Outsider

One of my worries of late has been about my old friends. Recently it was hammered home to me that I’d not been spending time with those who I used to class as closest to me. And as a result I’ve well and truly thrown myself from the circle of friendship. I don’t feel like I can address the problem fully though because it’s a bigger group than it used to be. And it now comprises of some people I really don’t like. And it’s impossible to talk to one person, and it not filter through the whole group. And I know they talk about me behind my back, and I know that as a whole they fucking hate me.

I guess this would be a million times worse If I didn’t have some epic friends who are always there for me. But I feel guilty burdening people with my, to be fair, self-inflicted problems when they all have things of their own to deal with. So, in an attempt to write down some of my thoughts I wrote another poem. I must apologise for the quality and quantity of my poems. They’re not really meant to be read, I just like putting thoughts down. And if you can make any sense of them then you’re probably in, or have been, in a similar situation. Either which way you’ll probably detest the analogy I chose.

A circle of light,
a chain of faces
unbroken and impenetrable.
No entry, no exit.

And then the light fades,
I’m moving backwards,
slow at first,
I do not understand.

I watch, stay, do nothing,
make no sound,
moving quicker,
quicker, lights become dim.

The edge of the circle
passes my side,
I am out.
Too late, it has passed.

I do not know how,
I wish to be inside,
yet I see only the turned heads,
of people I once knew.

I cannot turn one head,
without turning them all.
There is no easy way in,
out once, out forever.

There is no easy way,
no one step at a time.
No, jump down all of the steps, plunge,
or never see the bottom again.

And still the light there shines,
but now it seems tinted.
Green, red.
A white flag would looked coloured in their eyes.

I have changed.

Well, sorry for wasting more of your time. I guess I just have decide where I want to go and focus. But if you don’t know where you’re going then any path can take you there! And I really don’t feel like choosing a path right now.

Knowledge, Wisdom, other.

So I’ve decided that major reforms aren’t in order – thank you Michael. However, I wanted to try something a bit different so I’ll try and inject it somewhere in the ensuing entry.

I finished watching American Beauty about 30 minutes ago, my word is that film thought-provoking. Needless to say I cried in certain points and one line in particular has implanted itself into my memory already: “There’s nothing worse in life than being ordinary.” Well I’d say I’m pretty much 50/50 split on my agreement with that. Sure, ordinary can be boring – doing the same thing day in, day out, meeting the same people, being the same person, conforming to “their” standards and living a desperately prescribed life. However, on the flip side of the coin ordinary can be amazing. Surely ordinary is a calm, relaxing and peaceful state? Ordinary is beige, not glaringly bohemian yet by no means resignedly dull either. Ordinary, like beige, is a haven from the extremes we create in our lives. Ordinary is good once in a while, and we would do well not to synonamise ordinary with boring.

Additionally, the writer brought up the issue of beauty. Not chick-flick, skin deep “How big are your boobs?” beauty, but true natural beauty. And to me true beauty is really hard to find. I’m quite willing to admit that I’m often so engrossed in my ultimately insignificant quotidienne that I often ignore what is all around me, and I expect that it is this that makes me so ignorant to the beauty of things around me. But beauty is a concept, and I fear it’s one I don’t fully understand. Not through lack of trying. I, I just tend to think about things too much? And often I attribute what some would class as beauty to other things. I can’t really explain it, as you’ve already seen – in fact, I made quite the pig’s ear of that entire section!

So I’ll move on. I wrote a short poem earlier and this is where I risk offending the masses. I’m not a writer, I have very little knowledge of the intricacies of the English language and I don’t particularly like making things follow a pattern if I’m streaming my thoughts. The following isn’t meant to sound pretentious, or naïve, though I fear it will tick both of the boxes on the shameful list.

I can’t describe what I know,
for what I know and believe
are to me a kin yet to you,
lies.

And when I try to tell myself
that the truth I know is false,
I can muster no belief
and I question truth, not self.

