The Weekend the World Turned Blue

I find it funny when someone is asked if they watch the news and they say no because it's all depressing and there is never anything uplifting about it. I'm sorry but that wasn't in the mission statement when Sir Trevor MacDonald tapped his first pile of news on the desk all those years ago. Surely nobody can think that the world is a perfect place where only good things happen but to be able to accept that that is not true yet still not watch the news is simply a crime. News is what drives our days: it gives us things to talk about and debate, it provides us with a view of what the world is really like and for this reason it keeps us firmly in reality. The news should be watched, listened to, read and digested by everyone in the world because we learn from it as much as we create it. That 'reality' that I mentioned before was firmly bolted onto everyone's conscious at the weekend with the terrible news of the tragic murders in Norway and then with the sad news that Amy Winehouse lost her life. People should watch the news even if these kinds of thing are prevalent - there is no point in ignoring it because things are always going to be like that.

The Importance of Remembering

Notebooks. I live and swear by them for everything from university lecture notes to writing in my spare time and I've got a fair few floating around the place filled with just about everything you could think about writing down. In the last couple of days I've found myself searching out some of my older ones and having a thumb through them to see what they hold. Most of the stuff in them is lists, little bits of maths from my time at high school and lots and lots of poetry but, no matter what the content is, everything holds a memory for me. It is one of my habits that I'm most happy about because through these multiple notebooks I've managed (inadvertently) to paint a picture of myself from about 3 or 4 years ago which otherwise would have been lost and fleeting flashbacks in my head would be all that I have left. I find that it's important to remember who you were as well as who you are. The person that you are now owes a lot to the person that stood in your shoes in the past and having things to remind you of how you once were is one of the most invaluable tools at your disposal as we all seek to better ourselves.

Different Years, Different Ears

You might have noticed that there is now a new tab residing at the top of my blog - 'Taste of the Moment' - which has come as a result of a shift in the music that I'm listening to at the moment. I've always been one to have one of those music libraries that almost makes no sense; a mix of almost everything is something that I've always found myself with. I take great pleasure in putting my music on shuffle and seeing where it takes me but recently I've started to do that a lot less. Instead I've become an album listener (that being the whole album in one sitting) which somewhat signals a change in my approach to music listening. And it's not only the way I'm listening to music nowadays, it's also what I'm listening to as well. I've found myself going back to my Dad's music collection again for more Bowie, Clapton, Young etc and I've certainly been rewarded. In today's post I'm going to talk about a couple more artists (on top of the ones mentioned above) that I've taken a real liking to in the last few months.

Mind Numbing

I'm sitting in front on my laptop trying to work out what I could write about tonight and nothing is coming to me - and I mean nothing. Some people might put this down as writer's block but I put it down to being idle. Over the last 2 and a half months I've not really done anything that stimulates my brain. Even my holiday is a distant memory that feels like it could have been a year ago instead of a month. I ask myself what I've been doing with my time since I finished university and I sadly come up with very little. I've only finished 1 book this summer and I've hardly got started on another one since then. I've not even found the energy to watch the films and TV shows that I planned to watch which is crazy since I've had so much time before my trip and after to do such things that I can't understand why I haven't. It's now brought me to the conclusion that I've numbed my brain and that I'm going to have to train it back up to be on top form when the new university year comes around. It's not going to be easy and finding the motivation is going to be the toughest part of it but it's something that I've just got to do.

Red-Top Ruckus on the Newspaper Stands

It feels like the privacy of the public has been hacked off at the knees. And the elbows. And the neck. Recent revelations about the dealings of the News of the World newspaper has shocked the nation and the fine people that reside here. Heck, the whole world has been shocked by what vile atrocities have been glooping out of the news as of late - the News of the World has, for all of the wrong reasons, become world news.  Personally I've never been a bit fan of the red-tops anyway and have only even bought a single copy of one of them - and only for a laugh too. I can almost see where the appeal comes from and where the high sales are achieved but I'll never be converted. I'm more of a Guardian/Observer man myself and you can call me a snob but when it comes to journalism and newspaper production, quality always beats page 3 for me. I like to be able to read a paper where I know that I can trust and believe 99% of what is written - something that I don't believe ever has been the case with tabloid newspapers and has been diminished further in my eyes due to recent, shocking reports. 

