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:

 

Vanity is Only Fair

If I've crunched once I've crunched a thousand times. Well the fact of the matter is that I probably have done about that in the last week or so, and even more in the last 3 weeks. For whatever reason I've got myself addicted to working out again in the aforementioned period and I'm not quite sure why. Well I actually do know the reason (which I'm undecided as to whether I'm going to disclose it or not tonight) but I'm not sure if it is a particularly rational one. On the one hand, I could say that I'm doing it to keep myself in shape and to make sure that I'm doing a bit of physical exertion every day that isn't lifting my pen or typing. However, on the other hand I know that my reasons are purely narcissistic and whether or not that is healthy I just don't know.

My Morning Motivation Theory and the Most Important Decision of the Day

It's been a while since I've written about something that isn't about my relationship status or alcohol and therefore something needs to change. I've also not given a lot of thought to my last 4 or 5 posts for whatever reason - I'm going to say that they 'came from the heart'. Today's post has required thought though and it is something that I'm looking forward to sharing with you this evening. I hope that I've whetted your appetite with the title; although it doesn't roll off the tongue, it should get the punters in over the next few days. It has also been a while since I've used the word 'theory' in my blogging escapades and so it excites me to be able to bring you my 'Morning Motivation Theory' tonight! The rest will be explained in due course...

The Commercialised Day of the Love Giving Obligation

After successfully securing my solitude for another year I feel, more than ever, to be qualified to deliver this post to you tonight. For the purposes of the this article you should strive to think of me as a half-eaten Kit-Kat or an odd sock because it will help you put it in some kind of context. This time last year (less one day) I wrote a similar post lambasting the commercialised day of the love giving obligation that is Valentine's day. Here I am again, a year on, still with a bee in my bonnet about it. The only issue is that I'm tired of digging my heels into things all of the time so the master-plan for this week is to give both sides of this story. Tonight's post is going to be all about the heel pressure and then Wednesday's post should ease it off somewhat - it's only fair. The only caveat that I serve to you about this whole thing is that this post promises to be much like a red rose: beautiful to some but prickly to others. Look away now if you think you're in love.

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.

Location, Location, Location

Don't you just love it when something comes up and hits you in the face? I'm obviously talking about a good idea but then again if you're into being punched then don't let me judge you - although I might just do that. I've been on the brink of writing this post for a while now but I've never quite known the right words to say. Admittedly I'm not actually sure if I yet know those words but I'm low on ideas for a voluminous post and it makes no sense for me to have it on my mind for much longer.

I should probably start by explaining the 'good idea' that came to me as I sat down to write this post a few minutes ago. It wasn't an urge to watch Kirsty and Phil (on everyone's favourite house buying show) that lead me to title this post up as I have but rather it was the subject of it. I've recently becoming very conscious of how I feel in different places, with 3 in particular jumping out at me - see how I enjoyed being struck by this idea now?

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.

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.

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. 

Time Spent in the Wrong Places

Apologies for the solitary post last week but after my controversial post on Monday evening I thought it was best to keep a low profile. The angry mobs outside of my window (which might just have been the wind but I'm convinced it wasn't) meant that I've not left my flat for a whole week solid now and I'm running out of food/clean clothes to keep me going. Come to think of it, if I let my clothes get so unclean then they might become edible? Not a good idea? OK. Anyway that is a whole load of rubbish and fine well you know it. My excuse from Wednesday was the age-old one of football and for that, as I've said many a time before, I will never be sorry (except for the fact that Chelsea lost - I'm sorry for that). Today's post is about something that makes me a little bit scared about my own ability. They say that the more you put into things, the more you get out of the other end - you have to earn success - and of course this is true. The sad thing is that I'm aware of that for all of the wrong reasons.

The Inevitable Has Happened

IMPORTANT MESSAGE FOR READERS OF RAMBLINGS OF A TEENAGER
Sorry but this blog will soon be closing down on account of it's chief (and only) writer being a liar and a scoundrel - he bought a Kindle. Your computer will explode in 5...4...3...2...

