[Add photo of moleskin notebooks spread out on my bed]

July 2015.

For four and a half years I’ve been scribbling into moleskin notebooks. In the process I discovered that there’s a clarity of thought you find in writing that you miss when you simply chase the neurons firing in circles around your head. I’m also more aware of the limits of my memory. From interesting facts to the names and first exciting impressions of the girls I went on to kiss. They were noteworthy enough to pause and write about. Yet they would have eventually been forgotten otherwise. Back at the family home for a few days and I’ve stacked about a dozen of these notebooks in front of me. Sat on the the single bed from my childhood, and legs loosely crossed, I begin to leaf through them. What emerges is a picture of me. And in my own words.

I’m someone who marks the passing of time not in days or weeks, but in the experiences that add to who I am – the places I go and the people I meet. Whether it’s half the world away or in a bar within London’s familiar bustling streets. It’s that spark of intensity in someone else’s eyes, or their longing for a brighter future that hits you, speaks to you, and changes the way you think. Walking through mountains and architectural brilliance across the continents – observing, learning, seeing, even smelling – it’s this that expands your world and your ambitions. I’m curious. Someone who wants to get out there. To meet it, see it, read it, and open himself up to life’s opportunities. At the age of 21 I didn’t know quite how to do this. These years and notebooks on, I’m getting better at it, but there is still so much more to seek.

Travel tales, to-do lists, and wider thoughts. I’ve tried to categories the things I’ve written about percentage terms (work habits I’m afraid!): 45% travel stories and observations; 5% London wanders; 10% dating stories; 5% socilising with friends; 15% economic and social thought, 10% insomnia, angst, and the craving for more;  5% to do lists and mission statements; and 5% in the re-telling of memories, bring nostalgia back to life.

Amongst this I paint down quotes from novels that say something perfectly: “I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under some circumstances, and at all times when one can’t do anything about them” [Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird]. 

Quotes that condense someone else’s long worked for understanding: “The people who are the most passionate about their work are those that understand the meaning behind it” [A TedX Talk from someone who did 52 different jobs in 52 weeks]. 

I write down things of interest: An average person today will meet more people in a day than our hunter gather ancestors would have met in their entire lives.

And pose myself some questions that I will probably never get around to answering: How has the ambitions of the every man changed with changing life expectancy and cultural trends over the centuries?

I’m voyeuristic enough to turn down my headphones when an interesting conversation seems near. An occasional insomniac (and a massive grouch about it), who doesn’t exercise as much as he thinks he should. Someone who has had a clear tendency to fall into introversion and over-pronounced self reflection when I’m in lesser moods. Overly obsessed with the passing of time. And I seem to always fall a little bit in love with a certain kind of girl – the down to earth conversationalist, the idealist, free spirited, and breezily traveling the world.

Looking back through all these pages, there is a journey charted through countries and adulthood. From neat handwriting written at 3am, and those large looped scrawls from a drunken mind, or from the mind determined to write even while on shaky public transport. I’ve learnt that any a job involves being paid to do lots of tedious things, but that their should remain an element of fulfillment behind it. I’ve reeled from the death of my father, and drawn lines down the middle of pages to throw out the pros and cons of the bigger decisions in life.

This is what I’ve learnt so far. And in a couple of days I jump on a plane to take a new job and new chapter on a rock at the bottom of Europe. The next few years are anyone’s guess.