Exams 2

      So, this is the second quasi-post that I've been forced to do because of all the revision I'm doing. I'm posting this one a bit earlier than usual because I want to go to bed reasonably early and I want to watch Sherlock on iPlayer before I do. You may feel I've been lying to you about the very important revision I've got to do being the cause of the half-arsedness of these posts when I can change the time I post them based on my viewing habits, but there is a very good reason for this. Unfortunately I want to keep this blog accessible to people of all intelligence and the reason is so extremely complex that I just don't think many of my readers would understand it. It's not that I'm a lazy, hedonistic jerk that doesn't care about my audience, it's that I care too much. Totally.

      Another development on this blog: to mark the 100th person moaning about its layout giving them migraines I've re-designed it. Now, if this layout still gives you headaches or nausea or the long expanse of black with just a thin line of white lower down the page makes you feel like you've been bound and gagged then thrown in the back of a BMW while all the time terrified for your life don't hesitate to leave a suggestion in the comments. Actually, for that last one you should probably seek professional help, as it's possible your problems run deeper than the design of my blog.

      Anyway, as well as having an exam I also have my 18th birthday this week. This means that, by many definitions, I will be an adult. This terrifies me. Not because I'm afraid of being an adult per-se, I'm quite at peace with that, it's more that when you're young you always expect that there will be one day when you suddenly mature and become an adult, because they'd never let anyone who hadn't matured in this way make important decisions or run the country. But as I get older I realise more and more that adults are in fact just older, taller and hairier children. Or, as will be my case, an older and hairier child. It's just a bit depressing to realise there is now only really a numerical age difference between me and the majority of important people. Except they're important, which is another difference.

      On the plus side, when I'm 18 there'll be a whole list of websites I've been totally unable to get onto so far due to an impenetrable barrier in the form of a button asking my age that I'll finally be able to visit. So that's exciting.

Bitter 16

On Monday I shall have my 16th birthday and I realised that once I have lived another 16 years I'll be 32. This lead me to have a little bit of a quarter life crisis, wondering what I'd accomplished so far. So let's look back at the last 16 years of my life and see.

The first 2 or 3 years were quite good as I learnt to crawl, walk and talk, as well as many other skills. Through primary school not much happened to be honest, I was violent and a tad insane but apart from that it was all pretty much normal. Throughout my high school years I've become less violent and more insane. But what have I achieved?

To be honest, I can't actually think of anything noteworthy. Pages of incomplete scripts and books is hardly an achievement or a legacy. Weak political and philosophical ideas that would never hold up under even the lightest level of scrutiny aren't either.

But maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. If I'm measuring my achievements by their impact on the world maybe I should be looking at my effects on a smaller scale and my direct impact on what makes up the world; people. Any two people who interact with each other for any amount of time will have an impact on each other. So I must have had an impact on everyone I've ever met, no matter how little. The question is, was it overall a positive or negative impact on the people I've known? This depends on how you think of an impact, as even someone who hurts someone else can still make them stronger, so is it a positive impact?

I can't answer that and I can't say what kind of impact I had on each person, but I know I had one. And anyone who impacts one person, impacts the world.

So I'll put that as my greatest achievement.

Maybe I'll have some real ones in the next 16 years and won't have to make a rubbish excuse again.