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.

Decaff Coffee and Other Stories From the Past Week

Britney Spears famously sang 'whoops I did it again' - and look at what happened to her. Yes, after two weeks of waxing lyrical about how things have changed for me and how I was going to change, things hit a new (but familiar) all time low for me last week. In today's post I'm going to summarise a few of the things that have happened since Ramblings of a Teenager was last published. I think that you should get yourself comfortable because this promises to be a lengthy post that should make you both laugh and cry in equal measure.

Where better to begin than with the aftermath of last Wednesday's post. I'm not going to lie and say that I regret writing it because I don't. There have been only a few moments in the life of this blog where I felt I was writing something so personal and it felt nice to get it off of my chest. It was a post that was written in a style that I'm not used to writing away from my journal and for me to lay a part of myself bare like that took a little bit of self-encouragement on my part. In fact, 'Just a Glance' could easily be a blurb for a large chunk of what I write about in my journal and therefore you might think yourselves to be the luckiest people on the Internet - you decide. I realised the next day that I had been a bad law student/blog writer when I failed to put in a disclaimer saying that I didn't want any questions as to the identity of this girl. Suffice to say I've been bombarded since by questions and for that I feel a little daft - think before you publish in future has to be the moral of this story.

So anyway the whole thing has brought some level of jocularity to my days because every time I see her I think back to the words that I used last week and chuckle to myself. She'll never know of the frivolities of this blog and I'm sure she wouldn't care if she did - that's what makes me laugh. I might even go as far to say that she is naively attractive but that might be pushing the boat out too far. I stumbled across her Facebook page (which will happen when you spend the amount of time on that thing as I do) and tampered with the idea of 'adding' her. Never have I felt like a stalker before and never again do I want to feel like one and so that was the end of that. It's funny how these things play out in my head sometimes but I'm almost certain that similar stuff goes on in the heads of lots of guys (and probably girls) across the world. In no way is this situation unique.

Since I'm a fan of continuity I'll use the above tale to lead this post on to that low point that I referred to above. Thursday night was the pub quiz again and after the week before you would have thought that I would have taken the drinking a bit more easily. However, I guess I must have drank too much again because half way through my lecture the morning after it was time for me to leave and for everyone else to stay - that is all I'm saying on the matter. The reason why there is continuity (although having to explain this possibly takes the edge off a bit) is that as I was leaving the lecture theatre with about 150 pairs of eyes on me, I caught her out of the corner of mine. My misery was compounded with this and off I slumped with my tail (that being my last shred of Friday morning dignity) between my legs - not cool. 

So I more or less spent the rest of Friday feeling sorry for myself. The folk that were with me during the day will know that I kept hitting myself on my head in frustration as to the state I was in and spent every moment in between looking awful. I went home in the afternoon and told this story to my parents. They called me daft and suggested (in the way that parents do) to try and ease off a little. It shouldn't have taken that but I always do as they say and will be doing a lot of 'easing off' over the coming weeks.

After nursing my misery for a whole day I woke up on Saturday morning to find that my exam results were up - finally. It was in the following hour that I felt that something was back; I wasn't sure what but it was back. After finding out how I had done there was a lot of fist-pumping and (for some reason) a lot of chest beating mixed with sheer adrenaline flowing through every part of my body. I sit here now looking back on Saturday morning with fondness and now I feel like I'm riding a wave that I feel could carry me anywhere - what a difference a day can make.

So here we are the week after all of that fun and, as I sit drinking my umpteenth cup of decaff coffee (because I can) I feel slightly wiser than I did this time last week. The last 3 weeks of my life have been some of the toughest for reasons that I didn't know before. I now know that my head was in the wrong place and that there was only one thing to fix that. The weight that has been lifted off my with the release of the exam results is almost palpable and now I feel ready to charge on with the rest of the year. I'm not perfect (and I never thought I was) because I'll always have vices such as being attracted to girls I can't have but there is something much higher than that which I will always believe in - my brains and my ability.

If you got down to this paragraph then thanks for sticking with me tonight. I understand it's been a bit of a bore for a lot of you but if anything reading something like this should trigger you to think about yourself. A little bit of soul searching now and again is often needed and I feel better for it.

Thanks for reading,

Martin

The Night that Changes Things

The penny has dropped. Something has clicked. The missing piece of the jigsaw has been found. I've seen the light. OK I think you get the drift now, and that last one was a bit too akin to religion and so I think I'll stop there. Last Thursday night (the 26th of January 2012 for those of you that like to take notes) I went out to the weekly pub quiz at my favourite watering hole in Edinburgh with friends. No there wasn't any wild boar or zebras there but there was a lot of alcohol and I had my fair share along with my companions. We drank deep into the night, mixing our poisons all the while before making our weary way home - via the late night pizza shop of course. This is not a story of drunken antics (of which there were quite a few) but more about what developed the next day, and the lasting effect that it should have on me.

A New...Something

Blink and you'll miss it. Another year has come and gone and I've not even had a moment to take stock. Over the last few weeks I've tried to find a moment to myself so that I could have a proper look back over 2011 - my 2011. It was the first full calendar year that I've been at university. It was the first year when I went on holiday without my parents for the first time. It was a year of epic highs and of ultimate lows. I can delve into any day of my journal from the last 365 days and know that there was hardly a time in the year when my brain wasn't switched on - for better or for worse. But now I stand at the cusp of yet another year of my life and I'm not quiet sure what to make it it all. A couple of days ago I was excited about the prospect of the new year and what it might bring but, after a slightly flat start to 2012, I'm not 100% certain what to do next. 

My Favourites: A Lesson Well Learned

I've only got a couple more days to pick out some gems from my blogging back-catalogue and for that I'm a little sad. As I said in yesterday's post, I've really enjoyed looking back into the past at what I've been thinking and feeling about certain things and how I've interpreted them. It's interesting from the point of view that I might interpret various things in different ways now and I might have different ways of dealing with things on the whole. Today's choice popped into my head this afternoon before I even had even sat down this evening to choose a favourite for this evening. In fact it's in my head pretty much all of the time which is testament to just how much of a change it indicated in me. The post in question was the one when I got back from a tutorial early last year to realise that I had just made a massive break through both in confidence and productivity. I can still remember that day as if it was yesterday and the thing that I learned still crosses my mind every time I pass through the door into a tutorial room.

For those of you that are lacking a little confidence or just aren't getting enough out of university, I suggest you take heed from my epiphany from this time last year: 
http://roateenager.blogspot.com/2011/01/eureka-new-way-to-learn.html

Cheers everyone!

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