When posing question to a truth,
the answer can merely be thought,
and thoughts are born of mind
so to question is to think?

And if to question is to think,
then an answer is to know.
How do I know if I do not question?
And who do I question, who answers?

I cannot question of myself,
for no answer will come of knowledge,
knowledge which comes from question.
I am never to know, but always to question.

Still it plagues me,
question – why?

Yeh, so there it is. Essentially it’s confusion mixed with desperate attempts at reason thrown into some sort of literary format. Perhaps next time I should confine my less legible thoughts to my head!

Lack of legibility – this leads me nicely onto the topic of history homework. Now, if you’ve ever studied the Napoleonic regime with particular reference to the centralisation of French government then please feel free to comment and give me any pearls of wisdom which you wish to share. Because I think it’s safe to say that I haven’t got a clue. I’ve been trying (well, sort of thinking about whilst doing other things) to make an information sheet about the aforementioned area but I’ve had little (read:no) success! So I guess I’ll do what the Bourbon Monarchy did and just give up the ghost!

As I shall with this post, I’m not going to make my next posts too long because I’d risk writing everything I have to say at the moment in a few posts, where I could span it out and not have to worry about what to write. Worry not, I have many many thoughts to come!

For now, however, I bid thee farewell.

Abashed, Banal, Bromidic

” We’ve all done it at some point. Sitting at the back of the classroom, our attention span fully exhausted and our will to live somewhat sapping. All of a sudden the paper clip in front of you seems awfully interesting. Now, I don’t proclaim to be an expert on the uses of paper clips but I do know that unraveling the seemingly perfect form is a fantastic way to waste 30 seconds of otherwise unproductive time. Unfortunately I feel as though I have become that paper clip. And I’m sure you also know that re-forming an unraveled paper clip is impossible. I’m hoping I’ve not reached that situation.

So I guess I should explain my feelings and the reasons for them. I’m extremely sorry but I’m going to have to use the C word. Change. Yep, I expect this word is getting quite cocky with its dominant position in my tag cloud but it really is one of the major driving forces in my life en ce moment. The dynamics of my life have shifted and I’m now in a strange position – I’m adapting in a way which I feel like I can control. “

Ok, that’s what I started with. Re-reading it it just sounds pretentious, nonsensical and plain crap. So I’ll try a more concise route to my point (if and when I ever decide upon one.)

Basically the changes in my life have stopped and I’m now in the situation where I can finally take stock and try to decide what path to take. My emotions and feelings have sort of toned themselves down and I now feel like I can enjoy what I have at the moment, in the moment. I’m pretty confident that I’ve judged the situations around me relatively well and I can see the ways things are heading. There are bits I’m not going to enjoy but equally things on the whole are looking up.

I seem to have lost all inspiration with regards to this blog and I genuinely don’t know what to write here anymore. You can see that my last post was a week ago so obviously procrastination is starting to have its wicked way with me. I think, as a result, that a change in direction is in order. My next post may well be something very different to my usual ramblings on about various thoughts, alternatively it could just never appear.

Recently I’ve been writing a piece about a boy in secondary school, I may even type a little bit up for a change. Though I’d risk boring those of you who ever read this to death.

Sorry this has been genuinely crap. I’m sorry that you’ll inevitably feel that some of your time has been wasted. It you really want to make up for it and do something productive try bending a paper clip into a straight line!

Wow, that sure was an horrific ending.

Hm, Sorry.

A fall?

I don’t particularly know how to describe my current feelings, namely because I don’t really understand them so could not possibly begin to give them wordly justice. A lot of things have happened since Monday and they’ve all left me feeling slightly confused, disorientated and very much out of the loop. So, as normal, I am drowning in my own apathy.

I was quite nervous about going back to college after Christmas. I knew there would be awkwardness with certain people, as indeed there has been, and I knew that previous routines would perhaps be broken. I also worried that the new people I have met would have forgotten me over the break and that the new friendships I had made would be nothing, and that my “new start” would simply be “return to start” – now that’s paranoia!

