Puppet Academy

Firstly, this picture is the only spoiler you're getting, and only because it's been officially published on the One Way UK Facebook page

As one of only two "first year" members of the puppet academy team this year I was perhaps understandably quite apprehensive coming into this week. Would I get on with the team? What place am I going to have in an already well established group? and the biggest question on my mind: Am I good enough to be here?

Academy has surprised me in many ways. 18 hour days? Psh... saw that coming (apparently most new applicants don't?). Quantity of sweets on offer? Well maybe a little, I heard there were usually a lot of treats involved - especially skittles - but we must have had literally about 40-50 bags of assorted goodies, and that's before you include biscuits (and I am really really sorry about the oreos...). Seeing them all on the table was quite something...

Probably the biggest thing that surprised me about academy though is that we're really all just people. Having attended the European festival now every year since 2013 I'm not sure I could name a year where the Friday night showcase wasn't the highlight of the event, simply because it pushes the boundaries of what you think should be possible. People look up to the academy team because what they do is just so different to what you normally see, and they're usually the first people to show off new things, whether puppets, props or in some cases entirely new and incredibly powerful ways of performing (the obvious one here being dowel rods). Because of this I think it's really easy to look at the academy showcase and think that it's something unattainable, something you could never achieve or even live up to, an impossible standard. I came into the academy week having not done a serious puppet project since Christmas (technically it was blacklight, so not really puppets... video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM_k2tfGrQI) absolutely terrified I wasn't going to be able to keep up with everything going on and that I couldn't ever reach the level of the bar I had set for academy in my head.

It was incredibly strange then, to discover fairly early on that the thing I had been looking up to for so long was now not only within reach, but remarkably similar to what I had been doing anyway.
There's a quote I really like which seems appropriate here:

"What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person"

Yep, that one is from Paper Towns (John Green). Almost certainly my favourite book of all time, and I've been trying to get this quote into a blog since I started, so this probably makes me far too happy... Anyway...

If you've not read Paper Towns (well first you should read paper towns...) this particular quote is from the thoughts of main character Q trying to figure out the motivation of Margo Roth Spiegelman, a girl who has gone missing and whom he (and basically everyone else) has been idolising. This one line completely changes your perspective on things, when you realise that we're all just human beings. Unique but ultimately the same, with our own thoughts, dreams, hobbies and lives. (seriously read the book right now it makes a lot more sense... or I suppose you could watch the film but it's not as good...)

The thing about academy is, we are but mere mortals. Even the best of us make mistakes, and sometimes stuff just doesn't work, no matter what you try and throw at it. One particular song we did (and no I'm not telling...) had an ending that went through probably 5 or 6 iterations and took the best part of 3 days to figure out, because it just seemed like nothing we did made sense. Of course having been through that process we now have an absolutely insane ending you guys will love, but without having experienced the joys of creating it it would be really easy to miss just how much effort went into that one move. The academy team aren't superhumans, we're just people who love puppets and want to put on a good show. It's a lot of work, but it's 100% achievable if you've got the passion to follow it through. It's a learning experience. I've done things I never would have believed I was capable of doing this week, and I'm just so incredibly hyped to keep going and raising the bar with my team back home.

The other thing that surprised me about academy though was just how easy it was to come out of my shell and be myself. So much so that I actually had to redefine what I thought I meant by that (it's complicated). I'm about as introverted an introvert as introverts get, someone who avoids social interaction like the plague where possible, and I'm not sure I could name another person or group or people that I'm even anywhere near as comfortable around as the people on the academy team. That's just crazy to me since up until I arrived in Claxby I had only ever even spoken to one of them once (3 years ago when he knocked me out of the lip sync challenge... yeah...) and normally it takes me much longer to get to the point of feeling able to reveal my true self. I suppose a lot of that is really due to the fact that probably for the first time ever, I had found a group of like minded people. I was no longer the Anomaly, I was the Entity. I was me. Wholly and completely, without needing masks or walls to hide behind, and I would be lying if I were to say that it didn't make me seriously reconsider what I wanted to do with my life. The thing with being with a group of people with such specific shared interests is you get the sense that you have so much in common that nothing is too awkward and you can just be yourself . Maybe I'm crazy, but the whole thing feels like we're really just one big slightly insane family, and I LOVE it.

I applied to academy this year largely because I was so inspired by the 2014 showcase and all the awesome and boundary shattering performances the academy has been able to put together every year. 2014 was a special year though because not only did it have probably two of (what I think at least) were probably the greatest songs in the entire history of academy: Victor's Crown and Hope of Glory (Toobies on trampolines). My team "Extreme Puppets" also managed to place third in the open competition that year with our entry "Jonah Jazz" which some of you might remember for this moment:

Pictures from One Way UK EPMF 2014

Maybe it was just the sheer ridiculousness of the fact I literally threw a puppet Jonah overboard, but it became one of our team's most memorable performances, and made what was already an incredible year into an unforgettable one, anyway I digress...

You're probably wondering at this point, why if I was so inspired by the 2014 showcase, I only actually applied for academy in 2017...

I often wonder the same thing...

As of writing this blog, I am currently 19 years old. I could have applied for 2015 academy if I had wanted to, so why didn't I?

I wish I could come up with an elaborate story of why I couldn't have gone for it back then, with fully explained diagrams detailing exactly what I was doing at every second that meant I couldn't possibly have made it to academy that year.

The truth though is I didn't apply because I was afraid. Afraid of going by myself and afraid I wasn't even good enough to be accepted onto the team in the first place. After all, if you have no hope of succeeding, then why bother trying... and so the application form lay on my desk uncompleted as I took the path of least resistance.

That may just have been one of the biggest mistakes I ever made...

