Sunday 31 August 2008

Sssseptember

Firstly a quick update as usual. Life is generally good. I'm still relaxing, listening to lots of music at the minute (the national, pulp, blur, weezer, albert hammond jr are on rotation) and i'm sitting outside in the sun which is miraculous because there honestly hasn't been any sun in Northern Ireland in weeks, most days are either cloudy with rain showers or fog, it's been miserable this summer. The sun is a welcome change, i love the heat and i'm constantly trying to brown up a bit to make up for my lack of italian language skill by at least looking a tiny bit italian lol. (the last sentence is basically not true, i'm not quite that much of a loser.)

My knee is causing me some real trouble these days. I injured it over 2 years ago now and i don't really know what is wrong with it. I've had MRI scans and X-rays, both showing nothing and sometimes i can have 3 or 4 months without any bother at all, i was able to play in 8 football matches last year at oxford competitively with no pain. At the minute it's taken a turn for the worse, some days i find it painful to walk and the idea of running is completely out. I'm starting to get a bit worried because the Oxford football season starts pretty much as soon as i'm back in October. I've been trying my best to keep fit recently, i've done a lot of cycling because it's quite easy on my knee and i've been taking cod liver oil and glucosamine sulphate in a desperate attempt to force my knee to heal. I'm planning to play through the pain barrier whatever happens in October but i'd prefer if it didn't come to that, i'm hoping to do some light jogging this week to see how bad things really are.

September will hopefully be a month of catching up for me. I'm planning to work pretty hard so i don't fail collections when i get back to uni and i've really been quite lazy so far, but i think when my brother and sister go back to school and my friends go back to uni there'll be little else to do except study which though it'll be boring, is pretty damn necessary. I'm looking forward to getting back now though, it'll be cool meeting the fresher's and seeing my friends again. I might try to be a little less private this year though, last year i made loads of friends but i really focussed so hard on my work that i didn't have much time for heading out and though i really love the people i already know well, i didn't get to know some of the year as much as i would have liked.

In the time i've been writing the sun has descended into a multitude of cloud and shows little sign of emerging, meaning that the time for writing is over.. back inside to do some law work and listen to the national!

Tuesday 12 August 2008

It's been a while again.

Once again neglect has taken over and my attempts to carry on this blog seem ill-fated..but here I am again, to provide another of my many updates which seem to string together an incoherent jumble of what my life is like these days and months.

The first thing to talk about is what i've been doing this summer, mainly because at least then i can fulfill the diary aspect of my blog. This summer has been all about spending time with friends, relaxing and enjoying myself after a pretty tough year workwise at Oxford and i've really had a fantastic time so far. I've seen a few Oxford friends when i went to a wedding in Ipswich and i've been hanging out with friends from home almost every day, culminating in eight of us going to Prague for a week (i'm actually just back today). Prague was fantastic, although there was some infighting amongst the group and some rather strange behaviour but i guess that it's only when you are in close quarters with people that tensions really can boil over. Overall the trip was fantastic and really brought me closer than ever to certain friends and there were so many moments that really enriched my life, mainly esoteric sayings and my simple humour coupled with such fantastic trips as simply sitting in a park after climbing 250 steps just to have a nice view of Prague at night while having a few drinks and laughing, hysterically at times, with my friends.

This paragraph is more strange and needlessly philosphical than the previous one. One thing i always find interesting about people is that a person offers one persona to society in general, one persona to their friends and then their true person to themselves or to a very lucky few people. Some people always seem to be trying to save face, to say that something brilliant is happening in their lives when it really isn't, whereas others are blunt and honest with what is going on with them. I always wonder what the persona i offer to society really is, what do people think about me when i walk past them on the street or in a room? I don't particularly care what people think about me generally but it's an interesting thought to consider what the first impression that you offer to a person before you even speak is. If i was to guess my first impression that i offer i would guess that i seem rather cold which is rather unfortunate but probably accurate! My normal face seems set on a slight frown, which is odd because i'm almost always adequately happy. I'm very rarely clean shaven, which automatically brings with it undertones of shadiness or suspicion and i have both dark hair and dark eyes. To be frank, i'm not the bubbliest or beaming of characters! Sometimes i feel that i should make an effort to offer a more positive persona, because every now and then i feel that i almost stop people from talking to me because of the body language i emit, but then i conclude that i would look ridiculous walking around beaming with a smile on my face, and that i don't want to shave and look spick and span because i like my own style and generally, my demeanour is acceptable to me because i've concluded that i'm not trying to impress strangers and if anybody was to reject me because of a first impression, then that sort of person isn't the sort of person who i'd enjoy spending time with. I'm not sure if what i'm saying is the correct or incorrect approach to life.

The persona you offer to your friends is also an incredibly strange device, whether it is to mask severe unhappiness or to highlight to the world your despondent state in order to provoke a reaction from those closest to you. Almost everybody when they are pissed off shows their emotions, even if it is only subtley, and the reason they do so is that they have a desire to offload their anger to someone else who will understand and agree with them. However, i think that this is only true with anger rather than unhappiness. When you're unhappy you are, in my mind, in one of two states, either you have a desire for people to know that you are unhappy so as to provoke their attention being placed onto you and your problems to be sorted out and i feel that this form of an unhappy persona is mainly for minor grievances. When you are really unhappy is the persona that amazes me the most. When someone is really unhappy, them seem to try their best to offer a completely normal persona, or even one that is slightly happy in order to focus all attention away from themselves and to avoid suspicion of a grievance. I feel that it is this response to an emotion that is the most unhealthy, mainly because it is your close friends that are the only people who you should feel comfortable to be yourself around and if they are really your close friends then they have no desire for you to offer any sort of persona whatsoever.

Attention is a very strange thing. Many people are motivated by it and crave it, and i would be lying if i said i never desired attention. I have been motivated in the past and will be motivated in the future to say or do things in order to provoke a reaction from someone else or to make myself more heard within a group of people and i think almost everyone acts in this way at sometimes or another. I'm not sure what the link between the persona you offer and your position on how much attention you crave really is, but if i was to hazard a guess i would argue that it is the persona that you offer to the public that really defines what level of attention you seek. The people who dress provocatively, who speak loudly when unnecessary and desire approval from those they have never even met who desire the most attention and it is those people who present the brash and attention seeking persona to society. Perhaps i'm a bit too low on the scale of outwardness towards people i don't really know and i'm not sure to what degree that is to do with my body language or my general affront and although i would love to be able to seem more perky or chirpy to those around me i do feel that if i am to fail on the scale of the public persona at least i'm failing by not offering enough rather than offering too much.

I'm really not sure what the point is of this blog post, or what i am trying to achieve by writing it, i've talked a hell of a lot of gibberish but as i'm not seeking the approval of the reader (!) and it makes sense to me, i think i'm happy enough to quit while i'm ahead and stop here, knowing that even if this isn't understood or even read by another person that i can look back on it in 10 years and wonder whether a change in my public persona tomorrow would have either made or broken me.

Deepness or utter bollocks. Probably the latter if i'm honest.