Just kidding, you can put the party on hold for now and be safe in the knowledge that I don't have the ability to remotely make anyone's computer explode. But yes, it is true, I purchased a Kindle at the weekend and you know what? I love it. In fact it turns out (as if this was always the plan) that I predicted that one day I would get a Kindle for the primary purpose that I decided to get one on Friday - to put my university reading on it. One thing that is for sure is that I'm not going to lose touch with the good old paper back any time soon and, as if to neutralise the purchase, I spent £25 on books last week - real books. But I've said it already and I'll say it again: I love the Kindle. The screen is like nothing I've ever seen before. I spent the whole weekend at home gazing at it from various angles, testing out the claim that it works in any light. I must have looked like a monkey with a new toy as I contorted by body in an attempt to be able to say something bad about it - I couldn't and I think I probably pulled a few muscles in the process. 

Into the Home Straight

Week 9. That doesn't mean very much to people other than those at Edinburgh Uni but to me it strikes equal measures of fear and anticipation into my heart and mind. In essence it means that there are only a few more weeks until the exams are finally upon us and that scares me a little. It feels like only last week that we were dusting off our pens and word processors as the first lecturer of the year stepped up and declared the law in our general direction. Having said that, it feels like the summer was a very long time ago - I suppose we are closer to Christmas now than we are to the summer (ouch!). I'm now at that awkward time of the year when I can't quite start to look forward until Christmas but everything around has slipped into festival season mode - kinda sucks.

The thing is that I can feel something rumbling deep inside me - it's not my dinner repeating on me just for the record. No, I feel like something good might be just about to happen. After more or less coasting for the first 8 and a bit weeks of 2nd year I think I'm just about to move up into a new gear that I've either not used for a long time or not used at all before. I tend to think that the former is the truth because I've been here before and I know how it feels to be working at full pelt - it's a nice feeling when you're out of the other side.

All I'm trying to get around to saying really is that the lot of us might well be on the home straight to Christmas (although I would whisper that word very quietly around me) but we've all got a few hurdles to get over before it's holiday time again. I've got 4 sizeable hurdles to leap over and then on the 21st of December, all things being well, I'll get to say that I'm on holiday for a few weeks which might well be the best present that I get this year.

Thanks for reading and I hope I've not dampened any early holiday spirit that you might have had about 10 minutes ago!

Martin

Happy Mondays

Granted, I'm starting to get a little lax with my blog. It's purely been a combination of university and going out that has served to take my precious blogging time away from my finger-tips and, by Jove, does it pain me. I'm going to try and get back into the swing of things properly over the next couple of weeks because I hand in my last essay of the term on Thursday (yay!) but then I'll be starting exam revision (boo!) so we'll just have to see how it goes.

Today my mood is up and the feeling is good. I managed to get up at a reasonable time today, get some work done, went to lectures (one of which was a bit of a zone-out session sadly) and then I've managed to finish off everything that I wanted to have done before I head out for food, beer, pool and a pub-quiz - I feel I have earned all of those things because of today and the busy weekend that I had. Today might very well have been the coldest we've had for a long time but the sun was still shining in vein and trying its utmost to keep the spirits of thousands of chilled students up. I've recently more than I ever have that when it is sunny, regardless of the temperature, it does make you feel a lot happier than when it is grey and horrible outside. If it snows (or should I say, when it snows) this year, I'll be happy so long as the sun still makes an occasional appearance and I'm able to get home for Christmas. Just two little things to get me through what promises to be an awfully tough couple of months for me and my peers.

Thanks for reading and I'll be here again on Wednesday hopefully.

Martin

Warming Again to Coldplay

No post on a Monday!? What is this madness that has occurred over the last couple of days? Well it was Halloween for one and I was in no fit state to compose a blog post and so I thought that I would defer to today when I'm a little more awake. Never a better decision has been made either because today I have probably been as tired as I ever have been before. I could feel my head flopping in lectures this morning (9am start - ouch!) and for the rest of the day I found it hard to get myself going. How I even managed to take lecture notes today is mystery to me but I've managed to make it to tonight unscathed. Tonight's post is based on something that I stumbled across last week. I found out that Coldplay were streaming their concert in Madrid live on Youtube and I was all over it. Subsequently I've hit a real love for their music again, especially their new album - I can't believe that I ever doubted them.

