Brendan Devenney

The weather today has been so bleak. It’s neither cold nor warm, neither wet nor dry, neither sunny nor dark. It’s just grey. It’s days like this that make me wish I lived somewhere with a less erratic, depressing climate. When the sky’s grey, everything outside looks even greyer than usual - and where I live, that’s remarkable. I never thought it was possible until today. I hear we have a heatwave heading towards us around next weekend though so there is hope yet. It’d be quite nice if the weather sorted itself out for a few days at least, in order for Laura and I to actually do something nice on or around our anniversary.

And on that topic, I still find it hard to believe that it’s been a year already. It feels like just a few weeks ago we were celebrating New Year, and a few weeks before that was summer. Time has really started to fly - perhaps that is a sign that life is much more enjoyable these days? I mean, when you’re bored or upset the time drags - and, as everyone says, time flies when you’re having fun. Maybe that’s the way to measure how good your relationship is. To all of you people in stable relationships, do you find time passes faster these days than it did prior to the relationship? I’m actually really interested to know now.

We did get some nice weather earlier in the week but Laura spent the entire time asleep so it went to waste. I get really stressed out when I’m not able to get up at a decent time, have breakfast and head out when it’s nice weather throughout the week. I try to keep some form of structure in my life so university doesn’t shock my routine too much: early nights and early mornings throughout the week, later nights and longer sleeps at the weekend. Whenever anything interferes with this structure I end up in a really irritable mood.

It also knocked my exercise routine for six, so I’m going to make sure I pick that back up on Monday. Shouldn’t be too hard to do, I just need to make sure I manage to get up early enough to kick everything back into line.

Somebody come walking with me on Tuesday or Thursday morning, please? I’ll love you forever if you do.

This market research, man. It asks me questions that make me seriously question my views on the world. I only signed up for a market research project on fizzy drinks, not psychoanalysis.

But the thought going around my head today is this: what is the difference between a good life and a bad life? Is it the events in the past that shape your quality of life? No, it’s not. I’ve been through as much, if not more, bad shite in my time as the next person. So what else could it be, perhaps you’re just born thinking life is good or bad? Can’t be that either, because I’ve seen rock bottom and these days I love life. I think the difference is resilience. There are people who experience something bad, curl up into a ball and just cry until someone takes notice of them; then there are people who take it on the chin and try to make the best of a bad situation.

In the past, I was the most negative person you could meet. If something bad happened it was the worst thing in the entire world, no matter how insignificant it may have been. But once the bad shit really hit, I broke in two. Repairing myself led to a better version of myself.

Today, I have a positive outlook on life and an unmatched determination. If somebody says I can’t do anything, it no longer stops me. I don’t bend to the pressures of society, generic addictions to alcohol. Social constructs mean nothing to me: I have a grand total of about ten friends, I choose my friends based on their personality rather than their social standing/culture/bank balance, and I’m straight edge. But my life is significantly better than yours, and it always will be no matter what the world throws at me. I’m going to go to university, I’m going to achieve a high-class degree, I’m going to take the software development industry from behind, I’m going to pick up valuable tricks of the trade, I’m going to start up a small business with a few friends, I’m going to expand the aforementioned business, and I’m going to take over the world.

Because I’m positive, and you’re negative.

So I may have missed a blog yesterday, but I was a bit busy being sad - funeral today and all. But let’s not dwell on that because negativity is the devil’s advocate.

My market research started today and I was asked soul-destroying questions such as “How do you see the world?” We were asked to upload pictures to support our points, and my two pictures were as follows: a clenched fist with an ‘X’ on the back of it, and a picture of rainbows, butterflies and unicorns. It really made me question my sanity. Seriously, what. I’m totally not getting paid for this, but at least I’ll get free meals once they institutionalise me.

It’s quite enjoyable though, especially since I’m getting £120 for talking about unicorns and rainbows. The other people seem to think I’m a thirteen year old girl in disguise, but fuck them. Haters gonna hate.

In other news, the Queen of Scotland gets home tomorrow. I’ve been looking forward to seeing her all week since she’s the only one that can make everything better in times like these. It really was horrible timing for us to lose Calum right after Laura and I parted ways - even just a wee cry on her shoulder would’ve given me a massive boost. Alas, that’s not the way the dice rolled. I’ll get to see her tomorrow though and hopefully it’ll lift me up a little. If that fails, I suppose visiting the memorial once more couldn’t do any harm.