I stand here now, in the weeks after academy, and I can honestly and genuinely say that Academy 2017 has been one of the best things I have ever done, second only to my decision to become a Christian at Soul Survivor 2012 (which I took another 3 years to actually act on). I would be lying if I were to say that that it didn't make me seriously reconsider what I wanted to do with my life.

When I applied for academy this year, I had absolutely no idea that it was the tenth year of academy, or that we were going to bring back a song from another year, so when the poll came out and it became clear that we would be bringing back Victor's Crown. *THE* song that inspired me to apply in the first place, I was incredibly excited, but also extremely nervous. Living up to the original seemed like an impossible task, because the song itself is just so incredibly powerful and it touched so many people when it was first performed in a way that is difficult to simply recreate. What we've got looks incredible, but only time will tell us whether we have succeeded in what we set out to do...

I joked with a couple of people while writing this that I wasn't sure how I was going to make it not be an essay, and I think I've completely failed in that respect, so to close, here are a few dos and don'ts worth considering if you're looking to potentially apply to join academy in the future:

DOs and DO NOTs

DO NOT apply for academy if you...:

1. Are seriously concerned you won't be able to function on what from my personal experience is typically 6 to 7 hours sleep (I managed fine but probably coped better than most as a uni student who has a weird sleeping pattern anyway)
2. Are in any way averse to puppets

On the other hand, most definitely DO apply for academy if you...:

1. Want an absolutely amazing week 
2. Are reasonably confident with lip sync and arm rods 
3. Are looking to develop your skills and grow as a person and as a puppeteer
4. Enjoy performing as part of a group, whether behind a screen or otherwise
5. Like the idea of trying new things and are excited by the thought of pushing the boundaries of what is and isn't possible
6. Want to work in a close team to produce something seriously AWESOME!
7. Want to build lifelong friendships and connect with like minded people
8. Want to develop your faith and most importantly...
9. Love puppets!

I really wish I could tell you guys more, but the showcase is top secret and to reveal anything more than I have written here would be to breach confidentiality, so I'll end by saying It's been one heck of a week but oh my goodness it's going to be EPIC!

Hope to see you there!

Day 46 - The Exoskeleton

Two years ago to this day, the one now called The Entity began a journey... Unlike so many journeys however, this journey was never meant to be to a specific place. Or maybe it was, and at the time he didn't realise it. It was a journey that would force him to confront some of his greatest fears, but also allow him to discover his greatest strengths. One not confined to a generic timeline, but rather spread out across past, present and future. It has been said that sometimes, in order for us to find who we really are, we must first take a step into the dark before we can see the light. Sometimes we have to get lost before we find ourselves.

This journey was the retelling of almost seven years of trials, both physical and mental. Moments on the moutaintop and moments from the deepest darkest pits. Highs, lows and everything in between. Most of all though, this was to be a story of how a young boy somehow managed to find a way to keep going, despite the raging storms around him and everything telling him to turn back, to give up and to lose hope. It was a story of the impenetrable defence he built around himself, and how that very defence - those very barriers - became his prison.

It was a story of isolation.

Beyond that though, it was also a story of self discovery, how he wasn't happy with the life he had built for himself within these walls, how being forced to conform outwardly to fit in had turned him into the very thing he hated, and how he wanted out, whatever the cost to himself.

It was a story of escape.

The trouble was, how do you break down an unbreakable wall? Conventional means had proven ineffective, so what was left? Well... the answer seemed obvious...

The Key.

The Key was the way out, The Key was the truth of what he had, and The Key was the only way for him to get his life back.

Finding the key proved to be the easy part, since by the time he realised he needed it he had already found it, the hard part for The Entity was finding the courage to use it in the lock, as he knew that the moment he did, everyone he ever met would know that that was what he had done. In a world where everyone was living within their own bubble, he would stand out, and he would not be able to hide it, like a city on a hill or a lamp on a stand in a dark room. He would be forever different, and more than that, he would be vulnerable, with the whole world against him...

So he accepted it and did it anyway, in the biggest way possible... Watched by 9,000 people...

This was the story of the exoskeleton.

It seems somewhat appropriate that Easter is tomorrow, since that's really where it all began, a story of death and rebirth that gave us the keys so that we can really live. Free of barriers and everything holding us back. We just need to find them and step out.

With that in mind. I end with a song  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lky7U8ygU78 :

Run Wild - For King and Country:

Are the walls to lock you in or to keep others away?

And if the doors were to be opened would you leave or would you stay?

The comfort of your misery you cherish dearly

And you haven't started dreaming 'cause you're still fast asleep

But don't you wanna

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

You're a lion full of power who forgot how to roar.

You're an eagle full of beauty but you can't seem to soar.

Will you return to the garden where you were first made whole?

Will you turn to the one who can liberate your soul?

Don't you wanna

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

Run wild. Live free. Love strong?

To every soul locked in a cage

In the prison of your past mistakes

No there's no time left to waste

Yeah you can make your great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run, Forrest, all depends what direction. Some people run from fear some from their own reflection. Some people run their mouth, some people run their house ruling with the heart of a tyrant. Some people run their block, bust shots with a 4-4-5, and that's the environment, how we were raised, living like lions but trapped in a cage, back to a mine gold day with the blood of a king but the heart of a slave, don't you wanna run...

Run wild. Live free. Love strong. You and me?

Run wild. Live free. Love strong?

To every soul locked in a cage

In the prison of your past mistakes

No there's no time left to waste

Yeah you can make your great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

We're made to...

Run wild, run wild, run wild

If your soul's locked in a cage, you can make a great escape

We're made to...

Run wild, live free, love strong, you and me...

Day 26 - Freefall, Assertiveness and a series of (un)fortunate events?

