Two Treatises of Adolescence

This Friday marks many things - just like any other day. But the 8th May, as well as being the anniversary of VE Day, and the birthday of David Attenborough, is my birthday, and my 18th no less. The result of this is that I will have to close the door on my childhood and make the short walk down the corridor into adulthood, where my childhood will only be subsequently viewable through my memory window, which will inevitably be blurred and misted by time. Therefore, I've decided to write about my adolescence as a whole before I'm compelled into either renaming or archiving this blog.

Treatise One - Reflections on my evolution in Blogs

I think I continually underestimate the way in which Explorers, and indeed Scouting has shaped my life, even if I think about it frequently. I joined Explorers a slightly insular eccentric - bereft of meaning but able to make people smile either with my eclectic interests or my peculiar mannerisms, many of which I retain today. I've always had few friends, generally feeling burdened by trying to get on with many people at once. Among so many other things, Explorers enabled me to relax in a way the coordinated badge efforts of Scouts and Cubs couldn't. This means that the activities are designed and chosen by Explorers with a view to have fun and bond as opposed to more educational box-ticking. Through Explorers, I have met people like me but sufficiently different. People completely different to me yet remarkably alike. Although I have always tended to do well at school, Explorers has given me a self-confidence and a comfort in my own skin, which I think many people my age perhaps lack,  maybe due to the lack of bonding activities and opportunities they have had at this age. The result of this, is that as I prepare to depart Explorers, having even been elected co-chair in September 2018, I feel able to talk to so many people and consciously be myself without stifling them. I have managed to maintain my interests and passions whilst refraining from monologues or diatribes when surrounded by others. At least without provocation...

I started this blog shortly before I joined Explorers during a February Half-Term, aged 14, out of both boredom and curiosity. In many ways, this blog has been the soapbox on which I have stood and made my niche, occasionally personal remarks on the world and my life. The advantage of this is that readers are not forced to read it, rapidly losing interest as they might if stood with me. There is however, a slightly irritating trend, where my strongest articles on topics I'm passionate about - more often than not politics based - attract little more than 25 views, yet personal topics or subjects I have been asked to write about often teeter around 3 figures. The exception to this, is my travel reviews which I take pleasure writing in and seems to be reflected by my reader numbers - although they have benefited from more promotion than the others. I've toyed with the idea of actively promoting this blog, indeed, I briefly created a public Facebook page and considered making my Instagram public, but I have since backtracked on both of these issues. Privacy is one factor - though I'm not ashamed of anything I have posted - but I have also adapted this blog and its purpose over time. Where it was once almost a private diary of opinions (indeed I didn't tell anyone about my blog for around 2 months), it has grown from being a loudspeaker of my opinions to a more nuanced portfolio of all of my writings. Hence, I don't even promote all of my pieces which are just reposts of articles initially published elsewhere - such as Talking Bull magazine or Bulls News. At this moment, I don't need viewers or fame. I don't know if I want fame. But I hope that this blog shows my creative evolution and the development of my writing. I occasionally read earlier articles of mine (such as those on North Korea, or La La Land) and cringe. They're both terrible articles which chuck words together in the hope of drawing a bigger picture only to fall desperately short between both informing and entertaining, floundering in the abyss of nonsensical guffaw that constitutes far too much of the Internet already. But I've kept them online because it offers a starting point, and hopefully a compelling rate of improvement.

I still want to become a journalist to explore, explain and investigate. By gaining new information, and being tasked to convey it into news, it is a continuing education of knowledge and wider contextual understanding. And given that it has been announced that Universities will still charge full-price tuition fees if courses are moved online, I'm hopeful to find myself both learning and earning at some point.