Subtlety in Blogging

Blogging is an incredible creature. Yes I may well have a biased view on this topic since I've had a blog in my life for quite a while now but I think that my opener encapsulates the general consensus amongst fellow bloggers and blog readers alike. Blogs are very flexible, they can be accessed by anyone on the internet and the content can appeal to so many different types of people. 

When I started out I thought about starting up a 'marmite' blog where the topic of the posts would be very focused and would only appeal to the minority. In many respects this blog that you find yourself on today is testament to the fact that I chose to make this blog appeal to as many people as possible. I might well have shot myself in the foot with that decision because now I write one of millions of 'generic' blogs on the internet and therefore it is hard to get readers. This blog (contrary to the title) isn't even exclusively for teenagers either - it's hard to come up with a unique selling point. Those negatives aside however, I get to write about anything I want to. It's a great thing to be able to play around with because, despite it being generic, I know my audience (damn, I know most of my readers) and therefore I can pitch my posts at them and see what they think. The only problem with this (and yes, I'm being a little negative today but I'm slightly hungover) is that I have to try and be subtle when it comes to writing about things that relate to people I know. I don't name names and I don't act as a news-broadcaster for people's lives - I just put down my take on an event, nothing more nothing less.

A Dreaming Psycho

How often do you remember your dreams? I think that I'm lucky if I can remember (even parts of) mine twice in the space of about two weeks. I know people that can trot theirs off from start to finish and it makes me slightly jealous - until recently anyway. I had a dream a couple of weeks back that really creeped me out and put me off wanting to remember my dreams so much. Below I'll give a brief description as to what happened and how I felt when I woke up and then, if you haven't closed your browser by that point, I'm going to see if this reflection has helped. I've heard that you should write your dreams down when they are still fresh in your memory because over time it builds up a picture of your subconscious. I think that my notebook would be a very slim volume with a few less than savory reminders of my night-time wonderings.

The Internet: The Third Arm of Society

You learn a lot about people when you travel. I'm not talking about the people that you are traveling with in particular because you are bound to get to know them better; I mean the people that you encounter along the way. Traveling appeals to lots of different types of people and therefore when you stay in hostels all over Europe you get to see a very clean cross-section of the 'world society'. Anyone who has ever been in a hostel (either at home or abroad) will understand the kind of mix of people that can be found in places like that - it's all very interesting. One of the main things that I observed about these people when I was on holiday was that they all had one thing in common: they all wanted access to the internet. No matter what type of person it was or where they were from, everyone hovered around the computers in the hostel until there was one free. Most of them were looking for their fix of Facebook but no matter what they wanted to do online it struck me that whatever it was, it was vital. It brought me to the conclusion that most people (particularly young people) can't live without access to the internet for longer than a few days. I'm no different and I knew that I was going to struggle but it's nice to know that I'm one many who need to have the internet at their fingertips whenever they desire it.

Too Much to Learn? Deal With It

It's Monday and I'm me; there is not much else for it than to write a 'Me on Monday' post! After well over a month of eerie silence and wasted opportunities, I'm back for good this time and hopefully the coming weeks and months are going to prove fruitful on the blogging front. Today's post is regarding something that niggles away at me almost every single day of my life. It's a problem that I'm sure I'm not alone with and one that is probably most overt in our teenage years. The problem that I'm talking about is 'choosing' what you are going to learn. Obviously we don't get the choice with a lot of things (we're told what to learn at school and that is that) but then there are those extra-curricular things - the things that make us who we are. Now I've written much on this topic in the past including this post which in which I list the things that I want to learn to do - safe to say that not much of it has been learned in the 6 months since I wrote it. It's not even a case of me not wanting to (of course I do) but when I think about all of the things that I want to do with my spare time I get bogged down and end up doing nothing. This is not the wisest way forward and I'll never learn anything new at this rate. Hopefully this post might help to remedy the situation.