Who's Still Working on His Masterpiece? - My 'Favourite' Song

Back to basics.

The only thing more tiring than doing something is not doing it. If that is true, then I am on my knees from not writing any blog posts. Having now seen off university for the final time and dealt with 'grown up' responsibilities for the time being, I've run out of excuses for not writing. I guess, therefore, it is time to get back up on my feet again.

I've decided to break myself back in softly. Rule #1 for dealing with writer's block is to pick something you love and write about it. I was listening to music earlier; I love music; let's write. The flow was uncontrollable - just.

In my own inimitable style I've actually picked something stupid to write about. I would be doing you a disservice if I gave you the impression that the song I'm going to write about is always my favourite. It is, however, one that always springs to mind when I'm asked to choose.

Valentine's Day Through the Years and Through the Day - Part 2

So you've read part one and you're back for more - I'm starting to think people agree with my views? Today wasn't quite what I had in mind in terms of field research by I think I've made a sufficient number of observations today to get this post rolling. Mixed with my 'message for the year', what lies ahead should be good.

Valentine's Day Through the Years and Through the Day - Part 1

Nothing has changed. 

I spent the morning reading through my previous Valentine's day rants and watching some previews for today's skeleton final at the Winter Olympics. Those might seem far removed but there are parallels to be drawn. First of all, both facilitate the (voluntary) falling on one's own face. Both will captivate the whole country today, ending in either sheer elation or misery. And - most importantly given the nature of my posts over the years - both are mental.

This year I've decided to take a different approach to this post - which is apparently the 'only post people look forward to' on my blog. I am going to write a little this morning, head out for my normal day and observe. Think of me as the David Attenborough of blogging, or, at the very least, that odd nature guy from the One Show. 'And now we see an obliged young man picking through the last of the flowers as he heads home from work'; 'This gentleman baulks as he prices his wife's favourite chocolates, settling instead for the easy prey that is the reduced box of Roses'. I'm going to have fun with this.

The Valentine's Routine

I've started writing this Valentine's Day post two or three times now and each time it just sounds like I'm moaning about being single. The furthest I got into it was a story about a couple I saw the other day saying goodbye to each other. As they went their separate ways, the woman wiped her lips and the man had a spring in his step. However I realised that this observed contrast in post-kiss reactions didn't go so much to the heart of my dislike for Valentine's Day - it went much deeper. The moral of the story (which took up two or three paragraphs so you'll be glad that it's been dropped) I found was this: in a relationship it is often the case that the two people are not on the same page. It's quite sad and results in weeks and months of people's lives being lived under false pretenses. However, that isn't what I wanted to write about so I've cut it short(er) so I can get on with the task in hand.

The Early Morning Reality of Dreams

Some of you may already know and some of you will fall off your seats when I tell you what I'm about to tell you. I think I've actually covered just about all of my readers in one sentence - not sure if that's good or bad. Anyway I've got a job ("Blog Readers Get Back on Seats After Nasty Shock") and I've been working away for about a week and a half now. One of the wonders of this job is that I've got 6am starts - note the sarcasm for future reference. If the truth is to be told, I've only had one of those shifts but I have had two other 6.30am starts - you're splitting hairs if you think there's a difference. My inaugural 6am start was in fact this very morning when I was up and about at about 5am with it still being dark outside and with the BBC World Service playing on BBC1. If I'm honest, I don't actually mind the early starts that much but something happened this morning/last night which annoyingly affected this morning's preparations.

We've all had dreams that, when we wake up, seem like they were as real as your first fart - or so I'm told anyway. Up until I started working, I didn't really dream all that much but in the last week a combination of early mornings and hard work has meant that I've slept like a log and I've had a dream just about every night since. Last night was no different but with me having to get up effectively half way through the night for work, this dream really did seem like it was real (basically because I was still half asleep in the shower and on route to work). But reality soon hit.

There are few things in life that are worse than having such a vivid dream only to realise that that was all it was. Reality bit hard this morning a few minutes from work with the promise of milk and frozen food replacing what was otherwise quite a pleasant existence - in my dream that is. I'll tell you about it eventually, I'm just delaying at the moment because I don't know how to describe it!

Right here it goes. It was a fairly standard dream: there were a lot of people that I know and I was there - the usual stuff. I'm sure that everyone important was there in some form but don't hate me if you weren't; my sub-conscious probably just doesn't like you. The reason why this dream hit me so hard was that someone was there (of the female variety) for whom I used to hold a lot of feelings. I've written about her in the past on Ramblings of a Teenager and I thought that was where she was to remain: in the past. Apparently not and so I woke up this morning convinced that everything in the dream (all clean, I promise) had actually happened and subsequently those feelings returned, albeit until I was putting ice-cream in the freezers.

