I promise it's not all doom and gloom. However it is 4.04a.m on Thursday the 24th of February, two days before my twenty-first birthday and I'm sat at my desk thinking.. what have I accomplished at this self-proclaiming moment?
Your 21st birthday is that final "Man-up" moment, if you don't grow up and become a man now.. when will you ever? So the question for me really is "Have I 'Manned-Up'? Or do I need to anytime soon?".
There are a lot of things changing for me at the moment. Personally the biggest one for me is that for the first time ever, the desire to succeed is finally paying off. For the first time ever I have recieved an outstanding grade ... infact two outstanding grades. I got my first ever first at University and my first ever modular first too. this puts my Average for this year so far at 63.5% so far (2 completed modules out of 6) and including last years average at I think 57.7% which is on track for a 2.1 overall and will stand me in good stead for life after university. But with every silver-lining there must be a cloud right? And for me that cloud is always "Was that a false-hope?" I don't want this year to be like my sociology A-levels where I got an A in one module and then ended up with a D overall because I just took my foot off the gas and expected them to just fall into place. I can't afford to do that but at the same time I'm terrified of the future that I'll just shrink into my nuclear-shell and hope that everything blows over. So for my own-emo sake I'm hoping that my 21st birthday will that mental kickstart (or my friends' voices telling me ...) to MAN UP.
So in order to help myself "man-up" I'ma head to Rome to meet up with my father and enjoy a weekend of Drinking, Eating and Watching rugby and not just any game, not just any rugby, but ITALY VS WALES in the SIX NATIONS!!! A proper lads weekend just doing and watching the things we've been enjoying for many a fine year. It is a weekend that I'll never forget and it will tee me up for potentially one of the best ever week of my life... quickly followed by months of pain and agony (dissertation, essay, case study and other works). Next week I will have two days of recovery from Rome before my best-friend comes over to catch-up, chill, party and wreak general havoc before the rest of my best-friends come over for some pretty serious celebrations.
The reason for the slightly emo/self-destructive title to this entry is because of the music I've been listening to lately. On my facebook the other day, Soundcloud posted a playlist of 40 songs don't know who by or why but there were some including one called heartpiece2 that absolutely sounds like a work of art. It uses quotes from american politicians (I believe one of the quotes to be from Nixon destroying Senator Joe McCarthy's final political power) and also a simple but evocative quote from the character Tyler Durden (off of Fight Club) "Gentlemen... Welcome to Fight Club". The music is great, it is simple, it is long some 7minutes, some 5 but some like the heartpiece [1 and 2] are 11 and 20 minutes long respectively. The reason these songs have led to the title before is that they evoke feelings of change, feelings of renewal but also feelings of despair. They would work great in movies, they would work great in Television and they would work great to relax too, to let the real world disappear and be taken over by your own tranquil world. A friend told me once that with music for films you can hear what's going to happen in the action of the film through the music and he played me his piece of music and I could hear the car chase, the man shooting and getting shot and eventually dying. The same can be said with these songs, the speeches help the music to set the scene but they don't tell the story. This is why I chose the title for this piece, not just to reflect on my grades and my chance to "Man-up" but also because I feel those ideas in the music I've been listening to lately. Will the music tell me a positive story or will it be a story of destruction? Will it be a story of struggle and sadness or of struggle and happiness?
On that note and also because I need to sleep. I am going to end this entry and hope that I have entertained and interested anyone who reads this blog.
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