Howdy all,
This is the first post on the Zone Of Proximal Development (referred to in italics because it’s clearly a significant literary work – Izzy and Bradley, feel free to tell me to stop doing that), a blog that’s supposed to be about conversation, and building on what each other says; sadly, I’ve got nothing to build upon or react to, so I’ll begin this blog in a rather obvious fashion, by talking about beginnings.
November has been a month of beginnings for me, all three days of it; while most years I’ve spent this month grinding out work in preparation for oh so important GCSE Controlled Assessments around Christmas, or winding down after Halloween because, let’s be honest, it takes a good few months to get over going back to school after Summer, this year has been full of starting new stuff. This blog, for instance, came into being yesterday, I’m doing NaNoWriMo, which involves starting a novel from scratch, and I’m starting to take my English degree seriously, after barely concentrating on it for the last six weeks; I plan to read Ovid, Malory, Tristram Shandy and Ulysses in a week because frak yeah, literature!
I’ll also be starting new things as the month progresses: I plan to review trips to Rise Against and The Orwells gigs for a magazine here at UCL, and going to see The Orwells for the first time will be a new experience in of itself. I’ll also write a mid-season review of The Apprentice in a few weeks for that magazine, so this month will be my first forays into something that resembles actual journalism, as opposed to just writing self-interested blog posts and crappy novels that’ll never see the light of day.
But although November has become a month of starting stuff, I can’t really see a defined point of ending stuff anywhere in the near future: maybe Christmas, at the end of my first term – surely I’ll be catching up on and getting ahead with reading; perhaps Summer, the end of my first year at university – I plan to get a job, or try writing for local newspapers to get some experience of professional journalism. Whichever way you slice it, I’ll probably be starting new things to take the place of old things for the foreseeable future, mental breakdowns aside.
Because that which begins doesn’t have to end: my personal blog is hardly the epitome of endlessness, but I’ve been posting almost every day for well over a year now, and I have no intention of stopping that. Also, things might not end, but simply change into other things: my reading of Tristram Shandy will certainly come to and end, but will be replaced by Ulysses, Mill on the Floss, and Frederick Douglass at various points down the line. Even if my personal blog does end, I’ve got this blog, that I’m very excited about and, if all goes according to plan, will probably get more enjoyment out of than my private one, which doesn’t have the same communal elements to it; this blog could have begun, and not end any time soon, mental breakdowns of Bradley and Izzy aside.
Without getting too bullshity philospher on you guys, I’m terrified of not doing stuff, and having long periods where I don’t have projects to work on – I nearly went insane with boredom with the three months of Summer I had this year. And so maybe I’m more comfortable starting things than ending them, that I’m prepared to have a million projects and activities going at once, and then throw one more onto the pile, just so I know I have something to do every day. I’m seeing this month that balancing a novel, two blogs, and 200 pages of Sterne’s rage-inducing digressions is hard work, but if someone offered me a part-time job or a new club, I’d probably take it; Hell, I’m going to Karate tonight, Handball tomorrow, board games on Wednesday, and Dodgeball on Friday and maybe even Thursday too.
So I’m a fan of beginnings, and less so endings; but until I’m hospitalised with stress, or literally run out of hours in the day to do things, I don’t plan on ending anything I’ve started anytime soon.
– James
The Zone Of Proximal Development 