A soupçon of wibblyness and other nostalgic qualia from 2am

You do not know what you've got 'til it's gone. Not strictly true, I think, but it's weird how you can suddenly realise that someone/something was waaaay more important to you than you previously imagined, especially if you already thought it/they were pretty damn important and it turns out you still underestimated them.

   My last post on here was so pessimistic that had I been a reader rather than the writer I think I'd have been referring the author to the Samaritans. I believe it's crucial to point out that I always play a character online (quite often offline too, tbh) so while most of what I write is genuinely what I think, not all of it is of me and none of it is the whole of me. I play up certain characteristics to fit the tone of what I want to say. If I'm feeling shit and want catharsis I will tell you every reason why I feel shit and not mention any lingering optimism I may have (this example is the most frequent) and if I'm feeling good and want to celebrate it I'll probably not mention whatever bad thoughts are going on under the surface. Anyways, if you read that post and you read this one too soon after you'll probably notice such a fierce change of direction that you may get whiplash (the author takes no responsibility for injuries incurred while reading this piece; you have been warned and continue to read at your own risk but if you're so weak as to be genuinely injured by metaphorical events you've done well to get this far through life and I offer my congratulations) but that doesn't mean I'm so bi-polar that I genuinely went from depressed to ecstatic in half an hour (although that might be the case, despite my protestations, idk, I'm pretty fucked up, you know).
   See? Wistfulness to whimsy in bugger all time.
   Part of the turnaround was that having mentioned last time that blogging had lost its appeal I decided to go back and read stuff from when I used to find it more enjoyable. I occasionally do this. Going back to my old posts gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling, like I'm reaching out and touching that past life of mine, like I could almost inhabit that personality once again and enjoy life more fully than I have in some considerable while.
   Also, to get back to the point made in my first paragraph, I went to read blogs from other people I know who were writing at the same time as me and rediscovered a true gem. Liv, on the off-chance that you read this, I bloody love you. Not in like a kissy-face way, more kind of like we're cousins who don't see each other often but have had good times in the past when we were closer. I don't think I fully appreciated you back when we were closer acquaintances and I know I was distant, but that's just my personality, it wasn't a reaction to you in any way. I probably still wouldn't be able to say this sort of stuff face-to-face, tbh, but that doesn't make it less true. It's also true of my other blogging buddies, y'all know who you are.
   Soo... that was awkward. Moving on...
   I read those blogs of mine and others and couldn't stop smiling. Those friends I had were such a part of me and those blogs we wrote were - to me at least - like little letters between truly dear friends. The language, the people and places mentioned, heck just the being up at 1am reading blogs, it all took me right back to the happiest time in my life. I still don't feel good about tomorrow, but I've rediscovered some cracking yesterdays that I can look back on and smile.
   That happiness of nostalgia is so weird, it has all the ingredients of sadness, it even has a similar quale to sadness (for me at least) but it fills me with more joy than I can quite contain. I am genuinely getting slightly teary-eyed as I write. I miss those days so much it is a physical sensation; just above my stomach there is a soupçon of wibblyness (I know not how else to articulate the sensation), in my cheeks a slight quiver.
   I remember how I connected with the person I came to consider my best friend through this medium, at least partially, though also through real-world contact. Sadly we don't talk that much these days and I am the last one of my contemporaries on this particular coalface of the blogoshpere - still stolidly chipping letters away to form semi-coherent sentences, the lone typer - so this first and best mode of contact is pretty much obsolete.
   We - all of us - blogged the right way; we were honest, we talked about ourselves and our lives and we didn't give a fuck if it got read (though I did harbour hopes of having a bigger following, if I'm honest) but mostly we did it because we wanted to, not because we thought we were going to change the world or get rich (again, I wouldn't have objected to either of those things).
   I read through some of what remains of our little online community, some of it is lost I fear, taken down for one reason or another (I know a number of my posts were culled through sheer embarrassment and it seems other people's have gone the same way, or have been kidnapped by ghosts in the code) but some still stands and from it you can even imply some of what was there before the various removals. Like a digital stonehenge, declaring that HERE WE WERE and we lived and we loved and laughed and did everyday things and stupid things and amazing things and the odd extraordinary thing.
   We worked, you know, we clicked. As a group we fitted. While I despaired of just about everything (mostly I wrote of despair, despaired of my writing, wrote of writing, wrote of despairing at my despairing of my writing, despaired of my despair and wrote of my despair at writing about despair over despairing at writing about despair), others wrote the other side of the coin without making it an argument or contradiction, we agreed on most basic points and we just shared our points of view on each; some were angry, some were exasperated, some were optimistic. When we wrote posts that were on the same subject but totally antithetic in interpretation we still seemed to me to respect, empathise with and totally understand the other point of view. Some even wrote about how people who constantly despair are really bloody annoying and - though I despaired - I could not but nod in agreement.
   I was the only one, I think, who seriously wanted to do stuff like this for a living - in a totally different way to this, of course; a personal blog like this could not, would not and should not be a money maker. However, I was easily the least talented (about which I frequently despaired) and the weird thing about that is that I didn't care. Jealousy is probably my overriding trait (except despa- yeah you get it) and I know personally a few (semi-)professional writers who I have a lot of envy towards which has ruined our friendships, but in this little circle of firelight I genuinely revelled in these beautiful people writing their beautiful words.
   I needed a pick-me-up tonight and though in the morning I will regret staying up 'til 3am I have to thank those people whose words from the past reached out picked me up from my lowest ebb in a while. I know that if I touched your lives at all it was insignificant and fleeting but once again I have to say how deeply you all have touched mine and how grateful I am to know you. I could go on all night but that last sentence should be my conclusion, I feel. It's hackneyed, cheesy crap, but what did you expect from me?

A Review of my Ten-Year Plan; or, Welp, I think it's about time for a quarter-life crisis.

