Andy's Blog

I want to write something.  I’ve been promising a few people that I will write something.  It’s not that I don’t want to put proverbial pen-to-paper, it’s just that although the desire is there – the words are not.

It is HUGELY frustrating and more than a little worrying.  There are things afoot which could be the cause of this frustrating blankness but I am not entirely sure that this is, or I fervently hope it’s not,  the root cause.

There’s been enough happening in the last few months that deserve a mention; Black belts, technology, Cancer, garage dojo, work, children growing up and the usual idiocy of me interacting with my peers.

Let’s face it, I am not actually that good enough to suffer from the fabled “Writers block”.  Stupidity? Yes.  Idiocy?  Almost certainly and admitted to on a daily basis.

There was a new years resolution mulling around the head, although not verbalised, of putting at least one posting on here per week to drive the creative juices…. but the juices are dry :¬\

I shall try, I really really will try, however should you see me any time soon, please feel free to see whether a kick up the proverbials will help jumpstart this whole process off!  It can’t hurt…

…well actually it can, but you know what I mean.

Well 2011 has kicked off and as usual a bunch of vague promises have been made to myself as to how I will better myself.  These boil down to pretty much the same resolutions I had last year, the year before, and I’m fairly sure a few more years before that.

These being;

• Get better at Karate
• Get Fit/Slim

Very possibly one year I will acheive either, or being the eternal optimist that I am, both of them!

The ‘Get better at Karate” started off this Tuesday just gone with me huffing-and-puffing around at Senior Class and desperately trying to remember my chudan tsuki from my mawashi geri, after an extended Christmas break, so we are off to a flying start there!

I of course, for the second of those resolutions, am joining millionsof others in the thoroughly unenviable and unenjoyable diet phase of the year, full of all sorts of good intentions;  I shall not yield to chocolate treats, biccies or any food based produce not on the “You can eat that” list.  …and it’s an eye watering short list!

However, and it’s a HUGE “however” of biblical proportions, with a nice dusting of hundred-and-thousands of “however” on top and a rather fetching “however” themed double-whipped cream in the middle… does there really need to be that many McDonalds drive-thru’s between home and Birmingham?!?

I mean, really, I can’t remember “resisting temptation” being on my list of Resolutions listed above?!

“Most people would like to be delivered from temptation, but would also like it to keep in touch”
–Robert Orben

I think it’s time I try to put into practise what I learn in karate every week, and try to kick something; namely my own arse and actually commit to updating this blog at least once a week, no matter how boring that could actually get… for the reader!  Rather alarmingly I found out on Monday that someone actually reads this thing, which is always nice, but the posts are somewhat few and far between.

So there’s the promise; I shall henceforth attempt to put keyboard to screen and write something on this thing at least once a week – now that may be at the beginning, mid, or end of the week, but it shall be updated.

As for this week, I have mostly been leaving bits of me all over the UK; my stomach’s still in a hotel conference room in Wolverhampton, my co-ordination has been left at a karate seminar in Coventry, my heart’s in Scotland, my brain is still in bed and my common sense has been AWOL for more years than I care to admit to.

I’m not entirely sure I’ll ever be able to collect all these parts any time soon but I’ll give it a whirl and hopefully at least get the brain engaged before the next post is due.  Till then….

Safer with a computerless keyboard?

There is a certain laziness that creeps in when riffing off a quick comment. Unfortunately this laziness when armed with a keyboard is where trouble lurks, awaiting its chance to bite you on the unmentionables.

It seems that my writing skills, and its slovenly attributes, change dependant on where I visit when armed with the aforementioned keyboard;

• Blogging: For some reason I can never seem to post a small snippet of what I am upto quite like the talented Mr Fitchett is able to.  A veritable torrent of letters, words, sentences, bullet points and paragraphs gets splurged onto the computer and then gets edited, re-edited, moved around, edited some more, updated, deleted, polished and buffed to within an inch of its life.

The end result is no more eloquent than when it began, but it does probably reflect more what I was trying to get over in my own unique way… most of the time. There being some notable exceptions apparently.

• Twitter: …and in what can only be considered the extreme opposite end of the scale; being forced to voice an experience or thought in 140 characters or less gets you to consider VERY carefully what you want to say and the best way in which to say it.  Of course, as with all things, this can go somewhat awry.

It seems to be in the ‘little’ area between those two extremes that I come unstuck.  The quick reply often done without thought is where unmentionables get the nibble I spoke about at the beginning of this post (way, way back – I did say I tended to splurge on a bit).

Unfortunately, to a greater extent than I should really be doing, you rely on the person reading these unthought out replies to understand what it is you were trying to get across.  Hence, what you thought was a critique of yourself becomes criticism of another which is on the perverse spectrum of where you wanted to be.

Sometimes when a sentence begins with the word “I”, that is where the heart of the sentence lies.

Time to be less flippant online methinks and begin watching, not so much my P’s and Q’s, but my Q’s and M’s and all the combination of letters between the two (look down at your keyboard to understand).

Meh, you know what?  I had sat down with the absolute intention to try and list some resolutions for this year, but after faffing about without typing anything at the keyboard have come to the realisation that I really can’t be bothered to set any.  This is not actually 100% true, I do have some goals that I have set for myself, but these are the same I always have;

• Get better at Karate (at least one grade better this year)
• Get fit (also interpret that as ‘slim’)

But that’s about it.  I also can’t be much bothered to review last years, apart from; I did achieve the two belts, but didn’t get fit.

Ever so slightly uninspired today.  However the cartoon below did brighten the day somewhat…

Do you know, one day I will actually remember to update this thing on a more regular basis!  I suppose the underlying issues that I have are;

• An inability to write good prose
• A very hum-drum life
• An inate laziness, which is becoming more ‘inatier’ (I love creating new words!)
• …Zzzzzz

Just as a nice little visual clue to my ever changing moods, I have uploaded some rather nice self-generated avatars. So don’t get too surprised when these little piccies start popping up all over the place, to give you a little flavour of todays ‘mood a la troozers’.

I am still trying to get used to this blogging software, as well as try and develop some discipline to actually sit down in front of a PC and write something down. Of course the actual problem may be that I don’t have enough of a life to actually write down, which is somewhat of a sobering thought.