Commitment

It's weird to think I haven't been to a seminar at university for over four months now. Weirder that my last exam was in May and more than that, it's been two weeks since I graduated. That one will take a long time to sink, I reckon.

All in all, life as a graduate hasn't been too different. I'm working full time now but the lack of funding from Student Finance means I don't get to go out as much as I used to and I'm still not completely ready to jump back into writing again. More on that later.

So, I'm going to put more time and effort into this blog. I'll be following up my RPG genre post and exploring tangents from it, maybe so movie and book reviews, as well as things I find interesting throughout the week. Consistency is the key, I hope.

Job hunting

One thing I've never been a fan of is job hunting. It's something that my friends and I, along with almost every other graduate out there, are going through right now. The problem I'm having is that there are very few entry level jobs, and all the things I've done in university seems to count for very little so far. In time, I hope that will change but I'm under no illusions that my current state of mind is still enjoying the freedom of not having a "real" job right now. I do have plans, and I don't want to be in my 30's/40's by the time they start to happen.

Those plans keep me tied to Manchester. I'm not complaining too much about this, as I love the place and want to stay here for the foreseeable future, providing the work is here. I think a lot of it now is who you know, not what you know, and being lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time.

Hungary Grand Prix

It's no secret that I'm a massive F1 fan and this season has been fantastic so far. My only complaint is that I can't watch every race live, and through no fault of work (for once). I cannot afford Sky, let alone the sports package needed to watch every race on their channel. The BBC coverage is good but watching highlights is not the same, especially as I usually hear the result from someone or somewhere before I get to see the highlights for myself.

This weekend should provide an interesting race; a week after Fernando Alonso's third win of the season, the rule changes from the Red Bull engine mapping incident, and from today's practise sessions, the improved McLaren pace. While Friday practise is no evidence of pure pace, it is good to see the British drivers having a good start to the weekend, and hopefully they can carry on throughout the event. It will be even more interesting to see how much pace the Red Bull cars have actually lost, with the team saying it makes very little difference. If this is true, we could have five or six cars fighting for the victory on Sunday.

Safe to say I'm a little excited!

Writing again...almost

Ever since handing my dissertation in earlier this year, I've had very little motivation and inspiration to do any writing. It's annoying because I have a few projects on the go that I want to get back into but my random working hours and huge amounts of energy spent on job hunting has just stopped me from feeling any enthusiasm to any of them.

So, not only do I have a novel to redraft and a sequel to write in this year's National Novel Writing Month in November, I want to continue and finish the first draft of my dissertation by the end of the year as well as working on a sci-fi story too. Lots of projects and that's not even all of them. I also have an idea for another fantasy story and I'm pulling together ideas and pieces of information for that in the hope it will encourage me to write something - anything. I also hope this blog will help with this too. I'm going to post some pieces of writing here too, just to get it out there and maybe find some feedback!

Guild Wars 2

Less than a month before release!!! I'm going to spend a lot of time on this, but with enough will power, it won't interfere with the more important goals of doing some writing. I played the first two Beta Weekend Events but unfortunately I missed the final event due to the release of The Dark Knight Rises (an epic film that you should watch if you haven't already!). It just so happened to coincide with the release of the Sylvari and Asruan races, both of which I have been waiting to play since the BWE's began!

Then again, nothing will be spoiled for me on release, so there is a silver lining, and one I'm very much looking forward to!

Busy busy busy

It's been a bit longer than I had hoped since my last post, but I had to move at the beginning of the month and only just got Internet access back on my laptop - I didn't fancy writing a blog post from my phone!

I've set up a new e-mail address as well, and I do wish Google just had an option to change e-mail addresses or transfer control over easily, but that doesn't seem to be the case (unless I completely missed it and if so, I'm going to feel like an idiot...).

Other than moving, the big thing that's been going on for me has been the second Manchester Children's Book Festival, organised by MMU. The first festival took place in 2010 and it was a fantastic achievement and I was proud to be a part of it but this year has taken it to a whole new level for its second year. I missed most of the Family Fun Day on Saturday 30th June due top moving, which happened two years ago as well - I'm hoping to make sure this does not happen in two years time - but in the last hour, I managed to talk to a lot of the families attending and everyone had a great day with the zombie make-up being a big big hit!

Last night, Thursday 5th July, I volunteered at the Philip Pullman event and that was a fantastic evening with some interesting insights into his work and themes inside his writing, as well as a good way to get a bit closer to the author himself1 I'm a big fan of Philip Pullman's work, especially the His Dark Materials trilogy, which I did manage to get signed at the end. Hopefully there will be a photo to follow!

The man himself is a great role model for any writer, as he seems to be devoid of ego. He writes because he wants to, it's his passion and that's something I can really relate to as I feel the same way. There is nothing that I found I could dislike about him, even if I wanted to. He may have differing views on things from me but so do a lot of people and that has never stopped me from respecting or getting along with anyone. One day, I'd like to have a longer talk with him and go into further detail about things I found curious in his writing but there is hopefully plenty of time for that!

This afternoon I attended an event at the Museum of Science and Industry, here in Manchester. This was to announce the winner of the Midland Future Manchester competition, of which I helped judge the entries and create the shortlist that the winner was chosen from. The standard of the writing from these young people is astounding and very scary for someone like me, who can already see that in a few years, they will be at my level or even better. It shows that I can't stop writing for too long or risk missing out completely!

I do want to mention something else, on a much sadder note. Earlier this week, one of the F1 test drivers, Maria de Villota was involved in an accident during a straight line test and suffered serious injuries. It was her first time in the current F1 car and she has lost her right eye as a result of the accident, which is an awful thing to happen to anyone. Thankfully, while her condition is described as critical, it is also stable and anyone who reads this, I hope you join me and many other people all over the world in wishing her a speedy recovery. My thoughts also go to her family who must be suffering as well. It is a great thing that so many names in the F1 paddock are offering their support and wishes to someone who is new to this formula and it shows that even though each team is competing against each other, they are also part of a larger body that works together to help in the hard times.

A lot of people over the world can learn from this. Hopefully when they see communities and organisations doing this, it will happen more often and reach more people.