Thankfully I still have some enthusiasm (perhaps drive would be more appropriate) towards my studies, mainly because the thought of university is currently one which I cherish in every spare moment. Less than two years, I’d like to say it’s come quickly but it hasn’t.

I also feel at the moment that things (by which I mean life, the people around me, and just general…things) are moving on at a pace I can’t keep up with. And subsequently at times I can’t help but feeling slightly left behind. Not a wayside feeling, but more of a lagging-behind one. I’m possibly just over analysing everything at the moment.

I’m very sorry but I actually find this entry really hard to write, normally things just flow out. Which, to be fair, reflects how I’m feeling. I have to actually think about how I feel, which means that I don’t feel as at ease as normal because I’m hindered by some sort of apprehension or subliminal retardation.

I’m desperately trying to identify what it is that’s bugging me so much but I just can’t put my finger on it! ARGH! I just don’t feel particularly in control at the moment, and because of this I seem incapable of normal thought processes. What the hell is going on?

I hope next week will bring some sort of light to the situation, if not then I shall probably turn into an extremely miserable (by which I mean more miserable than normal) git.

Sorry about the shortness, general depressing nature and sheer stupidity of this post – I’m currently trying to run up a hill that seems to be getting steeper and I have no idea how much further I have to run.

Storm

Well, that wasn’t actually that bad!

So this morning I had general studies 2. The science part was about the freezing of ice cream, now I don’t know who wrote the paper but I would like to thank them. It was actually marginally interesting, though it did remind me of my GCSE Chemistry lessons, lots. But it wasn’t particularly hard (I thought – which inevitably means that I’ve failed) and the maths section was pretty much a copy pasta of a higher GCSE maths paper, so thankfully all was good.

Then, after lots of last-minute cramming, we had Law Unit 3. Now again, I don’t know the person who wrote the paper (although I know he’s called Richard, thanks to my law teacher) but again I would, to a degree, like to thank them. I was expecting the mother of all horrible questions on breach and a possible s47/s20 case. However, thankfully we had a s20 (possibly even s18) problem question which two questions. A) Describe mens rea, actus reus and strict liability (15 Marks) Which I think I did well on. and b) Discuss D’s criminal liability (10 marks.) Essentially it was a s20 gbh with possible mitigation in regards to recognition of risk. Bang him up, throw away the key and let me go home! =D And then the tort question was some idiot who’d not secured fence posts in the back of his pick-up, they’d fallen out while he was driving and smashed through the window screen of the car behind, severely injuring the driver who just so happened to be a model and due to his injuries lost his job. A) describe duty breach and damage. (15 marks) B)Apply to situation in regards to negligence (10 marks.) C) Discuss awarded damages (10 marks.)

So, in all, I think it went quite well. And it certainly wasn’t as bad as I’d bargained for. So guess that I shouldn’t have worried so much, ah well.

That’s really all I have to say for now, sorry.

the

The thing I’d forgotten – I hadn’t set my alarm clock so I can wake up at the ungodly hour which I have to when it’s a week day and I’m at college. I am, in fact, an idiot! =D

The calm before

Sunday 13th January. General studies and law exams are tomorrow. My nerves are shattered, my revision is obviously inadequate, and my panic levels high. Ah, thank god for exams. No, no lets not thank anyone for them.

Ok, so we all know that I worry, a lot, about things that shouldn’t need worrying about but this is something that should be worried about. Alas, I’m in overdrive.

