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

Waiting for Something to Happen

With little over a month until I return to university I'm trying to find ways to reinvigorate myself. I've been 'out of the game' for a pretty long time and it's starting to play on my mind a little that I'm not going to be able to do it all again. For someone who's confidence more or less only lies with his academic ability it's quite a shock to the system; then again I've suffered from a fear of failure before and this, surely, is no different. So again I find myself sitting here on a Monday night trying to search deep into my psyche to find something to write about that is fresh off the emotional press and this is just about all that I've got going on with me just now. I think that it all comes from having itchy feet - I just want to get back to it again. 

London Riots: Who Picks up the Bill?

I felt like a ghoul when I stayed up until the early hours of Monday morning watching the live news coverage of the riots in London. It was almost addictive watching it as streams of breaking news rolled slowly along the bottom of the screen to reveal where the violence had spread to. The urge I had to avoid sleep to keep up to date was fueled by the hope that the next update from the terrified and bewildered reporters on the streets would be a positive one - they never were. Monday night produced pictures that will be burned into the memories of millions of people, especially the ones that were there and (more specifically) the ones that have been affected so terribly by the criminality of mindless youths. The harrowing stories that have emerged over the last few days have hit home harder than any of those pictures ever could. They provide a background to the smoldering buildings and ransacked shops and tell of the prevalent fear that London is currently awash with. Those pictures and stories, however, are not able to explain to us how things are going to be fixed. Will insurance policies provide the necessary payouts to get home and shop owners back on their feet? Do the police have a duty to compensate those who have lost so much? Can those people's lives ever be the same again?

Building Myself Up for a Fall

Firstly it would be more than rude to not apologise to the few people that look forward to reading my posts every week on the days that I usually publish. I might have kind of, sort of forgotten to tell everyone that I was going away for a week of peace and tranquility and selfish old me only realised that it had slipped my mind when I got to the place with a lack of internet connection - it seems that the internet hasn't touched every house in the world (and the moon which is actually really nice this time of year). Anyway I'm back now and wanting more than ever to sit down and blog; the thing is that I want more! I've been dabbling with a few ideas as of late which regard starting a new blog with a more focused topic (which itself, like the possibility of starting this new blog, has yet to be decided). I would of course keep writing on Ramblings of a Teenager until my membership to that age-group expires in little over 7 months time but I would love to know that I would have another established blog by that time. The idea of writing two polar opposite blogs excites me but I'm afraid that, as the title of this post suggests, I'm building myself up for a big fall.