Nine weeks. Nine weeks of intermittently hating and fearing a computer voice. Nine weeks of sweating more than any other time in my life combined (including that Death From Above 1979 gig I went to years ago). Nine weeks of cursing my knees and my joints, of being so out of breath it hurts, of limping around my office and grunting like an old man, of confusing dietary advice and grim determination or an approximation of it anyway. All to be able to run for half an hour solid. Doesn’t seem like much but it sure as shit feels like a lot.
Not even cats can stop me (Week 7 of 9)
I’m almost there. I’m so close to throwing it all in Alison’s face. One more week of ‘training’ and I will theoretically be running half an hour three nights in one week. This was nothing I couldn’t handle which is impressive to me in itself. A few problems this time, ones I’m surprised I didn’t come across until now. They can be broadly categorised thusly: boredom, other people, cats.
Learning Curve (Week 6 of 9)
For fear of saying the same thing every week (‘it was hard but I did it anyway’) I’ll keep this brief. This week features my first 20 minute run and the hardest run I’ve had to do yet. Which was not the 20 minute one.
Take me back to Week 1, Alison! (Week 4 & 5 of 9)
For a number of reasons that I don’t need to go into I just haven’t felt like trying to be funny on the internet. So I missed a few weeks of this running review thing. But I didn’t miss out on actually doing the runs, those kept going. So forgive me for this jumbled up two-week recap.
A sort-of breakthrough thanks to Donald Glover and Daniel Bryan (Week 3 of 9)
That up there is my new ‘I’m going running’ t-shirt and I think it’s partly responsible for this week becoming, dare I say, somewhat enjoyable.
Running up that hill, little by little (Week 2 of 9)
Forgive me for breaking one of Orwell’s sacred rules of writing by starting this off with a cliché but progress is a slow process.
I am becoming physically active, what has happened to me? (Week 1 of 9)
I have started running.
Be calm, this is not a sign of impending doom, the moon has not turned to blood and to the best of my knowledge no two-headed cows have been born the past week. Stock markets won’t dip and no-one will run into the streets rending the clothes from their bodies while shouting their protestations to the heavens but for me it’s a pretty big deal. I don’t really do physical exercise. I’m a pasty little English nerd not so much picked last for school football teams but the subject of arguments over who had to be saddled with me. I’m the last person you would expect to voluntarily sweat in the name of trying to be healthy and I have always been particularly adverse to running. I have some pretty solid reasons I feel (it’s undignified, I’d look stupid, don’t have the energy, in that order) but they all seem to cower before the main argument for exercise. The ever-growing and unavoidable fear of getting old.
You are what you love
This is a little piece I wrote for a literary journalism class I’m taking right now. It was an assignment on creating a character. It’s about my grandfather and it got a B+. Later assignments got better grades but people have been telling me to post this here. I’m not sure if anyone outside of my family will be super into it but I’m kind of proud of it.
Enjoy.
When it sounded better
Regular readers (are there any?) may have noticed my dad comes up a bit in my ramblings. There was even a photo of him in one of my personal favourite entries. There’s good reason for this, the man is as supportive as he is entertaining. He’s also an inspiration and with the way my family has shaped my character it was inevitable that I would be able to mine them for blog ideas.
But now he’s started to horn in on my territory! He’s written a wordy, thoughtful piece on the importance of music and the way it has impacted his life and it is good. So here it is, posted in full for you to enjoy. I post this as a professional courtesy and I hope that the message is received. Because if you try and steal my readers (are there any?) with any more gold of this calibre it will mean war old man. War.
Anyway, enjoy. It’s really good. And he’s also included scans of his original Pink Floyd ticket and concert programme. Bonus content!
DH.
Facebook 2011 – State of the Union
Two years ago I wrote a little something about how much I hate Facebook and how it is evil and smells and hurts people and how I’ll keep using it anyways because, duh, it’s Facebook. As we all know, two years is equivalent to about fifty years in Internet time and so that blog entry now looks so embarrassingly outdated it may as well be wearing a smoking jacket and worrying about ‘the Negro problem’.
Nobody becomes fans of anything any more and nobody does those ‘how well do you know X’ quizzes any more. That’s objectively a good thing but their fall from grace as the popular thing to idly do on Facebook only leaves vacuums that equally banal things rush in to fill. There is one major difference after all these years though. Whereas in the good ol’ days of 2009 the idiocy was almost entirely user-generated, now it seems the online stupid infection and looped back on Facebook’s evil overlords themselves. Facebook seems to have taken up the challenge nobody threw down to create the worst and simultaneously most popular website on the Internet.
It's Not As Bad As All That 