Please don’t continue reading if you’re looking for literary sustenance, because this is just a panic post. I feel as if there’s something I’ve missed out that is going to bite me on the backside come tomorrow. I had this feeling earlier this afternoon, I then discovered that I’d neglected to revise Strict Liability Offences – a phone call to my law teacher later and things were okay. So I now I’m extremely worried. I’m also slightly stressed as a result. Today’s been pretty rubbish actually. Although our Tegan and Sara tickets came! =D

So I now have a lovely pile of postcards to my left (blue for crime, green for tort, pink for remedies and yellow for sanctions) which remind me that I am incapable of condensing notes. There are nearly 100 of them. However, I think I’ve just about memorised them. And if not, well, at least writing them kept me off the streets, lol. There it is again! Perhaps I should try to cut out “lol”s from my posts?

9am Monday 14th January 2008 – General Studies 2. Well, as far as I’m aware there’s not a lot you can do in the way of revision for general studies. You either know it, or you’re a daily mail reader. However, I’m quite expecting to fail so I doubt I’ll be disappointed on that front. Besides, I’ll be too busy worrying because;

1pm Monday 14th January 2008 – Law Unit 3. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I won’t deny that I enjoy law, because I really do. But when it comes to cramming 100 cases with points of law, explanation and application of actus reus, mens rea, causation, strict liability and criminal omissions, application of mute situations, application, quotation and explanation of common and statutory laws, explanation and application of duty of care, breach of duty and remoteness of damage, assessment of liability resulting in damages and possible sanctions and sentences of defendants into 1 hours worth of words even the most concise and speedy writers struggle, so I have no chance! As you can see, I don’t do concise writing!

So it’s quite feasible that this time next year I’ll be re-sitting Law unit 3. Great! Well, I shall now go and prepare for tomorrow. I’ve already pressed my trousers, ironed my shirt and selected a suitable tie, chosen my socks, refilled my fountain pen and even decided upon which cologne to wear. But needless to say there are aspects of tomorrow morning which I have not yet considered and the chances of getting to sleep without having planned for them are inevitably nil.

Very sorry about the nature of this post. I had hoped to write something with meaning but I’m rather worried. It seems that my resolution to worry less was extremely short-lived. It’s like it’s pre-built in me. Oh well, we are who we are. Christ that sounds pretentious.

I shall write again tomorrow following the exams.

A break from the

I had an urge to write something on here but have no idea what. Normally I like to have a rough idea of what I’m going to write so then I can plan a layout-of-sorts for whatever it is I’m trying to say. But for once I’m just writing – scary!

Well, actually it’s not. Normally I’d be all “argh, need to make it sound just right” but being as I have no point to put across it doesn’t really matter. I was talking to a friend about this blog a few days ago and I said that it was just random thoughts. And she made me see that really it’s not. It’s filtered thoughts dressed in some sort of structure with (at times) some form of direction. So perhaps once in a while I should throw caution to the wind! That’s right, I’m trying some genuine spontaneity.

Yes, that sounds pathetic – my idea of spontaneous is not planning a piece of writing but I really am that much of a control freak! On Thursday I went to Doncaster for the first time ever, it’s only an hour away by car and the people I went with had been there millions of times before. But my god did I panic about it! I looked up all train times there and back for the entire day, and even for the early hours of the last morning, I checked buses incase the trains died, I made a list of people I knew in the area incase things went wrong. Essentially I had to have all eventualities covered, which is one of my biggest problems. I spend so much time worrying that sometimes I lose track and forget to enjoy the moment. However, things are looking up on that front.

I’m in quite a good mood and I’m really ready to change myself. I’ve decided that I’m to become more spontaneous (but not reckless) and I’m to worry less (don’t quite know how yet.) And I’m going to lose weight and take up spanish again. They (you know they, those people that know everything – maybe one day I’ll become part of they, but then how would I refer to everyone else?) say that a change is as good as a rest. Well, I’ve had a rest with the holidays and it was good, so a change should be equally pleasing.

Ok, I’m drifting into a form of structure so now in a desperate attempt to not be as conformist I’m going to change the subject totally!

