The Last Blog

Sad day. This is the last post that Ramblings of a Teenager will ever see but I'm going to keep it short and sweet. I was given the poem below by a good friend of mine a few weeks ago and I've been saving it until this point - unbeknown to them of course. It means something different to me than it does to the person that wrote it but that's what makes it so special.

 As you walk along the path I left you
complacency fills my heart with passion.
It is clear now that we must not linger,
and leave us with our bitter regrets.

Sympathy has never become you
and yet our love continues to blossom.
I can't decide if we are fooling us
or if we shall ever forget ourselves.

I really can't decide what the future holds;
I know whatever happens you are mine.
But when I look at you I don't see me;
life is too short to be risking our time.

So as I sit under my tree of doubt
and as I explore the road less travelled,
I gaze upon the last glimpse of summer night,
and realise my love won't ever die.

And with that I would like to sign-off for good. I would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone that has ever read any of my posts and an even bigger thank you to people that have kept coming back for more. It means so much to me (and always has) that people take an interest in what I write - some of it being utter rubbish at times as well. My readers are the best that I could have asked for and I hope to see you all over on Ramblings of a Twenty-Something this time next week.

Much love. Over and over and over and out.

Martin

The End is Nigh

I'm not going to cry. I promised myself I wouldn't cry. Well just as well I'm not otherwise this could get awkward. This day was always coming no matter how much I hoped it wouldn't. I'm turning 20 next week thus meaning that I will no longer fit into this blog. If I was to try it would be like me trying to get into a pair of girls jeans which is never going to be a pretty sight so I'm moving on. Next Tuesday I'm going to launch Ramblings of a Twenty-Something which I hope will be the bigger (and better) big brother to this blog. 

All is explained below in a short video that I've done to say thanks for your readership over the last couple of years. Ramblings of a Teenager has been a huge part of my life since I started it and it's become 'my thing' which I'm very proud of. When I think back to all of the things that this blog has seen I wonder if I could class it as being some kind of time capsule, capturing the important (and sometimes unimportant) parts of my life. What's more is that this blog has covered a period in my life that I'm likely never to witness the like of again and in many ways it maps out my change from kid to adult. Not many people have something like this to look back on and for that I feel very fortunate. I'm going to post one last time on Wednesday in ROAT which will be special for different reasons. I'll save my final teenage thanks until then but for now here is a video about what's in store for Ramblings of a Twenty-Something:

 

Frustrations, Snooker and Sleep Deprivation - Another Story of a Week

What a week. No blog posts, a lack of sleep and some great fun in between and now it's Friday and I think it's time to sit down and take stock. I'm not sure how long this post is going to be because I'm actually not sure where the week went but I'll give you a blow by blow account of it and see if it looks anywhere near normal to you. Keeping in mind that my 'normal' week just involves going to class, preparing tutorials, reading and going to pub quizzes I think you'll be able to see why I'm having to post on a Friday night for the first time in a long time. Get comfy...

Apologies Sent With Love

I'm here! It's a minor miracle that I'm writing tonight because I'm shattered and for another reason that I'm going to elaborate on momentarily. That reason is that I don't really have anything to write about tonight; well I haven't thought of anything to write about - that sounds better. I've not had any drunken antics since last week (and I'd like to keep it that way) and I'm not going to reference the girl again because people are getting bored of that. Just because she's attractive doesn't mean that I have to write about her. I mean, I'm attractive and I don't write about myself all of the time. Oh...wait...damn. Actually as the more seasoned readers of this blog will know, I think myself to be quite the opposite - that's the reason why I write about myself you see. So anyway I've not really got all that much to write about this evening and that actually feels kinda of good but I'll get on with it anyway.