To-Do or To-Do? That is the Question

It's happening again! Tonight I lift my head with my stiff neck to see, on the wall, my week planned out before me. Day 1: Lots of work; Day 2: Lots of work, start essay; Day 3: Finish essay (if possible) + lots of work; Day 4: Lots of work for the week after. That is the abridged version of these notes of course because I'm not a complete moron - they are much more substantial than that of course - but you get the idea. I was writing out said week-plan last night when I realised that I was already at Friday. Luckily I realised that I had fired through everything that I needed to do and that ultimately, I should be able to take the weekend 'off'. Sadly the reality of it is that my brain hasn't been switched off since the end of the first week - during which it was technically going anyway but just warming up! 

Words, Words, Words

Coming off the back of last week when I was looking at my favourite posts, I thought that (somewhat ironically) I wouldn't have anything to write about this week. That worry was quickly quelled yesterday when I woke up and actually did something with my day! 'Wow Martin, you've really hit a low' I can hear you all think because, lets be honest, that shouldn't be much of an achievement for anyone but the thing is that yesterday was actually something to behold. My plans were executed to perfection and subsequently I felt great. I also don't think I've ever written as much in a single day as I did yesterday, hence the title of this post.

The plan was made on Saturday night after a trip to the cinema. I made a list in my head of all of the things that I needed to do, both for university and everything else on top of that. The morning wasn't all that easy because getting out of bed recently just hasn't been great fun for me but I shook my weary bones and cracked on. I prepared a couple of tutorials in the morning which took about 3 hours to do but they've been done properly which is good. That's something that I strive to do every time because consistently preparing tutorials well can only be a good thing for my education. I then got on with the house-work that needed done which is nobody's favourite but it's a reality that I'm used to. With that all behind me I was able to sit down and relax but if anything my plans for the day by that point were far from complete.

If you were reading my posts last week then you'll know that I'm also writing a blog on a car website and my post for that was next on my list. I knew that if I did that before all of my university work then that would throw me for the rest of the day. I saved it as something of a treat for me and, as alien as that sounds to some people, it got me through the tough stuff. I'm not sure when my post will get put live but I'll be sure to mention it over on my Facebook page during the week. That was the pièce de résistance of my day and it's always something I look forward to doing - words, I need more words!

So I'm going to have to make a slight admission. Despite the fact that one of the tags for today's post is going to be 'Me on Monday', this post was also composed on Sunday as well - that's how well my plan went. The fact that I go out on a Monday night isn't very conducive to writing a nice full post for your consumption. I guess the reality is that this post should be 'Me on Sunday' but that doesn't sound right and something really exciting or important might happen in the next 24 hours but I think I'll take that chance.

So all that is left for me now to do on my mental list for this evening is this: dinner, pub quiz and then bed before another week of university ahead of me. I guess I'm showing off a little bit with this post but it's not very often I get to say that I've actually had a productive day - especially when the day in question is a Sunday.

Thanks for reading 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.

Home or Away?

Sadly this post is going to be written in a little bit of a rush this evening and so I'm going to have to limit it to one of those posts where I put forward a simple idea for you to all think about. I'm sure I've dabbled in this topic before but I'm going to refresh my thoughts on it through this question that I've been thinking about recently: is home really where the heart is? I've gone home for the last three weekends for one reason or another (mainly for football) and every time I go home it's like I've been away for ages when I get home and then it gradually turns into a feeling of I've never been away. I've come to one personal conclusion on the matter that it is what is at home that is where my heart is. I love my house and I feel most at home there naturally but it's the fact that my family are there which makes me look forward to going home most. I really enjoy being in Edinburgh (in fact I think that in the future I would like to live here) but it doesn't yet hold the same meaning as home does - I wonder when I'll grow out of it...


Apologies for the brief post this evening but I'm running to a tight schedule just now!


Martin

Re-igniting my Passion for Something Lost

It usually takes something fairly major to shift a few things around in my life. The recent 'major' thing in question is obviously my return to university and all of the fun things that come with that - yes, I'm trying to have a good time! It has moved a few things around for me which I'm not going to get into but one of the many positives that have come out of the last week and a bit is that I've discovered my long lost passion for writing poetry. I can hear people groaning at the thought of more things being written by me ('the blog is enough you ass!') but I've actually got quite an interesting back-catalogue of poetry from about the start of 5th year until the end of high school which I occasionally revisit - sometimes for a laugh but for other reasons as well.