Post the seventh

Posted on September 4, 2010 at 5:47 am by Joe

Just a quick one on the ‘logging off’ thing. It’s only been a week that I’ve been ‘offline’ but it’s been good. It’s been different, at least. I get frustrated when there’s nothing to read on Reddit or Lifehacker but then I remember that there was rarely anything interesting to read on Facebook or Twitter so it’s not like I’m missing out on much (apart from the stuff I mentioned earlier.

I might not even go back. Not for a bit at least. I hate that there are certain things I almost feel that I ‘have’ to go back for (e.g. ‘events’, which is actually a useful thingy on there). Anyway, I’m not back yet, and still ‘offline’!

On the other hand, being ‘offline’ still hasn’t helped me to stop going to bed late though – hello quarter to six in the morning!

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Post the sixth

Posted on September 4, 2010 at 5:34 am by Joe

When I woke up today my upper body ached. I’m not sure if this was a good thing, as in ‘obviously I have worked those muscles hard’ or a bad thing as in ‘obviously I have worked those muscles too hard’.

Anyway, today I went to the gym again (even though I technically haven’t joined yet, aren’t I naughty) and the hour of cardio that I started off with was torture. I was rubbish. It took me ages to get up to my target heart rate and I tired much quicker than yesterday  - I think this is a sign that smoking and working out don’t go well together; yesterday I only had one cigarette, today I had, well, several before even going to the gym and the difference was definitely noticeable – which is to say, I noticed it. I suppose if either the gym or smoking is going to have to go it should be the smoking.

Falling off the treadmill wasn’t a highlight, either. I had to get some Lucozade after doing my cardio because I felt like I was going to have one of my hilarious fits and that wouldn’t have been good. I then had a go with some arm strength stuff and either my chest/arm muscles were tired from yesterday or they were no good to start with.

ALSO, I have been thinking about my dissertation (which I should really have been doing about a month ago) and I’ve realised that I have no idea how to turn the general idea of ‘something about Natural Law’ into a 13,000 word dissertation. It’s OK, though, I’ve downloaded some podcasts. So it’s obviously in the bag.

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Post the fifth

Posted on September 3, 2010 at 1:01 am by Joe

So today I had my induction at the gym. It was good; I even stayed for an hour and a half doing cardio stuff afterwards.

So paint the lines beneath your eyes,
To hide the pain beneath the lies,
You’re chasing streetlights home tonight,
You’re chasing streetlights home.

-From ‘Edie’ by Leddra Chapman. I was walking to the shop this evening and I wanted to listen to this song but I couldn’t remember the song title or artist (I never can recall the details of this particular song). So I just put my ‘phone on shuffle. I skipped through the first two songs that came up and the third song to play was ‘Edie’! So I was like, :) but then afterwards Coldplay came on and I was like, :( .

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Post the fourth

Posted on September 2, 2010 at 1:17 am by Joe

I went and joined a gym yesterday.

Well, that’s almost a complete lie. I went and spoke to a guy at the local leisure centre. I want to improve my overall fitness level and I feel that this will give me a concrete reason to quit smoking, in that quitting smoking will contribute to my overall goal  of becoming more healthy and maintaining a higher level of fitness.

So, tomorrow (actually today, as in Thursday (ergo no Winchester for me today)) I am going in at 1800 for my induction. As in, some guy will show me how to use all of these scary machines that are designed (I fucking hope) by fantastic PhDs to tone and strengthen my muscles and cardiovascular system. (Please, no-one tell me that my cardiovascular system’s strength is comprised, essentially, of two muscles – I like to keep ‘muscles’ and ‘cardiovascular’ separate.)

Anyway, the people that I saw in the gym seemed incredibly toned and fit (in comparison to myself – the rep I spoke to actually asked if I was going for ‘geek chic’ – cheers, mate). I’m not looking for that level of fitness just yet, I just want to be able to swim more than three lengths without my legs giving out.

Also, You Me At Six, Paramore and Thirty Seconds To Mars are playing within a reasonable distance (not all at the same time, that would be fucking hectic) and I think I would like to go to at least one. I haven’t seen a live gig for so long.