Isn't it funny, how sometimes the worst things in life can lead to the best. I was thinking about this recently, walking back in the rain from YP the other night. It was through missing my offer grades that I ended up at this university, and if it wasn't for a series of unfortunate events, I'd not have found my church here, and I certainly wouldn't have been walking back to my flat  in the rain at 10 oclock in the evening that night. Not only would I not have found my church, but I'd also not have found the CU, or any of the amazing people I have met in the past couple of weeks through hall group and Story week, and my weekend away. Aside from the grades thing, everything else I've mentioned can be traced back to one point, one event, and ultimately, one person. My friend Jordan.

A bit of context here: After results day, and when I knew where I was going, I spent a significant amount of time on social media finding and attempting to connect with different freshers groups. I ended up in a group chat for year 1 physics, and through this group chat I met Jordan, who isn't actually a year 1 physicist (but is year 0 so close enough). To cut a long story short, we arranged to meet up for a church walk hosted by the CU in an attempt to try and find churches here. Of course this happened after Ruth had already decided to visit, and so I ended up going to the church walk but not meeting Jordan that week (we actually met, and then established we were going in different directions, so yeah...). The next week they ran the event again, and once again I didn't manage to meet Jordan, but because of this I was forced to make a decision on impulse, which led me to the church I'm now settled in. Because of Jordan I met Ruth, and because of Ruth I met pretty much everybody else I know in Cardiff outside of my degree. Through what was a bad situation, I found probably the best thing about being here so far.

I was talking to a couple of the people from my church about assertiveness, and how we need to have more confidence in ourselves and our faith, because having this confidence is the only way we can ever make things happen. If we ever want our faith to mean something we need not just to think it means something, but to *know* it means something.

That can be initially quite hard to get your head around. Faith is about more than blind hope. If all we have is blind hope, then that really is all we have. It is only when we are able to say with absolute certainty that this is real that we begin to see change, because we were not made to be passive beings or to sit on the sidelines, we were called to be the light in the darkness, great warriors in the daily battles of life, and we can't be either of those things by being indecisive, shy or unconfident.

We also can't expect things to be easy.

Being a Christian means placing your absolute faith in God, and his plan for your life, and that is an incredibly difficult thing to do. Being a Christian costs, and you have to be prepared to give up everything you ever wanted, everything you ever hoped for, everyone you ever loved. It's incredibly hard, but if you are able to let go, then that is when you will truly feel alive.

I leave you today with a song: Au5 - Freefall



Shining faces lining up, everybody's filled with hope and disbelief
How could something so broken take us up beyond the reach of gravity?
Every second building up until we come back down like tears on this brave new world
this brave new world...

I know that I'm supposed to be afraid, but I'm not
I know that I will find my hand in yours when we drop
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive...

Shining faces lining up,
Everybody's filled with hope
Everybody's filled with hope, and disbelief
(I am only alive in the freefall)
That time...
That time that we fell...
And we kept going, we kept going
(I am only alive)

I know that I'm supposed to be afraid, but I'm not
I know that I will find my hand in yours when we drop
I am only alive in the freefall
I am only alive in the freefall

I am only alive...

I am only alive in the freefall.

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OK it's been a while... I'll be honest, I gave up even trying to keep going for 40 days, I simply just don't have the motivation, or the time, to write a decent post every day. And so it is that days 9 through 25 simply ceased to exist and things move back to normal. Sorry... :c

Day 9 - Neon Rainbow

Call me crazy, but I was listening to this song the other day, "Rameses B - Neon Rainbow"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWXWA3b5Zes) and I had the strangest experience. I was walking along, and suddenly I just felt ridiculously happy. It had been an absolutely wild day, I had had absolutely no sleep, and had spent most of the last 24 hours working solidly to try and finish assignments or lab write up that, yes, I had neglected to do (because future me has to deal with that... >_>), and I'll be honest, I didn't even manage to finish it all by the time the deadline came around, which is entirely my fault, but hey.

So you get the idea, I was incredibly stressed, and frustrated at myself and my lack of any kind of self organisation whatsoever, and thus what I'm about to say came as a bit of a shock.

Basically, I just came to an incredible realisation. Standing there listening to that song, I realised that probably for the first time ever, I was free from depending on specific people, things or circumstances to be truly happy. Despite all the bad things I might have said about Cardiff, it's my home now, and it's a place where I am the master of my own destiny. Even though I'm now in a location that a year ago I wouldn't have even known existed, in a weird way I'm more confident here than I ever was back home, because I see it as my city, and a place where I can truly be me, and that's amazing.

I leave you today with some words from the song:

"There's a place I know that always feels like home
Pixels and soundbites, warm digital sunlight
There's a place where I belong that feels just like a perfect song
There's a place where I can go, just follow the Neon Rainbow"


Thanks guys





P.S:

Sorry I've missed so many days, I've just had so much going on and everything has kinda just fallen apart. I do intend to finish the 40 day series, but it might be over more than 40 days. I don't intend to stick to my initial plan any more either (see day 7), but I do intend to go into more detail about certain things in this post at some point, it just didn't feel appropriate to include them here. By all means ask me questions though, I might answer them but I might just tell you to wait for a later blog post when I've worked out what I'm trying to say ;)

Day 8 - Questions

Oh questions, how I love you but how I also hate you sometimes...

Today was more than a little crazy, and mostly not in a good way, I woke up at 10 am, which was fairly normal, but I then fell asleep again (which is not normal). Thankfully I wasn't woken up by the fire alarm, but annoyingly, when I did wake up it was 10:40, and my bus had long since departed. I don't actually have anything timetabled for thursday morning, but I've been trying to get into a habit of going in regardless to get work done, because lets face it it's easier to work without being distracted.

