blog.djstead.net

  I think what I was trying to convey in my previous entry is perhaps more concisely talked to as a process of being reborn . Which is both unsurprising, given that I have been referring to these past number of series as Project Chrysalis; and also is quite a significant concept that I want to get my head around a bit more: Not just something to be neatly encapsulated as a phrase. = The realisation I have had is that: I have, in insulating myself whilst recovering from a bout of depression; I have jettisoned a great deal of what made up who I was, and how I felt about the people and experiences I have had in my life. As I tried to say last time; the way I am going about things these days feel different to how they did a few years ago, and across the two decades before that really. And this is not a conscious decision - I seemed to recall that I quite enjoyed those lives that I have had; and see no surface reasons as to why I would change that approach - but clearly the chemicals i...

There are approximately 17 years between these photos (5 or 6 years between each); all of which are undoubtedly of myself - but also are examples of four (of many more) previous versions of myself. The first is I think shortly after university, settling into a shared house - in the peak years of following a wide variety of European metal bands across the continent - spending hours (most days) in an internet chatroom of similar minded/humoured folk. The second is embedded in my Leeds-based social group; this was taken on the Three (Yorkshire) Peaks Challenge in or around 2011. I don't have much to report on from that period of my life - perhaps maybe it was simply unremarkable - but I would spend plenty of my social time with groups of people, maybe still at gigs - but often online playing games, or visiting folks at weekends. The third is early into my realisation that Polyamory (as I labelled it then) was for me. I think it is actually after my first real relationship; but when I ...