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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.

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.

The Importance of Remembering

Notebooks. I live and swear by them for everything from university lecture notes to writing in my spare time and I've got a fair few floating around the place filled with just about everything you could think about writing down. In the last couple of days I've found myself searching out some of my older ones and having a thumb through them to see what they hold. Most of the stuff in them is lists, little bits of maths from my time at high school and lots and lots of poetry but, no matter what the content is, everything holds a memory for me. It is one of my habits that I'm most happy about because through these multiple notebooks I've managed (inadvertently) to paint a picture of myself from about 3 or 4 years ago which otherwise would have been lost and fleeting flashbacks in my head would be all that I have left. I find that it's important to remember who you were as well as who you are. The person that you are now owes a lot to the person that stood in your shoes in the past and having things to remind you of how you once were is one of the most invaluable tools at your disposal as we all seek to better ourselves.

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.

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!

We're Brought up to Tell the Truth - It's all a Lie

I still remember writing a post this time last year when I was away on holiday. The difference between now and then, amongst other things (or inter alia - damn I've been wanting to use that for a while!) is that I have an internet connection where I am - this is fresh off the press today people! What this leaves me with is the ability to write a post without having to: a) predict the future; and b) without having to adjust my writing style thereof. It also means that you lovely people won't go to bed this evening without that little taste of a ramble still in your mouths - something I'm sure will make you all very grateful of our quickly expanding technology network. The topic for today's post struck me as I was walking along the dunes. I passed some people on the path and I happened to catch a little bit of conversation: something about telling lies (or telling the truth, my memory fails me). In the rest of the time I spent out in the fresh air that day, I pondered the idea of lying. Is it as bad as people make it out to be? Where would some of the most successful people in the world be without lies? How often do people (even the ones we trust) lie to us? We just don't know.

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!

There's a Book in All of Us

For those of you that get to this blog via Facebook (i.e. friends of mine), you will know that yesterday's post was missed because of a game of football. Under normal circumstances I would apologise for missing a post because there will undoubtedly be a bad reason for it but this time around my reason was perfectly justifiable. Football is one of the few things that I will ever put before writing this blog and, even though last night's result wasn't all that good for my team, I will continue to use it as a semi-valid reason for not producing the goods! This of course doesn't introduce this post very well and so I shall move swiftly onto that. I finished a very good book this week in which one of the characters was (eventually) a writer. It got me thinking about the fact that if you can write and think logically, surely you must have the ability to write a book yourself? I believe that we all have a story to tell whether it be about our own lives or lives of others; there is always something that can be written about it - why not a book?