I had also agreed to meet my friend at 11

(un)fortunately he also managed to not wake up, and so the meeting never actually happened, but it gave me the chance to prepare for lab, which ultimately probably wasn't necessary, the experiment took all of 1 hour (of 4)

Error propagation though? That's on a whole new level of bad. I literally spent 3 hours just trying to come up with an equation to combine errors in my measurements, and it's currently 4 AM and I still am not even close to finishing the write up for this experiment. I hate life sometimes

Edit* I gave up. It's now Saturday and that train of thought is long gone, I'm sorry. I'll catch it again at some point but right now I need to sleep...

And no, I didn't get labs done... :/

Day 6 - Ruth

OK this is a bit of a wierd one, and no, it's not what you might immediately think...

The name Ruth literally means "friend", and so it's perhaps appropriate (if a slightly strange coincidence) that probably the two most significant people helping me transition to University have been called Ruth, and have gone far far above and beyond the call to help me settle in (and seriously, you people are both amazing and I owe you guys so much, and everyone else who has helped me).

I'm not going to go too much into this, since I've already posted about it, but I thought I'd share again a passage from the book of Ruth, in the old testament (the second one I managed to read all the way through by choice)

Ruth 1:16-17:

But Ruth said, "Don't beg me to leave you or to stop following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. I ask the Lord to punish me terribly if I do not keep this promise: Not even death will separate us"

Ruth went above and beyond the call of duty to help her friend Naomi. When things got difficult she didn't run away, she stayed with her friend, it's a really moving story, even if it isn't necessarily the most well written. And in many ways it reflects how people have been with me through my life.

I'm not really sure I have too much to talk about with this, so if you want a (slightly) more detailed view on it you'll have to look at my other blog post "River City, Exams, Ruth and one heck of a slide puzzle (and not in that order)". I guess I just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has been there for me, whether your name is Ruth or not. I have no idea where I'd be right now without you, and it means more than you could ever know.

You're amazing, all of you.

Day 5 - River City

Going to university for me has been a massive leap of faith, and there were plenty of things that to be honest I hadn't even considered when I decided to go down that route. Finding a church was not one of those things, but I'd be lieing if I said I'd put all that much thought into it before I got here.

It took an enormous amount of effort, and courage, to try and find somewhere to go, since I've only really gone public with my faith as of just over a year ago, and I still find myself carefully steering around the subject in conversations for fear that people will think less of me for some reason. To find other Christians and a church at university, I not only had to actively go out and find them, I also had to accept that I was going to have to broadcast the fact to everyone I met in the hope of finding people like me in the same situation (being a fresher really REALLY does not come naturally to me).

I ended up settling in the second church I visited, River City. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure at the time if it was the right decision, but bear with me a second while I explain my reasoning:

River City is quite small, which meant that although I wasn't necessarily going to feel at home immediately, it was a place where I could realistically get to know people, and people could get to know me. While I'm not against bigger churches, I've never been good in big groups, and going to one would have meant I actively had to go out and find people within that church to make friends with, and put me in a situation where everything became overwhelming.

Despite it's small size though, River City as a church honestly has more passion than any other church I have been to, and yes, that includes things like Soul Survivor Watford and I'd even go as far as to say it probably out did some of the stuff at New Wine on the passion front. Being part of something like that is incredibly challenging, but in a good way, as it encourages you to focus on what is important rather than singing the same songs every week with the same call and response prayers which it feels like nobody actually means (sorry Peachcroft, you're all amazing people really and I don't mean to offend by saying this). River City as a church, really feels like it is "For" God, rather than just "About" him, and that kind of atmosphere is what brought me to faith in the first place, so I suppose it makes sense that it's what I would go back to (If anyone wants me to clarify what I mean by that please do send me a message or something, I'm not sure I can explain it very well here).

I've also met some absolutely amazing people there, and quite frankly the amount of support I have received from being a part of this church has been incredible, I'm honestly not sure where I'd be right now without it, and it's probably been the single most important thing helping me settle here, so I don't know if you're reading this, but if you are I feel like I should just say an absolutely massive thank you, because you really didn't need to go to any of this trouble for me, but you did anyway, and that means a lot.

I'm bad at endings, I'm sorry guys...

Day 4 - Corinthians

Sorry if this one is a bit short, I wasn't entirely sure where I was going to take it.

tl;dr: I'm a Christian, as you're probably already aware, but I'm not a particularly good one. I'm terrible at remembering to read my bible, or pray about stuff. I need help.

Luckily, I have a great friend called Anna, who has taken it upon herself to send me a text message every evening reminding me to do these things, which I'm not sure she realises how much I appreciate. (Seriously, I know you're reading this, I owe you big time). Not only does Anna remind me to read my bible, she also gives me recommendations for stuff to read in my bible, which is incredibly useful, and she listens to anything I have to say about it afterward, (which is honestly a feat in itself)

It was through Anna then that I came to read Corinthians.

Corinthians is actually two letters, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians, the seventh and eighth books in the new testament, and the first ones I can say I actually managed to read all the way through, by choice. The letters are written by Paul, one of the early Christians, to a church in Corinth (hence the name), and are basically a set of instructions for how the people there should live, as well as some helpful advice for dealing with some of the difficult situations the church as a whole is facing at the time, much of which, taken in a slightly different context, can still be considered incredibly relevant today.

I don't remember the whole thing word for word, since it was over 3 months ago that I actually read it, but there was one particular verse which stuck out to me at the time, which I'm going to share here:

1 Corinthians 10:12-13:

"So if you think you are standing firm, be careful you don't fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so you can endure it."

I don't know what it was about that particular passage, but for whatever reason it stuck out at me, and I felt compelled to share it. 

I guess it's just the fact that generally speaking, until I left for university I had generally just been in quite a stable position, but now that I'm here things are a lot more precarious, and right when I thought I'd settled down, something came to knock me over...

