wipe the slate clean?

i was chatting with ML earlier this evening when a thought rose out of the murky morass of the back of my mind, took on form and solidified into a shape that i could inspect from all angles - a singular, made thing, wrought in whole-cloth from the ethereal fabric from which thoughts are born. this happens some times to us all - ideas that you know have been floating around in the back of your mind for weeks, months; concepts unconceived, craving creation and calling to come clear of cloudy concealment. you know it's been there, it's influenced all the thoughts around it, but like undetectable dark-matter it hides in plain sight, appearing when ready as if they've sprung fully formed from your mind.

why NOT move to another city, delete all the numbers from my phone, close my Facebook account and start a new one. discard all the trappings of the life i've built over the last decade or more and start completely anew.

ML seemed a little shocked at the idea:

"Sounds rather nihilistic. And you're not even German."
erm... we HAVE met, right?
"Starting a new FB account just seems rather extreme. What's wrong with just trimming the dead weight?"
i'm moving in the direction of being in the mood for extreme

the thing is that i went through and trimmed the "dead weight" a few weeks ago. removed the people i never speak to, or who never speak to me, or who i added because they asked me, all glassy eyed and desperate for connection in a hostel somewhere and who'd never notice their friends list drop from 483 to 482. i cut LFV because while i'm glad she's happy in her life, i don't want to have to see it, and because i don't didn't want to be broadcasting my general anguish knowing that she'd be watching. i cut out the people who i think i'll be better off without, and those who'll be better off without me. the thing is that when something weighs nothing, how can it be "dead" weight? what burden do you bear in having an extra dozen, score, century of friends?  it turns out that it weighs more than you realise.

to properly explain that, i need to explain a little of my life in the last month or so. back when i was at university, if i was looking for someone to hang out with i'd paint a map in my head of the Greater Perth Area and scan through it, marking the location of the people i knew, working out who was geographically convenient for whatever it was that i wanted to do. then i'd go through my phone to see if there was anyone else i hadn't already thought of who might go for a midnight drive. then i'd make some calls. now i lie in bed with Facebook, Gtalk and sometimes Skype open and see who's online. if they're online, i figure, they're home, and relying on people happening to be online adds a element of serendipity that pleases me greatly. oftentimes i don't get any bite, but every once in a while the stars will align and i'll wind up having a really pleasant evening, often bearing no resemblance to my design. how is this relevant? well, the more people you have linked across our various social media sites, the more chances that someone'll pop up online and be there to answer your hail. 200 people makes for 200 chances, which any serial roulette player will tell you beats 100.

to see how this can be a problem, you need to think of your social connections as possessions, and remember your Fight Club; because the things you own end up owning you. when you already have 100 people you can call on, why would you go out and meet anyone else? i've had a very similar mentality to that since i moved back to this gods-forsaken sandpit; i figured that i had enough friends to be going on with and precious enough time for those i had. when LFV and i went our separate ways and i suddenly got a whole lot more time on my hands i realised that if i were to say fuck off, i've got enough friends i'd have been lying. sure, i know a lot of people, but only a limited number of these are what you'd call "socially available". let's face it - i'm closer to 40 now than i am to 20, and when you find yourself at this age still living the life of an upwardly-mobile bachelor you begin to notice that an awful lot of your friends are getting married and having kids (in no particular order these days) and that suddenly the list of people who are up and want to go grab a coffee at 11PM, or head to the pub on a thursday night, or sit around gass-bagging for an evening is getting shorter and shorter... but they're your friends, right? you don't stop liking them because their priorities have changed, so you call them up every once in a while, they come up in your browsings for companionship, and you take it with grace when they turn you down for the 8th time in a row because... hey - it's no slight against you that they're busy, right?

it takes a special change of outlook to realise that you need to get out and meet some new people. it's not any reflection on the friends you've had for years, but they're moving in their direction and you in yours and you have needs they can't fulfil any more. with this in mind, a few weeks ago i got back onto Meetup.com (where i met such infamous souls as Adnan, The Canadian, Stiltwalking Jacq and Nick The Playwright back in my London days) and had a look at what people where doing in Perth. next thing i know, i'm hanging out with a bunch of Ducati riders, wasting large amounts of fuel, riding around the place for no better reason than that it gives us all an excuse to get out of the house and hang out with some different people. they're completely unconnected with my existing circles of friends (although for how long that lasts is another question) and while on the surface of things we have nothing more in common than motorcycle ownership, they're a pleasant crew. so if i can forsake my Perth crew and start building a new one, why not go to the extreme and take the Scorched Earth approach?

first things first, you'd need to honestly and fully cut all ties with your past life. a name change would help. a different country would be even better. moving to a different city, where you knew no one or next to no one, would be the least you'd have to do. the phone number you've had for 13 years? change it. email addresses need to go. no forwarding addresses for your snail-mail - people will try to find you and you can't just make it hard for them. you have to make it impossible. then, when you get to where you're going, you need to start anew. it takes years to build a proper social network from scratch. i know. i've done it from a single link. the thing is that the first one is the hardest.

then there's the betrayal. what i'm proposing here involves writing off everyone you've ever cared about, or (and this is arguably more important) has cared about you. imagine if someone you knew just disappeared off the face of the planet without a word, their phone number suddenly silent, their email addresses bouncing back,  Return To Sender on all post and no one you know the wiser? is social suicide any less selfish than the mortal version? and do you want that on your conscience?

the thing is that i'm tempted. we all have our Weapons Of Last Resort, and i can't help but think that if the reasonable and rational approaches haven't worked and i've tried everything else i could think of, that if not now then when? with the mood i've been in for the last few months, i've felt very much like i wanted to watch it all burn down around me then sit an enjoy the quiet stillness of the falling ashes. the feeling of wanting everyone else around to share and understand the fury and misery that you've tasted in every thought through every waking moment. the apex of the mentality that says "if i ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". when you can't help that every time something good happens to someone you know that it's somehow intended as a personal insult.

because maybe, just maybe, when you can see yourself turning into so much of a cunt that it's time to withdraw gracefully and silently, just to spare them from it and use the time you've sentenced yourself to as an opportunity to sort your shit out and get your head on straight so that by the time you do meet new people to hang out with you'll be ready to be civil.

for now it's just a thought that i'll be turning over in my hands for the next little while before i throw it at the wall and see whether it sticks...