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…
..as in “Ice” but with an “N”, not as in that place in Southern France which is pronounced similar to your sisters daughter.
Nice is a nice thing to be. It’s safe, dependable, and…. well… nice. Nice let’s you get involved in conversations that otherwise you may never get into in the first place. You can banter around slightly risqué topics and sometimes downright rude ones with members of the opposite sex, as quite frankly they trust you enough to not take it seriously at all, cos you’re a downright thoroughly nice chap.
I enjoy these chats actually (and which bloke wouldn’t?) as it tickles that naughty bone I have inside me…. although that could be worded better!
It tickles my nature, is probably a better way of wording it; the bantering around an unseen boundary, not quite knowing how far to take a certain line of thought, and using words in unique ways to put across an idea which can be both innocent and not so.
Sometimes it works deliciously, other times it’s a horrible train wreck. However with the right friends, of a similar impish nature, it’s fun and funny and a source of actual laughing out louds (I was going to put LOLZ, but then remembered I wasn’t 13!).
But the label of “nice” can grate a little. There’s always a part of you that wants others to feel slightly wary, that gives a person that small pause of thought, that exudes that small aura of danger. In the back of your mind you always know that whilst almost everybody likes to fuss and pet their domestic cat it’s the tigers that really get their hearts beating; that frisson of danger that catches the breath.
But….. I *am* a nice person, with a healthy dose of doubt, a self-deprecatingly wry knowledge of one’s own self worth and a morbid fear of seemingly too interested in something/someone as to seem a little distant. We all have our dark hearts under our idiot persona though, which will sometimes roar given the right (or wrong) circumstances
…although for some of us that’s done silently in our own personal space.
In the meantime I shall leave you with this little cartoon which is both funny and painfully close to home.
Sunday was very much a “Grand Ol’ Duke of York” day; When I was up, I was up. When I was down, I was down. Today I’m neither up nor down. I was going to title this post “Four seasons in one day, part II” for pretty much the same reasons as the original post. A rollercoaster of emotions varying from pain, joy, sadness and pride although not necessarily in that order.
The joy of getting my students to their next level, especially all the new brown belts, was tinged slightly with the realisation that I wasn’t going to be able to make my own progression.
Despite eminently wise words from Sensei, and other friends, about priorities; one can’t but feel that the ‘ongoing buggerage’ has won this little round just before I deal with it ultimately. As noted to my Sensei, “at least it gives me more time to practice my sanseru and sepai“. Although truth be told my heart really wasn’t in it.
I think, if nothing else, the two weeks “off” I’ll be having will give me time to charge up the ol’ batteries. I have already started to fill up my media player with an almost obscene amount of musical tracks and the kindle is starting to groan under the weight of books that have been loaded on there.
It’s also good to know that friends “have your back” and that if nothing else things will be ticking along whilst I’m not there. The hugs have been rather lovely too :¬)
I won’t be online though. Recently, and I mean very very recently, it’s almost been too hard to keep things in check; grading, as I said, was too much of a rollercoaster – and funnily enough I think Sensei was very much aware of that fact… as did my tough love guardian angel (as always)!
you can’t go on thinking nothing’s wrong who’s gonna drive you home tonight?
The answer, as always, is ultimately “me”, but you can’t help but wonder somtimes…
I am looking at a blank screen, an amusing cartoon picture of myself smiling like the idiot I am, Black Stone Cherry playing in the background, an overused backspace key whimpering on my keyboard and a headful of nothing which is successfully making an appearance on this blog.
This post started off life as some form of apology for the sometimes teasing, sometimes sarcastic comments I tend to come out with, morphed to an amusing story about double glazing salesmen, light-hearted texts and then double-backed to the perils of playing with words. Somewhere in the middle of all of that it became a little darker and whinier…. and I now find myself gravitating that way again!
I really should stop trying to write a blog post when I really don’t know what I want to write and begin to just splurge on the page, the results are somewhat more navel gazing than I am comfortable with.
If I’m honest I think, deep down, I’m still a little scared about the whole Cancer thing even though I put the whole happy face on (as ugly an image as that is), and the upcoming visit to the quacks in July for the latest prognosis. Also, this post has also got an awful lot of sentences beginning with “I”, which is both very lazy and a little “me me me”.
