A time to blog

Uni­ver­sity has begun once again, we are all going through the motions one more time, one year on, 3rd year brai­niacs. I rea­li­sed as I pas­sed the half way point of my degree that much of my time here has been spent wallo­wing in the misery of too much work, the dull­ness of the work and often the frus­tra­tion of being around the same peo­ple for too long. It was this reve­la­tion that led me to a new scho­las­tic year reso­lu­tion: I shall get invol­ved and have fun. Last year I was pretty mise­ra­ble; whether it be due to my cold unin­su­la­ted Vic­to­rian lounge-bedroom, my severe tooth ache that led to me mis­sing the first two weeks and the asso­cia­ted intro­duc­tory fresher events or the con­tent lac­king course, who knows. As part of this reso­lu­tion I have vowed to eat healthy, get fit and build my sta­mina. I’m a regu­lar suf­fe­rer of hea­daches and I am trying to find ways to mini­mise this pain, I have given up caf­fei­na­ted drinks, I wear my glas­ses during lec­tu­res and I lis­ten to my iPod at a lower volume all in hopes of having a pain free week–it’s pro­bably good to give up caf­feine any­way, I hear that I’ll feel more awake within a week or so. To replace my daily ons­laught of tea and cof­fee I have switched to Acti­mel, Fruit Juice and the occa­sio­nal decaf tea when I just need something warm. I’ve also given up salty foods such as crisps (chips in the US) which pretty much con­sist of fat and salt. I can purchase a Fudge, Nutri-grain, Apple, Banana and The Times for £1. 

As part of this new year I have joi­ned the Squash sports club and the Poker society. I’m now pla­ying regu­lar squash, 3 games or so, every Tues­day and Thurs­day night and plan to par­take in regu­lar poker tour­na­ments, the most recent one being a wel­come back free roll whe­rein 200 peo­ple tur­ned out to play, they expec­ted 40. It was my first time at pla­ying in real life and it was nerve rac­king yet enjo­ya­ble; I didn’t play too badly, suf­fice to say I went out with a very bad hand having recei­ved no good pla­ya­ble cards all night.

In recent years I have also been pretty tight fis­ted with my money, not through gree­di­ness, but in light of stu­dent debts and the help­ful­ness of having money there when you need it. Spen­ding money is something I dread doing and if I can do it elec­tro­ni­cally so it feels as though cash is not lea­ving my hands then all the bet­ter. This is one of the rea­sons I didn’t go out much last year, I didn’t want to waste money having fun. Either spend money and have fun or save money and be bored. My phi­lo­sophy has been seve­rely alte­red; I repeat that sta­te­ment to myself in some form or another whe­ne­ver I con­si­der doing something poten­tially fun that invol­ves spen­ding money.

Rightyo, I’m lea­ving now, without having men­tio­ned the drama and great dis­sa­tis­fac­tion of not get­ting to see 2manyDJs and Vita­lic live. Here’s a foot­note to think about:

“Silent gra­ti­tude isn’t very much use to anyone”