Welcome to my blog.

Hello everyone!

Well, my friends have forced me to start a blog.  I mean, they didn't pin me down next to a computer and only release me once I had registered this account.  They suggested that it would be the kind of thing people would want to read, which I reject wholeheartedly.  This is the Internet.  The entirety of human knowledge readily available to anyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and the will to resist browsing porn.  You don't even need a computer these days.  I was sat behind two people on the bus who were arguing about whether bees have knees, a discussion swiftly ended by the use of an Internet enabled mobile phone.  Against the backdrop of such readily available information, why would anyone waste time reading the witless prattling of some nobody?  (It turns out bees have jointed appendages, but lack any structures similar to a kneecap.  Its just a hinge.)

Anyway, thanks to a random joke and my inability to resist the whims of my friends, I have a blog now.  I should start with some sort of introduction, something that will give people (including me) an idea of what this nonsense will be about.

I currently work as a technician in the National Blood Service, where I am involved in the distribution of blood products to hospitals across the country.  As a result, I am quite capable of boring anyone rigid with details about how blood is collected, tested, manufactured, and stored, as well as less palatable topics such as the smell of human plasma (rotten fish) and what the birth control pill does to it's colour (it goes green!).  I couldn't tell you what the stuff tastes like, you'd have to ask that guy who got fired for finding out.

It may or may not surprise you to know that I am currently single.

I also spend a fair portion of my time working out.  I started going to the gym over a year ago, as I moved into a house directly opposite one.  I then had no more excuses not to go, although I was surprised how much fun it turned out to be.  Not the gym itself, of course.  Lifting heavy things and running until you pass out are not pleasant experiences.  I'm sure people can grow to love the sensation of the human body telling its owner "if you don't stop this, I may die", but I am not one of them.  I simply recognise that lifting heavy things and running for your life are occasionally necessary, so it's in my interest to be good at them.

Of course, there is a price to pay.  There is a tendency to become slightly evangelical about the benefits of working out. Again, once I have exhausted the topic of blood, I shift onto the topic of health, and how everyone should do this, that, and the other in order to build a nation of chiseled supermen and women that can run like the wind and tear buses in half.  I suspect I am encouraging fitness merely to vent my deep loathing of public transport.

In all seriousness, I think I have forgotten that different people are motivated by different things in regard to the world of fitness, and that their goals may not match my own.  Some people want to become "ripped", others want to lose a little weight, still more may actually enjoy the experience.  Whatever the motivation, deciding to become more active is absolutely fantastic, and anyone making those tentative first steps should be showered with praise, support, and possibly some kind of sports energy drink.

In the past, I may have been a little overbearing with the "support" part of that equation.  From a genuine desire to aid my friends fitness, emerged a genuine desire to be a know-it-all smart-ass, extolling the virtues of resistance training while flexing and bellowing "BEEFCAKE!" at inappropriate intervals.  I now realise that this is a bad thing.  The correct approach would have been to point them in the direction of legitimate sources of advice and letting them get on with it, and to confine my testosterone-fuelled roaring to private moments or when I need to get to the front of a queue.  I have realised my mistake, and I shall never repeat it.

The "tears" part refers to my hobby of weeping with despair at the state of the world.  I mean, have you seen the news?  Or read that previous paragraph?

Anyway, that's a little background into the origins of the title.  I'll update when I feel like it, with badly informed rambling on a variety of topics, as well as minute-by-minute accounts of my day-to-day life, which you can read if you want.

Thank you for reading at least this far!

Still Alive.