An angel on my shoulder, a demon in my brain

My mind is often like a maze of twisty little passages, all alike, with no light at the end of any tunnels. My thoughts simply meander about, bumping into walls and tripping over barriers. There are no signs, no yellow, blue, green, or red tape on the floor showing the way. There is no floor, in fact, just a thick mist which swirls about the ankles. There may be a ceiling but it is obscured by a strange fog.

And I am often lost there. Like now. I wander through my mind each day, looking for some theme, some idea, some glimmer of a thought that can be turned into a post that might entertain, educate, or amuse you readers. I often fail. Not because I cannot find a thought (though that does happen) but because my writing talents are not all that strong. I started the blog with the idea that it might help me improve what meager writing skills I have.

Over the last two and a half years I have had some ups and downs, met some nice people, read some great blogs, and even received some compliments. I am not good at handling those. Trust and self image issues, clearly. We all have our demons, those are mine. Our demons would be more tolerable if they didn't impact our relationships, wouldn't they?

Something I have learned over the years is that these demons have a lot to do with how we interact with others. You have some bad experiences in your youth and they color all the relationships from then on. If only the good experiences had the same effect. It seems the good experiences' impacts are fleeting. At least they have been in my case.

I like to think of the good and bad experiences as "angels" and "demons." The demons have always been more powerful of the two. In that internal struggle, the angels are always the underdog. In my case, for much of my life, the angels lost the struggles.

This metaphor, angels and demons, is found throughout literature and human history. The struggle within man is endemic to the species, I think.