About me

Hey there. My name is Rockafella Skank (well, it isn’t really, or my parents would have a lot to answer for!) and I am a self-confessed, self-absorbed, over-thinker.

A long time ago I decided that I should deal with this problem by inflicting on others, my thoughts and (obviously insightful) analyses.

I also love writing.

Combining the two has enabled me to regale my friends and family with everything from daily diatribes highlighting the excitement of my working-day, to sagas of my speed dating experiences, to my thoughts on achieving peace in the Middle East. Well, okay, maybe not that last one…!

Family, friends, colleagues as well as those who avoid me will also, however, attest to the fact that I tend to be a tad long-winded in regaling these said-tales. I am easily distracted. Before I know it, I am off on some tangent and it isn’t uncommon for me to not actually finish my original story. (Which possibly says something about its importance in the first place!!!)

During a recent holiday I watched “The View”, an American talk show featuring up to five women (including Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg) sitting around a table chatting – and occasionally talking to guests. I was entranced. As someone took up a point (it was about sex, so I was obviously riveted), another jumped in and then someone else. All of us ended up someplace completely different to that from which we started.

That same night in bed, with sleep being the plan (sadly!), my mind raced all over the place – as it usually does. Leaping from one thought to another. I realized then that my mind is, in fact, like The View. I start contemplating some (very important issue), or perhaps trying to daydream about some gorgeous man enraptured with me (or something – and there could be sex?!) but then I am off to the next thing and I am distracted by some other far-less-fulfilling-but-worthy-of-obsessive-thoughts issue. I haven’t yet decided if this is a sign that I am, in fact suffering from ADD, or some sort of multiple personality disorder?!

So, what I am going to attempt to do here, is put my thoughts on paper (keyboard / screen) and in doing so, spare my long-suffering friends and family from my rants – though I am pretty sure they enjoy knowing why people should not dawdle along footpaths in the city at lunchtime when some of us are in a hurry!

In my conversations I am easily sidetracked. By putting my thoughts onto the screen however, it is hard to get too sidetracked and, besides, my fingers can’t keep up with my mind!

While I love writing, I hate the idea of being critiqued. While at university (many many moons ago!) I refused to go to tutorials where I would actually ‘meet’ the people scoring my essays.

Nowadays and a whole degree or two later, I spend my work life writing bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo but have finally become accustomed to others scrawling in red pen over my words. But, they are not really ‘my’ words – but someone else’s. I am just reporting them.

Having said all of that, however, a New Year’s resolution requires me to do some writing. To actually write. For me, however, there needs to be a point. However (and sadly for anyone reading), in the absence of an actual ‘point’, I decided I should just ‘write’. So, this is it. I don’t care if these words remain ‘unread’. I am putting my thoughts to paper and for me, that is a challenge enough in itself.