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Post the third

Posted on August 30, 2010 at 6:27 am by Joe

Oh yea,

I’ve come up with something new I want to do (this is the third thing in twelve months). By ‘something new’ I don’t mean, like, stamp collecting or photography or rock climbing. I mean as in a job/career/vocation/whatever you want to call it.

I want to be a nurse.

Yes, a nurse. Nick gave me a lift home from the barbecue on Saturday and in the car we got talking about the fact that I’d always been interested in doing a degree in Medicine or Nursing. My best friend is a nurse and I have always been interested in medicine/anatomy/biology and I like caring for children, so I think nursing (child nursing, specifically) could be a great career for me.

I said to Nick that the main reason I don’t fancy doing it now is that after two years of my Law degree I really don’t want to stay in uni for another five or three years (for Medicine or Nursing, respectively). Nick said that she’d been at uni for eight years before she qualified as a doctor (three years for her Biomedical Sciences degree and then five for Medicine) and that being a student for eight years was pretty good – I couldn’t argue with that.

I said that I might do the Primary Teaching PGCE after my Law degree and then see what I wanted to do. Nick reasoned that I would still need to do my NQT year after that, so I would still be doing two years post-graduation if I do the teaching thing. The conversation basically gave me ‘food for thought’ so I looked online when I got in.

I looked on Southampton Uni’s website and found the Child Nursing courses. For their Bachelor of Nursing degree the entry requirements are BBC at A-Level , which I did not get (I got lazy in college). However, they do a postgraduate diploma which leads to registration with the Nursing and Midwifery Council – the entry requirements are a 2:2 honours degree and maths GCSE A*-C (or equivalent). I already have the Maths and should certainly be able to get my 2:2.

The course looks really good as it is ’50 per cent theory, 50 per cent practical nursing experience, with hands-on experience from year one’1 – exactly the sort of thing I am looking for after two years in a heavily academic subject like Law. The location is really good, as well. The university campus is up in Highfield and placements are in Southampton, Winchester, Basingstoke and the Isle of Wight so nice and local.

Also, no tuition fees and a six and a half grand bursary!

Competition for Nursing places is tough, though, and I don’t know if my application will be strong enough as it is. My experience with HCPT will be a plus as will volunteering at Naomi House, which I hope to start soon. Even my time volunteering at St. Anthony’s Primary School will have been helpful as I want to do child nursing. Nick did say that it would be beneficial if I could get some experience of a care environment, though. I am going to an open day at the uni next week so hopefully that will give me a better idea of things and what kind of a chance I stand of getting in. Fingers crossed!

Oh, so as a result of this I’m on UCAS once again. Feels weird.

OH, I just remembered – that USSHS thing on Facebook was the University of Southampton School of Health Services.

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Post the second

Posted on August 30, 2010 at 4:16 am by Joe

I came across this video via Reddit:

…And it reminded me (as I have been reminded recently) that people can be things, and do things, that I might not expect.

It reminded me that I can’t have preconceived ideas of who people really are, because every once in a while someone will surprise you with something amazing and fantastic.

Then I saw that ‘Young, Dumb and Living off Mum’ was on BBC3 and I thought, “Well, I reserve the right to judge these idiots.” It was the final and the guy who won was so happy and felt so good he said, “You’d have to be inside of me to feel what I feel right now.”

And I felt awful.

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Post the first

Posted on August 30, 2010 at 3:32 am by Joe
Back in a bit.

...

Ra ra ra.

So, I’m offline, sort of.

I spent most of Thursday evening/Friday night doing not a lot but surfing Reddit and every five minutes (or less) going ‘⌘-t f <enter> ⌘-t t <enter>’ (which sequence of keystrokes basically opens up a tab with Facebook and a tab with Twitter). At 0700 Friday morning I decided that this was not a productive use of an evening/night. Also, I have a dissertation to research and ‘it would be useful’ if I were to learn Latin for it (yay).

So, I deactivated my Facebook account and left a ‘bye-bye (for now)’ message on my Twitter account. I deleted the Facebook and Twitter apps from my ‘phone. I was offline.

