What's with birthdays?

Up until a certain age, you are asked every year in the lead-up to your birthday "Are you excited to be turning <insert age>?"


For me, the answer is almost always no. Aside from turning 18 and preparing myself for the giddy excitement of approaching a bouncer/off licence counterperson with a sense of almost God-given entitlement to the right to purchase an alcoholic beverage, the idea of the digits I put down on forms changing slightly has for a long time not been one which has filled me with awe. Of course, when you are still in single digits, your birthday was Attention Day and consequently the most important day of the year after Christmas (and for me Halloween as well, but I had a thing for explosions and mischief, still do). Leaving aside those years, only 13 has ever seemed significant to me. I was officially a teenager. But even then, I didn't really understand the fuss.

Let's think about this for a second though. What exactly are you celebrating? Nothing changes on your birthday. You don't get taller or smarter. You don't 'level up' like you might in a computer game. The simple fact is that the Earth has made its merry way around the Sun one more time since you came into the world. But it hasn't. I was born at 8 minutes past 8pm on the 18th of August (the 8th month), weighing in at 8 pounds and 8 ounces. Of course this means nothing, but there is one important statistic there - 8:08pm. The Earth actually takes 365 days and 6 hours to make one full circle of the Sun, so really, apart from leap years I should be celebrating my birth on the 19th of August every year. First at 2:08am, then next year at 8:08am, then at 2:08pm then again at 8:08pm on the 18th of a leap year. To celebrate my birth in those exact minutes would be to know the planet is moving through the exact point in space it was so many years before at the very moment moment I was born. The actual date is not significant. I would propose a new celebration - that of the birthmoment or birthminute - but really, who could be arsed. I do like the idea of a general celebration - a birthmonth, I have elected to name it - around the fortnight before and after you were born. If you are going to celebrate another year older, why be specific to the day? And frankly getting presents for being older is a stupid idea unless you are really young or really old. Milestones? Really?

Of course, one thing I forgot to mention is that I recently did turn 21 (I should, at this point, point out that any birthday messages and/or presents I have recieved from people were of course very welcome and nice to hear/have! Though I don't quite get the principle, I do appreciate the sentiment). Unlike my 18th, 19th and 20th birthdays (which usually would have been cause for celebration) I decided to go all traditional and make an effort to have something like a party for my 21st. The rest can be explained in pictures...

Awesome haul - one is a cake and another is something I'd lost... Oh for the Christmases of years gone by!

This was what I had lost. If you are an dose like me and getting an iPod - get your home phone number engraved on the back of it (and your name - personal touch makes people feel guilty). It has twice saved my iPod from being lost forever! A kind stranger found this and called the number. Luckily my Dad was home to pick up.

Great cake. I do like a good cake. Pity no-one ate it.

More like it. Getting really drunk is what a 21st is really all about after all. No idea why. Answers on a postcard please. The washing up liquid at the end wasn't part of the session, but if it had, it wouldn't have been the most foul-tasting component. I'm looking at you absinthe.

So after all this we went out on the town. Long story short - I was wished a happy birthday by more people than I remember meeting and thrown out of more drinking emporiums than I remember entering. Ah well, you're only 21 once, might as well not remember anything past about 10:45pm. So I spent the rest of the night back at my friend's house slowly slipping further down the couch:

Having the time of my life.

Still having the time of my life - just slightly lower down.

Lower still - if any guys are finding this oddly attractive, don't fret I was attacked with make-up, and so probably look oddly feminine.

Just hiding the make-up. Really doesn't get any better!

Less than flattering photographs there, but it actually was a great night! Go figure!

Well, this is awkward...

It is awkward. It's that awkward second post, but it's not like I wasn't expecting this. Writing is awkward. A few friends of mine have tried their hand at journals, short stories and the like, and they all say the same thing - that they have started, blazed out a few paragraphs, and then hit a wall. The mind goes blank, that initial well of ideas suddenly seems bone dry and what they have written is deleted or thrown away. Maybe you can relate, I know I can, and right now I am at my wall. My blog-wall, or 'blall' in internet-speak (or at least it should be).

Benjamin Franklin once said, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." Well, (and this may be quite a dubious link, but bear with me) there nothing better for getting over The Wall than writing about The Wall itself (links don't come much more dubious but as repeatedly mentioned I am at The Wall so cut me some slack).

There is no easy way around The Wall, and The Wall can't be climbed. It has to be broken through. It is often said that near the end of a marathon, runners will hit The Wall. Just they have to try to forget their physical pain and keep on running, a would-be writer has to just swallow their pride and keep on writing. And this is just what I am doing, though I feel more like Simon Pegg's character in Run Fatboy Run than a Kenyan world champion.

That notion of 'swallowing your pride' raises another issue for wannabe writers. When you write something, you have an audience in mind. It's not difficult to keep a diary or a journal just for yourself to look back on, but when you begin to write, for instance, a blog, you intend it to be read. That is a whole other thing. It's hard to put yourself out there. No matter how much you might tell yourself you are impervious to criticism, if your words are meant to be read, the opinions of the people who read them matter. Especially if you have a direct intended audience (which, thankfully, I don't).

Now, I'm not asking whoever reads this to go easy on me. I like to think I can take the majority of anything thrown at me on the chin. But if for most writers the sudden dearth of ideas make up The Wall, then crippling insecurites are most certainly the foundations. I imagine the feeling just before hitting enter and putting up a blog post is something similar to a singer-songwriter just about to test a new song on an audience. Here goes nothing.

