number 14

i can never decide whether i'm the kind of person who likes to talk to/be talked to by friendly strangers in day to day life, or the kind of person who likes to be left to himself... have you ever thought about this? which are you?

the reason for this being in my mind is that i'm due to spend 12 1/2 hours next to one or two perfect strangers on sunday as i fly to malaysia, read about why i'm doing this here... part of me is quite excited and looking forward to the opportunity to spend such a long time with somebody i don't know, and yet, another part of me is a little bit daunted...

thinking about it... i suppose a large amount of the experience comes down to who that person is, and whether they are likely to talk or remain quiet... it would be terrible if i decided that i was the kind of person who loves talking to strangers, only to find myself sandwiched between a couple of plain faced business types who did not care for polite chitter chatter with an eager young man from... well... from different parts of the uk at one time or another...

the reverse is that i decide that i prefer the solitude of my own company and end up next to a big talker, who can't help but spill their entire life onto me and expect me to do the same... there are many more possibilities in between that are more likely, however there are, perhaps, a couple more factors that need to be thrown into the equation...

i loathe small talk... well... i'm not sure if i do or not, the fact is though, i can't seem to do it, on rare occasions when it's forced i can drag myself through it, but i can't seem to help but feel really uncomfortable the entire time... so... here we have something that might hinder a potentially brilliant opportunity... however, on the other hand, i love being in proper conversations, flowing syllabic movements, free falling social interaction nuggets, deep insightful, or laughably funny, i really love it... this is what i'm hoping for and looking forward to... its seems to me that with a new "friend" i.e. someone you've just met, you need to negotiate the small talk super highway before you can progress onto more rewarding conversational levels... hence... my problem... that being said, i'm fairly confident that all will be fine and i'll either have great conversations and be truly thankful for them... or i won't, and i'll not be that bothered...

if you glance back up the page you'll see that this malaysian transport experience was not the point of the post though, i'm trying to figure out if, on the whole, i'm the kind of person who likes to talk to strangers, or the kind of person who doesn't...

I reckon that maybe these are not the only two extremes as i can think of times when i've met someone and chatted to them and its been great and others when i've just wanted to be left alone... i truly love people, and strongly believe that everyone's worth getting to know and that makes me think that i must be at the more sociable end of the scale, although when out and about i spend a lot of my time listening to the ipod (due to an insaciable love of music) and that prevents these meetings from taking place... a bit of a conflict of interests... which has got to go?

i wonder if i'm the only one that thinks about these things

number 13

my friend ben said to me at the weekend that i use a lot of superlatives, that was the most amazing thing i learnt about myself that day

number 12

i do a lot of my thinking in the shower... i do a huge amount of it in there. there's something... pure... about it... a clean, naked, pure thing... thinking in the shower... no distractions... not really all that much else to do in there. i think about all things, i plan my day, i think through yesterday. i make a fresh start, put to rest the concerns of the day before, they're not worth the time taken to think through them anymore. i do continue to think about these things, these worries, these concerns, but for that small period of time they're put to rest, left alone and forgotten.... its just me here... i'm alone, warm and thoughtful... there's no point worrying in there... what can you do about your concerns? nothing, nothing can be done while you're in the shower... you could get out... but then... you'd not be in the shower anymore... see... you can't do anything about your worries whilst in the shower... so you might as well relax and not let them bother you... are you following me? (with this idea... this "shower thought" paradigm... not to the shower...) thinking in the shower... its what i do... i do a lot of it in there... i should be writing this in there now, then you'd understand, i wouldn't be stumbling over my words either, wouldn't be getting confused over adjectives and punctuation. in the shower, words just flow out, they "fit", they make sense... you'd know exactly what all this was about if i had written it in the shower, you'd all agree. it would be unanimous, we'd have a certain kinship, an understanding. however, if i had, my computer would have broken and i would have been electrocuted

number 11

to be able to have detailed long term plans speaks to me of a lack of ambition rather than a lot of ambition...

the way i see it to plan really far ahead is impossible, life moves so fast it is often difficult to plan into the next week, i'm finding it tricky to explain what i mean by this... i suppose for me to say that in five years i'd like to have achieved this, this and this puts limitations on what i'm striving for

i'm starting to remember my alevel in business studies... maybe they were onto something with their aims and objectives lessons... businesses have a mission statement the coca-cola mission is:

"to refresh the world.. in body, mind, and spirit. to inspire moments of optimism... through our brands and actions. to create value and make a difference.. everywhere we engage"

the mission statement for gap talks about purpose:

"Our purpose? Simply, to make it easy for you to express your personal style throughout your life"

the vision for ambassadors in sport the organisation i worked for on my gap year is:

"we want to see effective soccer ministry changing lives for good in every country and culture of the world"

the point is that these mission statements are often unreachable hypothetical goals, which ties in (loosely) with my idea of detailed long term plans showing a lack of ambition (if we have reachable goals... what do we do with ourselves when we reach them?), so what is the point of these unreachable targets, won't they ultimately end in disappointment?

i looked at a few other well known businesses to fond their mission statements and they all made a point of saying that all of their aims and objectives (long and short term reachable targets) had to fall in line with the mission statement otherwise they wouldn't be pursued... so here we have it, they are a framework for which their lives as businesses are based upon and serve to provide direction and organisation... something which i have been struggling with

so it strikes me as a good practice to have a mission statement for myself... what's that you say? how can you possibly decide now at the tender age of twenty upon a sentence or two that your whole life will be based upon and revolve around? that's true i reply and here it is:

when asked out of all of the rules and regulations and stuff like that in the bible which is the greatest one Jesus says:

