30 Days Planned Blogging:

Day 25 – Someone who fascinates you and why.

Flawed but successful characters fascinate me; I don’t mean the drug addicted celebrity who is unable to leave a night out without being photographed a little mashed (although that doesn’t rule them out) or the celebrity sports person who has fallen from grace because they had an affair or affairs outside of wedlock; those people are what the media are fascinated with, which I find kind of bewildering, I am guessing it is because we see ourselves in ‘those people’, because they are doing what thousands of other people do every day without ending up in the papers or maybe it’s just because we love to see someone knocked down a peg or two.

The flawed characters I am talking about are the extraordinary ordinary people, those who have something about them that drives them, the quirkier the better, but it has to drive them to achieve something. I’m not interested in people who are extraordinary for some physical reason (i.e the most tattooed man, the tallest lady or anyone in the Guinness Book of Records for achieving something), although that doesn’t rule them out either, it is much harder to define than that so I will list a few types of people that fascinate me and try to explain why.

The Flawed Artist: Brilliant talent, produces some of the most lovely pieces of work I have seen, in many different mediums but lacks the courage, the confidence, the conviction to either finish, present or exhibit their work. There are many like them over the years who have died in poverty, unrecognised and ridiculed who have gone on to be some of the worlds most famous artists.

The Flawed Scientist: Brilliant mind, influential in changing the way the world sees itself and its place in the universe but is also an ordinary person with ordinary pursuits and/or an ordinary career. Does not fit the stereotype and fought against the system was ridiculed or ignored only to be eventually recognised as a genius and not a mad-person, an influential historical character but their fame is fading and their notoriety is being forgotten or is unknown by the masses.

The Flawed Socialite: The person who claims to not be able to keep a friendship, have a relationship or interact with the general population because of their inability to interact with other humans in a ‘normal’, ‘healthy’ or ‘socially acceptable’ way. Usually very intelligent, very funny, genuinely caring and considerate of others but with a self-effacing quality and the ability to see the flaws and the foibles in others reflected in themselves and quite a few of my favourite bloggers fit into this category.

One of the things that all the above have in common is that I would love to go out for a drink with them or have them attend my dinner party, I guess, I suppose that I would want them to be my friends and I am very lucky indeed because some of them are.