"There
is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you"
--- Maya
Angelou
As
I idly browsed through the latest news stories, blog posts and online articles the
other day, I stumbled upon the quote above and it sparked something inside of
me. Something that seems to have escaped me for what feels like an eternity but
truth be told, something that once again I have let the world around me get in
the way of and made excuse after excuse about finding the time to do. That thing is to write.
If
I have something that can be said in less than 140 characters then I seem to
reach for my Twitter app and suddenly that thought is out there for people to
read, favourite, retweet, reply to or most likely, ignore. Similarly, if I want
instant reaction to something slightly longer than 140 characters then Facebook
is my next medium of choice. People can like or comment and this can last for
hours, days or again disappear as quick as it is written. Either way I seem to
have developed a worrying habit. It would appear that in the interest of time
saving, my emphasis on sitting down and writing anything longer over the past 3
months has been side-lined.
This
is predominantly down to the fact that I was never sure of the identity of my
blog. Whether it should be purely long tales of whimsical anecdotes & small
blogs would clutter it up or if these smaller ones would help to keep it alive
and the longer tales would still be the focal points.
As Easter approached I thought, “ok maybe this is the perfect time to spring clean my mind of all of the mini blogs that have been stopping me from committing to writing anything new on here for nearly 3 months!”. But then Easter came and went and I only really got as far as jotting a few notes down to remind myself in multiple ways that I was failing to not only blog but also keep up with my new year’s “goals” (http://bit.ly/ZwkYmv).
Whilst
I’m touching upon that, it’s probably wise to fill you in on why I have been
AWOL for nearly 3 months and maybe give you an insight in to how I’m getting on
with the 5 “goals” that I set myself for 2013 (if you think along the lines of
how the “I must blog more often” goal has gone then you would be somewhere
close to predicting how the others are doing!).
1)
Learn one new healthy recipe per month... Since my home made beef burgers in
January I have failed to really try anything new and with finding little time
and inspiration to blog I’ve also found the same things lacking when it comes
to new culinary creations. I do live in hope that I will turn this around and
catch up by the end of the year!
2)
Increase my cardio/fitness... This goal is being spectacularly failed on many
levels.
During February I attempted to complete a challenge that seemed to fit perfectly with my recent purchase of a jumprope and one that I presumed would be
simple enough and was also public enough to shame me into doing it. A 30 day
Jumprope challenge to see how many rotations you could achieve in 5 minutes
every day. After day one I aggravated a muscle in my back and took 3 more days
off before completing another day, which injured me further and I put it off
for the remainder of the challenge!
I
have also been thinking about buying a bicycle for a while now as it is something I
used to use every day up until I reached about 16 and enjoyed it without
realising that it was a form of exercise. So after much research and deliberation
I have decided to opt for an entry level road bike. The wheels are much thinner
than I’m used to but I’m sure once I’ve got out there a few times I won’t look
back...except to check for traffic of course! However, in testing out a bike in
a shop before I made a purchase I seem to have pulled muscles in my ribs and
have now been prescribed cocodamol by the doctor and told to not ride for a
couple of weeks...so ironically I can’t get my fitness up just yet because, well, I’m
unfit!
As
you can see, fitness seems to turn me in to something of a liability so fingers
crossed once I am fully healed, this new approach will signal a change in
fortune and I will be able to add tales of cycling adventures to this blog
rather than more pathetic “I’ve been injured before I started” stories...once
again my money is on the latter!
3)
Read more!... I am slowly making my way through 3 or four books at the same
time but I have been reading more and more news stories and online articles so
I can count this as a partial success.
4)
Blog more!... Well we all know what’s happened here so the less said about that
the better!
5)
Show my girlfriend how much I love her!... As ever you’ll have to ask her that.
As her birthday fell earlier this month I do hope I am at least completing this
goal but my view would be bias on this!
All
of this shows that not only am I useless at keeping New Year’s Resolutions but
I am also pretty poor at keeping the goals I set myself instead of these
resolutions.
