the GP to try and get some help initially in about 2006/2007 but they weren’t interested. Fast forward to September 2019 and I was back at the GP but this time they showed more interest.  I’ll go into this in a separate post or posts in future but that was the first domino in a chain of events over the next year or so that have helped me come to terms with clouds that had hung over me, in some cases for 28 years.  I can now view the world in a different way, the way I feel towards certain people is a revelation and material things seem far less important.  I wish I’d pushed the GP all those years ago or found another way to move past things, after all the only person who can ever fix you, is you and I’ve been here all along.

As a result, I’ve decided that the next chapter of my life is going to be dedicated to finding things that truly make my heart tick, things that matter and can positively impact those around me / the world.  I’ve sold my house and sold/donated/gave away nearly all of my possessions, once travel restrictions have been lifted then I’ll be heading out into the world with no destination or timescales in mind, no itinerary (well South America first but then wherever) just seeing where the world takes me and trying to work out ways in which I can have a positive impact.  You may think this sounds like idealistic bullshit, in the past part of me would probably be thinking the same.

This blog is for me, a form of therapy in one sense.  I’ve kept my thoughts and feelings to myself for the best part of three decades, I want them out of my head, I want to get better at expressing those thoughts and feelings, at communicating with others and I want to see what still resonates when it’s words on a screen and not just a constant jumble in my mind.  I don’t have it fully worked out yet, there’s no master plan, I won’t be writing click bait articles and I’m not trying to become a ‘blogger’ so I can sell people nonsense training courses and eBooks.

What I do want to write about are issues that affect us all, particularly mental health, the environment and social cohesion (or lack thereof).  I also want to write about things that I have an interest in, there’ll be posts on technology (both the positive and negative impact), travel, personal finance, fitness, photography, productivity and music.  I can’t promise it will always be totally coherent, but I can promise I’ll always be 100% honest and call things as I see them, including my own bs and hypocrisy!  If I subsequently change my view on something I’ll explain why.

My name’s Sean Christopher James Thompson.

Hello, World!

A “Hello, World!” program generally is a computer program that outputs or displays the message “Hello, World!”. Such a program is very simple in most programming languages, and is often used to illustrate the basic syntax of a programming language. It is often the first program written by people learning to code. It can also be used as a sanity test to make sure that a computer language is correctly installed, and that the operator understands how to use it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/“Hello,_World!”_program

TLDR / Lessons to My Younger Self

• It’s good to talk to others about the stuff in your head.
• It’s ok to feel vulnerable.
• If you know there’s a problem, it’s almost always better to tackle it straight away.