So, 26 today and how did I celebrate? I went to the job centre. Not because that's how I enjoy a special occasion, it's just something I have to do every couple of weeks. I've never been one for a big Birthday bash, but this was a whole other level of not celebrating.
   Anyways, Birthdays are always a time for looking back on the past, certainly for me anyway; it is a marking of the anniversary a past event, after all. So, as I sat in that office this morning I reflected for a period on the last few years of being me (they're never ready to see you when you walk in so you always have time to spend ruminating on something or other). I had been in the vicinity of my old school last night so leaving school ten years ago stuck out as a natural place to start my look back.
   The period between my 16th and the end of school was exam time and it was bloody awesome. I never revised but a lot of lessons were cancelled to make way for study sessions, which me and the boys translated to mean "go to the park down the road and kick a football around for four or five hours." (Still aced my exams, btw, at least the ones I cared about.)
   If you'd asked me then where I'd be in ten years time I'd have had no idea but I would never have said I'd end that decade sat in a near-deserted office preparing to defend my use of my time this week - they want you to be doing work-search related activity for 35 hours every week, more than some full time jobs for about a quarter of the money - and feeling like shit.
   I've said before I don't plan for the future. It's a mistake, I'm aware, but there you are. My somewhat nebulous ideas at that time revolved around working with kids in some capacity (an idea based mainly on my excellent rapport with my younger relatives) and doing something creative in my spare time, hoping for the latter to become professional at some point.
   It was five years later that my career "plans" (for desperate want of a better word) were dashed when I unhelpfully realised that I hate kids pretty much all people everywhere and it's only now, ten years on, that I'm beginning to force myself to admit that I lack any talent whatsoever.
   In those ten years I've changed a lot, though maybe not as much as I'd have liked and probably not always for the better.
   So, what's the solution?
   That's the right question to ask: identify the goal, identify what you need to do to get there, do the things, give no fucks if anyone or anything tries to stop you. That's what successful people do. Me on the other hand, I like to identify the goal, identify what I need to do, identify the failings in my character that will stop me doing the things, identify the reasons I can't escape these failings, identify my need for an alcoholic beverage of some kind, remember I don't like alcohol, die a little inside, write a blog post, get angry, suppress my emotions, buy something I don't need, act like a miserable bastard for 3 to 33 days, repeat from step one. Well, when I say I like to do that...
   It's worse this time. I've always joked about getting old on my birthday but increasingly I get the sense that time really is running out. Is there too much pressure on the young these days? Probably so. Look at those SATs for five-year-olds or whatever: if that isn't symptomatic of a system that seeks to put everyone on a path to something from as early as possible, I'm the Easter Bunny. But does the fact that our obsession with early achievement is possibly needless change the fact that at 26 I am pretty much beyond hope of ever achieving what I want? No matter how I cast around for any excuse to disbelieve that I have missed the boat on everything I have to conclude that no, it doesn't change it. There is no court of appeal on this stuff either, anyone who accomplishes anything in the modern world has that ten-year plan when they leave school and they may not get all the way through it but they have made plenty of progress by the time they reach my age. Anyone who failed to make plans is left by the wayside. All my competition is from people so much younger than me now that I genuinely look like an old man next to some of them, but without the benefits of age such as experience and wisdom.
   Regardless of whether I'm right in what I'm saying here, it has to be a sad state of affairs that a 26 year old can feel like life has passed him by. I take full responsibility for this; it's naught but my own stupidity and lack of foresight that led me here. It's naught but my own stupidity and lack of self-belief that stops me trying seriously to catch up with what I feel I've missed out on.
   I keep hoping that one day something inside me will snap and I'll suddenly feel like I can do what I need to do to get where I want to be, but I feel like - if it will ever give at all - whatever it is that has to snap requires weighting down with many more years of dispiritedness and despondency before it will finally yield, meaning I will have to be even further behind before I can start to get my run-up going. I'm terrified of not being able to move forward but it seems the only way I can see to do so is to fall further behind, which - of course - I'm terrified of.
   I laughed when I first read the term "quarter-life crisis," partially from the poor-sounding grammar, mostly from the feeling that it was all part of that joke we twenty-somethings do where we pretend to be old. But it is said that all jokes contain the kernel of truth and is there any more fitting term for what I'm going through now?
   I could go on like this all night. There's nothing stopping me, really. But what was supposed to be catharsis has only made me feel worse and honestly, I've barely found any joy in this. Secretly, or probably not-so-secretly, this blog has been my favourite thing for a while now. I may be here infrequently, I may be embarrassed about what I end up posting and I may wish I was a million times better at this but the pounding of the keys, the construction of the sentences and paragraphs - however clumsy - and possibly even the knowledge that I've made some contribution to the world, even if it is pointless and unworthy, never fails to lift my spirits. Except tonight.
   Tonight I may be finally admitting defeat in the quest to become a decent writer, because tonight I feel like it was early-twenties me who cherished that dream and though he had no better chance of realising it than I do, he had the license to dream that comes from youth. Late-twenties me has no such license, late-twenties me has to grow up and settle into the despair that is the true destiny of humanity, some future me may be able to harness the weight of that despair to some creative end but first I need to be crushed and battered by the world, probably need to actively seek out dejection and heavy-heartedness to break that dam and fire that furnace. Late-twenties me needs to go back to the job centre in two weeks (or preferably get a job, though that currently seems as fanciful as any other dream from my youth) and every week hence until something breaks; either me or that thing within me that is blocking my progress.

Straw Men on Slippery Slopes

Right, can I just take a moment to remind you that we are in 2015? That we live in a supposedly enlightened society? OK. That done, can I ask why people are bemoaning the recent US Supreme Court ruling stating that two adult human beings who love each other are allowed to get married? I usually keep quiet about this kind of stuff because I've got a lot of respect for religion and my religious friends and when this debate comes up it is so often centred around religion. But I can't keep schtum any longer
   I recently saw a link to an article entitled "40 questions for Christians now waving rainbow flags" on facebook (don't search for it, they'll get money from their advertising space if you click on their page and I couldn't in good conscience allow any more to be contributed to the cause of hate).
   Well, I used to be a Christian and I've always waved the rainbow flag so I thought I'd address these questions. I think it's important to mention certain biases here. First, my religion. As I say, I'm not a Christian any more. This is not because I don't believe in God or Jesus but because, despite its other merits, I don't see them present in organised Christianity these days. Second, my sexual orientation. It's a topic for another day perhaps so all I'll say here is that if you insist on labeling me it's probably best to call me straight-ish. Despite these facts, I'm rooted in Christianity and still see myself as a follower of Christ and reverent of the Bible, so I suppose the questions are still aimed at me in some way.
   First up, here are the questions:

1.  How long have you believed that gay marriage is something to be celebrated?
2.  What Bible verses led you to change your mind?
3.  How would you make a positive case from Scripture that sexual activity between two persons of the same sex is a blessing to be celebrated?
4.  What verses would you use to show that a marriage between two persons of the same sex can adequately depict Christ and the church?
5.  Do you think Jesus would have been okay with homosexual behavior between consenting adults in a committed relationship?
6.  If so, why did he reassert the Genesis definition of marriage as being one man and one woman?
7.  When Jesus spoke against porneia what sins do you think he was forbidding?
8.  If some homosexual behavior is acceptable, how do you understand the sinful “exchange” Paul highlights in Romans 1?
9.  Do you believe that passages like 1 Corinthians 6:9 and Revelation 21:8 teach that sexual immorality can keep you out of heaven?
10.  What sexual sins do you think they were referring to?
11.   As you think about the long history of the church and the near universal disapproval of same-sex sexual activity, what do you think you understand about the Bible that Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Luther failed to grasp?
12.  What arguments would you use to explain to Christians in Africa, Asia, and South America that their understanding of homosexuality is biblically incorrect and your new understanding of homosexuality is not culturally conditioned?
13.  Do you think Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were motivated by personal animus and bigotry when they, for almost all of their lives, defined marriage as a covenant relationship between one man and one woman?
14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a father? 
15.  If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?
16.  If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad?
17.  Does the end and purpose of marriage point to something more than an adult’s emotional and sexual fulfillment?
18.  How would you define marriage?
19.  Do you think close family members should be allowed to get married?
20.  Should marriage be limited to only two people?
21.  On what basis, if any, would you prevent consenting adults of any relation and of any number from getting married?
22.  Should there be an age requirement in this country for obtaining a marriage license?
23.  Does equality entail that anyone wanting to be married should be able to have any meaningful relationship defined as marriage?
24.  If not, why not?
25.  Should your brothers and sisters in Christ who disagree with homosexual practice be allowed to exercise their religious beliefs without fear of punishment, retribution, or coercion?
26.  Will you speak up for your fellow Christians when their jobs, their accreditation, their reputation, and their freedoms are threatened because of this issue?
27.  Will you speak out against shaming and bullying of all kinds, whether against gays and lesbians or against Evangelicals and Catholics?
28.  Since the evangelical church has often failed to take unbiblical divorces and other sexual sins seriously, what steps will you take to ensure that gay marriages are healthy and accord with Scriptural principles?
29.   Should gay couples in open relationships be subject to church discipline?
30.   Is it a sin for LGBT persons to engage in sexual activity outside of marriage?
31.  What will open and affirming churches do to speak prophetically against divorce, fornication, pornography, and adultery wherever they are found?
32.  If “love wins,” how would you define love?
33.  What verses would you use to establish that definition?
34.  How should obedience to God’s commands shape our understanding of love?
35.  Do you believe it is possible to love someone and disagree with important decisions they make?
36.  If supporting gay marriage is a change for you, has anything else changed in your understanding of faith?
37.  As an evangelical, how has your support for gay marriage helped you become more passionate about traditional evangelical distinctives like a focus on being born again, the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross, the total trustworthiness of the Bible, and the urgent need to evangelize the lost?
38.  What open and affirming churches would you point to where people are being converted to orthodox Christianity, sinners are being warned of judgment and called to repentance, and missionaries are being sent out to plant churches among unreached peoples?
39.  Do you hope to be more committed to the church, more committed to Christ, and more committed to the Scriptures in the years ahead?
40. When Paul at the end of Romans 1 rebukes “those who practice such things” and those who “give approval to those who practice them,” what sins do you think he has in mind?

