New Year, New...

Welcome all, my first point of call in this blog would be to say a belated Merry Christmas to you all, I hope you all had lovely days and got everything you wanted from Santa Claus and, as this is likely to be the last entry before the New Year, I wish you all a happy New Year, may 2012 bring happiness to all.

So, 2012 is upon us. Which means its time for the endless "a new year, a new me" routine which never really means anything because they remain the same. It's the same nonsensical madness in relation to "New Years Resolutions" - who actually sticks to them past the end of January, let alone all year? No-one I know, that's for sure, so please don't bother humouring me and more importantly, yourself. But what else does 2012 bring for people? Well, apart from everyone being scared of the world ending, which it clearly isn't going to. I love being able to say that in the knowledge that if the world does end, I don't have to eat my words about being wrong, because we'll all be dead.

But for me on a personal note, 2012 is a huge year. Some would say my biggest yet, but realistically, everyone so far has been that. But this could perhaps be a life-defining year. Why you ask? Final year of my degree, exams, graduation, scary times ahead. Hopefully my passage into the real world. And whilst on topic, I'd like to say that I imagine this will be my last blog for a while, I struggle to find time/motivation for it now, but now that I have essays and revision to be doing, I suppose I should prioritise those if I feel like writing. But back to the point. Exams. Funny situation I find myself in, I've had my life all planned out since I was about 12, what I wanted to do etc. But university has changed that, and I now find myself with no plans whatsoever as to where I want to be this time next year.

To me, the exams aren't just the typical "degree career prospects" and such and such. On a personal level, my degree is much more. It's the chance to finally realise all the potential I had. A ridiculously intelligent youth if I may say so myself, blessed with amazing talents, I had the whole world in front of me. At the age of 3, I could tell you every fact about every dinosaur there was, I could even spell the words involved, which I probably couldn't do now, aged 20. Yet for all this, I struggled to grasp such simple things as to how to hold a pen properly. Although my love for dinosaurs died, my intelligence remained the same. As most of you will already know, it was decided that it would be best for me to advance straight from Year 1 to Year 3, based on what I knew. The decision was certainly vindicated with my SATs results, dropping a mere 8 marks over 3 papers, without blowing my own trumpet. But the possibilities were endless. Nothing seemed out of reach. Offered scholarships at private schools, but not full ones, my parents had to reluctantly turn them down on grounds of finance. In retrospect, I'm glad, I wouldn't have wanted to go to a private school. For all the extra you learn, it seems life skills aren't among them. And so I went to Houghton Kepier. My tenure there was short, lasting just a year, as my parents relationship broke down completely, and so we moved off to Ferryhill.

Nothing against Ferryhill B+E College, but that's what I accredit my downfall to. Some of it has to be accredited to myself, granted, for acting like a dick in some classes, but the standard of teaching was poor. Don't get me wrong, there were some great teachers there (Mr Houchen, Mr Jones to name two), but for every good teacher there were 5 bad ones. During my time there, I found a correlation between whether I enjoyed the subject and whether I did well. That's what makes a good teacher to me, the ability to make a boring subject enjoyable. And this is probably why I flourished in their subjects but not so much the others. At the end of Ferryhill, my grades were respectable, and above average. But nowhere near the standard you would have predicted a mere 5 years ago. And then came QE 6th Form College, billed as being, at the time, the 4th best 6th form college in the country. Yet still, my talents weren't realised. I chose subjects I didn't enjoy nearly as much as I expected, and the split teaching was to my displeasure, as for Psychology I did really well on one side of the course with one teacher who I enjoyed, but poor on the other. And so my grades declined even further.

So off to uni I went, and as a result of my grades, probably wouldn't have got in to a top university to study Law. Not that this bothered me slightly, without knowing which unis were 'good' or not, I had my heart set on Leeds Met anyway, so all worked out in the end. Even if I had fulfilled all my earlier potential, the fact that I wasn't private schooled, put me at a massive disadvantage to the so-called elitist universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Into my final year, and I'm looking at a 2:1, with potential for possibly a 1st class honours if I do really well this year.