So, yea, it’s been, like, two or three days that I’ve been ‘logged off’.

I haven’t missed Facebook. The only thing is that there might be pages (as in, ‘pages’ – not people) that I want to see but can’t see unless I’m logged in. There’s only been one Facebook page I wanted to see (USSHS – but more about that in a later post).

I’d actually say that I’ve missed Twitter more. Well, not ‘missed’, per se, and it’s not really Twitter itself that I’ve missed. Sorry, I just went and made noodles and I’ve forgotten where I was going with the ‘not ‘missed’, per se’ bit, as I can’t think of another verb to use in place of ‘missed’. I think what I meant was that it’s not Twitter I miss as much as the people. There’s a few (like, three or four) people on Twitter that I interact with (as in @replies and such). I miss that interaction with those people – seeing their ups and downs, their adventures and everyday lives, and helping them when I could.

I think it’s weird that it’s these people that I feel most disconnected from. But what I think is more interesting is that I don’t feel the same way about Facebook. I have four hundred and something friends on Facebook (people from school, college, uni, work, church, other friends) but it is very rare that I interact with any of them actually on Facebook. My wall is mostly

  1. my friend Rich posting funny stuff/inside jokes
  2. ‘news’ stuff such as ‘Joe is now friends with ‘x”/photos I’ve been tagged in/’events’ I’m attending or have attended/groups I’ve joined (mostly stupid/joke ones
  3. (rarely, to be honest) other people posting things on my wall.

In terms of my use/interaction I most usually

  1. read people’s vaguely amusing status updates
  2. look on other people’s profiles (very rarely anything interesting)
  3. check out events – which very often are invites to events I have no interest in attending. This is useful when my friends are having a party/night out and I want to see who is attending (and who I want to see – or don’t want to see, as the case may be.

I hardly ever update my status on Facebook – which was one of the first features of Facebook; indeed I remember when I first signed up in 2006 there wasn’t much more to Facebook than one’s own profile page (I still appreciate the restrictions that have stopped it from becoming the garish mess that MySpace turned into), updating one’s status and writing on others’ walls. After seeing so many status updates from others and thinking, why did you think anyone would appreciate you sharing that with us? I decided that I could save that for Twitter. And if people following me don’t like that, well, the ‘unfollow’ button is in the same place on my page as it is on everybody else’s.

…Twitter, then. The few people I do ‘talk’ to on there, I actually seem to have meaningful, informative, useful and thoughtful conversations with – I feel that it’s communication with value. I have known one friend on Twitter since we were in secondary school together and we’ve always been close but he refuses to get Facebook (fair enough). Consequently we communicate almost solely via Twitter, despite having one another’s ‘phone numbers. The 140-character limit on Twitter is a bitch, yet there is actually one person I talk to on there with whom I have exchanged three or four tweets at a time just so that we could convey what we wanted to say. This was despite the fact that we are friends on Facebook and could communicate on there far more easily. I don’t understand it, either.

On the other hand, Since I ‘logged off’ I have realised how inane my tweets were. At times I have thought of tweeting things before realising that I wasn’t ‘on’ Twitter anymore. Some of the things I thought of tweeting are:

  • I’m having a cup of tea
  • I’m watching ‘Outbreak’ on BBC1
  • I’m going to a barbecue
  • I’m drinking wine and it’s really nice
  • There’s a big moth

…*le sigh*. I’m not sure whether my tweets add anything worthwhile. to the internet. I’m going to add any such UnTweets to a page up there ↑.

If anyone has sent me an @reply since I signed off, sorry, I didn’t get it. Since posting the ‘bye-bye’ message I haven’t checked Twitter at all – I’m only receiving DMs. And if it looks like I’ve deleted you from Facebook, I haven’t, I’ve just dropped off the page for a while.

So, yea, I’m gone from Facebook and I’m not sure that I care. But I miss Twitter, or at least the people. And I still keep going ‘⌘-t f <enter> ⌘-t t <enter>’ (it just brings up the login page now) but I haven’t gone back to either of them. Not yet. And I’m not sure when I will, either.

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