Starting Again

Third time lucky. My first blog documented my life a little too thoroughly to remain public, so I downloaded and deleted it. Blog number two was a more thoughtful and detached creature, though it still had enough allusions to my real life that I felt it necessary to delete it before starting my career as a teacher. As it turned out, my career as a teacher lasted around six months, but by that point I had forgotten the password, and now #2 sits as a museum of two unsuccessful years of my life.

So here is a third blog. I find myself, aged 25 years, in a rather lovely position. I spend my weekdays making educational computer games for kids. I spend my evenings and weekends playing music and making friends. I live in a fuck-wonderful (that being my chosen word for the opposite of "fuck-awful") house in Oxford. I am properly happy for the first time in a fair old while.

I will endeavour not to turn this quantum of the internet into a list of my life's banalities, but forgive me a little time-capsulism in this, my first post, and let me list some pertinent, current trivia regarding me.

Physical: Finally no longer growing. Topped out at 6 feet, 0.5 inches. Weight-wise, podginess persists. Proximity to chip van (home) and pasty shop (work) both posing problems, but baggy clothing still an adequate solution. Hair length getting a bit silly. First ponytail achieved some months back.

Social: Now truly over the moving-to-a-new-city-and-having-no-friends problem. Almost too many fantastic people in my life. Hard not to gush about this.

Economic: Sorted to the extent that I'm planning to drop down to a four-day week soon in order to facilitate music-making. Which is nice.

Political: Have been an unfocused leftish armchair Green supporter since university. Now I appear to be living with people who actually know things about politics. Trying to find a balance between being receptive to new ideas and not getting swept along by passionate people who clearly know how to construct an argument far better than I can. This mainly involves me sitting quietly for long periods while my housemates talk to each other, but this is a temporary side-effect of education, I'm sure.

Creative: Music, music, music. Have been recording guitar for Sam Taplin's debut album, gigging with my acoustic duo, playing the odd solo set and writing new material. Also having my head turned by multimedia projects; nice to have such limitless possibilities at one's fingertips. New stream-of-consciousness story/thing burst out of nothing the other night. Bit different to previous writing attempts. Freer. But still bound by lack of vocabulary and knowledge of how to write. Tempted to use new house as an excuse to become a Person Who Reads Things, but ever since reading (ironically) the Tao Te Ching at 16, I've been nervous of seeing knowledge as a "more is better" thing.

Spiritual: One for the private diary, I think.

For colour, I am writing this in the dark, lying on the sofa at my parents' house. My cousin has (quite reasonably) usurped my room. I have spent today practising for a gig, playing that gig, then picking apples. Visiting my grandad tomorrow. To end this post in a way that I'm sure is pretty ubiquitous in the blogosphere (to which I can't say I am a regular visitor), I promise that the next entry will be more fascinating and less boring. I recently learnt the word "tautologous".