DarrenByrne.com

I wrote this on my way home on Friday night. I had forgotten all about it until now, going through my PDA (I tidied up the many drunken typo’s)…

I am on the Nitelink after a particularly unbalanced evening.

For my part, most of the evening was great fun. It was an old friend’s birthday – fantastic to catch up. I can’t quite explain why, but I feel an unusual sense of pride in knowing that his life has turned out well – he has a funny and beautiful girlfriend and a great group of friend who seem to hold him in high esteem. Many of the group are swing dancers, which all seems very interesting and I would love to give it a try, were it not for my knees, which are probably in worse condition than the newly exhumed Padre Pio’s or maybe Grandad’s.

I thought it funny that I found myself comparing meeting these ‘swingers’ to meeting the bloggers at the Blog Awards two weeks ago. Perhaps it was that I was, once again, in the Alexander Hotel. Perhaps! But I think it had more to do with the air of comradery which billowed from the room. In the same way that the bloggers were overwhelmingly positive, motivated by a common medium but varied interests, these swing dancers exuded positivity and clearly had much more to them, than a simple love of dancing. As a person who loves to watch the lives of others, an evening where a larger group interacts on a variety of levels is very stimulating and is fascinating to watch.

Two rather drunken dudes, sitting two seats behind me are discussing their future. I would guess they are between 24 and 28 years of age. The have both had their obligatory YIA (Year in Australia). Both have had two great nights out separately and have now just met on the Nitelink for the first time in many months. One says he’s started saving for a house, but it’s very expensive and he’s been trying to cut back on the non-essentials, including drinking. Dude 2 suggests Dude 1 should give up drinking for a year and he’d probably save a fortune. Dude 1 replies, “‘Stop Drinking’ is a very big word”. How true!

After that, it trails off into some odd notes about the night. I’ll try put some semblance of meaning to them later and write a post about my eventful weekend.

I have reached an impasse with regards my studies, as you may have read. My bothered brain isn’t sure what it wants to do or where it wants to go right now, so I have spoken with my course head and I have secured a six month deferral.

From my point of view, there are many advantages to this. I can use the time to grow personally, blah blah blah. No seriously, I think I need to take a fresh look at my life goals and priorities. There are things I’ve been wanting to do for years that I continuously put off.

I can also use this opportunity to work on my project for college. It is a 300,000,000,000 word piece which aims to show that you can make practical use of all that you have thus far learned. This will help me ensure I don’t lose sight of my course completely.

I have sought advice on this from a number of sources and thank you to everyone who helped me.

Sadly, very very sadly, Arthur C. Clarke has passed away. A visionary, a genius and a very entertaining man, Clarke was responsible for my initial fascination with Science Fiction. He introduced me to new worlds through his many short stories and then he showed me the future with 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequels.

At 90 years of age, he passed away in Sri Lanka. Take a second today to remember an incredible author and man.