Sometimes I think I’m the only person who is genuinely solipsistic…

We all like to think we’re special, think we’re something different. I’m by no means a committed blogger, as is clearly evidenced here (and how my soul recoils at the sheer etymological ugliness of the word ‘blogger’ and its kin), but is not this activity of blogging itself an attempt to express this difference, make it more apparent to the world that we are here? We’re not just existing, we have something to say. Or perhaps we’re not all that arrogant. But all the same, we could just watch TV, if we wanted our views to go unheard.

Small cries, then, in a big world. This is also part of what I believe drives people, myself included of course, to decide to become writers. It is a belief that our views and perspectives, imagination and linguistic brilliance will be of wider interest to all those people out there and with this will come recognition and success. Blogging (do I really need to keep using that term?) is some sort of ersatz form of creative writing, or at least can be, and can easily consume, I would imagine, time that should be put to more constructive use. I say this because an awful lot of people seem to be writers or express an interest in writing and I cannot always tell whether this means anything beyond maintaining a web log itself. We take up writing to validate our unique difference but, on doing a quick search, an expressed interest in writing is shared by another 189,000 people on this site alone. Although there is obviously a degree of rounding there (and the number may be more of an order of magnitude than scientifically accurate), it is also known that there are others here who have not declared their interests and could well add to this figure.

In days prior to the preponderance of user-defined internet content, you could decide to become a writer and find that you alone, amongst your friends and acquaintances, had this ambition. You would feel differentiated and perhaps encouraged by this. But now the internet can demonstrate that you are not unique or special at all, pretty much everyone is at it. Flicking through the blogs of those with an interest in writing (and I have applied no real scientific statistical analysis behind this) I start to develop a sense that many of the women seem also to like cats and many of the men profess accompanying interests in music and playing guitar. I’m guilty of falling into that male stereotype (there’s a pun there if you look hard enough) – although guitar owning probably describes my status better than guitar playing.

Why am I bothering to bang on about this? What has this got to do with anything at all? Well I’m not sure but it would seem that to declare yourself interested in writing is both easy and common place. But these days the poverty of such a declaration is more easily exposed. To be a self-proclaimed writer differentiates you by a fraction of one percent from all other human beings, it is no achievement in itself, even as an ambition. What makes the difference is not the intent but the writing itself. You need to forget your orgulous posturing and the existential aggrandisement that may be your hope from writing and think merely of the words. The words, if written well, will validate you, will determine whether you are indeed a writer or just someone with a vague and misdirected interest. Having the desire to be a great writer has no worth, desiring to write well, and pursuing that desire until you attain it, does – or so it would appear to me.

But Tartarus Central is not really about attaining things, or moving on in any way. It is, as far as I can fathom, more to do with adopting transient aspirations that are never really pursued with any commitment and vigour. Not everyone gets this, for instance Sisyphus continues to make one hell of a racket down here by persistently lugging his boulder around. He should just sit down and reflect on how great it would be to get the boulder up that slope rather than go through the futile activity of trying to actually do it. But he’s always grumpily muttering about “miscarriages of justice” and “I’ll bloody show them” and won’t be discouraged. I’m in half a mind to ask Gyges to confiscate the boulder, I wonder what Sisyphus would do with his time then.

"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Camus

“Yeah, right. Have you spoken to him recently?” – me

“No.” - Camus