(h/t thegospelcoalition.org)

   Now, I could spend the next four years answering each question individually, or I could simply point out the multitude of fallacies within the questions but the former is pointless and the latter's a little childish. Instead, I'll answer the key ones and address the flaws in some of the others. I might miss some out for reasons of not wanting to turn this into a book-length response but I intend to address all the issues raised and shirk nothing.
   I must first say that although I'm arguing against this piece, my primary concern is with its poor debating technique rather than its message (though I heartily disagree with the message). If you want to believe same-sex marriage is wrong, fine, but don't try to brainwash others as sure as hell don't try and do it with lame-ass arguments like those above.

   Fallacies first, I think, to save time: 

   Questions 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 28, 33, 40 are all predicated on the assumption of the absolute truth of every word of the Bible, which is a shaky concept on which to build an argument. Even if you yourself believe it to be the case, you must accept that not all Christians do and that for those Christians, these questions have no meaning. More on this later.

   Questions 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 24 are all actually additional parts of other questions. This isn't a fallacy but it rather renders them redundant.

   Questions 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31 and 36 are examples of two fallacies at once. Straw men on slippery slopes, impressive.

   Questions 37, 38, and to an extent 34 and 39, presuppose a universal interpretation of Christianity, which is nonsense.

   I deem the following questions irrelevant, for the stated reasons:

   Question 1, because it doesn't matter how long you've believed something - is the belief of a recent convert to Christianity less valid than that of a life-long believer? I would argue it's more valid, since they are more likely to have used reason to come to their beliefs rather than simply being brought up into a tradition. So, if recent converts to Christianity are not less valid (we can agree on that at least, can't we?) then question 1 is irrelevant.

   Question 7, because the verse in question fairly clearly refers to reasons why divorce is allowed, which has got little to do with support for marriage equality.

   Question 13, because the opinions of others and their apparent changes of opinion have no bearing on one's own opinions. Unless the questioner wishes to imply that their audience are no more than lemmings?

   Question 35, because my ability to love and disagree with someone has three-fifths of sod all to do with marriage or my opinions thereof. This question was just filler, wasn't it?

   Which leaves four questions worth answering. That's right, four. And those are mostly worth answering to demonstrate their absurdity:

   Question 5: do I think Jesus would be ok with same-sex marriage? Clearly I, as a rainbow-flag-waving Christian, do. Next.

   Question 14: do I think children do best with a mother and a father? That depends entirely on the specific child and the specific parents. Many kids from "traditional" homes have horrible lives, many don't, so clearly the make-up of the household is irrelevant.

   Question 18: how do I define marriage? As a legal and/or religious commitment to another person, ideally because you love them. And?

   Question 32: How do I define love? I don't, it is subjective and indefinable by its very nature. If this was not the case then most of the major artworks since the beginning of time would not exist.
   Well, that's those questions answered or rebutted, am I supposed to feel wrong about supporting equality now? Or to have changed my mind? Or to feel a conflict between my faith and my ethics? Well, I don't and I haven't, and here's why:

   The majority of the "argument" put forth by these questions seems to be "the bible doesn't explicitly state that same-sex marriage is ok, and some parts of it suggest it is wrong."

   The weaknesses of this argument are myriad, but here is the important one: The Bible is not the direct word of God. I don't say this to cause offence and I'm really not trying to challenge anyone's faith, merely to put my side of the argument. So sorry if you believe that the Bible is God's word but even the book itself does not claim to be written by God, most parts of the book are named after the people who did allegedly write them (the Gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul's letter to... etc.). Are those people God? No. They were writing their view of events. Even if they did not embellish, even if they tried to faithfully represent facts, by the very fact of their humanity they were flawed and prone to error. Even if you believe God directly inspired these writings, you still can't completely rule out errors and you can not ignore the many things which were arbitrarily removed or omitted from the Bible by what is now the Catholic church. Who knows what Jesus said in the accounts that have been buried by organised religion?

   To call the Bible the word of God is blasphemy. It is the word of long-dead men who know nothing of faith in the modern world, who at worst used the names of God and Jesus to propagate their own world views and at best had the unenviable task of interpreting the inherently ineffable wishes of God through the prism of their own experience. How can you let these men tell you what to do, what to believe, even what to think?

   I did say I revere the Bible, and I do, the stories of Jesus are inspirational, but to take anything in the book as absolute truth is to narrow the infinite wisdom of God to something relevant only to ancient man or modern extremists. That is not my God.

Inspiration strikes

So, today I started work on my first... hmmm first novel? first short story? First something or other, anyway. I don't know where it's going to go but I'm finally writing something.

   Awesome.

   Yeah.

   Except...

   Well, what do you do when you have an idea that you think is really bad but is the only idea you seem likely to have for a while? And when you don't really think you can write well enough to save the bad idea by cocooning it in words that hide the flaws?

   Apparently you write it anyway, or that's what I seem to be doing. I foresee great danger here: either I'll hate the end product and be too demotivated to write anything else or I'll be so happy at finishing something that I'll love it too much to admit it's poor.

   Well, there's only one way to find out I suppose.

Letters from the past, nearly illegible but not nearly illegible enough.

So, I've talked a lot in here about how I like to write. You've probably noticed that the idea of writing professionally is starting to coalesce in my mind once again. Of course this isn't the first time my thoughts have swung that way. I remember a time when I was all about my various notebooks full of scribbled song lyrics (my band was never going to take off but obviously someone would want to buy the shit I'd been writing for their band: it was gold dust!).
   Recently, I was scrabbling around for something to scribble on (I was scripting/directing what was essentially a TV ad - if it doesn't make TV I might stick it on Youtube) and I came across one of these old notebooks. I deliberately didn't look at those old scribbles, mostly because I was pressed for time but also because I wanted to continue to remember them as merely weak rather than know them to be abysmal.
   Well, a few days later I'd gone to bed and suddenly remembered that yet again I'd nearly forgotten to write anything for that day. Quickly I snatched up my old notebook from the floor where I'd abandoned it and, searching for inspiration for what to write, I reviewed that time capsule from 16-year-old me.
   Mission accomplished. It certainly inspired me. Very soon I'd embarked on a essay extolling the virtues of fire when it comes to expunging unwanted records of the past.
   I think all of my old notebooks are going to be dug out tomorrow and have a lit match applied to them. I had always half intended to keep them for the purposes of refining them when I'd become a better writer or just as a reminder of where I'd come from. Well, bollocks to that for a game of soldiers, I'd much rather forget as much as possible of that. Let this blog be the start of my journey, let the feeble prose herein be testament to my origins and (hopefully) my progress towards a decent level of skill.
   The discovery of those old scribble pads did remind me how much I love writing with pen and paper though. Obviously I'm digital these days (and today I did see a typewriter in the shop where I volunteer and immediately fell in WANT) but there's something about the barely legible scrawls you make when caught in the flow of an idea that capture the tone of your thoughts the way typing can't, no matter how feverishly your fingers dance.
   So, once I get money my next purchase is probably going to be a stack of fresh notebooks in various styles for the purposes of impromptu jotting, and probably that typewriter (so much WANT).

