Gavan Reilly

It’s funny how only yesterday I was trying to work myself into the mood where I’d rejoice in the stuff that I always used to find more thrilling in my youth.

Then, today, the snow came. And melted again, but came again. And melted again. And yet it kept coming… and I rejoiced in the soft crunch of the white powder under my feet, and of the giddy childhood pleasure in running around in white stuff.

And I got exam results I’m happy with, and we went to Elephant & Castle for chicken wings, and all is basiicaly great with the world.

Sorry for the genuinely pathetic blogging of the last ten days or so, life has been awfully hectic and the blog has simply had to move aside for other things. I’ll share bigger thoughts soon, I assure you.

When I was five or six I used to love the beginning of a new month – of waking up and thinking, “Yeah! New month! Happy New Month, everyone!”.

Somewhere along the line I lost that feeling. I miss that. The blank page of a New Year on a monthly basis. I suppose it was a feeling borne from the relatively few New Years Eves I’d ever had, and the desire to be older than I was.

My project for this month is to recover and rejoice in those juvenile joys – of Fruit Pastilles when Mum came home from work, of making computers from paper and writing coded messages (in what years later I learned to be a Caesar Cipher) to myself, of being addicted to reading.

Let’s just see how this turns out.

Last week I coined a new term which today I used for the first time.

sportgasm [spoʊɹt–orˈgasm]n. an orgasmic experience precipitated, or directly caused by, exposure or overexposure to sporting events.

Today I watched two F.A. Cup matches and three Heineken Cup pool games.

It was sexy. That is all.

…I have been tormented by the hook of that Beyoncé song being stuck in my head as I tried to do job applications.

“If you like it then you shoulda put a ring on it…”

That Obama dude has a lot to answer for.

It seemed to be a little more low profile this year than previously, but today was Blue Monday, supposedly the most depressing date of the year.

The depressingness of any particular day is measured on the basis of:

• weather conditions
• debt level (the difference between debt accumulated and our ability to pay)
• time since Christmas
• time since failing our new year’s resolutions
• low motivational levels
• feeling of a need to take action

Not the greatest day to wake up after your second semester in college has started, then? Certainly not. I managed to set my alarm for 7.45pm and not 7.45am, waking up at 9.10am for a 9am class.

It seemed that while I was away last week, the entire country slid into hypernegativity mode. Prime Time broadcast shows with scores of young people unable to get a job, the country went apeshit when the Government took control of a toxic bank, and the Irish people totally just went belly-up in dealing with the recession. A new year was coming and life wasn’t getting any better.

Well, I propose to you, Ireland, that you draw your line in the sand today, and tomorrow, you get up to a day where the sun will shine that little bit longer, where Dubya is off the radar, and where you pull your socks up and do that little bit extra for yourself that you know will pay off in the longer run.

Tomorrow’s a day for much-vaunted Change. If you gave up a New Year’s Resolution, take it up again tomorrow. Forget the mass market psychology of needing a date on the calendar to effect the change – tomorrow is a brighter date, so do it tomorrow.

Usually as a person I find it difficult to be in the company of negative people. They drain me; I get tiresome and itchy listening to moaning – about joblessness, the Irish attitude to alcohol, the weather, or whatever you’re having yourself. Tonight I had the grim realisation that over the last while I’ve myself become a little like this. So, because I can, I’ll change.

Ireland, frankly, get the f**k on with it. As Damien said, f**k the recession. Tomorrow I’m going off to make my own chances.