Don't be a gunner

Many years ago I used to write short stories as a bit of a hobby. I often had friends read these stories and they'd say to me, "I'd love to have a go at doing that".

I used to tell them that all they needed to do was grab a pen and paper and start writing. The thing is, none of them ever did. They just continued to be gunners - one day I'm gunner do that.

Someone once told me that if you wait for other people to do something with you - a trip, a course, etc - you'll never get around to doing it. Of course the person that told me that was trying to talk me into signing up for his scuba diving course at the time, but I've always remembered what he said and tried to live my life that way ever since. I started by doing the scuba course.

There are too many gunners in this world today. To many people that have dreams but never do anything about making them come true. It's oh so easy to come up with excuses for not doing something, money and time are usually the main ones. If you really want to do something you'll find the money, or the time. You might even find you're good at it.

I guess that's why I started this blog, it seemed like a good idea at the time and I thought, I wanna do that.

So I did.

The trouble is, what do you write about once you've started? When I used to write fiction I never wrote unless I had two main ideas that I could combine into a story. I wrote one in the shower once. Well not actually in the shower, I had most of it in my head while I was in there. As soon as I came out I sat on the floor in my bedroom with a laptop for three hours and wrote it all down.

I could write about my job, but I've been here four hours already and my phone hasn't rung once yet. I don't think it would be very exciting reading.

Maybe I could get another job and write about that. You might have to wait a while for that though. I've got about four more years to go on the science degree I'm doing by distance education.

Hang on a tic... I've just succeeded in writing about ten paragraphs without really knowing what I was going to write when I started. Imagine what I could have done if I'd put a bit of thought into it first.

I wish all my uni assignments were this easy. Then again, I'm not being marked on this... I hope.

Another bored office worker

After reading a few blogs recently I thought I'd give it a go myself.

Of course some of the blogs I've been reading are by people with interesting jobs, police officers, ambulance drivers, bus drivers, that kind of thing. I sit in an office all day so this blog isn't going to be as interesting as some.

I do, however, have a couple of hobbies that people might find interesting (or not) and my wife and I are off to Vietnam for a holiday in January. So if this blog is still around by then it will get better... I hope.

One of those hobbies is amateur radio, a hobby I share with my younger brother. I recently went round to his place to help him install a new antenna on his roof... his second storey roof.

I also have a private pilot's licence. Now it's a little known fact that a higher percentage of pilots don't like heights than non-pilots. Sure we don't mind flying upside-down at five thousand feet, but climbing ten feet up a ladder is a totally different kettle of fish. So you can imagine what I look like when I'm climbing up and down the ladder.

Anyway, the picture above is on the first storey. My wife wanted to take my photo while I was up there and it was a good chance to have a play with the new digital camera. I'll post a lot more pics on here as photography is another hobby of mine.

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edited 11/11/06
This bit wasn't here when I first started blogging, but I needed somewhere to park the picture of my desk when I changed to look of the blog and this seemed the best place.

After all, who's gonna look here?

This entry is becomming a bit of a repository of pictures