Creative Non-fiction

So, I realised I'd nearly forgotten to write something today and was casting around for a topic. I had this in the pipeline but it wasn't something I was planning on doing for a while yet. I guess there's no time like the present though and I've got nothing else so it'll have to do.
   Cards on the table, I bought a book that's supposed to teach you creative writing and this was task 1. I honestly don't believe it's something you can learn (especially the particular aspects that I lack) but my chances of learning it are 100% worse if I don't try compared to what they are if I do, and you never know, right?
   Anyways, I'm supposed to make a list of names I've been called in my life and write a paragraph on any one of them. I might do a paragraph on a couple of them actually. Pretty sure this'll be no good, partially because it's me doing it and partially because it's a pretty lame subject, but I'm not going to turn my nose up at something designed to help me improve a skill I've been scrabbling to acquire for years. So here we go. First, my list:
Dan (duh!)
Danny
Daniel (when someone's annoyed with me)
Daniel Lovegrove (when someone's fuming with me)
Daniel James Lovegrove (when the shit's about to hit the fan)
Lovegrove
Loveshack
Shack
Shacka
Shaktar
Shakkerslovakia (it's totally possible I made that one up, but something's telling me it happened)
Mangrove
Love me Slender (I have literally no idea)
Lovebear
Sex God (I had weird friends at school)
Mr. Lovegroan
Dean
Dandeano
Big D
Son

I got called Loveshack again the other day. It's an ambiguous name for me, the thought of it transports me back to a time when I was relatively happy - or certainly a time I remember as being happy - but when there was so much confusion and sadness around that I've no idea where this happiness came from.
   That time was school and that right there should give you a measure of the confusion and sadness I'm talking about. I was never popular but then I didn't particularly want to be. I was genuinely happier as an outsider, if it wasn't for the fact that you need a few extra people for a decent game of football I'd have been a total loner. Sadly, kicking a ball against a wall all by your lonesome isn't anywhere near as fun as kicking it around with other people, so that forced me into having what in the right light might have looked like friends.
   They weren't friends, not really. Us loner types struggle to make real friends, we're too odd for people to connect with (especially at school, where odd does not play in your favour) and find that sooner or later, everyone lets you down (especially at school, where hormones and peer pressure turn everyone into an obnoxious little shit, and I include myself in that).
   Anyway, Loveshack as a nickname came from this group of pseudo-friends and while it was initially a friendly moniker, I can't help but recall the times it was used by bullies or friends who had turned against me. Allegiances were so fragile back then, so while a nickname's supposed to be something used amongst friends, part of your group's own particular slang, my name was used at least as much by foes as it was by allies.
   So. Confusing, sad, no friends to speak of. School was a nightmare on paper, but as they say, the game's not played on paper. I remember it fondly, for reasons I still can't explain. Perhaps it was that lessons were easy, breaks were frequent (and filled with football) and the future seemed bright.
   Whatever the reason, thinking about the character of Loveshack, I think of a happy person surrounded by circumstances that made him unbearably sad and a sad youth who always aspired to happiness. They are one and the same and they are me and I them but also we're all strangers.
   Being called the name again felt weird. I was sat in a car with two of my former pseudo-friends who are now mature enough and have stuck around long enough to have become proper friends if I weren't too much of a loner. That was the reality but as far as I was concerned I was practically back on the school astroturf, trying to figure out why my friends sometimes act like they hate me and why I sometimes act like a total dick (the two may not have been unrelated, in fairness).
   It's a name that'll stick though, I think. To this day I can't hear the song Loveshack by the B-52s without smiling and singing along.

Whew, that was considerably more than a paragraph, guess I'll leave it at one name. Just a note though, the person who calls me Big D is a total arse and does so without any encouragement from me. She may be family but I genuinely want to do violence when that godawful attempt at joviality is uttered. Night all.

Oh, and I guess you might be wondering about Mr. Lovegroan, I know it sounds like a shit name for a porn star.
   Well, that's a whole other story.

=

Well, it's only day three of my write-something-every-day challenge and just 36 hours since I really put the pressure on with a melodramatic outburst on why it's so important that I keep it up and I've only just noticed that I've written nothing today. I'm the king of poor follow-through but this was nearly a dismal failure by even my generous standards.

   So, in my haste to fire something out in the 57 minutes remaining of today, I've had to pluck a topic out of nowhere and I'm going for equality. Weighty stuff for midnight on a Saturday but its something I think about a lot. I've always had a passion for justice and fairness, and there's a couple of related stories/events at the moment so I thought I'd talk about one or two.

   So first things first, I consider myself a feminist. Yes I'm a man, yes you could just call me an egalitarian if you want, but this is where I'm coming from. I may be quite a bad feminist at times, as I shall recount here, but I am a feminist.

   One equality-related thing happening at the moment is the Women's Football World Cup. I've always been a staunch defender of the women's game against a barrage of sexist comments from people I'm slightly ashamed to call acquaintances and friends. Women's football is not the same as men's football but it's no less entertaining. Sometimes it's better to watch, even if you might be able to make a case for the standard being lower. Anyway, there are obvious potential challenges to my claims of feminism here. I often find myself thinking something bad about what I'm seeing. I actually made a mental comparison between women's football and "real" football earlier today and I was not happy with myself about that, I can tell you. Of course, having these thoughts doesn't make me a complete chauvinist arsehole. In fact, acknowledging my own faults and trying to address them probably makes me a better person in the long run but still, I'd rather not be prone to such slips in the first place.

   The main problem with trying to be a male feminist women's football fan though is trying not to think very bad thoughts about the endless parade of very aesthetically pleasing women on show. I wrestle them down most of the time but thoughts like these trouble me still. Can I really be fair and equal in my treatment of people with these thoughts in my head? Can I truly be a fan of the game I profess to love? Or am I merely a worthless letch? Fighting myself here proves I'm trying but does the lack of total victory mean I'm not trying hard enough?

Titles are Hard, part 2 of 2.

Part one here

   Last time I mentioned that I'd be trying to write every day, just to see if I can get any good at it. I'll be honest, that piece went on longer than I expected and I never managed to wrestle it towards its intended subject, so I inserted a break at what seemed an appropriate point and split it in two. I'm undertaking this writing on the advice of a far better writer than myself, who thought it might help. Unlike the man in question, I haven't the ability to write fiction (now anyway, hopefully it will come with time) so I'm just typing to see where it goes.

   Anyway, the second and third part of Sir Terry's advice concerned becoming a good writer, which I don't think many people asked for advice on, more commonly they wanted to know how to make as much money as he had so these other pieces of advice are less widely published. The second part was this: read, and read a lot, if you read enough words they start to overflow and you'll find yourself writing, if you've read good things and read widely about all sorts of subjects, you'll have a lot of material to draw on.

   This, I suspect, will be my downfall. Back in my teens I could read two books in a day and if I'd spent that time broadening my horizons I'd have probably ended up reading everything in the universe, but I'm a notorious re-reader so my horizons stay stubbornly narrow. There's a nice eclectic mix in there but new things are rare and these days they seem to take months to get through. However, a glut of new books recently entered my life and hopefully I can take some good things from the experience.

   One of these was actually written by a family member and I'm proof-reading it for him. Through a twist in circumstance I'm not entirely sure he knows I'm proof-reading, it could be he thinks I'm just reading it, which presents me with the dilemma of what to do with the points I notice that need or want changing. I've no idea of the etiquette in this situation and I'm really reticent to give the book back with my little scribbled notes all over it.

   You see, not only do I not know whether he's expecting any feedback or not, the feedback I do have is harsh and I've gone far beyond the remit of the proof-reader, for four reasons. Firstly, because if my relative is to go from self-published to just published, which I assume he would like to, he's going to need to get used to harsh criticism of spellings, punctuation, grammar, syntax and such (this, incidentally, was Terry Pratchett's third piece of advice: knowing your commas from your semi-colons is vital). Secondly, I've been harsh because there's a pretty good story in there but it really struggles to immerse you thanks to its presentation and making it easier to read will make it better. Thirdly, I love correct grammar (though my definition of correct may be looser than some others) and seeing it misused hurts me almost physically.

   The fourth reason is far less virtuous. Honestly, I'm jealous. I've always thought myself a writer, even if not a very good one and suddenly here is someone putting their skill into practice while I wait for an idea to strike, like some hunk of stone landing on my doorstep from which I might be able to hew a story of some kind. I've been wretchedly comparing what I've read in that work to my own efforts and while I believe myself to have the edge when it comes to the nuts and bolts of writing, the author of the piece I'm half way through critiquing has me beat all ends up on imagination and story-telling. Together we'd make a fearsome team, though I'd never say it to him. Instead, rightly or wrongly, I'll just tear his first novel to pieces and try to be as dispassionate as possible so that what I'm saying comes from the part of me that's trying to help rather than the green eyed monster who keeps urging me to find any fault I can purely for its own satisfaction. It's a perilous tightrope I walk, over a chasm of despair and envy.

