New Year, Same Shit

I'm struggling to think of anything more depressing than taking the Christmas decorations down. I should clarify further; in previous years the de-Christmasification of the household has not been something I have necessarily objected to. In fact, if I remember rightly the experience is usually almost bittersweet; nonetheless tinged with  some sadness, yet overall progressive, dissolving away the festivities into something altogether more sobering and a tad exciting; the New Year. But this year I can't help but feel less enthusiastic about the coming of the New Year, nor the passing of Christmas.

It may be something to do with the fact the decorations didn't go up until the 19th (which is, quite frankly, fucking disgraceful), so in a sense it feels Christmas hasn't lasted long enough. Its end has felt abrupt rather than the usual conclusion of it becoming tedious, which may be another reason why the New Year has previously felt so refreshing. Additionally, with the passing of Christmas I now have no excuse to loll about in chocolate wrappers playing with all my new things and actually get that English essay done. Make no mistake; my sentiment towards Christmas, though relatively strong for my age and demographic, has no religious foundation whatsoever. My sentiment is very, well, sentimental; Christmas dinner, The Snowman, visits from relatives (Gran on Christmas Eve, Nan on Christmas Day; if this sacred order is ever broken, I fear my sanity would completely collapse) Coronation Street, the bumper edition of the Radio Times and so on. I still maintain that Christmas, alongside The Vicar of Dibley, are the two only good things to come out of Christianity, but that still doesn't mean I really care about the religious origin. You don't need me to tell you that Christmas has become a near-secular, commercialised holiday, but I'll tell you anyway; Christmas has become a near-secular, commercialised holiday.

This year, Christmas has been routinely pleasant, though my mind has unfortunately been elsewhere for much of it. I won't divulge the details (firstly because baring too much of myself would only add another strain to my habit of constant self-assessment; secondly, as it'll make me sound even more of a whiny dickhead), but just as I feel mentally sound enough to approach Christmas full-on, it goes, as physically manifested by the removal of baubles from a plastic tree. You may understand my disdain for New Year when Christmas is still very much in my system. In other words, I'm absolutely dreading New Year, yet the source of this dread surely can't be of mere sentimentality of a passing holiday.

If anything, 2013 is shaping up to go quite well. I'll be sitting my first AS examinations (hold on, let me explain; I'm not the kind to necessarily anticipate exams, but I feel that 'exam time' as a whole, as stressful as it is, is often quite rewarding in retrospect. When not in the exam period there is less urgency; less urgency breeds boredom, boredom breeds depression, and depression breeds self-indulgent blogs), I've recently been accepted to attend a University of Cambridge Shadowing Scheme for three days in February (owing to the fact the scheme targets students from disadvantaged backgrounds, I've come up with two hypothesis; either I'm actually quite clever, or my secondary school really was awful. You conclude which.), and other than that I can't think of anything to dread.

Yet still, I'm really not looking forward to it. As previously mentioned, I usually really enjoy the New Year, yet also as previously mentioned, I don't feel ready nor inclined to enjoy it. I've reached that awful state of boredom where it feels that whatever you do will be equally ineffective in lifting your spirits. I'm even struggling to finish this blog with an actual conclusion. So I might just end it now. Abruptly.

Elliott

The Obligatory Introduction

I'm getting quite sick of writing these, and those familiar with my previous blogs may be experiencing a similar sentiment; that is, that they are sick of reading them. For both our sakes I shall briefly explain my reasons for the creation of this new little project, and why hopefully this won't limp off after a few installments. The concept here is not to write a 'blog' as such, but to house any artistic endeavour I should so please to pursue. To put that less irritatingly, the issue with my previous blogs was that they were quite limited; I grew bored with my last as I felt limited to merely complaining about things, and besides that, I never really liked the idea of a blog anyway. Though this website will indeed contain some posts that are quite bloggish, I plan to refrain from 2000-word rants and instead write a range of things- reviews, shorter diary-like entries, perhaps even the odd short story or poem. Of course, as is always the case, it is far more likely that I'll get bored after a few days and just leave it. In fact, I'm getting a bit bored now, so bye.

Elliott