I could approach this from a few different angles, each of which results in a different destination. Initially I thought that this might be a relapse but I've not spoken to her for about 3 years and I've seen her almost as little in that time - relapse is quickly ruled out thankfully. I could also look at it from the point of view that I might like to get in contact with her again but that's irrational - I'm learning! I should then` probably consider why I was dreaming about her at all because I've not thought about her in a long time and haven't even come across a 'story' on Facebook about her that would have really made me stop to think. The last, and most probable, reason for the dream deserves its own paragraph.

Those of you that have been reading Ramblings in the last couple of weeks like drug addicts looking for their next fix will know that I've been reading (and writing about) some hefty stuff recently - namely philosophy. I was actually at a lecture/interview with Alain de Botton at the weekend with my Dad at the Edinburgh International Book Festival but that's a post for another day. If you haven't been reading (why not!) then things went pretty deep last week - or at least as deep as I go.

Oh ye, that paragraph I was talking about - apologies for the important, yet lengthy, digression. My interpretation of the dream (hence the digression) and the way it got to me this morning is that I miss having a someone to pine after. The poem that I wrote about in 'A Look at Love' (which gets a lot more airtime that it really should) had a last line that says. "...is it love or teenage lust?". That very poem was written about my 'relationship' with the girl from last night's dream and the very reason why I wrote it was because it was just teenage lust - nice rhetorical question eh? The real question is this though: what would I not give for a little bit of that back?

It's funny how a little dream (which had many other elements to it by the way) can have such as effect on your head, especially on someone who considers himself half-decent at being stoical. I'm not going to let it get to me and I'll trot off to work tomorrow morning (slightly later start thankfully) thinking about something else. Having said that, it doesn't mean that I wouldn't mind dreaming about her again tonight.

Thanks for reading,

Martin

A Truth About Love and Relationships

You know that feeling when you read something and you think 'yes, I couldn't agree more with that'? I read quite a lot of stuff, both fiction and non-fiction, and only occasionally do I come across a sentence, a passage or a chapter that says something more to me than what is actually written on the page. This happened to me when I was reading a sample of a Kindle book last week. I'm going to one of the Edinburgh International Book Festival events next weekend with my Dad; the event being an interview with Alain De Botton who is a writer and philosopher from Switzerland. It wasn't something we originally looked at going to (everything we did was sold out by the time my 'place in the queue' eventually got to the front) but the tickets fell to us from a family member who can no longer make it - funny how some of the best things 'fall' to you.

A Hopeful Return to the Basics

So with the finish line of the Olympics 2012 before us, it's about time that I found myself back on the blogging boat again. I've spent a lot of words on this blog in the past saying just how much I enjoy writing and, in particular, how much I enjoy writing my blog. That being said, I've actually enjoyed a brief hiatus from Ramblings of a Twenty-Something for one reason or another. 

First and foremost I've really enjoyed the last 2 weeks of sport on the TV and that is what I've been spending most of my time doing. Secondly (and I'm not sure why this is the case) I've enjoyed not having to thing about topics to write about - a break from the pressure that I put on myself to come up with good content. And that last note is third and final reason why I don't feel that guilty having not written for a while: I don't feel like I've written well for a long time. Looking back at my last 5 posts, there have only been a couple that I've come away with that satisfied feeling of having written what I what I wanted to. For those of you that click on my posts whatever the weather, you might have noticed this as well and for that I apologise. You might remember that I wrote about wanting to boost my readership through writing in quantity and with quality but neither of those things have come to fruition - time to pick things up I guess.

A Look at Love

Today I have been unsettled. I occasionally sit myself down to watch a film that I know is going to skew my head for a couple of hours and this post comes off the back of such a film. I'm a huge Ian McEwan fan - something that my Dad is mainly responsible for. A couple of his books are amongst my favourites - I even wrote my first critical analysis on his best book (in my humble opinion) 'Saturday'. This morning I decided that I would watch the adaptation of 'Enduring Love' starring Daniel Craig. Admittedly I've not actually read the novel but the DVD has been in the house for as long as I can remember and I finally decided that I would see what it was like. A deeply unsettling film about love and obsession, it has got me thinking about the question of love and what that actually means to me. A brief exploration into my head is sure to follow here - apologies are in the post.