   On this high-wire of the soul I have one salvation. Knowing that the trick of the tightrope walker is to lower their centre of gravity to a point below the rope, I've fashioned for myself a heavy weight. This is why I write every day now, to keep me balanced. I've done nearly 1350 words today (and amazingly still haven't got around to the topic I originally had in mind) and the release I feel is not just down to the confessional nature of the last few paragraphs, although that will certainly have helped. I know that this burden, gladly carried, can save me from becoming the terrible person I've always suspected myself to be and if between that and improving my own skills I can't find some motivation to keep on carrying it then I don't deserve to use this keyboard for anything but facebook and gaming.

You Know What? Titles Are Hard. (Part 1 of 2)

That has bugger all to do with the topic for today. It's just a comment. I've come up with some titles I've been pretty happy with over my career but sometimes I just can't condense what I'm thinking of writing about into a concise enough sentence.

   My topic for today is in fact pretty much what it always is: my struggle to express myself through the medium of the typed word. (Yeah, I know, but there's actually almost a pretty good reason for once).

   In fact, yet again I've had someone tell me I write pretty well. This happens surprisingly often and I never believe it to be true. It seems more likely to me that people are humouring their friend. I don't say this to fish for further compliments, I'm simply stating the facts of the matter.

   Having said that, I was reading back through some of my favourite posts from this blog yesterday and thinking to myself that some of them were half-decent. This is clearly selection bias though: if I'm reading my favourites, of course I'll like them, I should try reading the ones I hate or (if it were possible) the ones I've deleted if I fancy getting a true measure of my ability.

   Anyway, that's why I'm here. Compliments motivate me to try and make myself worthy of them and practice makes perfect so here I am.

   Fair warning, this piece is about to go off on such a tangent you wouldn't believe it.

   I was mid-way through my annual re-read of practically everything Terry Pratchett ever wrote when the great man passed away (naturally this extended the splurge to include other of his books that I read less often). Amongst the things I took in this time around were the anthologies of his non-fiction and shorter fictional works. Between them, the notes he makes between each piece in those books represent the closest we'll get to an autobiography, which both gladdens and saddens me. It's unusual for writers to to autobiographies. Despite being the only people qualified to do so, they always have something more interesting to write about. Such was the case with Pratchett and I wouldn't swap one novel for an autobiography but from those notes in the anthologies of his work I learned there are scarcely any people whose own story I'd be more interested to read. It is all there in his fiction, anyway, once you know where to look.

   Writers are always asked what the secret is and of all the answers I've heard, Pratchett's is one of my favourites. It comes in three parts and the essence of the first and most important part is "You want to be a writer? No-one's stopping you, write something." He himself wrote at least four hundred words a day when he was starting out. If he finished a story within one night's session, he'd simply start on another story. A lot of those innumerable words might never have made it to print but that wasn't the point.The goal wasn't necessarily to be published (although I'm sure it was appreciated), he wanted to write, so he did.

   I've decided to take his advice and try to emulate him, as much as possible. Not that I expect that by writing a couple of hundred words a day I'll turn into the next Sir Terry Pratchett, he had certain advantages over me - such as a skill in the craft - but with any luck I might at some point become worthy of those compliments I've been getting.

My name is Daniel, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I've had a lager.

So, I discovered something today: 25-year-old me can handle significantly less booze than 15-year old me could. I think the first clue was when, after one San Miguel while ostensibly working on a project for a family member. I started slacking off, posting more facebook statuses in an hour than I have done in the previous month and singing Busted songs at the top of my voice. And now I'm blogging about totally random shit and I just can't seem to stop.
   I've always had a measure of control. Even in those heady days of Cardiff '05 and the infamous pre-birthday bender, I could turn tipsiness off if I started making an ass of myself. The lowered inhibitions pursuant to a considerable amount of lager made me less likely to do so, but the option was open to me. I still have this trait but again, lowered inhibitions mean that while the flesh is able, the spirit is unwilling. It's not like I need booze to have enjoyment but there's a certain element of what I consider enjoyable whilst not lightly inebriated being far more sober pleasures than most people would enjoy, whilst alcohol - that great leveler - brings my personality more in line with what some call "fun."
   Truth is though, fun's a nasty bastard, fun comes in flavours including "we thought it would be fun," "we were only having a bit of fun" and most perilously of all "are you having fun yet?" I hate "fun" people. I like funny people (in both senses of the term), I like diverting and engaging people, inspirational people, people... People described as "fun" are like movies described as "feel-good" in that they contain very little of merit and tend to all be the same.
   What I'm saying is, I don't like slightly sozzled me, but everyone else seems to and down this path madness lies. I'm not saying I'll never drink again, 1) because that's too cliche and 2) because it's just not true. Every now and then everyone needs a drink and I'm no different. But my current rate of about two bottles of lager a year seems sufficient, to me. And I will say one thing for far-too-easily-inebriated-me, I've written my first blog post in what seems a goodly while - certainly the first one I'll bother posting on Facebook for ages, despite what sober me might think of that later on (*evil laugh*) - and despite having to wrestle with an American spell-checker it had some pretty good vocabulary, no errors that I can see and possibly even better punctuation than usual. I even managed to reference Shakespeare (in my drink-addled fugue I think I flipped the reference 'round as well so it's probably satire or parody or something), I did borrow extensively from Pratchett but then I do that when I've not touched a drop; my sad attempts at the sincerest form of flattery being far more worthy than my own - thankfully inimitable - brand of "writing", so that's no big deal. Maybe my semi-annual beer should always lead to blogging, maybe not. But either way it's probably time to sign off - so I can post this before I get sober enough to realise its a mistake - and get back to work, we've been through happy drunk, introspective drunk, maudlin drunk and tailing-off-mid-sentence-drunk (though I managed quite an adroit save there, I thought) and nobody wants to see angry drunk, if that's something I even have in my pantheon of inebriates, I've no idea.
Adieu, friends.

Twenty-Something Life In The Bit Bucket: So, where do you get your inspiration?

Hi. Yeah, it has been a while. How are y'all doing? Good, good. How's life as automated text-scanning software treating you? Cool, Yep, any actual people reading this might be a bit confused by now, but I know my audience.

Anyways, the old uni blogging gang seem to be back on the scene and I thought I might as well join in, in my small way. Well, topics are still pretty thin on the ground, the only thing really going on at the moment is my first steps on the long and arduous journey towards being a proper football coach and since a) the human minority among the audience will quickly get bored with minutiae of VAK, STEPS, the LTPD and assorted other details and b) I have a sneaking suspicion that my first steps on the journey will also be my last ones - at least for a good long while - it seems a waste to spend a lot of time going on about it.

I will say this: I have managed to pass one coaching course and look set to scrape by in another despite showing a very low level of competency for the subject (my life in microcosm, if I'm honest: the number of things at which I've been deemed good enough to move on to the next level, only to find the next level to be beyond my limited ability, is simply staggering). Being just good enough at something to know how shit you are is rare. Generally, you're either amazing and so have sufficient appreciation of the skill to notice every microscopic detail (and therefore magnify all your own mistakes) and unjustly believe yourself to be poor OR you're so poor that you fail to understand what good or bad performance would look like and therefore believe yourself to be amazing (case studies: TV "talent" show competitors and at least 80% of management-level workers), how lucky am I to land in the middle of those two sub-sets and have total knowledge of my inadequacy?

Wow, rant over, sorry. On to why I'm actually here.