I’m (there I go again) also worrying about my next grading, whether my karate is sufficient for the task or whether I can actually *make* the next grading. As I said “dark thoughts indeed” and not something I am overly comfortable with.
I think I need to change the track…. in all senses of the word.
It’s wet and muggy today, and the end to another long karate weekend. Come a grading weekend I never seem to be out of the Gi much, what with teaching on a Saturday morning and Grading on Sunday afternoon, there’s precious little for anything else apart from hitting the sack.
Celebrating an engagement, at least for a little while, was a nice exclamation point to the week and breather before the weekend in white pyjamas began …although once the crazy gang arrived it gave me the chance to slip await quietly.
Grading is a full on exercise for the students and the mugginess just acts to put them under that extra bit of pressure; it’s hard to give 100% when the very air you breath seems to be be doing everything it can to not reach your lungs.
Unfortunately all this makes for a ‘flat’ kumite session, the students just too shattered to put up much of a fight.. I even had to practically chase one potential red belt around the dojo to get him to spar me. I’m really not that scary!
However what makes your day is seeing a little 6 year old girl giving it her all to achieve that next belt. Despite the mugginess, despite always seeming to be the smallest in the room, despite the tears of frustration when she ‘perceives’ she can’t do quite what you ask of them, and repeating this at least 5-6 times a week, still doesn’t give up and puts everything she has to gain that next milestone…
Kinda makes you a little embarrassed at the navel gazing you let yourself indulge in every so often. Thankfully nobody was looking too closely at me as she ran up to get her shiny new red built and certificate, I do have a reputation to maintain… or at least I like to think I have one.
Well apparently my last post was a “little too much information” for some people, and I have the sore ear to prove this, although I think it still serves as a good reference point for all budding future male karate do practitioners… go figure!
That apart I have the uncomfortable feeling that I really haven’t moved any further forward from where I was a few weeks back, I may have even moved backwards on a few items, which is a buggarage and all of which is making me even less fun company to be with than usual.
Introspection is all well and good for a hormone overdosed teenager, who feels the whole world is against them, but for a forty *cough* year old it can be a little ridiculous, but here we are. Turn up, do what’s expected of you; smile, laugh, practise, teach, drink, chat …. leave quietly. All without actually being there in mind or spirit.
I am missing not having a motorbike at the moment, taking very long, very fast rides to nowhere. In my mispent youthdom, when in the same type of mood (when it wasn’t a ridiculous age to be as introspective) this was my favourite form of escape… at least for a little while.
Now I have a blog, a large music collection and a hidy-hole where I can be anti-social to my heart’s content. I think that’s progress?
……also I do worry that Creed, 3 Doors Down, Daughtry, Theory Of A Deadman, Seether and Stone Sour are not the sort of tunes to help my teenage regression… but DAMN! There’s some damn fine lyrics in there and is at least helping me to figure out some future blog post titles.
Goddamit, one post at the beginning of this month and I am now only just starting to think of another post at the arse end of the month. Well that’s not entirely true, there was a post in progress somewhere near the middle which never saw the light of day for various reasons; the primary being it was rubbish.
Of course I still can’t think of anything to write although a lots gone on;
The chance to see, chat, laugh, drink and celebrate with Parents, Brothers, Sisters, Nephews, Nieces, Cousins, even the ever-itchy footed one, Aunts and Uncles down in Andover for the wedding of my cousin Josie.
Round two of the GKR Inter-Dojo Drinkie-Poo’s, with its tagline of “be there or be sober!”
Sun, sun and yet more sun. Seriously it’s been sunny here!
Hospital visits and probes.
….and probably a few more things that I can’t remember right at this moment. Maybe I should write these things down?
For some reason, and it was badly written in the unpublished post, I still feel slightly “empty” this month. The feeling that something is slightly out of your reach and no matter how much you strive for it, it is just that wee bit quicker than what you are. It’s not always something that tangible either.