Back on the Horse

I must say straight away that the only reason that I'm writing this post tonight is because I was just watching Big Bang Theory - that is all. Well, OK I'll explain a bit further in depth in a second but I wasn't planning on writing tonight (shock horror!) because I'm pretty tired and I cut my hand on a broken glass this evening - can't say I'm enjoying this typing malarkey at the moment to be fair. I'll crack on with this smashing post though (might as well embrace this evening's clumsiness) and get back to what I was saying above. Raj said to Leonard that he needs to get 'back on the whores'. He was swiftly corrected by a bemused Howard whilst I chuckled myself into a post dinner stitch and decided that I might as well write about my first day back at big school.

I'm a Local...Get Me Out of Here!

Facebook is a marvel don't you think? Without it we would not be able to get our grievances off of our chests or read about those of other people that seem to haunt their lives so. It seems that every time I click onto Facebook I see at least one 'friend' moan about where they live and the fact that they have to 'git oot ae this place'. Firstly I would like to point out that I detest people writing like that. I was once a person of such literally laziness but I've since shaken my bones to become the very person that you read today. The only time that you'll catch me writing anything like that would be out of mockery of people that are the same age as me but act as if they are 12. Anyway, back to my main point. People don't ever seem to be happy with where they come from. They always seem to feel that the grass is much greener somewhere else but my view is that the place you live is what you make of it, not what it says on the tin.

Back Home

I've been pining after this day for a very long time now. I could spurt out some useless clichés such as 'you don't know what you've got until it has gone' but I'm starting to understand just what that means. Now, from those couple of sentences, with it being Christmas Eve and the fact that I'm writing this from home and not from Edinburgh, you would think that I'm happy to be home and that Christmas has finally wriggled its way into my psyche - you would only be half right I'm afraid. Yes it's grand to be home and to feel a modicum of Christmas cheer but the greatest thing that I can say I'm delighted about it that I can blog again, free from the guilt of procrastination and the stress of exams. I can't begin to tell you just how many ideas I've had for posts over the last few weeks whilst the exam period kept me hostage - solitary confinement tends to get the mind working. I'm so happy to be home and to be spending Christmas with my family but to add gravy to the turkey, I'm blogging again and that makes me feel just as at home.

Signing Off

I couldn't bring myself to do this last night on account of the fact that I was on my knees after a long day but I'm here now. This is pretty much me reporting to all of you lovely readers that I'm going to give myself a few weeks away from my blog because of my immanent exams. Like the rest of my peers I'm certainly a little bit on edge at the moment but I feel that the next week or so might serve to help me get my head above water and into full speed mode. I think that I made the same decision last year to stop blogging throughout my exams because all I would write is how crap I feel and nobody wants to read about that. I'm hoping that at the end of the exams (only a few days before Christmas by the way!) I'm going to have that great feeling of having a weight lifted off of my shoulders and that is the kind of thing that I like to write about. 

There is a good chance that I'm not going to blog before Christmas so if I don't then I hope you all have a great festive period whatever you may be doing. I would also like to extend a message of good luck to people sitting exams all across the country and a particular shout-out to my fellow law students - it hurts I know, but we'll all be fine!

Thanks for reading and be sure to keep an eye out for a post around about Christmas/New Year time - over and out!

Martin

My Favourites: Not so Fresh Anymore

The reason why I decided to do this 'favourites' thing this week was to encourage myself to have a look back at my older posts and see what I was writing about at various moments in the history of this blog. So far I've come across happy times, sad times, stupid times (that have been utterly laughable) and times that should be reflected on. Today's favourite falls under that last category because it's the post that I wrote just after freshers week in first year. Back then I was a lot quieter and more reserved than I am now (believe it or not) and I also had a hunger to start my degree that I had forgotten I could have. I'm absolutely loving the challenge that I've got before me after just a month of second year but it's very refreshing to read just how enthusiastic I was about everything back at the very start. It also reminds me that although I can sometimes get myself down about university work, I've got this bubbling desire to succeed that's always just under the surface and a confidence in my ability to go with it. This week of reading old posts for me has turned this blog into something of a time-capsule for me - just another beautiful aspect to what I've got here.

Enjoy...again!: http://roateenager.blogspot.com/2010/09/week-one-down-rest-of-life-to-go.html 

For the first time ever I'm going to thank myself for keeping this going through all that's happened in the last year and a half but, as always, the big thanks goes to my consistent readership.


