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Thursday, October 27, 2005
Oui, je regrette beaucoup
I was just checking the stats on my various websites, and quite a few people have been looking at my photos. It's nice to know I have visitors, but I don't know who they are, so it's a bit weird.
These visits got me thinking about my travels - it's actually been a while since I've looked at some of those photos, and I'd forgotten about some of the stuff I've done. And even though I've done quite a lot of the things I've wanted to do, there are so many things I wish I'd done or wish were different.
When I was at university, I was a member of the surfing club. It was a bit of a joke amongst my friends at the time because I went to Warwick uni, which is just outside Coventry, pretty much the furthest point from the coast. But every month the 10 or 12 members would drive down in a mini-bus to Devon or Cornwall and stay in a big house by the beach. Even though we were typical students and stayed up late smoking, drinking and watching videos, we'd always get up at sunrise to catch some waves. I remember one time we walked across snow on the beach at 6am to surf for about 3 minutes before racing back inside to thaw out. We'd usually start out early, then spend all day surfing, or playing games, or watching 'Point Break'. I'm glad I did that.
During our travels I did some bungy jumping in New Zealand. It's not an unusual thing to do these days, but I'd never done it, so it was new to me. At the time the bungy company were doing a special offer - 3 for the price of 2 - so I signed up for all 3. They were awesome. I'm glad I did that.
In fact, there are lots of things I'm glad I did, and they're not all based around extreme sports: played at Knebworth with my band the Soft Pink Underbellies; was a member of the lace-making club (when I was a little kid); went out with the most good-looking girl in our school (for 2 days, and never actually spoke to her); worked as a labourer down-under with a proper Aussie criminal... you get the picture.
We all have our list, some longer than others, and they're all unique - they're the experiences we've gathered on our journey through life. For some reason, and I don't know if this is the same for everyone, it would make no difference whether my list contained a huge variety of wonderful things or a tiny amount of mundane everyday things, I'd still feel as if I was just treading water if I weren't doing something cool right now. Even though I've swum with dolphins, the fact that I'm sitting in an office at the moment feels like I'm wasting my life.
When I start reminiscing like this Corrie calls me 'nostalgiaman' - I always look back on the things I've done with excessively rose-tinted spectacles. I even get nostalgic about things whilst I'm still doing them, I start to miss them before they've even ended. I don't think this is real nostalgia though, I think it's more about missing the feeling that I'm making the most of my life.
I remember learning about acceleration in GCSE physics: "the rate at which an object's velocity changes with time". It's weird because you can be going hundreds of miles an hour, but not be accelerating, so it won't feel like you're moving at all - a difficult concept to get your head round for the first time. I reckon this whole 'wasting my life' thing boils down to acceleration: if I'm not constantly doing something different, pushing forwards, I feel like I'm not getting anywhere, like I'm standing still and wasting my life.
But it's impossible to keep on accelerating isn't it.
Unless I can redefine the laws of movement, I think I'll have to pop down to Specsavers and get some different coloured glass put in my spectacles.
.....posted at 10:10 am permalink
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