Because I was bored...

Like any young guy in Northern Ireland, boredom can be a major factor in any decision I make. It is responsible for at least 40% of my motivation to start a blog in the first place. So I think it is fitting that my first post be on the topic of boredom, and the often strange things it can make me do.

Pictures and everything! This is my room at the homestead in Aughlisnafin. To put this picture in context, I have recently returned from a hectic month at an American university, and am now expected to reacquaint myself with permanently grey skies and countryside isolation. The blow is not softened by the fact that the last few days in the States had been spent in amongst the huge buildings of Chicago and the flights home included a lay-over in Newark Airport, complete with panoramic views of the New York skyline. Waking up to panoramic views of the Mourne Mountains, nice as they are, did not exactly excite me the same way. And sure there are worse things in the world than walking outside to see fields and maybe the odd gathering of cows, but after that being par for the course for my first 19 years, the experience of walking out into a relatively busy campus was one that was difficult not to miss. Suddenly I felt like an astronaut on a spacewalk who's rope broke off and was now drifting away into space. Crippling isolation. Craving human contact I turned to the Holy Book of Connecting People - Facebook. With uploading a few hundred photos of Chicago as my excuse I trawled its pages for craic, clicking on profile after profile. After one particular session, longer than I care to mention, spent semi-comatose in front of my little netbook, I decided enough was enough. I was going to have to do something productive, something I was putting off, something that might take a few hours and require some effort, the sort of heroic thing my mother would do if she had a free afternoon, something even more productive than throwing sticky darts at the wall.

I was going to raise myself mightily from my soft and warm seat in the living room, march down the all and... clear out my drawers. Hence the mound of crap on my bed, most of which was chucked out (sentimentality is so overrated).

I can honestly say that the whole process has so far benefited me in no way whatsoever. The crap hidden away in those drawers was hidden away in those drawers for a reason. It was crap. But I felt better afterwards. I admit, as shameful as it is for someone legally an adult, part of the reason for that was the metaphorical pat on my little puppy head from my mother for having briefly imitated her spring cleaning ways. Other than that, it took my mind of where I wasn't anymore for a little while. The question now is whether the slow-moving boredom and isolation of Aughlisnafin has put me back in touch with my senses or has aided my taking leave of them that little bit more. I think what me and a few friends did the next day to pass the time might give a clue as to the answer.

We drove 30 miles to play the playstation. 30 miles. And it was totally worth it.

The summer months of the Belfast university student whose origins lie in the countryside are largely spent at the parent's home (and so too, sadly, are the majority of weekends, but that's another issue). So after some organising (always difficult factoring in football trainings, etc.) a car-load of five of us took a trip up for the night to one of the student houses lying rented and dormant during the month of August and had a FIFA tournament. I fared incredibly poorly but that wasn't the point (it wasn't the point). We escaped our homes and did something, which is more than can be said for our average day during summer. Breaking things up a bit keeps us sane, but there always seems to be to be a bit of added mental to a guy who has been cooped up for an extended period of time. Exhibit A from that night:

My friend is wearing boxes on his feet because the floor is wet. I guess that makes sense. Empty beer boxes tell their own story however. Boredom leads to drinking. Fact.

On another note, boredom and drinking are both cited as factors in the current big news story: the London riots. There are many commentators who have, over the past few days, mentioned many different possible causes of the outbreaks of unrest, but as the trouble continues, it is clear that this is not the work of Anarchist groups or a reaction to police brutality, but the work of young guys who are spending summer sitting at home with nothing else to do. There is a culture of thuggery and bullying in England which has led these guys to jump at the excuse to go outside in the evening to rob, steal and destroy. The rioters are going out and tearing their communities apart where a sane person would just play angry birds or some other ridiculous iPhone game.

Maybe as more iPhones get nicked the streets will become steadily safer. All the tracksuits will be at home trying to slice fruit like a ninja (love that game). On Sky News now there is a woman saying that young people in these areas have a sense of unfulfilled entitlement. They might be from disadvantaged areas with limited prospects (some aren't particularly), and state cuts may have hit young people in these areas (I guess it could be a chav-led movement to destabilize the coalition government). Somehow I doubt if asked one of the enterprising fellows trying to pull a monitor of the wall in Ladbrokes why he was doing that he would tell you he had a burning sense of alienation from the Big Society. The rioters are not fighting the police, or society, they are looting. They are smashing in windows and kicking down doors because the only other thing they have done that day was eat a bag of chips in a 'suped-up' Volkswagen Golf.

Of course, the rioting is about more than just overflowing boredom, there is a strong element of opportunism behind what's going on, as well as that ever-present human need to destroy. Today I saw footage of a young man dazed with a head injury being helped to his feet just so his bag could be rifled through. Last night a furniture business over 100 years old was burnt to the ground. No amount of boredom, no amount of alcohol, is an excuse for that type of behaviour. Another man on Sky News has just called it 'aggressive late night shopping'. More like it.

The moral of the story is: if you want to escape your boredom by all means drive 30 miles to play FIFA, or wear boxes on your feet, or clean out your drawers, or even have a few drinks; but by no means take it out on another person. Don't blame those around you, don't blame society, don't mope (unless you are into that sort of thing). Do something, or just enjoy being bored. And (you would think this was obvious) don't riot.