steve carlton writing

There might be a couple of reasons that have kept me from expressing myself lately. Maybe it was the fact that my operation and recovery took a bigger toll on me than I initially expected they would. This is possible, yet unlikely, since although I was very stressed, I don't think there could have been any long lasting effects due to the sensational recovery. (This is somewhat outdated, but still holds true at the end of the day.) Maybe getting my degree and struggling to find work immediately put me in a bad mental state. I braced myself for circumstances similar to this, but I was hopeful that it was not necessary to do so. Managing my expectations has always been difficult for me and I grativate towards being hard on myself. Maybe it was the fact that I saw one of my closest friends very vulnerable and realising my own helplessness. Seeing somebody that I have known my entire life open up about their own struggles and finding myself in that situation again. I have spend some tim

It is a difficult time right now, inside and outside. Many people, I have come to think, might feel about what is going on in the world right now like I feel when I step into my father's old workshop. To give some more perspective: my father was a quite gifted craftsman and carpenter. Alongside his ability to speak and translate many difficult languages, his handiness and general capability contributed to the near perfect image of a male alpha that I was presented with as a child. An imagine I have struggled to live up against from day one, as one-sided and incomplete as it might have been. For all intents and purposes, as I grew up my father was the man and he could do anything. He build our house from scratch and accumulated a great assortment of tools in the basement and constructed himself a proper workshop that he used frequently. As far as I remember, he was a real work-horse and would only stop in the evening to have dinner and a beer.  Since he died when I was still very yo

The one thing that has been on my mind the most over the course of the last couple of weeks was, and still is, change. The best way I can describe how it has made me feel like would be to talk about a friend of mine. It is a close friend of mine, one of my best friends in fact, (but) and he is moving away. See, my first instinct was to say "one of my best friends in fact, but he is moving away" because that's how I feel right now or rather have felt for some time now. "..., but he is moving away" implies that our relationship is going to change, which I know it will not. He is not doing something to me, I understand. "... and he is moving away" implies that our relationship is more firmly embedded in trust. That we both understand that life is like that and friends might move away at some point, but you still stay friends. You just don't see each other all the time. Actually, most of our friends have already moved a little further away from were we

From a writer's standpoint I feel like I missed the train right now. It left the station in the moment I got there and now I have to wait for God knows how long to get the next opportunity. In a way this describes the process of being judgemental about one's own work and I wanted to explain how my mind runs in that regard. There have been times where I have been writing on a daily basis, or something close to it, and even though not everything turned into something, the general level of judgement I would bring towards every text was much, much lower than how it would have been, had I not been writing on a frequent basis. The bar gradually moves up higher and higher and eventually, when I do take up a pen and paper or move towards a keyboard, whatever comes out is just garbage in my eyes in most cases. Unless there was something produced by God-given talent, of course. I struggle with responsibility from time to time. If I take it and attach it to my writing, then there is a

I think in a relationship there needs to be irritation of some sort, be that indecisiveness when in lack of leadership or arguments about differing opinions and maybe even fights. If the destructive potential of these interactions isn't too great, then it releases built-up tension and makes room for new (and maybe familiar) experiences and feelings (that might have been neglected recently) and it is both of that or leads to both of that on its own. If there is a balance between care and irritation, then the relationship is going to be strong enough to withstand obstacles. If one is never challenged, one can not grow. Much the same way, I think, it applies to human relationships of any kind. Sometimes we talk and fight and sometimes we communicate non-verbally, focusing on love and/or kindness, but often when I fight it is almost like an intellectual (or just really stupid) sparring. I would like to think that I surround myself with intelligent people and I love to communicate ope

I understand that the situation worldwide surrounding COVID-19 is terrible. It is required that people stay home during this time in order to slow down the spread of the pandemic and that is as much attention as I intend to give to this omnipresent topic for now, but even the invasion of my thoughts in the morning, as I write this, is difficult to deal with because I am trying to explain myself in a somewhat chronological fashion and it is bound to come up again in this retrospective practice. There are certain stress related symptoms that I am experiencing again lately. A couple of months back was the first time that I had a skin-related issue besides severe backpain after I was done working on my thesis and it was a little troubling for me, honestly speaking. I believe the symptoms are now showing again because of the last couple of weeks. My mother, whose age I am not willing to specify other than elderly, was scheduled to have a hip replacement operation and I was nervous as hell