So, as this blog will attest, I'm a keen writer (though it's another area where I fall into the "I know I'm crap" bracket) and part of that is having to deal with the "bit bucket". Most of you will know what I mean by that. The space in your head where you throw those half-formed ideas that you just know you can work into something later on. It doesn't have to be what you might call traditionally creative, it could be 5 minutes worth of lesson plan, it could be an acronym for the new initiative that they're working on at the office, but generally it's for that one project you intend to get 'round to if only you had the time. Everyone's got that project, it could be a novel, a play, some poetry, a song, it could be a particularly spectacular piece of DIY (up to and including building your own house), it could be as grandiose as a general election manifesto or as modest a witty facebook status. Point is, everyone's got a project and it always starts out formless, no title, no outline, no components, just a thought, not always consciously acknowledged. At first any random inspiration can become part of it, suddenly you think of a bloody brilliant title for an album and even though you've not got a band and you haven't touched your guitar in months, you are always - from that moment on, in small ways - thinking about that album, working out genre, the songs, composition of the band, whatever. Other inspirations strike, they either become part of THE PROJECT, or they go in the bit-bucket, because of course, once THE PROJECT gets out, you'll be on a roll and ready to start on PROJECT TWO: PROJECT FURTHER which may be able to use stuff from the bit-bucket.

(Bloody Hell I'm being wordy tonight, I shouldn't leave it so long between posts, I get all gabbly, sorry folks, trying to swing around to the point, I promise).

I live in my bit bucket, if I'm honest, I'm constantly having thoughts, chucking them in the bucket for later consideration and rootling around for previous ones, trying to assess their merits as the basis for a PROJECT. There are so many thoughts in my bucket that they're actually breeding, some of them are now 4th or 5th generation bucket denizens, never knowing any other life than to swim around their own hopelessly crowded gene-pool, looking for other ideas to merge with, in the hope that the descendants of a cringe-worthy attempt at a song lyric and a desperately one-dimensional dystopian dictator could one day aspire to escape the bucket as a particularly pithy section of a stand-up set.

So, there's all these inspirations around, and everyone's got them and everyone stores them in their buckets or incorporates them into a PROJECT and by now we all pretty much know it and yet people who manage to get their PROJECT to fruition with a bit of success still get asked where they get their inspiration. Less so nowadays but still, it does happen and it's a bugbear of mine. It also sets up my point for today and a micro-rant blog on the subject is one thing that's been in the bucket for a while.

Inspiration is not what separates successful PROJECTeers from everyone else, inspiration of some kind probably strikes each of the planet's 7 billion people at least once a day and what takes it from imagination to the real world is an almost indefinable quality, mostly comprised of having the guts to try, the perseverance to keep trying, the motivation not to think that you'll get 'round to it one day but instead to get on it today and - not least - a degree of skill in the discipline.

So, part of why I'm writing this is I've got many friends managing to take on PROJECTs - a few of them taking on PROJECTs that I am somewhat envious of, in fact - and I wanted to take this opportunity to salute them because that x-factor they've got is absolutely a salute-worthy attribute. I may lack it, and that lack may hinder my every PROJECT and cause my bit bucket to overflow but it doesn't stop me appreciating the skill in others.

You knew it was coming.

I'm back. You know why. Good God it hurts. I thought I had it tamed but the beast has reared its head again, taking another savage swipe. The sad song playlist will be back out tonight for the first time in a couple of years and somewhere around 2am I'll start to wish, not for the first time, that I had a taste for alcohol so I can get thoroughly smashed. There's been highs and lows recently; life stuff, nothing huge, but once again there's one thing on the horizon, blotting the rest of it out like a huge life-blotting-out thing, draining the colour out of everything and putting a black hole in my stomach.
I guess the difference between won't and can't is huge, like the moon and the edge of the universe. Both distances are incomprehensible, insurmountable even, but you put something on the moon and at least you can see it, you always know it's there even if its existence is, in practical terms, little more than notional.
I've nothing left to say. Feelings won't form into sentences right now. Many more of these days to come now, I'm sure. Steeling myself to deal with them. Cat in Hell's chance.

Goals of the NEET Twenty-Something

For nigh on two years now, the author has been unemployed (although I've only been a government statistic for a month or two, signing on for jobseeker's allowance in March of this year) and that has somewhat lessened the motivation to blog. Largely because, for all my daydreaming of writing an informed article on anything, I know the truth of the matter is that I talk about me in this space. Which is fine, sort of. When I was at university it seemed to work well, on my annual trawl back through my facebook timeline, I do read a fair few messages of support from friends who were readers. The assumption is, of course, that they were being kind but nonetheless, I feel like I was at least trying to say something back in the day, even if it was filtered through a quite ego-centric medium.

The problem here is obvious, really. A supportive reader base existed at university because while I was writing primarily about me, I at least had a subject who was relatable to the audience. My subject - me - was a university student, writing for other university students who had similar thoughts. Now what is my subject? Unemployed, with little prospect of finding a job that in any way feels better than unemployment, with no real skills and holding qualifications that he possibly doesn't deserve which in any case, employers don't care for. The readers are a) enjoying some measure of success, b) auto-scanning computer software designed to make advertising easier or c) non-English speakers looking to learn a little of the lingo. Whilst the first are largely friends and hopefully could forgive me lack of anything interesting to say, the second do not judge and the third probably don't care what's going on here (though they should: if they learn it from me, their English will sway wildly between slang from four or five different areas of the English-speaking world, polysyllabic nonsense and unnecessarily verbose parenthetic passages), still I've felt for a long time like the blogosphere is not the place for me anymore.

Tuesday night, however, I found myself composing a blog entry in my head on my walk back from my 5-a-side football session. I can't remember now what I was going to say but something, along with reading a couple of other blogs since then, seems to have got me back in the mood. How long this mood will last, that's another matter. Personally, I think I'll have done well if I get as far as publishing this piece.

Nevertheless, I'm here now and believe it or not, that was just the introduction to this piece (don't worry, the middle will be shorter and the conclusion non-existent).

So, what do I want to say? Do I want to talk about how someone who honestly does want to find work can feel persecuted by the system that's supposed to help while in every town around the country the crowd of unemployed who intend to stay that way are legion and seem not to have been impeded in this goal by the same system? No, if I think about that long enough to write about it I'm at risk of psychotic rage or inescapable depression. So how about a recap of the themes from the university era of this blog? Well, the plural there is extremely generous and there's not a lot to say. Largely just that the thing that made me want to write this blog in the first place is locked inside a little room in my mind and doesn't want to come out. It's comfortable in there, assimilated with similar though less intense experiences, just another part of the psyche of an individual who has reaped nothing but pain from that area of life. Gone? No. Forgotten? Never. Simply in a place where it can't hurt me any more and has no more bearing on life than does the rain on Jupiter.

Nope, I think I'll just end on the good news stories, there aren't many but they bring a little sunlight to my mental horizon so I'll write them down, see them physically and be glad that they are there.

First then, next week begins an (up to) eight-week stint of work experience which, while it might not lead directly to a job, at least gets me closer than I've been in a while.

Second, I continue to help run my local Church's youth football sessions. We've grown to a place I hoped we'd be and we show no signs of stopping, such that we now use our love of football to raise money for charity.

Third, it may be a good few years later than I dreamed of  (and my God, did I dream) and I may be paying for it rather than getting paid for it but finally I get to do that thing that many like me dream of. Nine days from now I will step out to play my first game of football at a professional football team's stadium. Not for a pro team of course and as I mentioned, not on the extremely generous wages of the professional athlete but nonetheless, a dream will have come true. In a diffuse and unanticipated manner, but come true nonetheless. And then, a week later, I'll do the same thing again.

Fourth - and last - with the above three points and all my other regular football activities (which ramp up to nearly unprecedented levels this month) I'm going to spend a lot of May in an exhausted state, but a happy one. For the first time in God knows how long I can look at a calendar and think what an excellent time this is in my life.

Ramblings, just standard blogged ramblings. And a 3-month Epilogue.