Through all that though, I made an important realisation. It wasn't going to be easy, but I had a way out...

Day 3 - Sink or Swim? - The University Challenge

OK, I'll admit it, I might have stolen the title for this post from a talk at Soul Survivor last summer, but it's something I've been trying to find an excuse to talk about for a while, and this seemed a good way to introduce it, so here goes I guess:

To give some context here for those who don't already know, Soul Survivor is a sort of Christian youth camp, people from churches all over the country come and spend 5 days in a field somewhere in somerset. Probably sounds rather dull right, yeah... that's what I thought when I headed there the first time... Oh man how wrong I was... I'm just gonna leave this video link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOJCTMDGejA

Yeah... I'm not sure exactly what I can say other than is completely blew me away, and I've honestly not been the same since.

Anyway, I was at Soul Survivor 2016 last summer, and I was looking through the programme for the week, and I came across this talk: "Sink or Swim? - The University Challenge". (It's probably worth mentioning here that I had literally had my uni place confirmed the day before) and I was intrigued. Knowing I was going to university but not really knowing a whole lot about it I had decided to go to as much studenty stuff as possible over the course of the week (because I may be slightly obsessed with information... don't judge me >_> )

The description for this talk was "University can be a challenging environment for us to thrive in with up to 70% of Christians losing their faith during their time at university. Freddie will look at how we can not only keep our heads above the water but actively swim and thrive in our faith at university." and the opening line was "Does anybody know the probability you'd survive an attack by a four metre crocodile?"

I'm gonna guess 30%

Turns out I was right, who'd have thought...

That statistic is really very scary. As a Christian you have as much chance of having your faith survive university as you do of surviving an attack by a four metre crocodile, that's crazy. The problem is that when you look at the facts, it's easy to see why.

When you first go to university, you have an opportunity that is incredibly exciting. You're (usually) in a completely different location, and nobody knows who you are or anybody else is. All the connections you've made suddenly are stripped away and in a very short space of time you're forced to define yourself to make new ones. For the first time in your life, nobody expects anything of you, which means that overnight you can become a completely different person, and in that situation, you have a choice to make: Do you do the difficult thing and try and find a new church in an area you've only just moved to, with people you've never met, or do you go along with the crowd and bury that part of yourself for fear of it making people think less of you?

It's a sad truth that the vast majority of people in that situation would choose the latter, and it's honestly understandable. If Ruth and Adam hadn't come down to visit me during freshers week I probably would have done the same, because it's honestly just easier, but I didn't stand up in front of 9,000 people at Soul Survivor 2015 because I thought being a Christian was going to be easy, I did it because I didn't want to be able to hide it, and it was a combination of that and some amazing people checking up on me from home that inspired me to keep looking, no matter how difficult things seemed at the time. They kept my head above the water.

You don't realise just what it means to be able to completely recreate yourself until you actually live it, it's an amazing opportunity, but it still requires effort. Things won't come naturally, you have to put yourself out there and actually work to see change, and that's incredibly difficult, but 110% worth it.

Until later then...

(You can find the whole talk here, the guy explains it far better than I can if you have time to listen: 
http://soulsurvivor.com/talks/16c011-sink-swim-university-challenge/ )

Day 2 - Dear Younger Me

I've made mistakes in my life, who hasn't...? If there's one thing you can guarantee it's that at some point, we're all going to do something we regret, or in many cases not do something, and then think back on it and be like: "I wish I'd done that" or "what if I'd done this differently"

I came across a song a while ago now, which as soon as I heard it resonated with me

----- Dear Younger Me - MercyMe -----

Dear younger me, where do I start?

If I could tell you everything that I have learned so far then you could be

One step ahead of all the painful memories still running through my head

I wonder how much different things would be...

Dear younger me...

Dear younger me, I cannot decide,

Do I give some speech about how to get the most out of your life or do I go deep and try to change 

The choices that you'll make 'cause they're the choices that made me

And even though I love this crazy life

Sometimes I wish it was a smoother ride

Dear younger me

Dear younger me...

Oh if I knew them what I know now, condemnation would've had no power

My joy, my pain would've never been my worth

If I knew then what I know now, would've not been hard to figure out

What I would've changed if I had heard

Dear younger me, it's not your fault

You were never meant to carry this beyond the cross

Dear younger me

You are holy, you are righteous, you are one of the redeemed

Set apart, a brand new heart, oh you are free indeed

In every mountain, every valley, through each heartache you will see

Every moment brings you closer to who you were meant to be

Dear younger me

Dear younger me...

---------------------------------------------------

Official lyric video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l70C3ePyIQ

Over the past 6 months, I've been constantly plagued by "What if's." "What if I had thought more about my future before committing to university?", "What if I chose the wrong subject?" "What if I had chosen a different subject?" "What if I had been more open about my feelings 4 years ago?" The list is endless. They dragged me down, and held me there, while I was battered by what if after what if. I honestly lost count of the number of things that were brought up during this time that made me wish I could have gone back and changed them. It's been really really rough. Don't get me wrong, I love university and all the crazyness of it. Living here is great but I didn't always think that. It took a significant part of my first semester to even begin to settle down, and I still don't feel entirely comfortable with my situation, but it's the last part of this song that really helped:

"In every mountain, every valley, through each heartache you will see every moment brings you closer to who you were meant to be. Dear younger me..."

Even now, the what if's still come to try and get me, the difference is, I stopped listening to them. It doesn't matter if times are good, or times are bad. Things happen for a reason. Sometimes we just need to be, and accept that whatever you've done, whatever you're going through, things will get better, all it takes is for you to keep going, and that's exactly what I must do now...

