Post 100: Symmetry, Change and What's to Come

I've only gone and done it again! It is with great pleasure that I report to you that this post is my 100th on Ramblings of a Twenty-Something. For those of you who have been following me over the years, you will know that we've been here before over on Ramblings of a Teenager. However, this time seems to matter more for some reason.

It has taken me over two years to get to this point again, with the coincidence between the end of my undergraduate degree and this landmark being almost poetic. I'll not bore you with the romance of it all  - I like to write, I think we all get that now! - but it is enough to say that the majority of the 236 posts that I have written over the years map my whole time at university. With that in mind, can you at least let me indulge myself with a quick look back at that time? Tough, I'm doing it anyway!

Good Morning Edinburgh

"Everyone we know is down there sleeping just now".

It's about half four in the morning and we are scaling the side of Arthur's seat to see the city that I love wake up. The wind is crisp and the ground is damp from yesterday's downpour. We're not really dressed for the climb but the warmth of the white wine and beer is keeping out the cold. I can feel my lungs straining and my legs burning with every stone that I scale. Every twenty metres calls for another break; a gulp of ginger beer and half a sausage roll bought from the twenty-four hour shop. Onwards.

Summer 2014 is Here!

Time. Zeit. Summer. Sommer.

I don't want to check the time-stamp on my most recent post because I think it will make me greet. It might have been just after dissertation, or it might have been just after my eighteenth birthday - time has felt like that recently. Anyway, I'm here now and that's all that matters.

Is She?

My break is almost over. It's been three weeks to the day since my dissertation deadline passed and I haven't touched university work since - it's been great. In that time I've had a relaxing week away beside the sea, resolved to make a decent go of improving my German in the summer and rediscovered my interest in poetry. I started writing poetry towards the end of high school and was quite productive between then and the middle of second year at university when it just disappeared from my life. Until this afternoon I hadn't penned a single stanza for two years. 

It felt good to be creative with something again and to get my hands dirty with structure and story telling. Today I remembered how much I love writing poetry and I thought I would share that with you in this post. Underneath I've included an audio of me reciting the poem which I've called 'Is she?'. Hope you enjoy it. 

A day pined for, a day now gone.

A hop, a grape and repeat –

as long as I stand, hit me neat.

Stunned. Stranger yet familiar;

familiar but I’m strange

like that.

I admit: I see you in her, and her in you.

Make it stop, help me start:

another round?

And around we go. Sit and watch and talk and

I will show,

show nothing new, not to you.

For you know my type:

light and loud, heavy and

Quiet.

Is she? I don’t even know her name.

Cheers,

Martin

My Favourite Wikipedia Page

Wikipedia gets bad press. From day one at university we were told, in no uncertain terms, that it is the devil's source and should not be used in any academic work. Consequently, when you tell someone that you found your information (whether that be about how many goals Liam Fox scored for Livingston or the names of the Queen's corgis) on Wikipedia, they scoff. Granted, I'm sure that, overall, Wikipedia comes quite short of being 100% accurate, but you would be lying if you said you don't use it at least a hand-full of times a week.

Once you get past the prejudice against the great online encyclopedia, you can start to enjoy it. Away from the likes of BuzzFeed and Facebook, there is a world of knowledge out there waiting to fill the hours you should be using for other things - knowledge gathering procrastination, you might call it. Anyway, this morning I searched for something I've been meaning to for a while and found what I can comfortably term my favourite page on Wikipedia. Guess I should tell you about it then?

Dissertation Reflections

Dissertation and idleness. Those are the two extremes on what has very much been a sliding scale of emotions and productivity for me over the last couple of months. Before the idleness, however, came the 'Big D' and I think that enough time has elapsed for me to be able to properly reflect on it.

It was a curious experience for me. The biggest hurdle was getting over the disappointment of not enjoying my dissertation as much as I thought I would. When I set out to 're-think liability for defective products' back at the start of fourth year, I had the genuine belief that I could make a valuable contribution to the product liability debate. I set myself up for a fall. 

Questioning, Questioning - Another Guest Post

And so to the second guest blog of the day. Having, I'm sure, enjoyed Iain's post earlier, this post will set another interesting thought process in motion. I've had a great time with the work that I have been sent today and I hope it will encourage others to write their own stuff. The writer of this post has asked to remain anonymous. 

Having volunteered, somewhat over-enthusiastically, to author a guest post for Martin I faced the problem of actually coming up with something to write about. This is one area that normally I have no trouble with - I can ramble on about anything and everything. However when looking at what I would like to talk about I hit a brick wall.  

The inspiration eventually came in the form of a couple of podcasts that I have been listening to recently. The podcasts themselves are not wonderful works of art or a lesson in editing but rather are the discussions of two individuals talking about a range of topics that take their fancy. My listening to them has posed one of the most perplexing questions I have thought about recently: the question of asking questions.

This is not going to be a discussion of a major logical challenge posing issues of regression in relation to questions. Instead I simply query why we don’t always ask the difficult questions?

My Renaissance or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Everything - A Guest Post

It's like Christmas - only better. Today two very good friends of mine wrote some great content for a couple of guest posts. As you will see tonight their writing is great and it's a privilege to be entrusted with some important and personal messages. I hope you enjoy reading them both as I have. The first is by someone who even I am dwarfed by when it comes to thinking about thinking. Enjoy. 

The notion of starting with just a title is one which has always appealed to me. Well, I’m not sure if it’s a matter of appealing or more a matter of the alternative being much less attractive. You could spend an infinite amount of time planning and crafting a perfect sentence that could sum up your life in a way which conveys whatever emotions and experiences you’ve gained from it, but even if I managed to do just that, I don’t think I would be satisfied. 

For me it has to be about the journey. 

The process of documenting my life is one that I began the summer of 2011. Granted, I only get the chance for reflection when my desk isn’t covered in various papers – so not very often – but reflection still remains a big part of my day-to-day life. How I reflect is a bigger issue. I like to be able to discover things about myself. To sit and not know what I’m going to think about, or write about and through this process find out what’s important to me; to pinpoint that one thing that happened today that made me happy. 

This post is going to be a discovery for both of us.

This is getting a bit heavy already. Come, sit down by the fire, pour yourself a fruit-based drink. Let’s talk.

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.