Funny how it works out like that isn't it? If I had lived up to all the hype, I would potentially be leaving a good university with a 1st or maybe a 2:1. Yet, even though I suffered a big decline in my middle years, the end product remains the same? And I've managed to live a pretty good social life in my eyes, the perfect balance between a life, and my work. To me, it isn't just about the simple career prospects of the degree, I feel a sense of urgency to get a good degree, because I can finally end the guilt I feel of not living up to expectations. Because like I said, the end product is the same, so why wouldn't I feel good? But perhaps more importantly than the personal gain, the pride in my family's eyes when I graduate. To make them feel justified in supporting me all the way through my life, both when younger through helping me, and in the later years financially. Words can't even begin to describe how much I owe them all, and for that I am eternally grateful. I just want to hurry up and get into the real world so I can start repaying the faith. But first, I need to find out exactly what path I want my life to take.

I was going to talk about another topic, but I think I've spoke enough about my life today, so I'll leave it there, and will hopefully come back with that topic in the next couple of days. But like I said, time will be hard to come by, so I hope you all understand if I don't get round to it. And to echo my sentiments earlier, I hope 2012 brings all the happiness, joy and luck you need to succeed.

Thanks for reading,

Thomas.

Diary of a Lonely Soul

Welcome again, to a very late instalment of my blog. But again, I haven't really had much to write about of late.

But today I find myself bored with nothing else to do, on day one of being alone in Leeds. Like the money-grabbing fool I am, I volunteered to work over Christmas, thinking the extra money would come in handy and make the sacrifice of not going home until Christmas Eve worthwhile. As usual, how wrong I was. When expecting 3 shifts, I find that we are now closed on Tuesday and I'm not required on Thursday, leaving Friday as my only shift before Christmas (excluding tonight's of course). For the sake of £30 I'd probably rather have spent an extra week at home, but hindsight is a wonderful thing, isn't it? When I say I'm alone, that's not strictly true, I do have the one friend in Leeds. But unfortunately, she works full time and lives a good 45 minute walk away, so not exactly ideal. But a friend is a friend, I can't complain.

But anyway, it's now a week until Christmas. I hope you've all got your Christmas shopping done. I know I have. And when I say "I have", what I really mean is my sister took my money from home and bought some presents. With my consent of course, I'm not calling her a thief. Christmas when you're older isn't as good of course, as you pretty much pick all of your presents, but shouldn't this be good because you're getting exactly what you want? For me the main annoyance of Christmas has to be the music channels, not being able to watch a music channel without the usual dross songs from the past, and the occasionally shit new one such as Justin Bieber.

I always found with Christmas that no matter what age you are, there's always that one thing that you want that you never get. When you're young there's always that present that was just too expensive. And when you're older there's that one thing that Santa just doesn't have the power to bring you. Like what? European football at Sunderland would be nice. But I don't think anyone has the power to bring that. I live in hope. After all, "hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things. And no good thing ever dies." - Who'd have thought a film could provide such a good quote? The film is The Shawshank Redemption by the way, in case you haven't seen it. I hope for a lot of things, some more realistic than others. Nietzsche once said "hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." Of late I found this the more refreshing quote than the other, but then I realised that this is not true. Only false hope prolongs the torment. If there is genuine hope, and not false hope, maybe there is something you can do about it.

How do you decide between hope and false hope though? I'm yet to find out, I just expect everything to work itself out. Maybe if I do something about it, I'll find out.

Thanks for reading,

Thomas.

Mr. Writer

Writing a continuous blog is becoming more and more difficult, I seem to have had no time of late to write and not much inspiration. "Writer's block." But I suppose this is a good thing, as my blog has been described as depressing, me personally described as a moany little bitch (which I am), so surely I should be rejoicing that I have nothing to write about, because it means nothing has gone wrong for me. I guess you're right, things are looking up at the minute. Not that anything good has happened in particular, I just seem to have snapped out of my mood. But if I have nothing to write about, how am I writing another entry? Well it kind of gave me an idea, that I would write about my short time as a writer to date.