The unpublished post was titled “Well I wish I was…” which was a slightly ironic title based on a mucky song that my dad had on a vinyl record back when I was a young whipper-snapper. The song’s a bit whimsical and British sea-side postcard humour’ish, but the sentiment was what stuck. I’m not going to attempt to re-iterate what was in there as I couldn’t finish that one, and I want to at least get something posted before the end of this month!
Not entirely sure there’s a point to this post, but I shall attempt to bring my head back to the here-and-now and focus on some personal milestones that are coming up far quicker than I can entirely grasp. May and June *could* be momentous times in my development and I need to get my shite together, as a friend once eloquently put it.
I can’t help who I am, but I can do something about what I want to be…. maybe.
You know what? I am bored of this now; the ups ‘n downs, the no-news, the unwelcome news and all the bits in between. I am tired of writing about it, almost as much as you are reading about it.. probably.
I am supposed to be at Karate now, getting my unfit body dragged and beaten up around a School hall somewhere in Northamptonshire, and I was all but there… instead I am now here in a foul mood and desperately trying not to drag this post down into a long list of anglo-saxon, and some exciting newly invented, words.
Quite frankly everybody has an “It” of their own without me adding to the It’iness of it all. So henceforth “It” shall not be getting any more column space on this little irrelevant corner of the T’interweb unless it’s a post with a title along the lines of “So long and thanks for all the fish”.
That of course may change as I am a man of short memory and whimsical nature, and this is my blog and I’ll whine if I want to – to paraphrase Barbara Gaskin
This Monday just gone I was in a bad mood, and I hate being in a bad mood.
Being in a bad mood takes a lot of effort to maintain and really doesn’t do anything for ones complexion.
I especially hate being in a bad mood with the sprogs but sometimes, no matter how much of a “new age” parent you try to be, the little wallet drainers will dive head first into full martyrdom mode, throwing proverbial dummies out of the even more proverbial cot, and get right on my tit.
The thing is, I remember being almost exactly the same when I was Number 1 son’s age. The world was almost entirely against me and my parents were just the frontline of the battle-lines being drawn between me and the rest of the population of the Universe (yep, we’ve escalated from World to Universe).
To be fair my battles were minor scuffles when compared to the ding-dongs my Sister used to throw :¬)
To now find myself being that frontline soldier is somewhat startling. Despite the rapid hair loss, white streaks in my facial bum-fluff, and snaps crackles & pops sounds that my bones make – in my head I am still that gangly 6’1 blonde idiot I was in my teenage years.
In a moment of revelation I look at the moping 13yo in front of me;
6’1? near as dammit,
blonde? check,
idiot? oh yes!
Oh crap! I’m looking at Andy Mk II, the improved model. I wonder if my dad ever had the same thoughts running through his mind? …Probably not.
Not that this made the mood appreciatively better, although I now felt considerably older than I did a few seconds before that little epiphical revelation, cos now I feel I am just arguing with myself of 30-odd years ago!
*sigh* I feel the need to go and apologise to my parents…
I seem to be spending an inordinately large amount of my life, at the moment, just waiting around. The problem is; I’m no bloody good at waiting!
Waiting for test results to come back, waiting for ordered items to be delivered… although to be fair some of these haven’t taken *THAT* long to be delivered, it’s just that my geeky heart can’t wait to get its greedy mitts on the latest play-thing.
Waiting for the next bout of unpleasantness to arrive, and more frustratingly waiting on the motorway for traffic to start to think about moving again. This has gotten to the point where I am loading up the ol’ smartphone with some frankly quite bizarre music tracks to take my mind off the static here-n-now.
So in an attempt to wrestle back some control, and inject a little deviation from the normal run-o-the-mill, I’ve decided to finally get around to doing some things I’ve been promising myself but have been thinking “it can wait”…
..It probably can, but I don’t think I want to any longer.
Granted it’s not anything life changing, but every so often a little “what the hell” can’t hurt and is good for the soul. It also gives you the chance to remove yourself from all those little ‘waits’ that are trundling along, admittedly slowly, but will at some point arrive – what to do at that point is another blog post altogether!
This Monday just gone I was in a bad mood, and I hate being in a bad mood.
I seem to be spending an inordinately large amount of my life, at the moment, just waiting around. The problem is; I’m no bloody good at waiting!