"the most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'hear, o israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' the second is this: 'love your neighbor as yourself.' there is no commandment greater than these."

there are two accounts of this story in the bible you can see one here: matthew's version and the other here: mark's version...

this seems like a wise place to start the year, a year in which i will probably be busier than i ever have been before... a little direction is needed...

this is what my life is striving for and (albeit quite slowly) moving towards. how about yours?

happy new year

number 10

i am still here....

i haven't blogged for ages as i have been busy living life, like i said in my last entry, living life right up to bed time, but now i'm back in isolation i can spend some time inside my head and can think of some wonderful and wierd ideas that will hopefully bring a smile to the face or a tear to the eye (a happy tear) of anyone who should read about them

to what extent is optimism important for achievement? do optimists perform better? can someone alter how well they do something simply by having a more positive attitude towards it? is this something schools should be thinking about? if you do perform better with a more positive attitude, should optimism be taught in schools? is it possible to teach such a thing? and to what extent is optimism ignorance? is it better to be realistic?

why am i asking all these things? i suppose i should be honest... i've got to do a piece of work at uni in the next term and this is what i'm thinking of doing it on, it would be useful to get some people's opinions on it... but i also think its an interesting factor to consider, so please do so...

Also it's christmas time and i'd like to propose an idea (actually i'd like to pinch someone else's idea and present it as my own - not really this was the christmas message at my church in leicester, thankyou andy upton) apparently there are bumper stickers in america that have slogans something along the lines of "jesus is the reason for the season" well perhaps they are wrong...?! how about... "we are the reason for the season..." or... "i am the reason for the season..." why do we have christmas...? simple... because of me! (and you of course!)

ask yourself... why christmas...? what is christmas...? we're all after the perfect stress free christmas and if that were possible there'd automatically be no such thing. jesus came because of the very things that we become so aware of at christmas time: our impatience, our anger, our greed, the list goes on...

i don't want to be preachy on here but my faith is too big a part of my life (well... pretty much all of it) to ignore and it seems fitting that at christmas time i give an idea of what i think its about

i noticed i used to have such free flowing, flowery metaphors on here and i miss them i'll try and get them back for my next blog...

..,and the final reason for my christmas blog is that i'm really loving this picture at the moment its some stairs in budapest (thankyou james, again!!) i think its beautiful...

number 9

righto,

i'm finding it rather difficult to find the time and the enthusiasm to write anything on here at the moment, i'm sorry if anyone has been checking and not finding anything new (a little arrogant of me perhaps), life has been for living recently and i've been living it right up to bed time and then going to bed and not blogging

i've also not really had any new thoughts... i'm trying right now to think of something, but its not coming to me

however i did have a dream last night that i was taking care of a baby and it was just an amazing feeling

i'll leave you with that

number 8

ok so here we go, i'm back after a bit of a break and i've got a little bit of time to focus on this and keep you interested in me...

first i've got to remember all of the little rules - like the fact that i don't use capital letters anywhere on here and that if something is fairly obvious i should have a crack at explaining it further, whereas if it's a bit ambiguous i can leave you to decide what you think about it...

blogging as a secret identity... i'm relitively new to this game and so one of the things i think you do in a new situation is you try and figure out how everything is meant to work, and i came across an astounding discovery, people who blog, never mention their blogs or the fact that they blog or anything about it freely in the real world (possibly why i climbed on board so late), and in as a general rule of conformity, i don't do this either

consider the scenario... i am reading a friends blog and i particularly like it, and then i remember whilst talking to him (or her, it could be a lady) face to face that i enjoyed the post (and this is where i think it gets interesting).... rather than saying this to him (or her) right there and then i make a mental note to post a comment next time im on their blog. i think this is insanity, why not just tell them about it, and yet, there's something so wonderful about it, its like out own special community

and here's another thing... the things we talk about on our blogs don't necessarily reflect the kinds of people we are in real life and the subjects we talk about (hence the secret identity theory) it gives us a whole new chance to be interesting, or funny, or deep and insightful (i suppose i fit into this one), i think this is quite a discovery due to the fact that as far as i know there's no limit to the number of these things we can have so it is possible to continuously reinvent ourselves to suit everybody

which is the real you? is it the one that your friends see in everyday situations? or is it when you're on here late at night baring the deepest darkest depths of your soul to whosoever might notice?

something to think about....

number 7

i've been thinking about a new idea for a while, i should have put in on here sooner but i have been unable to get connected

my new idea is... blogging as a secret identity, i don't want to write about it too much at the moment as i feel my creative juices flow more vastly and juicily late at night and i want to do this new insight justice...

if you do read this please let me know via the mystical path of comment leaving as i feel a little bit like i'm writing this for my own benefit, and that makes me feel like i might be a crazy person who has to write down their thoughts in order to validate (or should that be verify) them as being real... what i'm saying is i already know what i'm thinking and to put them on here solely for my benefit would be insane as i already know what i'm thinking, and besides just reading without getting involved is selfish...

once again thanks to james for this photograph

i want to change the theme of my post titles (number 1 etc.) what should i change it to...?!

love to you all...