To put it shortly, I'm quite enjoying it. I've had a lot of good reviews, with some from unlikely sources so it's hard not to enjoy it really. But what do I enjoy the most? The reviews? No. I'm going to contradict myself later, but the best thing is the freedom to write about whatever I want. I've always had a little soft spot for writing, which is strange because I'm absolutely awful at essays. Unless I get a spot of freedom with them. When I feel free to write about anything I want, I could genuinely write for days. Just like I could talk for days. Maybe this was why journalism was my back up to law when I was first in the UCAS process. But why would I want to do journalism? Journalists don't get freedom to write about whatever they want. Although if anyone has read 'The Sun' I'm sure that point can be very easily argued. My opinion of journalists of late are pretty low aswell, with the whole phone-hacking scandals etc, it opened my eyes a little bit as to how parasitic they really can be. But it's their job.

But back to freedom, and my contradiction. Am I totally free to write about whatever I want? I've learned not. Not through choice, but through conscience. There are certain things that I just don't want everyone reading about my life, and out of respect for others whom it may be about etc, or maybe in fear of pushing them away. Maybe this is why I won't make it as a journalist, I really don't have that ruthless streak required. But I'm still learning about this whole blogging lark, and I'm not by any means saying journalism is the route I plan on following, but this is an experience of my own in the world.

Back to the freedom once again, why if I feel I have the freedom to write about anything do I choose to write about myself? It's a simple concept really, what could I possibly know better? Although sometimes even I don't know what goes on in my head, it seems like a pretty obvious topic. It also feels good to, when I have a problem (earlier blogs) to get it out in the open and not have to put up with the ridiculously clichéd advice that is so inevitable from some people such as "everything happens for a reason". That's great, but who does it make feel better, really? Not that I'm not grateful to people who have been there etc, but some things you just wanna talk about and someone to listen. And I have my blog for that.

That's all for today, thanks again for reading and sorry it took so long to post another entry. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter for regular blog updates at @Tpearson6

Thanks again,

Thomas

The Leopard

Carrying on from where I left off last time, I want to talk about change. Do people really ever change? And if so, why? Why would anyone want to change who they are?

I'm sure you're all familiar with the saying "a leopard never changes its spots". But what does that saying really mean? To me it seems like a pretty poor analogy, of course a leopard never changes its spots. It has no choice in the matter, it is nature. But people have a choice in change. Do I believe that people can change for the better? Of course I do. But do they change for another person? I'm sure many of you out there will claim to have done so, I say bullshit. People change when it suits them. Admittedly, sometimes it does suit them to change for someone, but changing for that person in particular is a lie. Change is all about motivation, some people are more motivated than others, usually in that they're not happy with the track their life is currently embarking upon. It doesn't happen overnight though, it is a gradual process.

Why am I writing about change anyway? Isn't this meant to be a blog about ME? Well yes, but I've noticed some minor changes in a lot of people I know of late, some for better, some for worse. People who have previously been horrible (not proper horrible, banter horrible) have started being nice, and vice versa. Is this a change in personality? The simple answer is no, it's just an adaptation to the situation, whatever the situation may be. Different situations in life bring about different sides to peoples personalities, someone you didn't expect to be sympathetic for example will be, and it makes you think "why can't you be like this all the time?" But it would soon lose its novelty, right? If everyone was nice to you no matter what. Not that I'm using this to justify me behaving like a bellend all the time. But why do some people start behaving differently in a bad sense? Surely we've all been there, you think you're getting along with someone then out of nowhere they change.

"Hang on a minute," you say, "I thought you said changes don't occur overnight?". These cases aren't personality changes, these are just the minor changes that I referred to earlier. But why would people who were nice turn not so nice? The reverse change can be easily justified, but this one not so much. Unless of course you do something wrong then it should be surely obvious. As I fall into the category of the "usually a dickhead, pleasant surprise when nice" category I can't answer why the other change is brought about. As someone who just loves to make people laugh and smile, this phase perplexes me.

Am I the leopard who never changes his spots and just can't see it and justify it with this "adaptation" shit? Answers on a postcard please.

Thanks for reading,

Thomas.