thing13

I’ve had an increasingly strong urge to actually make something real, recently. So have started a woodwork course.

It was actually meant to happen a full year ago; the course was a present from Jen for my 30th. But procrastinator that I am, it’s taken until now (and until I have Ben, my old Edinburgh flatmate, to do it with) for me to get round to it.

I have made lots of things before, and been taught a lot of useful things by my uncle (who can make amazing things). But now that I have access to all the tools and all the expertise and all the time in the world… I can’t quite decide what to make.

It’s quite a seriously difficult decision, because it’s real. That’s the whole thing. If something goes wrong, or I change my mind, I can’t just press ⌘-Z.

But it’s very exciting. I think I’ll make a box.

I believe the phrase is “OMG”. Apple has announced the iPhone, surely the most eagerly - no, desperately eagerly - awaited bit of technology in the recent history of bits of technology.

Over the years, the “will-they-won’t-they?” debates became so extreme that it was impossible to trust anyone’s predictions; it was all just endless wishful thinking. But when even the best Mac blogger started guessing that it was going to happen, it all got rather exciting. Would they really try to reinvent the phone? Isn’t that a bit too amazing a prospect, even for Apple?

Nope. It’s real. And it’s exactly what I’d secretly been holding out for: pretty much a Newton-iPod hybrid, running OS X. But with a phone. And a camera. And a proper web browser. And everything else. Bloody amazing. It will be mine.

Autumn 2007. That’s a long time to be continuously hitting refresh…

This weekend, I have mostly been:

• discovering how to make pancakes just like I had in Canada and making myself very happy eating them
• putting a large number of scraps of paper that have things like “Inland Revenue” on them into the recycling bag. That’ll teach’em
• cycling around in the rain in London, when it would have been nicer inside with a cup of tea
• being inside with a cup of tea, where it was much nicer (especially with the food we had got while out in the rain)
• going to a gig where the sound was bad, and thinking about how I’m not in a band any more and how that is [insert word for it here], generally
• going to a yoga class for the first time, and feeling really quite strange in a very good way afterwards
• not being entirely sure how much of a good idea it is to go back to work again on Monday

So there I was, all ready to begin in top-notch super-motivated resolution-making mode. One minor plan among several exciting drunken ideas I had was to blog more. I’m not sure why I had this idea, and this is probably precisely why it’s taken until now to do the first entry of the year…

But anyway.

I once wrote a diary. It was of my 21st year - from my 20th to 21st birthdays - and I have to admit that, even if it does run out of steam by August, it makes mildly amusing reading in places. Cringeworthy in others, but that’s diaries for you.

Thing is, it’s now more than a decade later, and that’s a bit bloody astonishing.

Looking back at the diary, I really do seem a decade younger. All a bit “he said, she said” and “life is shit, ho hum”. A strong whiff of whinging depressive cynic… so, good to know I’m at least consistent. I can confidently state that I’m a bit less of a whinging depressive cynic now though. A bit less.

Anyway, at one point I thought it might be quite clever to try doing a diary that ran in parallel with the 1996 version. “This is what I was doing when I was 20, and this is what I was doing when I was 30…” You get the gist.

But I’ve missed the boat for that now. Nevermind. Probably a blessing in disguise for all concerned to be honest.

So, shall we do a diary for 2007? Report back on the new me, the one who Gets Things Done?

One step at a time, eh?