BLOG POST NUMBER 1191

No more "clever" titles... No more "search engine friendly" wording...

It's just you and me now, okay... Which is, of course, how it should always have been...

You either come here or you don't. That's not up to me...

This blog has now been running for three years which is, I now realise, longer than it took me to earn my so-called qualifications back during what are increasingly looking like they might actually have been the best three years of my life despite much evidence to the contrary at the time.

I wonder what I would have been writing about if we had had blogging back then?

"Regrets, I've had a few… but then again…"

I suspect that my life was no more exciting than it currently is but, because I was still young and full of hope, I kind of believed in those days that it had the potential to be important in a way that I've finally come to understand that it didn't and never would.

I kind of believed that the world would actually quite like me one day, and that things would turn out okay in the end and, back in those days, I actually still believed that I would actually turn out to be a "bit of a catch" for whoever was astute enough to see through the facade and realise the genius hiding within…

"If only they could see beyond the surface… If only they could appreciate the real me…" I thought...

But look at me… just look at me…

What on earth was I thinking…?

"Feast your eyes! Glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness…!"

No wonder that caption card from the Lon Chaney silent classic "The Phantom of the Opera" has stayed with me all of these years. Perhaps all those wistful hopes and dreams which I locked away from public view were indeed knocked back by my morning glance in the mirror when reality used to bite and those long lonely years dragged on and on and on…

There were moments, of course, and no doubt, if I'd had access to an outlet like this, I might have been able to embellish them still further if the mocking laughter of whoever read such piffle and nonsense hadn't driven me out of my tiny mind...

I suspect that my daily adventures might have been generally more interesting to that sort of audience when I was still the undoubted (and young) idiot it turns out that I was, self-delusion apart. Perhaps some of those small, insignificant moments that have seared themselves upon my memory - the second year student who I worshipped from afar after her (rather foxily) nudging her backside up against mine as we waited in the campus office one day (I've always been slow on the uptake, or to take a hint, when it came to such matters…); That finals night roll on the college lawns with another woman who (it turned out) actually liked me but which was far, far too late in our lives for either of us to be able to capitalise upon it - might have gained even greater significance if I had been able to turn my thoughtful mind to writing about them then, or actually just talk to people about how I actually felt…

That said, they are no longer looked back upon as missed opportunities, but rather "dodged bullets" as I probably wouldn't have the life I had now if I'd made different choices back then, and things now are, despite everything, actually as good as I could hope for them to be.

That said, I also suspect that the arrogant, self-opinionated version of me might not have been the sort of person anyone would have wanted to read about, just as I imagine that he would have been far less circumspect and, consequently, got himself into far more trouble with his friends by writing stupidly about matters best left alone and things better left unsaid.

It is more probable, however, that the drinking and the hangovers and all of the excitement and "fun" might have meant that the blog itself never actually got written. And then there would have been the tricky little matter of the people back home and what they might or might not have read into those ramblings if they had tuned in to them.

It was, after all, a very significant three years in the shaping of me and without the qualifications it gave me, I wouldn't have been eligible to enter the profession in which I have spent my less than brilliant career. During that time I left home for the first time; I learned to live independently; I learned how to drink like a fish but somehow rarely suffered the hangovers which would later occasionally cripple me; I made a complete new circle of friends who I have since, regrettably, mostly lost touch with; I also failed spectacularly to discover the hedonistic and self-indulgent possibilities of the life of a so-called "artistic type", failed almost universally to get off with any of the girls I fancied, and also suffered the personal catastrophe of having my father die during my finals year.

On the whole, though, I'm not entirely sure that you'd have liked that version of me all that much. Heck, I'm not entirely convinced that I thought all that much of him either, and his singular lack of success with anything very much, including his personal life (or lack thereof) doesn't mark him down as much of a catch...

Nevertheless, though, those three years would probably have been more incident packed than these last three that I've actually been writing about have been, but then… well, you might have found them far less readable if it was just another young git droning on about how great everything is, or despairing about his lot in life and sounding like a slightly less engaging version of Adrian Mole...

Now that does show my age...