Warning! My blogs might shock you

I find the words to say

My blog may not necessarily be my undoing, but it is a journal and compendium of snippets and snatches of memory, experience, and observation that if I could commit myself to the rigour of an autobiography, there is little else I might need to put in a book apart from flesh out some stories for content, context, and contemplation.

In the versatility of the use of language is the revelation of much that might elicit inquiry and confirmation, yet, what is read should be taken at face value, for there is neither obfuscation nor dissembling, just some finesse, and if one could rise to that standard, the sophistication to make the usually unspeakable readily palatable.

Too many assumptions exist that in the spectrum of believing the worst to fairy tale bliss, the truth is not so much a search for a needle in the haystack, it is in plain sight once disbelief is suspended for accepting an unconsidered reality. It is quite likely a variation on the art of storytelling.

Did you really not know?

There are discussions and difficult ones they are that have made a showing on my blog before they have become a conversation with certain close ones. Too many things to learn about me that it is surprising that the profile texts of my blog and Facebook do not seem to have had the in-depth reading and comprehension desired.

On my blog, I have a play on the meaning of my name Akin in English and any other translation or interpretation you might consider. “Essentially similar to what is known, compatible to what is expected and related to the unexpected…” It would be supercilious to consider myself enigmatic, but the ellipsis at the end is both deliberate and suggestive of much more about me that is unknown.

The Facebook profile changed some time ago because acquaintances from long ago had impressions about me in need of addressing forthwith. Adopting a broad statement was supposed to stem the tide of inquiry, even as I pruned my following to contain aggression and disapprobation. I could not be clearer than this: “I thought and concluded, do not presume you know me, this is really not a biography, it is guidance.”

Shock is the wrong reflex

Then comes the other conundrum, I write quite openly about very personal stuff that gets read by an audience beyond those I am directly in contact with. Even amongst those I know, I do not know who cares to read my blog, though the statistics suggest I have a readership in as far-flung places as Indonesia in the last week, that country taking the lead with the UK, the Netherlands, and Nigeria where I have lived coming 5^th, 7^th, and 9^th respectively. I cannot begin to fathom why the interest from these places, but something is engaging them.

This is my advice to those who read my blog; you will probably learn more than you expected to see, if you have any doubt you might want to give it the benefit of the doubt that what you have read needs no further explanation than what it has said at your first reading. Mental gymnastics are a cause for unnecessary angst, we can agree, your writer does not mince words.

The thought sometimes crosses my mind to be reserved, reticent, or dabble in a form of self-censorship, but rather than curtail, I usually prevail by finding a form of words for whatever I want to express. Finally, I ask for some open-mindedness and the need not to make a shock your first resort in the acquisition of knowledge; the world is a big place, some things might extend your worldview to places you never thought possible. That is the biggest teaching about our humanity.