Looking back at what I wrote with regard to the events of three years ago, I found myself wondering what had happened to the people I knew at that time, particularly the ones who ended up hurting me enough that the entire situation arose in the first place. I'd hoped that after this long I wasn't still going to be harbouring thoughts towards them, much less the depth of feeling I found was still there.

  A long time ago, I knew I had the capacity to be a very vengeful person, and while sometimes it was justifiable, the actions in that time turned me into someone I didn't like. Someone I still don't like, if I'm honest - but at least I was able to change, to try different ways of living, to not bear grudges against those who had hurt either me or those I cared about.

  But looking back over the last three years brought it all back to the forefront, to know that while I might not be consciously remembering the events, they were still there, and really that I still wished ill on these people. And I don't know what to make of that, even though I know that I now wouldn't want to go and exact retribution or anything, but that it was still there in my head/heart. I found myself wanting to write about it for d4d, to address the thoughts, and perhaps to even be able to find a vent, a dumping ground for them. As it turned out, even that avenue wasn't allowed me at the time, a form of writer's block hit me, and I couldn't even get the words from brain to "paper" (or keyboard and Cathode Ray Tube, in this particular case) for some godforsaken reason. Personally, I suspect that the self-censoring part of my brain took precedence on this one, as I know it does on occasion.

  There's been a lot of gubbins talked over the last couple of years about what should be written about in a "blog", or in "personal publishing", or whatever the buzzword happens to be this week. For me, I write a lot of thoughts and other pieces for here - but always with the knowledge that it's pretty much got to be for public consumption. I don't want every detail of my life, history, thoughts, and mental processes to be that accessible - and I refuse to write about quite a lot of personal stuff for precisely that reason. I've read some sites where people list everything that they're doing and thinking - and if that works for them then fair enough, but it's not something I'm comfortable with doing. For me, it's easy enough to make people cringe without doing it via the medium of WAY too much information.

  So there we are - the main reason why very few pieces got added to the site for nearly a month. Every time I wanted to write about something, it was always the same thing, and the self-censoring kicked in, so it was pretty much at an impasse all the way through. While writing this I've been very careful about how it's written (hard to believe, given the grammatical "style", I'm sure) and ensured that while the thoughts are kind of expressed now, neither are they giving much away. Sure,it's a juggling act, and not one I'm particularly happy about having had to do - but it's better than being stuck at a point with nothing to write, and no idea how to get past it.

  Hopefully I'll now be able to get back to writing more stuff without as many of these hindrances and hiatuses (hiatii?) - but only time will tell, I'm a lot happier for having finally circumvented this block - I'm sure there will be others in the future, but at least I know for myself that it's not a grand finale, that there's no way past it. Instead I know that sometimes things just have to be written from a different angle, and that being able to do that enables me to side-step the blockage.

  And that's no bad thing - it's also a pretty good indicator for me of how far I've come since May 2000. For me, that's important, to know I've progressed, not regressed. So all things considered it's been a learning experience, and one with a positive outcome.

  That'll do me.