Day 1 - Opening up

I'll be honest, when I was thinking about doing this 40 day plan, I wasn't really sure what I was going to write at first. I made a google document with a whole bunch of topics, and just put them in an order I thought made the most sense, so this is me apologising right now for the mess that this is likely to become.

(Yes, I went back to the unlock patterns, I might explain the significance later)

Today has been quite eventful. Despite not a whole lot actually having happened, what has happened has been very positive. 

Today we had personal tutorials, which are basically like normal tutorials, but on a one to one. The idea being that it's a chance for people to voice concerns that they might have that are either personal, or just irrelevant to everyone else. This proved to be quite useful, as it meant I was able to get clarification on many things which otherwise I might not have been able to, in particular some stuff regarding labs and other things. Nothing bad, just interesting observations.

One of the things I've found difficult about university so far is the fact that while people are there, and generally able and willing to help you, you need to actually go and talk to them, and admit you're struggling. This has never been something that has come naturally to me, since I tend to prefer doing my own thing and just doing what I can with what I have.

Admitting you need help can be really difficult, but it's the first step on the road to success in life, and chances are if you don't use what is there then you'll never really get anywhere. Despite how you might feel, it's important to realise that people genuinely do care about you, whether that's how you are as a person, or just academically. You might be surprised with the extent people often go to to help you.

I'll leave today with a quote: "Doing a degree is basically about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable" - My tutor

(Not the most helpful advice there eh, but so far true in my experience)

Anyway, it's 3:30 AM, I've delayed writing this post far too long and I need to sleep, so I suppose I'll see you tomorrow - Good Night!

Winterland

I'm home!

Well, I guess...

I basically came home yesterday, got into bed and slept...

Today I woke up in a winterland

It's been an interesting one, though sadly none of the snow has actually settled, but being outside when snow is falling really makes you appreciate the little things in life. If we're honest, we don't often even really consider snow all that much - it just isn't something we have to deal with very often - and sometimes even when it does settle, we just see it as an excuse to get extra time off, while infrastructure struggles to keep up.

I invite you to just drop anything it is you're doing right now and just think, for a minute, about the little things in life. If it's snowing outside where you are, then just go outside for a minute, find somewhere open, and take it in. If it isn't snowing, then find a clear night, and just find a place to lay down and look up at the sky. 

It's all too easy to get bogged down in everything life throws at you. Things build up and up and up until eventually it seems impossible to deal with everything. When one task is completed, three more take its place. No matter how much we do, there will always be more we need to do.

But what if we take a step back, a moment to ignore everything weighing us down. What if, instead of trying to throw everything we have at something that won't ever change, we choose to deviate from that path, to diverge from everything that is normal and do something so unorthadox most people would consider it insane?

What if, instead of living life as we are, we choose to live in the moment?

Being outside today, in the snowfall, I was struck by just how beautiful it was. A place I had been hundreds of times before suddenly seemed to have a completely different atmosphere. No longer was it just "some place tourists go for some reason." I began to really appreciate it for what it was. For the first time, I really saw it.

Living in the moment won't make your problems go away, but it makes the mountains we all face into more of a mole hill. When you take the time out, and really see life for what it is in this way, it makes everything else feel insignificant. When you live in the moment, it becomes more than just survival, because we are finally able to appreciate what it means to exist. Living in the moment is living alive!

I'm gonna end this post with a short poem I wrote a couple years back, so here it is I guess...

Woke up in a winterland, snow everywhere I see,
It feels so wierd saying this but finally I feel free.
With all this stuff around me then I can go and make,
Whatever my heart desires, albeit only fake.

No normal day, outside I see,
The snow, I think: I've found the key!
This strange white substance lets me be,
Master of my own destiny.

But when the rain clouds fade away,
And when the sun comes out to play,
Then this white snow will melt away,
And leave just memories of this day...

Insiders!

OK, I've put this off long enough, it's about time you guys all found out what it is I've been hiding from you the past week and a bit. On January 20th 2017 I recieved an email from Chris North, admissions tutor and organiser of outreach things. The subject? Undergraduate Insiders.

You might be wondering at this point: "what the heck is one of those"
Essentially, an undergraduate insider is a student at Cardiff University who blogs about their life, to give people an idea of what being here is really like. Unlike what you might find in a prospectus, insiders are in no way obligated to paint everything in a rosy hue to draw you in, the idea is more to be informative to new and current students, by talking about the ups, and the downs, of uni life.

You can probably guess where this is going...

Due to  the natural progression of life, most of the previous insiders had either left or simply decided not to continue with it. This meant they were looking for new members of the team.

It was sort of one of those things where you just say "Screw it, I'm not sure I'm good enough, but I do this anyway, so I might as well go for it right?" so I sent off an application, complete with a link to a post on this blog "Induction"

I have no idea how this happened, but I guess they must have liked it, because a few days later I got an email saying I'd been accepted. Talk about unexpected! As of January 27th 2017 I am now an official Cardiff University Undergraduate insider. I have a new blog on the official Cardiff University website: http://insiderblogs.cardiff.ac.uk/ and you are more than welcome to follow this one as well ;)

I should stress that this absolutely does not mean the end of "The Entity" my goal is to have my new insider blog be much more practical, dealing more with the real life aspect of settling in, assignments and the ups and downs of life in general. The Entity will remain exactly as it always has been, and in fact the only thing you really need to worry about now that I have two blogs is that I'm going to be putting out twice as much content and you won't have time to read it all!

Welcome to my world...

River City, Exams, Ruth, and one heck of a slide puzzle... (and not in that order)

I'm back in Crazylan... woops, uh, ahem... Cardiff

Much has changed, much hasn't, to be honest it's probably to be expected. Buses still disappear off the face of the planet right before they get to my stop, my hall is still miles away from anything useful (literally) and there is still a rather large tree blocking the view from my window. Nothing new there then.

