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.

Euphoria by Night

I've been meaning to write this post for a while now - well over a year actually - but it only ever seems to pop into my head just after I've done my blogging for the week, stays there until the weekend and then I forget about it by Monday. It's actually a little strange that it ever slips my mind because it's something that I do think about quite a lot and it also fascinates me as well - the memory moves in mysterious ways. Picture the scene: you go around to a friends house armed with a 4 pack of beer with the intention of slowly sipping through them. You don't of course because when you are talking and having a good time you're drinking arm often slips into over time and before you know it you've got 4 empty cans and a slight gassy feeling. This has happened to me on a fair few occasions (although, let's be honest, I don't often only take 4 poxy beers to someone's house) but there have been a couple of times in my life when it's turned out to be a good thing and it is those times that today's post is based around.

The Wrath of the Beer-Belly

I enjoy a good pint and I'm not afraid to admit it. I've grown to love the taste of a crisp, cold pint of beer or ale in the last few years and let's just say that I've had enough experience to lead me to this stage. When I started out drinking, beer was more or less all I would drink. After a few bad experiences with spirits and a deep loathing for cider, I settled on beer. At the time when I was just getting into drinking I over-indulged myself on quite a few occasions which is the norm with young adults. I've seen it all in the last few years: having to drink in people's houses because your not 18 yet and then when you turn 18 riding it for all it's worth. That in turn has led to many a teenage hangover of which I have had my fair share. The thing is that the hangover (which was not always a guaranteed outcome thankfully) was the only problem that I would have with drinking too much. Now that I'm a bit older I'm starting to fear the specter of many a beer drinker - the beer-belly.