I really really dislike F keys! I had this conversation recently too. I just hate them, you press them and they ruin your laptop! And they’re cocky too! They sit there all smug, high and mighty above the other keys, thinking that they’re something special. Well let me tell you something now F1 – a)You’re nothing but a type of car racing! b)If I want help, I’ll ask a real person!!! What does F stand for? (actually checking now) Function – F stands for function. But, my laptop has an FN key – a function key. Ok, I see what’s going on here.

How many F(number) keys are there? 12! How many disciples did jesus have? 12! The Fnumber keys are disciples – they’re not anything special – they don’t know it all and they often get things wrong. Sometimes (Judas) they do naughty things when pressed (F12 which destroys your web browser) yet sometimes they can be helpful in combination with other things (John the baptist and water – alt+F4.) And what the designer of this laptop has seen is that they could be so much better if only they had something to aspire to. The Jesus (FN) key. You see, when I press FN and an Fnumber key things happen which match the little pictures on the keys. FN+F6=lower brightness, FN+F7 = increased brightness. With a little bit of jesus the disciples are a lot more useful and easy to understand. I don’t really know what my point is, but I just thought that I could highlight the biblical parallels.

Ok, time for another shift I think. Oh, firstly let me point out that I don’t mean to be sacreligious, blasphemous or disrespectful (dis-sacrephemous if you will,) I merely try to pour my thoughts through my keyboard onto the screen. I aim not to bring about the fall of faiths or give birth to satanist cults, just to type. Please don’t hate me.

I think that my cat feels slightly neglected at the moment. She’s quite quiet and not as bouncy as normal. Recently the house has felt quite tense and I’m sure that she’s picked up on it. She now sleeps a lot of the day and rolls around on the landing at night. Occasionally she’ll knock on (by which I mean claw at) my bedroom door and then I’ll let her pop in for a chat (actually she just jumps into any drawers which I left open, curls into a ball and looks at me with the “you try and move me and I’ll knife you” face.) Whereas before she’d have just head-butted me for half an hour, got bored and gone outside to try and catch hope – the bat that lives in our garden. I’ve tried talking to her about all this, she’s not as responsive as she used to be. Perhaps it’s a time thing.

I don’t know whether or not I want to go back to college on Wednesday. I have a strange feeling that things are going to be awkward with certain people and to be honest I’d rather run away from it all and bask in the happiness which I have recently found. I, by the way, am going to see Tegan and Sara!!

I still have homework to do, I shall do it after my exams on Monday. Last minute as always, it hasn’t failed me for the past 6 years. Bad habit, must try to break it. But when I do homework well in advance there’s just so sense of achievement when you hand it in because you’ve forgotten all about it. Ah well, c’est la vie.

Oh, and I saw someone yesterday who I hadn’t seen for over a year and a half. He used to be the head teacher at my school. It was so strange seeing him again. I’d seen him in civves before of course, but this was different. I guess when he was at school he always had a very authoritarian, strict yet highly respectable aura about him. Yet yesterday he was just an ordinary bloke looking for a present for his wife in HMV. It kind of reminded me that things have moved on a lot recently, and things have changed.

CHANGE! Now that word has been cropping up a lot recently, but I think I’m coming to embrace it. I tend to live in the future, planning, or the past, analysing what could have been etc. But recently I find myself living slightly more for the moment. Not necessarily IN the moment (yet) and I think this change is a good thing. And it’s one (as I think I’ve already said) that I intend to keep up.

It rained today, it hasn’t rained since my pootle around town a week or two ago. Strangely when I saw it was raining my first thought was “oh, I don’t think anything about it.” Normally I’d think “oh, rain. Crap.” or “Oh, rain, I think I’ll go for a walk.” But today, nothing, total indifference. I did go for a walk in the end though. It was very cold, which I quite enjoyed.

Well, I guess I shall wrap this up. Wow, 1286 words of total nothingness. And normally now I’d think of a picture or photo to put with my entry. Well, I’m still going to do that because I like finding random pictures. I shall try something that is cheery and yet modern, sort of happy but ready to embrace the new so-to-speak. And pink! Because I rarely even ever think about pink.

