Welcome to MMXXII

Morning brew

Here we are then. Happy New Year 2022. Or MMXXII in Roman numerals. (Which does look cool!)

Cathy and I had a discussion about what we would like to do this year. Hopes of holidays and sorting out stuff in the house. I have ambitions of running a Blood Bowl cup competition with my friend Bryan. I would like to find time to read more books.

I've also been thinking of what I want to do in life more generally. I realised a few weeks ago that my next 'big' birthday will be my half century. (I'm already over halfway to 90!) It's not really a midlife crisis, but I have been having a think about work and life, and what I want to do when I grow up. 

In terms of this blog, I have a few ideas. Last year I started blogging a snack of the month. I'm going to carry on with that. I've thought of a new '...of the month' topic as well, which hopefully I will manage to start doing as well. 

There are a few longer form articles pending, returning to topics I've covered previously like Business Psychology. I will tidy them up and publish them.

In the meantime, thank you for reading - and feel free to leave a comment with your hopes for MMXXII.

When all our cells change why do we expect to stay the same?

This post has been sitting in my draft folder since January 2017. Given some recent conversations I've had, I feel like it's worth an airing (with a few minor edits).

I find New Year quite melancholic. It's a time to reflect on what's happened and look back on stuff. (In 2017, for various reasons, I ended up looking back a bit further than normal. This is mainly because of reconnecting with some people I had been in school with over two decades previous.)

I journal offline as well and reading old journal entries, or my old blog posts on here, sometimes makes me feel like I'm reading about a different person. Douglas Coupland warns us that nostalgia is a weapon and sometimes I can turn that weapon on myself by thinking about the past and about how much has changed.

The thing about change is that it's rarely in huge increments. Yes, some are life-changing and can happen over a few short days (for example, diagnosis of a chronic illness), but most of our changes - in attitudes and priorities - happen slowly.

I read somewhere that all the cells in our bodies are renewed every ten years or so. I've been in a relationship over 25 years. I'm a whole new man. In fact, I'm the second whole new man to have been in the relationship. An entire version of me has died off and been replaced. And we didn't even know it.

Or did we? I'm not the same person as I was 25 years ago. Experiences and achievements, wins and losses, have made their mark. I feel a lot less certain about some of the things I was so certain about back then. Things that were once important don't matter and things that never used to matter to me suddenly seem important. How much of this is just the weight of living pressing down on me and how much is actually physical? Feelings of attachment and abandonment originate in brain cells that change like any other cell. As my cells change does that have an effect on my opinions?

There's a couplet in an Avett Brothers song that goes: 

I want to have friends 

That I can trust 

That love me for the man that I am 

Not the man that I was. 

I really like that lyric because it shows how we can be perceived as the person we were in the past, even though we have changed. That can be a battle if we have grown up, if we react differently now, if we have different priorities. When people assume we will always act a certain way that can be constraining and they may not like it if we do something they don't expect.

There's also a danger in such expectations. If we know we are loved because of what we were when we were first loved then it's hard to say we have become something different. We become inauthentic versions of ourselves, afraid to admit what we really feel or think or believe at this point in time, in case it turns out the people who love us love us because of who we were then, not who we are now.

It's hard to see people for who they have become. If we have friends and loved ones who do see us for who we are and not who we were, then we are very fortunate.

Excuse my moribund blog

Apparently a lack of blog action is a sign that real life is busy. Not sure where I read that, but it's a useful excuse and I'm going to stick to it.

Life has been a bit busy of late. I've been making time to attend football matches and have already been to 13 this season. This has been helped by Shrewsbury having a seriously brilliant (and unexpected) start to the season, and getting to know a Cardiff season ticket holder as well. I've been to enough Shrewsbury games this season already to justify buying the new replica shirt.

Plus there's been work, and films, and all kinds of fun things going on. Like going to look at Snowdogs that have appeared all over Cardiff.

Chrome Snowdog on Barry Island

Life is short, so it's important to live it well.

The merits of blogging (and should I continue)

I've blogged before about how blogging has changed. Social media and other things has taken its toll. I've been wondering about whether to wind up my blog and just admit it's over and time to move on.

I started this blog way back in 2006. (You can read the first post here if you really want to.) For the first couple of years I was updating it several times a week; most days in fact. Now I can barely get one post posted every month.

It is a bit of a relic of a past life. Since 2006 I have gotten older if not wiser, found new interests and hobbies. I've been through redundancy and a five year stint at another job and now am onto something else. I'm back at Uni doing a MSc. I've stopped working with young people and started preaching regularly. I have a niece and nephew who I love to bits. Life is good and busy and full and I just don't know what this blog is for any more, or who it's for.

Why the title?
Back in 1999 (I think) we went on holiday to mid-Wales and stayed outside Pantperthog. I got a photo with the village sign because I thought it was funny. Then in 2005 we were on holiday in the Scottish highlands and I posed for a photo with the sign for Knockando, again because it amused me. And then I was setting up a blog and I wanted a title and those were the two things that popped into my head.

Recently I discovered it would take over 8 hours to drive from Pantperthog to Knockando. Part of me is tempted to see if that is true. Maybe one day...

So, anyway, the blog might get a revamp or maybe I'll just rediscover a love for posting random thoughts. Or this may be it. It's been a fun almost-decade for the most part.

Five Quotes from Life after God by Douglas Coupland

I have discovered Douglas Coupland’s novels in the last few years. Life after God is both like and unlike his novels. Here are five bits from it that really spoke to me.

“Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound... And then sometimes I think the people to feel saddest for are people who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder – people who closed the doors that lead us into the secret world – or who had the doors closed for them by time and neglect and decisions made in times of weakness.”

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can’t ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it’s already happened.”

“...humans are the only animal to feel the pain of sorrow that has been stretched out through linear time ...our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time – our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events – a story – and when we can’t figure out what our particular story is we feel lost somehow. “Dogs only have a present tense in their lives,” ... Humans have to endure everything in life in agonizingly endless clock time – every single second of it. Not only this, but we have to remember having endured our entire lives as well.”

“I think that death is not just dying. I think death is a loss that can never be found again, words that can never be taken back, damage that can never be made whole. It is a denial of any possible future giving of love.”

“...we are living creatures – we have religious impulses – we must – and yet into what cracks do these impulses flow in a world without religion?”

(I’ve typed these up without permission. I would recommend you buy and read the book and all Douglas Coupland’s other books.)