Long Time, No Post (I'm Getting Sick Of Titles Like These)

Good evening! Well, I tell a lie, it is actually the afternoon currently and there is even a most rare and undoubtedly fleeting glimpse of sunshine which the Welsh weather has gracefully been generous enough to lavish upon us today, and I am therefore making the most of it by... sitting indoors and tapping away on this ol' thing. But still, I shall say 'good evening' since I've felt it has always carried with it a certain amount more panache than 'good afternoon'.

Yes, once again I neglected this place. Possibly due to the fact that I would be genuinely surprised if anyone still actually visits here, partly because I can't escape the thought that I should have grown out of writing about my life on the Internet years ago, partly out of sheer laziness and inattentiveness. But I received an electronic communication from an old friend recently which reminded me of the thing and in a sudden outbreak of chronic nostalgia thought that I would once again firing up the blogging cannon and let loose upon whoever cares to drop by.

It's been a long time since I last wrote anything here, so what has been happening? Well, I embarked upon an expedition to learn more about the indigenous people of the South American rain forests, travelled the world, fell in love and achieved regional fame in Belgium as part of an avant-garde jazz and expressionist performance art troupe...

...Or rather, that is what I have done in my mind. Unfortunately the way I view the world and the way the world works rarely seems to coincide, so the actual reality of my time has been finishing my university studies. I now hold a BA (Hons.) in History, having gotten a II:1 which, to anyone who knows how these things works, is a pretty sterling effort (if I do say so myself) and more or less translates to, "I have mostly worked hard for three years, but I did not get a first because I also have had a social life."

With the completion of my course I'm now stuck in the foreboding realm of unemployment, completely at the mercy of the job market and an economy which, thanks to the wonderfully cack-handed handling of New Labour, has essentially just face-planted the floor and is continuing to slide along in its death throes to the corner marked 'recession'. Things are not made a great deal easier by dint of the fact that there is not so much a job market in Aberystwyth but more of a rickety old stall with a few hundred people piling on top of it in a desperate bid to grab one of the jobs going, of which there are only 10 in total at any given point, ever. And they're all taken.

I have no career plans at present. I might take a Masters course in History in a year or two, providing I have accumulated enough to cover the course fees. Until then I'm more or less happy to take anything going; basically after three years of frugal student living I' just like an income. From my perspective right now, minimum wage even looks appealing. Ultimately though I'd like to do something which involves writing, since it's one of the few things I am actually passionate about and enjoy doing. Perhaps journalism, or the ultimate dream is to be an author. Trust me to pick one of the most notoriously hardest careers to actually get into. And I'm unsure as to whether or not my writing is actually up to scratch... I guess you can see from yourselves from the disastrously diabolical diatribes contained within these pages. But of course if you don't try, then you'll never know, although the hopelessly optimistic plan of writing something, getting published and then living a life of luxury surrounded by vast piles of royalties may amount to little more than a badly thought through pipe-dream. One lives in hope...

And that is more or less what has been happening to me, barring the minutiae of every day life which I shall refrain from boring you with. My time is currently spent frantically mailing out CVs left, right and centre and spending a lot of time trawling through the internet for anything of interest or inspiration. And trying to write. Yes, I really am serious about the whole writing thing... God help me.