As a somewhat belated and not-very-difficult-to-accomplish New Year’s resolution, I thought I’d make a specific effort to try and engage a bit more with those who leave comments on here. Being a relatively directionless personal blog, of course, the vast majority of my readership is made up of people that I already know in real life (or quasi-real life, otherwise known as “elsewhere on the Internet”). But in the last year particularly, I’ve seen quite a few people showing up here who aren’t among my immediate group of close friends.
That’s not a bad thing! Don’t shy away!
Whew. Thought I’d lost you for a minute.
Anyway, to all new readers, I’d like to say a big hello! And to those who have been reading for quite some time, hello! and thanks for reading!
I know there’s quite a few people out there who read but never comment, either, so I thought it might be nice to devote this whole post to us just getting to know one another a bit. If you’re a lurker and you’ve never commented on this blog, why not make this the first post you write a message on? If you’re a long-time commenter, why not get to know some of the other random people who frequent this site and strike up some friendships between the disparate social circles in which I move, both on and offline.
Of course, this is all a moot point if no-one comments on this post, so I’m hoping that I don’t end up looking somewhat foolish by putting this post up only to receive no responses whatsoever. And this isn’t a shallow, thinly-veiled attempt to get more comments — well, it sort of is, but that’s not the primary point. Many bloggers seem to measure their worth by how many comments they get. Me? I’m just curious as to who out there is reading this, who they are, what they’re doing and what brought them here.
So I’ll start. I’m Pete. I’m 30 years old. Were my girlfriend writing this, she would have emphasised the word “old” since she is several years my junior. I live in Chippenham, which is a small and unremarkable town in Wiltshire, somewhere in the depths of the West Country of the United Kingdom. I live with my girlfriend Andie in a small two bedroom house which has two very friendly cats named Artie and Chester who live next door and frequently barge their way into our house.
Until the end of last year, I was a writer for GamePro.com, which sadly folded at the end of last year. Currently, I write for Inside Network covering social games and mobile apps, and am looking for a little more work with which to top up the money I’m getting from that. In past lives, I’ve been a teacher in both primary and secondary schools (swearing “never again” to both), a supply teacher (ditto), a Creative and a Specialist in the Southampton Apple Store, a temp at the Most Depressing Company In The World (a loss adjusters, if you’re familiar with the concept), and at university I was a starters chef at a pub and The Man Who Collected Glasses and Cleaned Up Sick at a grotty, “trendy” bar in Southampton city centre.
I went to university in Southampton for four years, the first three of which were spent studying English and Music, a more useless combination of subjects I don’t think it’s possible to pick when considering future employment prospects. (Kids: ignore anyone who says English is a “good, general degree”) The last year was spent doing a PGCE (Postgraduate Certificate of Education) — in other words, training to be a teacher.
I got married in October of 2008 but my wife and I split in May of 2010, an experience which was quite possibly the most emotionally agonising, painful thing I’ve ever been through. I made it out the other side, though, and can accept that mistakes were made on both sides, and have moved on.
I like video games, cats, music (I play the piano, clarinet and saxophone), drawing stickmen, my iPhone, reading, writing, blogging, the Internet, Community, Friends, Spaced and friends with whom I can both talk seriously and make jokes about flatulence. I hate onions, spiders, leeks, The X-Factor, people who won’t shut up about platform wars on either console or mobile (seriously! Just use what makes you happy, and stop telling other people they’re wrong and/or gay), Facebook Timeline, spam (on the Internet, not the meat), Big Brother, reality TV in general and the sort of teenager who wears tracksuits that look like pyjamas and too much Lynx.
That’s me, handily summed up in a few paragraphs. A more comprehensive breakdown of my skills can be found here. Any questions?
So what about you? Who are you? Why are you reading this? Where did you come from? Do you think I’m se– no, wait, that’s a different list.
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“my girlfriend is several years my junior…” – you sound a bit like Alan Partridge here! I read your blog most days, but rarely comment. Keep it up.