So, I'm back again. In and out like a pissing fiddler's elbow. For those unfamiliar with the expression, the "pissing" was for emphasis, rather than a actual part of the phrase, a pissing fiddler would have to have a pretty stationary elbow to avoid severe toilet inaccuracy.

This deliberately has no structure, much like my left knee currently, which seems to have been decimated by me making the rookie error of trying to put my foot on the floor, obviously a poor move.

Other poor moves include purchasing a cineworld unlimited card. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to be able to watch as many films as I like without having to pay, but the card only pays for itself if you watch two films a month. Now all of a sudden you're having to meet a quota. The flicks used to be a treat, now it's almost a chore and furthermore, they don't seem to make two good films per month, so now I've paid money to be forced to watch at least one sub-standard film a month, it seems a slightly rough deal, when you stop and think about it.

I was right earlier when I said this would have no structure, as it's been a draft for several months and I've no idea where I was going with it. I think the plan was to take the last idea, word, phrase or concept of each paragraph and use it write the next paragraph on an unrelated topic but with said idea, word, phrase or concept as a jumping-off point. An intriguing concept that I may revisit at some stage, but for now I'm just easing back in by going over my unpublished material and seeing what can and can not be salvaged as a good piece to publish. (They all come under can not be salvaged because they were written by me but as the shortest and most recent of my many many draft entries this was an obvious place to start and in truth, I'm somewhat proud of the pissing fiddler joke).

However, the reams of virtual paper filled with words unsaid seems a decent topic to finish on. I could enumerate the attempts at fiction, or make some survey of the opinion pieces or map the milestone musings, but I guess I'll just look at it overall and try and make some attempt to bring meaning to it.

It's symptomatic of me, of course. A lot of what is published in this blog is words I couldn't say out loud so I suppose it make sense that some of them end up left alone and not even posted on the web.

Some of them are left as drafts for months and then deleted entirely, how this compares to words in my heart I don't know, I don't think I've ever erased anything from there. I still harbour some feelings for my junior-school "crushes", in draft form rather than anything more concrete. In fact I met one on work experience from college and briefly fell in love all over again. Thankfully the ones who know who they were don't stop by here. As far as I know, anyway.

I'm struggling for a conclusion, but then again, this wasn't supposed to be structured. It would have been nice to say something meaningful about making our voices heard or not being closed off, but in truth it would be hollow because amongst the never-released dross there's a thing or two that deserves its place in the rubbish bin and which I will never allow to be seen or heard. As sincere as the unpublished and ultimately deleted "Telephonic Soliloquy" was, it was an attempt to bring together a passion for fiction and the facts of my passion, making the creative writing sloppy and the real-life portions insincere. It was a failure and while I remember it still, three years later, it was ultimately a product of a part of me I wish didn't exist, the part that is as truly me as any other part but never gets the memo from the rest of me and is not a team player, it seeks to turn every life experience into something I can write with the ultimate goal of finding something publishable, not on a blog, but in print. This part of me ignores the fact that some of my life has to be just for me and tries to get me to whore out my few experiences and my meagre talent in pursuit of the dream.

Anyway, this is getting perilously close to something else that won't see the light of day so I'll end here. Sorry to have wasted another five of your minutes.

Twenty-Something on the Dawn of Creation

   "I love this time of night", was my first thought as I noticed that I was once again alone with the silently breaking dawn and my latest writing project. Having lost track of time, I discovered that somehow it was well past 4am and the Eastern edges of sky, just visible from my kitchen window, were beginning to take on a tint more commonly associated with midday, though the zenith above me was still as dark as the heart of a crater on the other side of the moon. The many hues of dawn are well known to me, the shocking pinks and fluorescent oranges are as familiar as the colours of my bedroom walls.

   It's not unusual for me to be up in the wee hours but recently it's become a rarity for me to have a better reason than simple insomnia and an internet full of TV. Yet tonight the ceaseless parade of the adventures of improbably interesting people was ignored in favour of the blinking cursor which Pacmans its way around the screen, eating up white space and leaving trails of creation in its wake. Not particularly creative creation, it has to be said. It's been years since my last fictional piece begun, stalled and was abandoned. No, tonight I was beating back the hordes of word-doc dwelling snow ghosts with a letter begging for donations to a charitable concern and registration forms for a fundraising event in aid of same.

   Such peaks of mundanity could not have been aspired to anywhere else by a young man in the wee small hours yet there was fun there. As well as the easily recognisable joy of watching another sunrise, there was another, less obvious, source of enjoyment. I soon realised it was a presence I hadn't felt since... such a long time ago. It was the buzz of writing, of taking something from inside your head and giving it form in the world, even if it was only as substantial as the fluctuation in an electrical current. Not for me the brush and canvas, nor even the inkjet and paper. No, my medium is this; the keys and screen. I won't ever create a masterpiece, or anything that is ever seen by more than a handful and is discarded and forgotten as easily as a chewing-gum wrapper. But who cares about skill or recognition when I can feel the sense of contentment that comes from creating at all?

I've got my mojo back.

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead.

Ok, to be fair, that's a pretty tasteless title, but it may just be one of the more moderate reactions of the day.

In case you haven't heard (you know, if you've been on Mars all morning or similar) Maggie "let's put the working man in his place" Thatcher died this morning. As a proud northern lad, I had nothing but resentment for the prime minister who ripped the heart out of anything north of the Watford gap but I'm not going to go celebrating. Today will be pretty much the same as yesterday was and tomorrow will represent a startling lack of difference. The woman may be gone but her legacy will live on in the politics of our nation quite possibly for ever. Some good things wrre done by the milk snatcher but then again a lot of harm was caused too, some necessary evils were enacted - with far too much relish for my liking - but some entirely unnecessary ones were entertained also.

Others will document, in great detail, the political life of democracy's greatest failure (she never lost a popular vote, you know) and despite all the wrongdoings, reports will most likely remain positive, partly because that's the ettiquette of death but mostly beacuse to badmouth Thatcher these days is to be, in the eyes of many, a millitant leftist bent on anarchy and the destruction of civilisation. Britain took a lurch to the right from which it may never recover when Maggie was elected and the rhetoric will all be of tough decisions that were unpopular but needed making, rather than the gutting of Britains industial northern cities. Neither leaving political office nor death can change the effect she had on us all, which was to turn us all to the dark side.

But whatever the past held now is the time to let her rest, if not in peace then at least in the ground, where we all go in the end, hopefully to reflect upon our sins, whether they be acts of political evil or dancing on the grave of a fellow human being.

Twenty-Something (and single) on Valentine's Day (sort of)

It's the most manufactured of all the special days we have, and yet probably one of the most celebrated. Valentine's day is that special date on which we all come together and declare our undying love for crass consumerism. The embodiment of our post-modern, capitalist society can be found in almost every place on February the 14th.

Okay, it's actually the 15th today, and (since I'm writing this with my nosey-ass brother looking over my shoulder which is considerably slowing the process by necessitating my punching him in the face if he does it once more) it may well be the 16th by the time you read it, but I'm not waiting another 363 days to get this written. I've got the topic and the motivation, timing can hit the bricks.

Anyways, Valentine's Day is often considered a couples' day, hence its often being misspelled as Valentines Day, the plural taking the place of the possessive to imply it is the day for you and your "Valentine" (perhaps the Americanism I most despise), rather than a celebration of St. Valentine. Point is, if you're single, society takes this opportunity to look down its collective nose at you.

But society is missing the point. The one thing this "holiday" is about (apart from gift companies having needed something to tide them over between Christmas and Easter) is people in love. This does not preclude couples, obviously, but equally does not exclude those not in a relationship.

Now, I'd love to be the sort of blogger who does a little research and sprinkles my 1500 words with a light dusting of facts but I'm just going to go with what I (and the rest of you, I'm sure) learnt in primary school and hope for the best, despite the fact that, when you can remember it, most of what you learn in primary school turns out to have been little more than unadulterated bollocks.