I’m not sure if blogs will still happen while Laura’s here because I’m not sure if anybody other than her even reads these days. Leave a like or let me know elsewhere if you actually read these? I’d appreciate even a wee message on Facebook if you readers don’t mind. :3

So I’ve managed to take a few more steps forward on the job front. Firstly, I’ve got myself onto some market research that’s giving me a nice £120 cheque at the end of the 20 days (and hopefully future opportunities). Secondly, the Asda right by my house has posted a few vacancies that I’ve went for. Since I almost had a job with Asda before but didn’t get it because I couldn’t travel 5 miles to start at 4am, my hopes are high for this. It’s within walking distance so I can start at ridiculous times in the morning. Fingers crossed.

I’m really not in the mood for blogging tonight but I didn’t want to let myself slip out of the habit so early, so tonight’s blog shall be unreasonably short. Last night’s was long enough to make up for it though, so I don’t feel guilty.

Today has honestly been mind-numbingly boring. I sit writing today’s (which is actually yesterday’s now) blog post at 03:20 having sat for about ten hours not being able to decide on what to do. The day started off typically - breakfast, workout - then I went and helped my dad fix some felt to my gran’s coal bunker to stop the rain from getting in. But beyond that… I haven’t done anything productive or entertaining.

I hate days like this. I just didn’t manage to arrange any plans and nothing popped up to occupy me, so I was left with nothing to do. The idea was to just get an early night but my insomnia decided to creep up on me and keep me awake to endure the boredom like a man. So since I can’t blog about anything I’ve done, let’s just have a thoughtful post.

The topic? How humanity interacts with me.

It became quite blatantly obvious today that all of a certain person’s friends only talk to me when they want something that benefits them. Having not spoken to me for weeks (or even ever), all at once I had three people talking to me like I was their best friends. I thought this was great because I was bored and needed good conversation. Alas, after the greetings and the small talk all three conversations all instantly switched to the exact same thing that all three of them wanted from me. Something that could only ever impact me negatively if I agreed to it, but they all asked nonetheless.

So how many friends are truly friends, and how many are in the friendship for their own benefit? Let’s take Craig for example, because we go back further than anyone else. Fourteen or so years ago, we met - before we were aware of all the harsh truths of life. We were friends because we were interested in each other and wanted to learn more. As time went on, we grew up together and learned the ways of the world side-by-side. To this very day, my primary interest in the friendship is Craig - I am friends with him because I care about him and want to see a smile on his face at all times. That is a true friendship driven by nothing other than care. Nothing could break that bond, ever.

But when you take somebody whom I met after the transition to high school (when you really learn that people are in it for themselves) there’s really no way to prove that it’s a true friendship. Half of the people I considered close in high school have drifted away because they no longer need me to entertain them, so I’ve fallen by the wayside. The rest of them don’t really keep up with my life anymore and certainly don’t know me anywhere near as well as Craig or Greg. Perhaps it’s the growing up together that taught them to read me, or perhaps they just care that little bit more and therefore notice the little signs. But whatever is the case, there’s a massive gap between my two close friends that I grew up with and my two close friends that grew up independent from me. Even Laura, the one person on this planet who means more to me than anything else, cannot read me.

This leads to one question: what is the driving factor in relationships? You could say it is love, but really that comes too late to be considered the driving force. There is perhaps attraction - the primal instincts of choosing a suitable mother, or however the subconscious mind goes about it. But I loved Laura before I’d seen her in the flesh, so it can’t be that. That leaves only one candidate: conversation. So in theory, we have dodged the bullet of self-interest by falling in love over the internet and our relationship has blossomed from that. But if we had met in person first, the driving force of our relationship would be attraction - the same reason that people buy and wear expensive jewellery. We would be in a relationship because I like to own pretty things.