On
a slight side note, in my time away from blogging I have still been keeping an
eye on other blogs, mainly for inspiration to find the time to write again but
also because there really are some great writers out there with a plethora of
interesting things to say. I don’t often plug other sites or blogs but my lack
of ability to blog since January and keep up with my “goal” is in stark
contrast to an ex-colleague of mine who created a challenge for herself to blog
every day of 2013 and not only is she managing to keep up with this challenge
but her daily tales provide both anecdotal and interesting stories from her
travels. Feel free to check out her blog here (but do make sure
you venture back here once you’re finished perusing over there). . .So
congratulations Nikki, keep the good work going!
Anyway,
back to my absence and during the process of writing my last blog post I was also evaluating my current career path (those of you familiar
with my previous posts will remember a fateful night trying not to kill off a
comedy night for a room filled with paying spectators whilst I try to gain some
humour from my role as a Project Analyst whilst being asked by the comedian of
the evening, Chris Ramsey (http://bit.ly/116e6Qx)). I had applied for a new job which
would take me back to the world of Marketing, been for the interview and felt
inspired by the potential of not only being back in a more creative environment
but also having a much easier job to explain if ever I came face to face with
Chris Ramsey or any other comedian again! So I wrote my last blog and luckily
enough 2 days later I was offered the new role (I don’t believe these 2 acts
are connected but you never know!) and so came the far more nerve racking
experience of handing in my notice at my current employers. You never like to
feel like you are letting them down but this was made all the worse as the day
before I had my interview my boss came over and sat on my desk before I left
and said “So, go on then, you’ve got an
interview tomorrow haven’t you?!” to which I swallowed a deep breathe,
chuckled (what other noise do you make in this kind of situation?) and said “No. Of course not!”
What followed then
was 4 weeks of even longer hours, increased stress, taking work home, all in
the name of handing over my ever increasing workload as seamlessly as possible
in what turned out to be the quickest timeframe I’ve ever experienced. After a
fantastic last Thursday night and Friday send off from a great array of the
people I had worked with for the 3 years of my time there I had a mere 48 hour
weekend to unwind from a frantic 4 weeks and prepare myself to start the new
role on the Monday. And being only 6 full weeks in to this new role, some would
say I’m still settling in but despite being in a far more inspiring and
creative environment it has come at a time of year that carries a large array
of emotions. These emotions range from joy, to stress to tiredness and most
importantly an empty wallet…that’s right, it’s birthday season for me.
In the
space of 12 days I have my sisters’, my girlfriends’ and my mothers’ birthdays
so there is lots of celebrating, meals out, cake, presents to find and buy and
sleep to miss out on. Oh and just for good measure there are friend's birthdays
and a wedding or two thrown in just for good measure! But please don’t think
I’m complaining about this, I am merely making you aware that it has been
incredibly easy to fill any spare time with anything other than sitting down to
compose words on paper...especially when the author isn’t even sure where they
would sit best at the end of it!
So
I guess whilst the seasons make their mind up on how long Winter will go on for,
I figured April is still a great opportunity for a spring clean. And once I had
this birthday season out of the way and found more time to get my thoughts
clear I started getting certain thoughts down and out, and low and behold the
dots started connecting and suddenly small anecdotes turned in to longer tales.
So
from now on I’ve decided that not only will I post the longer stories but will
occasionally be adding smaller anecdotes, hopefully for your amusement but more
selfishly to help clear my mind from time to time to allow creativity to flow a
bit freer. After all, there are only so many random thoughts you can get away
with without talking to yourself and looking crazy! I will of course still be
using Twitter (@justdrewonit) and Facebook for these too but I think I have
finally realised that you can’t really define a blog before you write anything,
you have to let the blog be defined by the things you write on there.
So,
as this blog nears 1000 page views, I am more humble and more determined than
ever to keep this blog going and relieve my agony by telling the stories inside
of me, whether they big or small, they will no longer go untold.
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