Well, here goes: according to every teacher I had from year 1 to year 6 (and sitcom How I Met Your Mother), St. Valentine was a priest/monk who married people in a time when some crazy Emperor dude had outlawed marriage. This guy was a supporter of a kind of love that, at the time, was not allowed. If anything, this guy now bears more significance for some single people in today's society.

No kind of love between two people is out of bounds in the modern world. As we prepare to make gay marriage legal in the UK, we've gone about as far as we can go in making every expression of love available to every person. But, nearly everyone has experienced the pang of a one-way love and that, I feel, is the kind of love that, whilst it is legal, is nevertheless not allowed today. While this kind of love can become reciprocal, it is far more likely that it is stamped out. We either bar ourselves from love by failing to act on such feelings or we act and are rebuffed, neither stops us from loving but in either case it is almost a fact of nature that we will be encouraged to stop, to give up, to move on. This is what I mean by not allowed.

See how those of us who are one half of a potential relationship which will never come to fruition are told we should not be allowed? We, the least obtrusive of alternative loves, are forever told we are unworthy of use of the term. Valentine is our saint now, we are the outlaws. We don't ask to secretly wed, we know the impossibility of such a thing, when we have no-one to be wed to, we ask merely that we be allowed to love, silently, from afar.

That's what February the 14th used to be about. Remember when you first heard the primary school version of the story of St. Valentine? Remember the card to the girl whose desk was a couple of rows over from yours? Often anonymous but sometimes signed, though only by the bravest of the brave. That's the only time this most sterilised, monetised of saint's days meant anything, when it was the chance for us all to take that flame we'd been holding (usually in a safety lamp with all the flaps shut so that no-one could see it) and use it to light the windows of our hearts.

I fail to see why grown-up Valentine's Day should be any different.

Twenty-Something back on the scene

Back on the blogging scene. Yes, that's right it's yet another "I'm back" post, putting me well above Lazarus but with some ground to make up on the Phoenix in the rebirth league table.

I make far too many promises, to myself as well as others. Not only is the number of promises I make infeasible, but it is coupled with the utterly herculean nature of some of the tasks I promise to perform.

In truth, the things I vow to do are not out of my reach: I have the ability, but the application is sadly lacking. However, I had promised to return to the blogosphere and here I am. One thing off the list. Sustaining my interest in this journal will not be easy, though. As my rest period slips inexorably into full-blown unemployment, viable topics of discussion become thin on the ground. I've been mentally composing rants against those things that irk me but I'm in a demographic of one on these issues and would lose what little readership I have if I were to tell you my grievances in these areas. I've also had designs on writing short stories or philosophical treatises, but the plot won't fall together and the existentialism has been rehashed here over and over again.

(If you're playing Dan's blog bingo, or some associated drinking game, you should have "return to blogosphere", "apologises for quality of blog", "pretends like he has a readership" and "takes self-deprecation too far". Simply because I assume you would like a full house I'll use the word love but I will spare you a disquisition on the subject. I assume that love was the uber-word, requiring some sort of cocktail of doom, comprising at least 8 different drinks including that 40% proof cider and a pint of absinthe. Suitably sozzled you may even thank me for pointing out that in the course of this last paragraph we've also covered "over-use of punctuation", "using big words just for the sake of it" and "puts far too long passages of text in brackets".)

At any rate, I've written my first post of 2013, I invite you to read half-way through it and give up: that's what I did whilst writing it. The paradox being that to have read this you would have to have perservered beyond half-way, you poor lost soul.

Twenty-Something and retired

So I was a full-time student. It's an apt phrase because more than any other occupation it really does affect you full time. Wherever you are, whatever else you are doing you are defined as a student, by the discounts you get, by the debt you are in or by the friends you are with and the topics of discussion among you. And then it all ends, much quicker than it began and you have to move on to real life and find a job or continue on your pre-ordained career path. You have to find a vocation if you didn't already have one in mind and bust your balls going for it. Well, I found a calling, that occupation I felt like I was put here to have. Being a student, however is not a feasible career choice and I've been forced into retirement without even the "benefit" of a pension packet.

In this vein, today I will be considering the ends of things, and the beginnings too, and pondering why I can't do middles. This will give me a great opportunity to properly close the ledger on the student blog and turn the page into this new one.

It's odd really, I'm forever stuck between the poles of any situation, not in the middle of it but constantly flitting between beginning and end or occupying both ends of the spectrum at once. I was a great student and I'd kick the ass out of being retired if I didn't have to go get a job and make some money first. I'm not even really twenty-something. Not in my mind: emotionally and mentally I'm part 16-year-old, part nonagenarian. I'm a good friend (I hope) and I'd like to think I'd make a great husband but I'm crap at the whole boyfriend thing.

Is it just a lack of follow-through that means I'm forever feeling like the middle of a project is the hardest? Probably. I'd say that is the curse of my generation. I've seen twenty-somethings who have escaped the apathy of the convenience culture of the 21st century and are capable of putting in the graft required to get them where they want to be but in every town centre are the other kind of twenty-somethings, the ones who gave up on themselves and hang around smoking in tracksuits outside the job centre in one of the greatest natural occurrences of juxtapositional irony ever to grace the face of the Earth.

I escaped the chavish tendencies of my town - as did many of my friends - but something held me back, my aspirations and motivation got me just far enough to realise I'd never make it to the end of the line and actually fulfil any of my dreams.

It sounds bleak but things could be much worse and I'll be OK. The main thing to realise is that it'll all work out eventually. The volunteering I'm doing currently (helping to run a couple of Church football groups) will hopefully lead to some proper work at some stage.

Anyways, on to the other reason why I'm here.

The rebranding exercise this blog has been through was to make me write more considered material which I could hopefully use as an example of my work should I ever get the opportunity to work as a writer (unlikely, I know but still it's only fair to warn you that there will be a few TV, film and literature reviews coming soon). Which is all very well but the decision to maqke the change came as a shock even to me and did leave me feeling like what I'm now thinking of as the old blog didn't get to finish its story, so I just want to close the book on that one with a little update regarding some of the material contained therein.

As you can tell I'm finding it hard adjusting to life after university. It's a slow process that feels something like grieving. I've talked about the five stages of death before, as you might recall, and that situation remains pretty much as it was, except that the pain is gone, which is an odd sensation. I don't think I've ever felt this way and had it not hurt like hell. That caused me some consternation, as my biggest fear was forgetting in the weeks after uni. Eventually I realised that feeling is still there but it doesn't hurt as much. Like schrapnel in a soldier's leg, it hurt at one time and it still can make life difficult now, but it's just there, permanent but painless, reminder of the battles of days gone by.

Amongst the treasured mementos of the time when there was so much pain in my life are photos from Grad Ball and Graduation Day proper, the texts that flew back and forth on results day, the ring I bought myself as a facsimile of a Sikhi kara bracelet and of course the Christmas card that started this blog. It never got delivered, see, due to a tendency amongst those off campus to skive off the last few lectures of a semester. Along with it is the birthday card to the same person which was also destined to never reach its intended recipient.

And chief amongst them all are the memories, of cups of tea in the lounge, of plane-spotting in boring lectures, of that one time we drove to ASDA, I tagging along and buying stuff I didn't even need just because it was time spent together, of the frequent times I made an arse of myself because the nerves shut down my quality-control filters and of course of that last goodbye. The finalty of that memory makes me want to be able to shout at my past self to make more of those last minutes, for disarmed by and confident in the last words we shared I took no opportunity to say what needed saying or even to hang around longer than I normaly would. In the movie theatre of my brain, the last shot of that heart-wrenching scene is taken from behind me as I stroll away, it goes into slow-mo, music starts playing  as the soft focus comes in and then the credits roll as the camera pulls back and up into the air and everything fades to black.

The last few months have been so hard because I don't want to leave the cinema. Maybe it's going to be like a Marvel hero movie; maybe there'll be a teaser for the sequel coming on soon.

Or maybe I can just sit in the dark and forget the world outside ever existed.