It's been a rather eventful week back, by any standards, not just the standard I usually go by which is that anything involving leaving my room is eventful. I'm therefore going to begin with a disclaimer, in that I've been trying to write this pretty much since I got back, and as such it's likely this particular post is going to feel more like 5 or 6, I just have a lot to talk about.

I should probably start this post with a confession, I really really suck at remembering things. Not in the context of information - I'm pretty good with that - but in the context of remembering to pack everything into a suitcase to go places, I'm really really bad. 

Before I go any further, I should probably explain something. I left home to go back to uni on the 8th, and on the morning of the 8th I still hadn't even started thinking about packing, to be honest it just kinda got put to the back of my mind. I knew I was leaving on that day, but it hadn't quite clicked that in order to leave I would first need to pack. Unsurprisingly this meant that it got to the time I wanted to leave, and I wasn't ready to go, and unfortunately this led to my feeling rushed and wanting to get going as soon as possible, so I packed quickly and left. 

I don't think there has ever been an occasion where I have packed a bag to go somewhere, and not forgotten something fairly important, and, to the surprise of nobody, due to the extra pressure I had put on myself to get going, this was no exception. On this occasion however, it wasn't something as simple as a toothbrush I managed to leave behind, it was my hard drive. Even more impressively, I somehow managed to bring the cable, but not the box itself, talk about stupid mistake...

Not sure how many of you reading this are massively into computers, but suffice to say that this was a big deal. My hard drive contains 75% of my games, all my files, all my music, and well over half of my programs. On top of this, a lot of the programs currently on my SSD are set up very specifically to save and retrieve data from this external drive, so without it plugged into my computer I was pretty much restricted to basic web browsing, lest I risk messing up practically the entire way my computer works when programs on my SSD tried to pull files from a drive that wasn't there. Thankfully I have very generous parents, and my mum kindly agreed to come all the way to Cardiff to bring it to me, on condition I spent the day with her. So I got my hard drive back, and I even got a free lunch! If you didn't know me well enough you'd say I'd planned it that way! (apart from the fact I did genuinely forget to bring the thing and to be honest don't really think that far ahead).

Things got considerably more interesting on Tuesday evening however, after the hard drive fiasco blew over, as it was the evening of the weekly River City student community group, pretty much the only thing I'm a part of outside of my degree. For anyone who isn't already aware what this is, the best way for me to describe it is that it's a bit like a more active version of youth homegroup. For anyone who doesn't know what youth homegroup is, basically people choose an evening to meet up, usually at someone's house, to just talk about life stuff, and how the week has been as well as anything in particular that has inspired them. Sometimes there is also cake. It's basically a really good way to get to know church people outside of the church setting, important for someone like me who would otherwise sit in his room all day checking social media, playing games or spending far too long trying to write blog posts like this one...

Anyway, I went to this thing last Tuesday, and it was really nice to see people again after almost a month away. Going home for Christmas made me realise just how much this place has come to mean to me, no matter how much I might complain, or despair about how awful my life is sometimes being by myself all the time (and I know what you're going to say here, yes that is largely my own fault). It's where my life is, a place I can call home, and I love it for that.

So the evening progressed pretty much in the usual way, we got there, chatted for a bit about stuff, then they played some songs which we sang along to (though I didn't join in for most of it because I didn't know the words, I just used the opportunity to appreciate the moment, and to live in it for what it was), but then something happened.

I got a picture.

No, by this I don't mean I took a picture of something, or that I had my picture taken (I'm really not at all photogenic anyway). What I mean is a picture appeared in my head, and it wasn't like it was something I had thought about myself, it was like someone had put it there. I probably sound crazy saying this, but I felt instinctively like it was something I had been given, and that there was more to it than what you could see at face value.

What I saw was a jumbled slide puzzle, very specifically a 7x7 slide puzzle, much like the one you see below:

I will just stress here, this is far from an accurate recreation of the picture I got, the patterns were far more intricate, and overlapped tiles, so that there would only have been one correct arrangement of the puzzle. It was also initially black and while, so it was impossible to tell exactly what it might have been. I made this version in about half an hour in MS paint to give a general idea of what I'm talking about, so please don't judge my artistic skill too harshly. You could probably work out what the picture actually was without me telling you, but in the picture I got it was hard to tell, as everything was much more complicated and black and white.

Anyway, while I was looking at this slide puzzle, it started rearranging itself, and revealing a picture in the middle, which then gradually became more and more colourful, until the puzzle was solved, and the solved puzzle looked something like this.

I guess sometimes things can be hard to see. Sometimes what we are can just feel so messed up, so uncertain, that it's impossible to tell who the real you is. The truth is, no matter how broken you are, no matter how bad things can get, there is always ALWAYS hope. Life can be a bit like a slide puzzle sometimes, where nothing seems to be in the right place. The thing with life though, is you don't have to solve it yourself. If you are able to trust in love, then everything else will just fall into place, because at the end of the day, love always wins.

To be honest, I have no idea if this is significant or not, but I thought I might as well share it anyway, regardless, because in the words of Mike Pilavachi: "If I can help one person, then it's worth it, but if I don't try then I'll never know." Maybe it's nothing, and maybe it's everything. Maybe I'll never know, and maybe that doesn't matter...

I was talking to Ruth, a friend of mine from the church I've been going to, afterward, and how I'm so glad I've been able to find a place like River City after all the anxiety and loneliness that initially came with moving away from home, and how in some ways I feel more at home now than I ever have before. I guess because in some strange way, Cardiff is my place, and I'm in control of my own destiny here. I'm not reliant on other people (mostly), and I can be myself and do my own thing.