So there we have it folks. My views on human interaction. Friendships beyond the age of five are driven by self-interest, conventional relationships are driven by the desire to have something pretty hanging from your arm (or just to be able to call yourself ‘taken’), and everyone you know wouldn’t hesitate to sell you out once they no longer needed you. But the interpersonal bonds created as an infant who knows nothing of self-interest are something special: something free from the corruptions of society; and relationships fall into one of two categories: relationships that began with a word are driven by interest, and relationships that began with a look are driven by self-interest.

Welcome to my brain in the early hours of the morning.

This is why I can’t sleep.

So, in light of yesterday’s discoveries, I was speaking to Dan - someone who I’ve always been friends with but never really spent much time with - about cardio, hill walking and all that lovely stuff. It led us to arranging to explore more of Arthur’s Seat today, and by God we explored our hearts out. I’m pretty sure we tempted fate more than once but there’s no reward without risk. Long story short, instead of walking up to the peak we climbed almost vertically (literally vertically at some points). It was tough, but it was so unbelievably rewarding once we hit the peak. Today was definitely a bonding experience which took us from friends to bros, and I’d be content to do the exact same thing again many times.

It really showed me how much I’ve let my cardio slip though. I mean, I was getting pretty gassed at points and found myself having to push myself beyond my limits. Maybe that’s just something to do with the insane incline though. Either way, I’m going to be spending many days roaming the hills this summer in an attempt to push the cardio. It was a million times more fun (and a million times more challenging) than a jog or a long walk on level ground, and the scenery is much nicer to look at.

The only problem now is finding people willing to accompany me. So far there’s only Dan, so if any of you fancy it a couple of times in the future please let me know. And don’t even bother if you’re the kind of person who gives up when their lungs start to burn, because I’m wanting company - not anchors. This is exercise, not The Sound of Music.

Good spirits are good. Thanks Dan. :3

After Craig and I visited the memorial for our friend and shed many tears, we took it upon ourselves - or, more accurately, he had no say in the matter - to climb Arthur’s Seat. It took many rests due to Craig being a pussy, but we made it from one of the most difficult approaches. It gave me a sense of achievement that I’ve not felt for a long time - like I had truly accomplished something while exercising. And because of that feeling, I believe I’ve going to start setting difficult goals for my cardio workouts. If I can’t achieve those goals first time, second time or third time, then by God I’ll achieve them the fourth time. I suppose it makes sense to have a goal that’s outwith your comfort zone because it’ll force you to push yourself above and beyond your limits - something which I tend to not do these days.

But that said, it’s difficult to find fun and challenging goals that don’t involve numbers or distances. I know that I want to walk from my house all the way to Cockenzie in one go (7 miles) and I also want to walk the entire length of the Innocent Cycle Path despite it stretching from East Lothian all the way through to West Lothian. But other than those two goals, I have nothing. And those just involve numbers and distances as previously stated. Hell, if anybody here wants to set a goal for me then feel free.

And on the topic of exercise, I swear my chest muscles are expanding at twice the rate of every other muscle in my body. It’s starting to look unnatural, but I can now do a hundred million level pushups before falling flat on my face. Every cloud.

After us lads got home, we took it upon ourselves to play a spot of Starcraft 2. I’ve been trying to push myself to improve because I really want to be able to play the game at a higher level. I have no delusions of becoming a professional Starcraft 2 player, but it’d just be nice to be able to visit conventions and LAN parties in the future without having my arse handed to me in the first round of play. After all, I don’t play any conventional sports so why not attempt to take e-sports to a higher level?

Either way, it was a very successful day in the lives of Brendan and Craig.There were tears, there was laughter, there was defeat and there was victory.

I love that boy.

I’m having an ADTR night, as you can probably tell from the title. Or, more specifically, I’m having a Sticks & Bricks night. There’s just something about that song that I feel I can really relate to. Perhaps the fact that 90% of the song is the story of my life - the other 10% being the fact that he’s rich and famous. One day. But yeah, lines such as “So here I stand, the only son of a working class man. I won’t be held back. I can’t be held down” really get me. The way that the song makes unfavourable situations seem really positive is quite beautiful.

This all stems from the fact that I’ve been listening to a lot of positive hardcore recently. I stumbled upon the genre a few days back and I’ve been hooked ever since. You’d think that, being straight edge and all, I’d know a lot about the ‘SxE’ culture but I really don’t know a thing. Hey, I’m learning. I’m straight edge because I want to be, not because the culture appeals to me.