Treatise Two - The Future of Socialising/On the cusp of Liberty

You may have noticed I've begun naming each segment of this article after A-Level politics philosopher's most famous work  - hence why I'm referring to my paragraphs as treatises when they realistically warrant little more than the moniker of 'essay' if that. But I've also thrown in 'On the cusp of Liberty' because of it's personal significance. For it is also a quote from my Dad. It was said last year, shortly after I had turned 17 whilst we were walking on a beach. He was referring merely to the fact I was nearly an adult, yet in times like these, I think it has a far broader meaning. Last night, I finished watching Normal People, and instantly decided that I would buy Sally Rooney's book, and put it ahead of all the non-fiction currently on my reading list. In a vein not dissimilar to the male protagonist, I am content at Sixth Form and slightly scared about going to University. However, given the most unusual circumstances I - indeed the world - finds itself in, I feel as though I will remain on the cusp for some time. On Friday, when I am granted the freedoms of adulthood under the letter of the law, I won't be in a position to exercise them beyond the four walls of home - liberty suspended in the better interests of public health. The consequence of all of this, is that I am really rather numb - cut adrift.

I don't want to go back over old territory by talking about how exams have left me somewhat lacking a purpose, other than that this has been extended and broadened. Exercise clears my head but even then I am saddened by the knowledge that when I return from a run or bike ride, I return to the same world as the one before. A world paralysed by illness and held in suspended animation as jobs, hopes, plans and lives fall helplessly out of it.

I'm not even an adult yet and already I'm looking back at my childhood through rose-tinted glasses. 

All in all, I am sad that my childhood has come to a close in these circumstances and sad that things will never be the same again, even if everything will stay exactly the same for quite a while. Continuity with change...

The latter stage of my adolescence has been marked by a growing maturity and ambition, coupled with the familiarity and routine support that family and a school environment can provide. That is not to say that this will be lost as school is abruptly cut off and homes are left behind, but it does signal a tangible shift which leaves me apprehensive. So much uncertainty. Normal People also explored the changing socio-economic environment of the characters through University and, by the end of the series, both characters also sought stability in varying forms. I'm now wondering when rather than if I will yearn for that stability in my life.

That said, I'm torturing myself with this whole idea of stability in the first place.

I'm crap with change and the certainty of life at home in my bubble is now doubt fuelling the rose-tinting of my memory. Simultaneously, lockdown is horrible for me - a terrible Groundhog Day spoof - devoid of focus, aspiration and even a clear future. The only advantage of this as opposed to Bill Murray's world is that everyone else knows this, and is struggling too to some extent. But we also don't have cute Groundhogs, indeed any Marmots, to look at. 

Perhaps my adolescence could be characterised instead as the cautious removal of stabilisers in a soft play area, a gradual development of psyche and self-awareness enabling me to become far more independent whilst retaining the support, care and stability of my physical surroundings along with the continued presence of people who have shaped me to this point. At least that's the metaphor which to me feels most apt compared to impending adulthood - an immeasurable drop onto concrete without the knowledge of who or what is waiting for me when I am eventually free to leave the soft play and into the game of life. This is all exaggerated and naive, of course, but writing this doesn't quite soothe the fear of uncertainty and mass upheaval.

My teenage years have been far from perfect - emotional yearning, sweeping change, exam stresses and most recently, apathy. But these have also been the years where I have worked out what I wanted to do with my life, made friends, become self-content and garnered the most passionately awesome eclectic music taste perhaps known to man. I don't even know how 'Normal' People might look back and reflect on their childhood and how consequential they will see it in shaping their life. But through this blog, not just this post but all of them - even the shit ones - I hope I have conveyed to you a little bit of The Pessimism and Occasional Optimism of Adolescence, even if the ratio of half boy, half man has shifted somewhat... 

In any event, my adolescence has shaped me almost exactly as much as it has everyone else, and will culminate on Friday, when I will look out at the Union Jacks across the roads, and the people smiling at each other through hedges, and joke to myself that they've all come out to celebrate me, since I am the ultimate image of British patriotism and only the mighty Union flag would be worthy of such a fine birthday. And David Attenborough's... of course.