The Shadow of the Day

The observant among you might notice that this is the first post I've made this year.

Others might have assumed that I'd make some kind of New Years Resolution to keep this blog up and running smoother and more frequently. You folks were wrong.

I did think about it. The same as I thought about losing weight, not swearing, becomming a mormon, and all the other stuff that comes with January-tinted-glasses. The fact is, this just wasn't the year for me to try and write a decent blog. I just don't have it in me.

Before anyone gets any misconceptions, I'd like to clarify that I do make New Years Resolutions, and for the most part I do manage to keep them up for a few months.

Last Years Resolutions:

No Chocolate;- lasted around forty minutes. 


No Swearing - lasted approximately four months.

Some people would say this statistic only adds to millions of other wasted resolutions; and that making them is a complete misuse of my time because it's highly unlikely that I might stick to them. Whenever I asks people what their resolutions are for the year, I nearly always get the same shabby "You don't need to make a resolution to change your life, if there's something you dislike about yourself, change it today..." I believe a few years ago back in 2009 I might have even posted a blog stating a similar kind of mantra.


Well guess what;


I still eat chocolate. Often.

There's definitly a right and a wrong way to make resolutions though. When people ask me what mine are, I'm careful to say "losing weight" and not "dieting." Note I how I've phrased the gesture so that it doesn't implicity state that I lay off the cake. I can eat cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner, providing it means at the end of the day, I at some point make a conscious effort to try and get rid of some flab - like doing starjumps while I scoff. It's a perfectly reasonable adjustment.


I also understand that people need to be realistic about making their resolutions. I knew I couldn't cut out the cake forever, but it doesn't mean that I didn't try to. I think it's a little too easy for people to brush off resolutions because they're too lazy to contemplate or even try to better themselves. I knew that I wouldn't be able to maintain a decent blog because there's not enough wonderful stuff in my brain to keep it going. Equally, until last Monday I was too bogged down with Uni work to breathe, let alone blog, and as much as I wanted to share my work with you guys, I knew it was still at a pretty low standard to try and put it out there yet. Much as I dedicated what time I could to the craft, I still wasn't quite there yet; I'd been trying to write poetry, and really failed at the entire process. Although I was relieved when I finally handed over my impressive looking portfolio, I knew the content was lacking.

It was this morning when I turned on the radio in my car that I heard a song with what I'd always thought of as simple lyrics. I'd never really paid attention to them before, as it was a song that had just kinda passed in and out of my mind without stopping to give it much thought, but listening to Linkin Park's Shadow of the Day genuinely stopped me in my tracks this morning, which is something quite beautiful when you think about it.

It made me think about myself, and what I wanted to achieve from life. It can start as something very small, but that desire to better yourself is all it needs for you to get up and make that first step; whatever time of year it is. A few months ago I blogged about the fact I was embarrassed to discuss literature with people because I didn't feel I had much to offer to the table because of the crummy books I'd read til now; I'd somehow manage to avoid ever hearing the storyline of Wuthering Heights for around seven years as a literature student.

Well today I just picked it up. It's a small step, but I'm going to get there; be it this year or the next.