Blogging – how not to do it.

Its been another long day down here in Reading, classes took an age and quite often my mind wandered throughout the, day never concentrating on what we were doing for long. This would be a bad thing if I actually was struggling with the course material but despite being ‘away with the faeries’ when it came round to doing coursework based on the lecture and demonstrating that we knew what was going on and how to do the work I still breezed through it and had the work successfully completed in about a quarter of the time of my classmates. I’m not saying that these courses are a waste of the tax-payers money – far from it, I’m a tax payer but never-the-less I do have the impression that these lessons are devised for people with close to no technical aptitudes. Hence why I sailed through it. The qualification for attending these lessons is worth every penny and the work is just interesting enough to be worth learning – this is after all a subject I have never tackled before but aim to do so in my current job, but I could hardly call it challenging. I define my job as challenging, mentally stimulating and overall enjoyable.

Anyway so I was wandering through my head – not a pleasant experience sometimes – minding my own business, peering in through the windows of my imagination and seeing where bits of my mind were exploring and visiting old memory lane. I should point out that I have never found it hard to daydream multiple dreams at once but keeping track of what goes on in any of those dreams is often difficult. I guess I just have a quantum imagination – ie. I can either know where my imagination is or I can know whats going on (or where the dream is going) but not both at the same time. Its odd and very disconcerting sometimes, but I do find it useful for plotting story arcs and metaplot for the rpg’s I run.
Anyway I stopped at a window on an old townhouse on memory lane dating to about 7-8 years ago. In particular towards my first I suppose adult life friends, namely Edith, Rob, Gerald and Mairi. I met these people through Rob as it happens – notably in Black Lion Games in Edinburgh whilst it was based in the basement at Flip. We were just chatting about old Amiga’s as it happens and the conversation moved on to battletech a passion of both mine and robs. Now as it happens Rob was about to run a Werewolf game and he didn’t live far away from my parents so he offered to let me join in. I accpeted. As I recall – and I may be wrong here. That is when I met Mairi, Edith and Gerald. Edith was Robs landlady, Gerald was a kiwi nutball – but a solid bloke and well Mairi, well Mairi was (at that point) Rob’s secret other half (they hadn’t made it public to anyone yet). There were other people there who I got to know but they sadlky didn’t leave as big an impression as those 4. As time grew on My friendship with these 4 grew and aged. Like most friends we fell out over small things, and big things, made up, argued, laughed, cried and hugged. Fast forward when I went to Uni, well Rob had moved away, Mairi had moved on, Gerald was still about but I rarely saw him and Edith, Edith had remained a solid – abeit less seen constant in my life. Fast forward to present day and Rob’s married and has an infant, Edith is engaged, Gerald is in Oz (last we heard, several years ago – I miss the big lug) and Mairi has returned from working in France and is back in Edinburgh last I heard. So much has changed and worryingly I feel so detatched from it all. I’m still in touch with Edith a fair bit and I occaisionally hear from Rob but frankly its all rather – sad to say, distant. I can’t help but wonder what life would be like if we were still all hanging out together, shooting pool in Edinburgh Uni’s union, playing rpgs/boardgames and generally spending time in the pubs. They were good days for me, thats not to say I’m not happy with my life – don’t get me wrong I’m really enjoying my life, but I do miss my old, old friends.