The End

Scrawling yourself as the main character in your own story is possibly the most self-indulgent hobby available to humankind.   There is no more narcissistic way of spending one’s time; no other context in which every fart, twitch and stammer can be accorded such status.  I have had a wonderful time. 

I promised myself a year.  I took a little longer: it has been fourteen months since I missed my first meeting with the spirit fans, just before last Halloween.  We are now looking the turn of the year in the eye. 

I did not get what I expected.  I did get bonus results.  My driving has improved.  I have become an internet fan.  I started taking photographs.  I learned how to dowse. 

When we know nothing, we do not know how much there is know.  I have uncovered all kinds of communication channels and sources of information about the world of the weird, but all I really know is that there is much more to find out.

It is strange for me now to look back and remember how little I understood about this field fourteen months ago, and yet the seeds of my eventual conclusion were there in myself all the time. I had expected to end the year doing something new and different.  Oddly, the change has been less visible.  I feel different.  Not new, but better organised inside. 

Poking about in the paranormal is about making choices about what beliefs a person may develop.

When we make such choices, we are choosing which world we think we live in.  I think I live in a world characterised by the interaction of subtle energies, where everything feels alive.

We also make choices about how we want our world to be.  I want a world full of stories, myths and legends. 

Lastly, I like to hear about the worlds other people have chosen; what stories they are telling, why they cling to them and why they tell them.

So, after 14 months, I understand who and what I am these days, now that I can be myself.

I could be described as a Fortean fan, which means that I am in it for the craic.  That is my silliest and most shallow level, and I am not ashamed. 

I am a person who loves mythology, including the modern stuff which we do not always realise is mythology at all. 

Lastly, in a deep corner of my being, some kind of soul exists, and it is nourished when I feed it.  I will learn how to be proud of that.  In a busy, hard-nosed world, where people do not suffer fools at all, I have given myself permission to admit I have a spirituality, and I am currently feeding my soul.

That is it.  The end of the project.  I am sorry to let you go, dear diary.  I am also glad, though.  When an important chunk of your leisure time is actually a secret to all but your very closest friends, you do tend to run out of small talk.   When you meet new people, and find yourself all the time wondering whether or not to write about them, it makes for uneasy relationships.

Goodbye, dear diary.  Onward, ever onward (but quietly, now).  There is still Stuff to find out.

..and that is where we leave Rifol, forever in January of 2010, poor thing, it was not nice.  

Of course, the world keeps turning and everything changes and grows.  More has happened; we all keep learning and doing, there are always more adventures, but there is no more Rifol and no more diary, there is just me now.  

I thank you for letting me share this with you, and I hope you will go on to share it with others who might like it.  I am leaving it here, like a little fossil for people to stumble across.    

Goodbye, and stay Chipsy,

xx