Found it, and as ever I shall put it at the start of the entry. I wonder, did it feel strange reading me think about what to put up because you saw it before-hand. It’s kind of like you knew what I was thinking before I did. And I don’t quite feel at ease addressing people in the future like this, lol. I feel like I’m writing a will. Oh, I don’t think I’ve ever used lol in my blog yet. And now I’ve used it twice, fneh.

Anyhoo, I shall go and do something equally as unproductive now.

Bis Bald.

Change of path?

Ok, so to fill in the picture I’m currently revising for the first of my A level exams. A week today I have law and general studies, and it’s safe to say that the novelty of college has well and truly worn off. I’m currently on a, slightly deserved (it must be said,) break from re-revising sanctions and sentencing. I was so pleased when I finally managed to recite the 10 sections of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that we have to memorise in order to justify our generic babbling on the topic of sentencing that I decided to give myself a break from writing. Strangely this seemed like something different to do.

Recently the imminent exams have been very much at the forefront of my mind. Revision has become the main staple of my routine and other things have taken a back seat. I say that as though it’s a bad thing, but for me it definitely isn’t. You see, when it comes (or rather came) to exams I’ve normally always taken the mindset of “I know what I need to know, and I’ll revise the rest later if I get time.” Now of course, procrastination takes its toll and eventually you reach the week before the exam and realise that you know pathetically little. Thankfully, however, GCSEs can be passed without masses of revision providing you listened during the lessons. However it seems that unless you read, re-read, summarise, revise and re-revise every aspect of the A level course you are doomed to failure. It’s a strange type of pressure which I think, or rather hope, I’m actually managing to deal with.

That’s right, I just raised a positive point! In contrast with my usual style of criticising everything and anything that’s wrong in the world recently I’ve really started to see the bright side! For example, I expected to be feeling pretty crap around this time and actually I’m pretty mediocre (in a good way) and things that used to really bug me are now starting to pass me by blissfully. Now I really feel as though I should write about something negative, sombre or thought-provoking right about now but to be quite honest I’d rather bask in the moment.

I don’t know quite what to pin my current state on, but that’s not going to stop me trying! Firstly I’ve been quite relieved recently, various stresses have dwindled and my lack of sleep has been greatly compensated for over the Christmas holidays. Secondly, I’m quite hopeful for the near future – thing’s seem to be looking up. And thirdly, and most importantly, the people around me (by which I mean emotionally [ie, friends] not physically) are by far the most amazing people I’ve ever countered and I really thrive in their presence. You know who you are, thank you!

So yeh, I guess this goes some way to prove that we all cycle in our emotions to a degree. Obviously some people less than others, and some people more. And also that sometimes you can find relative happiness in the strangest of places. I’d say I’m the type of person who needs pressure to perform to my best so really the current time is bringing the (academic) best in me, I expect the price I’ll pay for this will be social retardation or something of the like but that bridge can be crossed when I reach it.

Also, recently I’ve learnt that sometimes people are amazing. The one thing, I believe, I take for granted most of all is human contact. Strange though this will inevitably seem, conversation is actually one of the most important aspects of my life and of late I’ve had some damn good ones. Granted, some were in drunken states and some were in peculiar circumstance but I think I may have found the key to a certain degree of happiness – throwing away your inhibitions and, in cases, scruples, and diving into a conversation that you’d never have. Be it with a total stranger, like the lady at the bus stop who actually made my day, or be it something which you haven’t dared discuss. Find someone you truly trust and go for it. The sense of relief, coupled with a bizarre sense of achievement, is truly fantastic.

Now I really am being far too happy. And I expect that you’re most probably sick to the back teeth of it too. So I shall quit while I’m (somewhat) ahead and wrap things up. Besides, I have law revision to do!

So there you go – things change, people change and sometimes, just once in a while, it can be for the best!

Normal service shall resume shortly.

p.s – The photo has no relevance but it caught my eye so I put it up.