Martin

My Favourites: Cheesy Stuff!

To kick off some of my favourite blog posts I'm going to go for one of the basics. This was the 3rd post that I ever wrote and reading it back I can see just how much better I've become just from writing this blog. The message, however, is as strong as ever and I occasionally go back to it just to refresh what I was trying to say all of those years ago. So here is the link to one of my best and favourite posts from the last 100: 

http://roateenager.blogspot.com/2010/02/cheese-theory.html.

Enjoy - promise it was me that wrote it despite how bad it might look.

Thanks again folks!

Martin 

Post 100: The Numbers Game

100. It's a big number but it depends in what context you're saying it. £100 is a lot of money but 100p isn't. 100/200 shares is a lot of shares but 100/10000 is less so. 100 is a big number to me because it indicates a fairly big milestone for me: today is my 100th post on Ramblings of a Teenager. Now if I was to look at them properly (that being all posts that I've written) then it would certainly be clear that some of them haven't been as long as others or haven't actually amounted to any kind of message but the number 100 now shows on my blogger dashboard and it's nice. If I was to try and average out the word-count of all of my posts then my guess is that it would come out at about 500 words per post meaning that I've then written about 50,000 words in this blog, probably more. That for me indicates just what a commitment (and to some extents, what an addiction) this blog has become to me. I would go as far as to say that a little bit of me in now in this blog and it's an experience that I'm never likely to forget.

Building Myself Up for a Fall

Firstly it would be more than rude to not apologise to the few people that look forward to reading my posts every week on the days that I usually publish. I might have kind of, sort of forgotten to tell everyone that I was going away for a week of peace and tranquility and selfish old me only realised that it had slipped my mind when I got to the place with a lack of internet connection - it seems that the internet hasn't touched every house in the world (and the moon which is actually really nice this time of year). Anyway I'm back now and wanting more than ever to sit down and blog; the thing is that I want more! I've been dabbling with a few ideas as of late which regard starting a new blog with a more focused topic (which itself, like the possibility of starting this new blog, has yet to be decided). I would of course keep writing on Ramblings of a Teenager until my membership to that age-group expires in little over 7 months time but I would love to know that I would have another established blog by that time. The idea of writing two polar opposite blogs excites me but I'm afraid that, as the title of this post suggests, I'm building myself up for a big fall.

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.

Home!

My fingers are stiff and my brain is labored by writers block but I'm back and I'm here to stay. The month that I've been away from this blog has been one of the most exciting and stimulating of my life and I hope to be able to portray that in my up coming posts. It is safe to say that I've missed writing more than I've missed most things but you'll all be glad to hear that I've been keeping an eye and an ear out for interesting things to write about and I think I've got a juicy little batch waited to be squeezed through this keyboard in the coming weeks and months. Anyone that has started a blog will know that it is sometimes difficult to come up with ideas on a regular basis but this, for bloggers, is the bread and butter thing that you have to be able to do otherwise you just won't get readers. My hope is that my recent spells of silence (for my exams and of course my holiday) haven't left people feeling bored with the idea of my blog. If anything I'm more excited about blogging than I have been for a long time and I'm going to try and give something back to everyone that sits down on a regular basis to read my posts. A month is a long time in a teenager's life and I feel like I've undergone a few changes in that time because of things, both good and bad, that have happened in my life. So here is to what promises to be a fruitful summer of writing and I hope you enjoy what I've got to say in my future posts!

Much love,

Martin

My Passion for the Blog

Standing on the brink of another break from writing this blog, I've suddenly got a greater passion for it than ever - so much so that it's going to be hard not being able to post for the 3 weeks that I'm on the continent. That said though, I'm going to be traveling for 3 weeks which will take the edge off this disappointment somewhat. It'll also give me a chance to think about new things to write and might make the things that I write about more interesting. I feel that the best way to make your writing interesting is by being able to include personal experiences in it - something that I should have in abundance come the end of June.