One band has really spoken to me though - Have Heart. They sound a bit like Every Time I Die, but what I really love about them doesn’t lie in the music - it lies in the lyrics. Every one of their songs has a positive message about sobriety, pacifism, love, motivation, etc. I think one of the things that my music library most definitely lacked was positivity, but now that I understand the true power of positive music that will never be the case again. If you’ve never given positive hardcore a listen, go click on the link to Have Heart and give them a chance. You might be pleasantly surprised.

There’s really nothing substantial that I can blog about today with regards to what I did, because I’m going to be honest and say that I did absolutely nothing. I showered, played a couple of games, watched a couple of documentaries on iPlayer and socialised for the rest of the evening; nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Tomorrow, I believe Craig and myself are going to have a walk around Arthur’s Seat to say our goodbyes to our friend though. The wounds are still fresh from losing him and it’ll do us the world of good to find some sense of closure, combined with the funeral this weekend. We’ll see what wonderful surprises tomorrow may bring though.

The blog on my site has been completely removed and replaced with this Tumblr now but I’ve been pondering what to actually do with it now that it’s set up. One of the things that I’ve been wanting to try out most is a kind of daily blog - so that all of my thoughts and feelings are expressed - as opposed to just blogging the really big events in life. After all, my parents have always taught me to appreciate the little things in life. So let’s try that.

I’m aware that these daily blogs will likely get swamped by reblogs and microblogs and whatever else I’ll be doing once I become on of the crazy Tumblr people, so I guess I’ll just leave you lovely people to wade through the shit to get to the treasure. I’ll also try to keep ‘semperfisocius’ as a tag since it should be unique to me and therefore tracking the tag ‘semperfisocius’ will give you a feed of my blog posts.

Anyway, onto the important stuff: today’s blog.

As I said earlier, today is a rather dull day due to the passing of a friend of mine but I will do my best to be positive. After all, it’s positivity that makes the world go ‘round; if the earth decided to just give up and stop moving, we’d all die a horrible fiery death. So there you go, some sound logic based on impossible metaphor.

I suppose the biggest piece of news is that the lovely Laura Gunn is away to New York for a week because she was born into a middle class household and has lived a life of six star hotels and renting entire countries for weeks on end. But hey, who the fuck wants to go to New York anyway? There’s nothing there worth seeing, man. But in all seriousness, I’m sure I’m going to miss her quite a bit - we’re used to spending weeks apart due to the distance between us, but there’s a big difference between Edinburgh-Fife and Edinburgh-New York. Specifically: a five hour time zone gap, lack of free texts and phone calls, limited ability to communicate through the internet, and the fact that it would not cost me £500 to go see her rather than £6.

But looking at the positive sides, there are many. The most important part is that it’s giving me time to start on a few projects that I’ve not really had time in my days to do in recent times. This blog is, of course, one of them - although this will hopefully continue far beyond this week. Another little project that I’ve been wanting to get on the go is - and don’t judge me for this - getting around to giving my 360 some love. It’s been sitting there all lonely, serving no other purpose than being a media adapter, for the best part of a year now. If everything goes to plan I’m going to trade it in for some wonga and invest in the new model (so I’ll have an active warranty, built-in wireless to eliminate some cables, a larger hard drive, and a fan that doesn’t drown out my television).

Here’s to re-embracing your inner basement dweller the second your girlfriend leaves the country.

The only other thing that I really want to mention before I post this is SlutWalk Edinburgh since it’s probably the best cause in recent months. I think it’s safe to say that we all sadly know a victim of sexual abuse, and chances are that they never felt secure or confident enough to actually tell anyone and/or report it to the police. This march is to raise awareness of those victims and let them know that they can reach out to us all without being judged. Nobody asks to experience such horrible acts of brutality and anybody who thinks that dressing provocatively is an invitation to do anything of the sort needs some psychoanalysis. Please, if you’re anywhere near Edinburgh and have the means to attend this march, make sure you do - I’ll be there with the majority of my friends and you’re welcome to walk with us if you don’t know anybody who’s going.

As always, feedback is welcome on the blogs if you have anything to say.