Unfinished Blog Posts and What To Do With Them: #1

Let's Do This

In my last post today I promised to go through all of the draft items sitting in the background and get them out there for your perusal. I think I have found a way to differentiate between now-me telling you about the post I put together and never managed to complete, and the post itself. I'm in black. Back then is in purple. Simples.

As it happens, there is currently one of these stuffed fictional meerkats** on it's way to me. I get updates. Best advertising strategy ever. 

This is a draft written (guessing by context) in March or April 2013. Lets just go with whole numbers and think of this as Me minus 1 year telling you how it is. 

I want to do too many things!

Hello Everyone!

Time to bring you up to speed with all of the slightly off-the-wall things that are going on in my life. This is a post for the people who've been trying to catch up with me, and getting palmed off with crappy excuses about me being too busy.

I am busy, but I think I like it.

Mostly I like it, I didn't like it when I had to wake up this morning. It was like I touched my head on the pillow to go to sleep and then the next instant it was a new day and I had to keep doing stuff. But I figure that it's all about momentum, and fitness. Like how if you run 5k each night for long enough, you'll be able to run 3k and still have energy left. This is not an example from my life, may I point out. I run if I need to be "over there" faster than I can walk, and that is it. Scaled up to my entire life, I figure if I keep doing stuff, I'll build up the stamina to keep doing stuff, and then I'll be doing fun stuff and just about coping with it.

This is a blog post about all the things I do, and the things I'm going to start doing, and the things I want to do more.

Yup, I have just had a big cup of sweet hot chocolate.

I want to see my friends.

I don't have thousands of friends, but I love my the ones I do have dearly. My limited social skills get thinly stretched quite often, and the people who can cope with that - I'm keeping them. And I want to be a proper friend, and know what they're doing, and be around, and understand, and help and stuff. At the moment my friends are buying houses, having babies, having operations, starting new jobs, thinking about new jobs, learning new skills, having relationships, travelling, studying like crazy, leaving for ever and probably a whole bunch of other stuff. I want to be around for all of those things.

I want to dance.

I do one heck of a lot of Scottish Dancing. I teach (half of) a student class, and occasionally a little at another class. In September I'm going to start teaching (half of) an adult beginners class for the RSCDS*. There are dancing nights on every week through the summer that I want to go to as well. Heck, I have to put together a programme for one of them. In a few month's time I'm going to perform some dancing in Italy for a festival. It's all hap'nin'. I live in a beautiful part of the world where there is dancing on somewhere every night of the week, every week, all year. Honest.

I want to play music.

About a year ago I joined a ceilidh band playing whistles. I've gone from really crap to almost mediocre, and I'm a little too proud of myself. When I was learning to play an instrument as a kid it was a chore, and my sight-reading would normally carry me through, so I did little to no practice at home. I'm actually enjoying it, because I'm getting to play music I like, and if I try for long enough I get to hear a tune I like because I've made it. That sentence doesn't flow too well, but I hope you can fathom it out. I like that tune, I'd like to hear that tune, I can make the tune happen right now. Sorta like that.

I hope to get a little bit of playing in in Italy too. I also hope to be able to put a booking or two in the band's diary.

*Look them up, they think they're important.



So that was that. There I was, waxing lyrical about loving my friends and doing nice things. I am a jammy smug Sod, in hindsight. But there it was. Genuine hope and ambition and stuff. Me-1 makes now-me quite happy.

I went to Italy. Want some pics? Oh go on then.

Costumes, sea, warmth, playing whistles in church.
Spot the incongruous modern thing in the picture of people in traditional costumes. 

Definitely a holiday photo.

Guess I had something to be getting excited about.

**Spellcheck just wiggly-underlined "meerkat" and tried to suggest "beermat" as the correct spelling. I wonder what the market is for meerkat beermats?

Welcome back, Tuesday

Welcome back, Tuesday me ol' friend. It's been a long time.

This is an inward-looking story about this tiny Blog and how it has been so sorely neglected that I feel like some of the draft posts sitting waiting were written by a much younger version of myself.

Me. 4 years ago. That other person who started this blog.

Busy people do stuff, right? By definition almost. Busy people get stuff done, and I feel like I've been busy doing stuff. The last thing I posted was ELEVEN months ago! I suck at this. I had plans for weekly posts, features, reviews, all sorts of nonsense. But I am inherently lazy, so this has not yet happened.

But I have drafts, stuff left lying around unfinished, written by someone who is mostly me, yet enough not-me-any-more that I cringe slightly upon reading them. There are 6 draft posts sitting in this account, which I think you deserve to finally get your hands on. And, dear starved readers (both of you*), you shall. I shall post them as they stand - broken and incomplete - written by slightly-younger-me and narrated by now-me. I'll even put pictures in. Pinky promise. Maybe even the occasional Buzzfeed style "12 things I once tried to blog about" title to pull in the Googlers. Because you're worth it.

And I will attempt to recount the stuff that has been filling those eleven months of radio silence.

I can do this (I hope) because Tuesdays have been returned to me. I have a precious School night off. For a number of years (about 5 of them) I had a Church House Group on a Tuesday evening. No longer. I taught a few weeks of yet another dance class. Job done. I had a two-month cold which had me going to bed as soon as I got home from work. I have eventually bounced back.

Since I last spoke up over here I have a new job, a new car, a new tiny friend, a new committee role to play. Some other new stuff I'm more shy about, like how I have a girlfriend now. I have achieved stuff and not achieved stuff. I've just had a notable birthday. There is a tiny squirrel. There is blogging scope here. And I might just use my new found Tuesdays to tell you all about it.

Until then, here is a bunny.

*Feeling the optimism in the room.