The Week of Coffee, Chocolate and the Box-Set

If someone was ever to write a book about my life then the last few days would be referred to as the title of this post. After initially getting over the confusion as to why someone was writing my biography (and checking they were mentally sound) I would have to ensure that such names were used to describe the inane details of my life - I doubt if it would be an easy read. This last week of my holiday has been spent drinking my favourite brown coloured drink (closely followed by a cup of Bovril), eating more chocolate that I have in the last 5 years and watching the same amount of House as I usually do in these times of 'vacation'. If you read my post on Monday night then you were probably thinking afterwards just how much better you're holiday has been than mine. The truth is that it's actually not so bad at the other end of these fingers that type this sweet poetry to you this evening.

Satisfaction not Guaranteed

It was the longest holiday, it was the shortest holiday. It was the best holiday, it was the worst holiday. It the holiday of success, it was the holiday of failure. In short it was the holiday that I always thought that it was going to be - and there is still another week left of it. I actually feel a little bit daft opening my post like that because, as the more learned readers amongst you will have noticed, it is in the form of the opening to the Dickens book 'A Tale of Two Cities': a book that I've never read before but for a short period of time had memorised the famous opening. When I look back on little things like that from previous holidays (such a frivolous past-time only came a few summers ago) it makes me think how much time I've wasted and how much time I continue to waste as well. Even as I sit here, fighting through an almost palpable bowt of writer's block, I can't decide if I'm using my time well or not.

Thought Provoking

With only being able to post once last week I've been thinking about something new that I could do for this week that will quench to almost palpable thirst for posts that I can sense from my readers. The thing that I've come up with almost seems like a contradiction to that because my plan is to write a shorter post with a single line that is sure to get you thinking. So today's post is going to be less than long and might fail to inspire many people but I hope that it hits home with at least a handful of people.

I heard this line a long time ago on a (very) early morning jazz radio program when I was heading on holiday - the reason I was up at that time listening to the radio. I can't quite remember what they were talking about apart from the fact that it was something to do with jazz but it was something that really hit a chord with me and it had me thinking for most of my journey: to feel completely free you must first fully restrict yourself. It was something to do with jazz in the context of the program but I felt that it could apply to life in general. The message I took was that to truly feel the freedom of a holiday or just time off you have to fully commit yourself to the complete opposite, be it university, school or work. Yes everyone enjoys time off from things but it is my feeling that you have to earn that time off by fully restricting yourself first.

Thanks for reading my short but hopefully thought provoking post today!

Martin

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.

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.

Summary of a Summery Holiday

I've been thinking about writing this post ever since the wheels of my flight left Scottish soil almost a month ago. In fact right from the moment when I knew that I was going on holiday I already had it in my head that, yes I was going to miss a whole month of posting, but that at the end of it I would have some really great things to write about - I was not far from the mark. The truth is that I've got so much to write about from my 3 and a bit weeks of traveling around Europe that I'm not sure that there is enough disk space on any computer in the world to hold it all. My fingers have been twitching for a long time as I've encountered new and interesting things; it felt like I had lost a limb with not being able to post for a whole month. Had it been for any other reason than being on one of the best holidays of my life I doubt that I would have been so accepting of the situation. Anyway, enough of the reasons for me not being able to write and lets get back on it! My holiday consisted of 5 different stops right up the middle of central Europe: Florence, Venice, Vienna, Prague and Berlin. The plan for this post is to give a little insight into my favourite things about each of them. I should say that this post comes with a warning though: I'm going to recommend that you visit each of these places and will continue to do so for pretty much every post that I write about my holiday - for this I can only apologise!