There’s a little of Alan in all of us, Mike. Hopefully not that bit, though.
Hi, I’m Keely, intermittent reader. Haven’t seen you or Andie for a while, glad to hear its all going well, and that you’re making a bit of progress on the job front. Joined any more Tweetups recently?
Hallo, Keely, good to see you here. No, Andie and I haven’t been to the last few tweetups for various reasons — busy, tired, bit far to come sometimes 🙂 We haven’t really looked into West Country meetups as yet. Perhaps we will if we get around to it! I can’t speak for Andie, but certainly a lot of my friends are still in the Southampton area, so I find myself down there intermittently.
I comment frequently under a variety of pseudonyms and I never get any response. I just assumed that you hated your readership.
I miss Don Woods.
I comment, but I have a bad habit of killing the comments when I do.
Also, you forgot to mention in the biography “capable of making it look cool to wear a traffic cone on your head”. I have the photo somewhere, I could always post it 😉
C x
Damn right. I rocked the hell outta that cone.
Hey Pete, I read your stuff every day; commenting when I feel I have something to say, liking those that I, um, like but have nothing to say and still reading all the rest.
I’m sure we both congregated at 1up together during it’s halcyon days,but I wasn’t aware of you ’til I became hooked on the Squadcast.
I can sum myself in few words: father, husband, gamer, writer, optimist and general lover of pizza.
A fine combination of character traits.
So many of my online friends hail from 1up originally. That site has a lot to answer for. 🙂 My life would certainly be far less rich were the Squadron of Shame not involved, I know that for sure.
You should know me by now – I’ve written so many replies to y ou. I thought you might think I was a pain, or boring, or presumptuous, or too old, or too grumpy, or . . . I’ll think of some more in a minute.
I’m 63, feel 73 physically but 33 mentally, married, am a singer, play the piano when I can remember how to do it, am an artist on and off, learned French at Uni but with no practice my vocab is shot to hell, did a Masters in Writing at ECU in Perth Western Australia where I live. I love music – almost all kinds, except Rap and bibop or hip hop or whatever it is called. I wrote a contemporary fantasy novel for my Masters, which I haven’t published yet. I am considering doing it myself on my other website – judsjotting.wordpress.com – when I get some time off from publishing game-review blogs. Have 92 of those so far and counting. I have so many notes still do blog, but have to fit in testing new games (and writing more notes) as well as putting the info into blogs. All very time-consuming.
I love crime novels and have written some of them, and scripts as well – plus I love playing PC games, Hidden Object/Adventure games, especially the CSI series. I also like Sudoku and crossowrds, and am a whizz at jigsaws – I have the abiltity to hone in on minutiae, and am generally very observant. I’m basically everyone’s ‘Fun Pal to Be With’! I just adore Douglas Adams and am obviously a huge fan of Stephen Fry.
Though I am a very social animal, I have rapidly gone off crowds. If I’m not careful I might just settle down to being a Hermit.
I really enjoy your blogs, have saved quite a few, in particular all you NaNoWriMo ones. I am just waiting to hear if you have taken that novel any further – because you should! When you work out how for Pete’s sake let me know so I can do so too! lol then people will stop nagging me about getting mine published.
Can you blog some more of your creative writing works please? See you tomorrow.
You’ve been one of my most prolific commenters in recent months, Jud, so thanks for that!
I know what you mean about being the “social animal that doesn’t like crowds”. Online, I’m quite a social person, but I tend to clam up when faced with crowds of people, particularly strangers, but ever friends at times. It’s one of the many anxieties that make me who I am, I guess!
As for the creative writing, I would love to get something published. Like I say, I have a story on the go in Google Docs at the moment, but I’ve been umming and ahhing about publishing it on a new blog. It’s not finished yet, but if I put it up online for all to see and commit to updating it on a regular basis, it might actually make me get on with it. Once it’s finished, I could then always look at perhaps self-publishing. Is Lulu.com still around?