I came to a bit of a strange realisation though, during this conversation. If not for people called Ruth, I probably wouldn't have a church right now. Obviously there's no way to know for sure, but hear me out here:

When I moved to Cardiff, my intention was always to find a church eventually, however when I got here I think it's fair to say I had a difficult first few weeks adapting to the new environment. There are the obvious reasons for this: I was responsible for myself for the first time ever, which I'll admit was a bit of a shock to the system. I also missed people from home (I still do), and to be honest I just wanted to give up, to run away and just go back to how things were before. It was already hard enough to settle in without having to think about finding a church, so to be honest for the first couple of weeks I didn't even really bother looking. It was only when Ruth (different Ruth) - a friend from my church back home - texted me (completely out of the blue) to offer to come all the way to visit me and "do church" that I actually started looking for places. The church I ended up going to that week was not the one I ended up settling with, but if not for that visit I probably wouldn't have even bothered looking in the first place. It's easy to see how people who go to university often lose their faith, because without someone to push you in the right direction it's all too easy to think it doesn't matter, and just not try. Without proper church connections we start to lose our faith, and it's a sad truth that 70% of Christians who go to university would say they didn't have a faith any more after just one year (this is a genuine statistic from the charity Fusion). The pressure is to conform, but we can't let that get to us.

It wasn't until 2 weeks later that I found River City. The Christian union at the university organised a "Church walk" for the first few weeks of the semester, which was basically a meeting outside the students union where student representatives from different churches came and held up signs advertising their church before taking whoever was interested on that morning to wherever they were based. On the morning in question I had arranged to meet someone from the physics group chat and go and try whatever church he'd been to the week before. Of course on the morning in question this person also overslept, so I walked all the way down to the SU only to find that he wasn't there, and being forced to make a choice between going all the way back to my hall (I don't know if I've told you already, but that's a very long way, and is mostly uphill, so wasn't very appealing at the time) or picking a random church and going with that. It just so happened that the night before I had had a message from someone from River City via the Fusion app (which is really good, by the way, for anyone going to university and worried about finding a church). I therefore made the decision to find the representative from that church and go and see what it was like. The representative's name? Ruth

You can probably see where this is going...

It got me thinking though, the name Ruth literally means friend, and so it's something of a strange coincidence that some of the people who have argueably been most helpful to me in settling in share a name with such a specific meaning.

You probably don't know this, because I won't have mentioned it, but one of the things I'm trying to do this year is get better at reading my bible. I've never really been very good at this, in fact I'd go as far as to say the vast majority of what I know about it is stuff I've heard from other people. That and the gospel, obviously (because let's face it, who HASN'T heard about that, at least a little bit, even if you don't have any kind of faith). To be honest though, it can be quite hard to know where to start. I'd been reading Corinthians, which I'll come back to later, but on this particular evening I decided to go back a bit, and to read the book of Ruth.

Ruth is a relatively short book in the bible, consisting of just four chapters, so I managed to quite easily read the entire thing in one sitting. It follows the story of Ruth, a woman from the region of Moab, who married the son of a Jewish woman Naomi, whose husband had died. Ten years later both of Naomi's sons also died, and so Naomi was left alone with Ruth, and Orpah, her other daughter in law. Naomi told Ruth and Orpah that they should go back home, to live their lives and find new husbands, but Ruth refused to leave Naomi alone, and instead travelled with her to Bethlehem, where they lived together, until Ruth met and married Boaz, which through a complicated series of events I won't attempt to explain here allowed Naomi's husband to have an heir, and therefore Ruth became an ancestor of king David, and therefore Jesus. The book isn't exactly the most well written, quite hard to follow at times and perhaps understandably wasn't actually very relevant to me, but there was one particular passage that stood out in particular, Ruth 1:16-17:

But Ruth said, "Don't beg me to leave you or to stop following you. Where you go, I will go. Where you live, I will live. Your people will be my people and your God will be my God. And where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried. I ask the Lord to punish me terribly if I do not keep this promise: Not even death will separate us"

While I can't say I have ever been in this sort of position myself, it's pretty hard not to admire Ruth's dedication, regardless of what you might think about the Bible and other faith stuff. Ruth is not only saying she is prepared to stay with Naomi, she is saying that she is prepared to give up absolutely everything to be with her, despite everything that has happened. Even in death they will remain together.

*Update: Met another Ruth today, though briefly* (probably need another post to explain that)

University is a strange strange experience to begin with, and can be very difficult to get to grips with. You're thrown into a situation where not only do you suddenly have to adapt to a new environment, but you also have to do that with the added pressure of having (in my case at least) no friends from home to turn to for help (at least not within about a 100 mile radius). I have a daily quotes calendar on my desk, and I confess, I've had it longer than a year and this is my second time cycling through them, but it was this quote, showing up what is now just under two weeks ago, that started me off writing what has so far been an absolutely crazy long blog post. (Seriously, longer than my formal lab report at this point, so serious congratulations if you're still with me)

I'm not sure what it was about it, I've had it as my skype status now for over a year mainly because I liked it at the time it first came around, but this time it stood out to me, because in many ways, it's exactly the way I've dealt with university. Settled down first, got used to living alone, cooking for myself and everything else. Only when I had found my bearings in this strange new world was I able to reach out properly to people and begin to form meaningful connections, or maybe it was because of that that I finally began to feel at home here. Either way, it's an interesting series of events which I hope to go into more detail about at some point when I've worked out what I'm trying to say, but I think this post has gotten too long to remain as just one post, so I'm going to leave things here for now, and I may return to this at some point in the future, who knows...

Oh, and one last thing: at some point since returning I had 3 exams, but we don't talk about those much. Just know that they went about as well as I expected them to, which wasn't good, but they could have been far worse, and I think I've done enough to pass, which is the important bit.

Rest assured there is plenty more content to come in the next week or so, including a rather interesting development which I personally am very excited about, so watch this space...