It's Good to be Back!

As I clear my throat and stretch off my weary fingers, it feels good to be back. My great loves in life are football, books and people but I never considered myself to have something that was a little different - something that I could say was mine. Until this blog was started about a year and a half ago I think it would be fair to say that I was without a hobby. I started it up because I had something to write on a cold day in January and here we are today, over 60 posts later and I've realised just how important this empty text box is to me. These last 2 weeks have been some of the most challenging of my life and have certainly put me and everyone around me through the wringer like never before. I think it was a good idea to take a little break from writing my blog but I really have missed it - have you guys? I suppose it wouldn't be much of a surprise if I was to stop doing it all together because that's generally what happens with blogs over time; unless it hits the big-time the writer gets bored. I've always maintained that I will be happy even if only one person reads what I've got to write and that looks set to continue. It's good to be back!

Notice of Silence

Hey guys. This is going to be a very brief post basically saying that I'm not going to be blogging for the next couple of weeks because of my exams. It might be nice to have some time to think of new and more interesting posts and I plan to have a 'bumper' week when all of my exams are finished and I can try and get back to a little bit of normality. All that remains to be said is 'here goes nothing'...

Over and out (for now),

Martin

A Life Without...

How I am managing to keep this blog up is beyond me at the moment. I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of revision and other such stressful past-times and for me to be able to continually produce two posts a week is therefore nothing short of a miracle. No, I've not been working every hour of every day (in fact there have been days where I've done nothing) but when I do find some time to get around to blogging I realise I've not been able to spend time thinking about something to write about. Where these words come from is often a mystery to me but, for your continual enjoyment, I shall keep posting until someone tells me to stop - please don't do that anytime soon; I'm having too much fun! The topic for today's post is more of an introduction than a stand alone post. I've been thinking about doing a 'series' of posts on the same theme for a while because that way I really don't have to spend too much time thinking about it before I sit down to write. It means that I'll have a good amount of fuel to go with (for Wednesday posts at least) for a while so that will be nice. The topic for this prospective set of posts is what our lives would be without some of the more fundamental things in our lives. How would we survive without cars? Would the world function without the common umbrella? Would I be able to get things done if there wasn't such a thing as coffee? I'm going to explore these questions in the coming weeks - hopefully I'll spark your brain into gear a little along the way!

Time to Take Stock

As I approach my 50th post of this blog, I think it is time that to stand back and see where I am with it. It is fair to say that it was one of the best decisions of my recent life when I chose to start this blog up. Little did I think that I would have people following it and reading every post and for that I am very grateful. What makes me even happier is the fact that I've had a couple of people say to me that they are either going to start a blog or reignite an old one. It has been super fun up until now and, although this opening paragraph sounds a bit like a farewell, there is plenty more to come from this blog - both for me and you.

Guest Writers Wanted!

Well I guess this could be seen as some kind of personal ad -the sort you get in  newspapers - although I would imagine that this would fail to entice people in the lonely hearts column. Basically what I am looking for it for someone (or some people) to come up with some interesting ideas in the form of a blog post that I can put up on this here page for people to read. Naturally I would add some stuff around it otherwise that would just be plain lazy on my part but they bulk of the post in question would be the 'donated' text. I'm not sure if many people have looked at the new 'Contact Me' page, but there on there is a little bit of info about what I am looking for. For those of you that have looked at it and thought "maybe that would be quite good fun but I'm too shy to give it a try", that is ok as well because I am happy to put up content under anonymous just as much as I am willing to plaster someone's name all over my blog until it chokes on it. I'll put together a wee list of ideas for you to mull over and if you have any desire at all to get involved then just drop me an email or even better (and this will apply to most of the regular readers) talk to me in person - this of course includes msn for we do live in the 21st century after all. So here's the list and I do hope to hear from some people over the next couple of weeks:

• Poetry
• Monologues
• Full blog posts
• Blog post extracts
• Musings
• Pictures
• Something to debate
• Song lyrics

Cheers,

Martin