Edinburgh

I've had it put to me several different times over the years from different people that I have to build something here in Edinburgh first before venturing further afield.  Usually this topic comes up when somebody finds out about the SoulJahm Europe adventure and how it failed to materialise the way I envisioned.  It was one of the things thrown at me in an indirect way by the French freemason I encountered online in 2010, who seemed to have a serious problem with me heading for Europe and seemed intent on sending me back towards my hometown and family.  It was even expressed in an online psychic reading I had done in 2008 where I was told I would not "thrive far from my roots".

What nobody has understood or even bothered to find out is why I felt the need to venture out from Edinburgh in the first place.  That is so often the case with me, plenty people like to tell me what I should and shouldn't be doing with my life, but so few ever attempt to understand me and what I'm about first.

I have lived in Edinburgh almost all my life.  In 2002 I travelled Europe for a few months and then between 2010 and 2014 lived in various parts of Europe again, this time for longer periods in each place.  Aside from school days, I have lived an almost hermit like existence in Edinburgh.  Around the age of 15, I began to feel this kind of isolation and aloneness come over me even whilst around my school friends.  It seemed to descend on me out of nowhere.  A few years later, during my first job after leaving school, what I now understand as some kind of pre-kundalini/pre-ascension process kicked in and took my life in a different direction to all my peers.  I suspect the feeling I had at 15 was a pre-cursor to this.  

What happened to me during those years, 1996 to 1999, took me out of society's rhythm and began aligning me with a new rhythm, although I never understood this as it was happening.  I found I was just 'different' to everyone I met, in how I saw the world, the things I wanted out of life, and though I tried my best to fit in, I couldn't do it.  It was easier to withdraw and get into my own world and see what I could do from there.  I always had this feeling the right people would come to me anyway, that it was pointless to try to make friends the way everyone else does.  Meeting Kate from Australia online in a very synchronistic way only confirmed this to me.  That is something people don't understand when I tell them about the difficulties in finding like-minded souls and they say how do you expect to find friends if you don't go out and do A, B and C?  Well, because I've seen from my own experience that when I try to do that it doesn't work and when I just do my thing, it brings me to people who are right for me.

Before I met Kate online, I had no desire to meet people this way.  I used to go out and mingle during the Edinburgh Festival, dreaming I'd strike up a conversation with someone, perhaps from another country.  I used to go out to the pubs and clubs in the city centre most weekends and I used to imagine having a band here in Edinburgh, rehearsing and getting really good before taking it out to the world.  Everytime I found the same thing happening.  Nothing.  The odd time I did meet someone they would disappear out of my life as quickly as they had come in.  Overall, long before the social media days we live in now, I was getting the feeling humans just did not really want one on one physical relationships.  Mobile phones were beginning to become very popular during this time and although it was early days in terms of the internet, I can definitely trace back where we're at now as species and the problems with human interaction to those days.  I could see it going this way.  I felt like I was some relic from a distant time who simply wanted normal human interaction, being in a band, hanging out, rehearsing, the way I'd seen it from earlier times like the 60s and 70s but it felt like nobody else wanted that.  The technology was pulling them away.

So my life as a hermit was half circumstance, half choice.  Yes, I could have went out to places and made more effort by following society's conventions to meet people but that was the problem for me.  I didn't fit in there and if that was the only way to make friendships then the only option was to withdraw and become more reclusive.  The life I had during my 20s in Edinburgh revolved around me and Kate, with my family alongside.  That restlessness to connect with others wouldn't leave me alone and as happy as I was with Kate, there was always a feeling I was destined for something bigger than this.  That's what drove us to search further afield, and continental Europe was always calling.  It felt more in tune with us as an environment and lifestyle.  That it wasn't to be the solution so far was only confirmation to me that something had happened to people to make them more suspicious and afraid of human contact.  This came to a head clearly for all to see in 2020 with the lockdowns, work from home, everybody behind screens of some kind, if not a monitor, phone or tablet then a mask or perspex of some kind.

People would collaborate with me online now and again but almost never in person.  So when people make out I need to build something here in Edinburgh, it sounds very strange to me.  I started out wanting to do just that over 20 years ago!  Nobody was interested so I went looking elsewhere, including online, and now that I'm still in Edinburgh all these years later nothing has changed!  Even when I went online it was with the intention to lead to a real physical relationship but only Kate seemed up for that.

I've never really been someone with a sense of strong roots anywhere in this world.  Perhaps because of my Maltese and German family background I never felt that Scottish pride I see and hear so many other Scots talk of.  Not that I don't love this place but maybe I've always been a bit of an outsider.  I never felt Scotland was my "home", I always felt the whole world was potentially my home as a physical place.  So to me it was perfectly natural to move on somewhere else and try there if nothing and nobody was showing up here in Edinburgh.  I've been back now living in Edinburgh for almost 9 years and I only have one friend to show for it so nothing has really changed in 20 years.  Can you blame me for looking elsewhere?