Written 03/04/09, on a bus that should have had a wifi connection, but, depressingly, didn't. Dear reader, what a terrible host I've become. Back in the days when I was traveling I was a good blogger, doing my best to keep to some kind of publishing schedule and, I like to think, writing stuff worth reading, but now it seems that I've fallen into inactivity. I'd like to make this something more than a 'sorry for the lack of updates' post, so let me tell you how this all works. I like to blog about a thing, a topic, something, as we say in computer science, atomic. I don't like to ramble (although I am aware that I often do) and I try to write something that I could imagine people talking about amongst themselves. When I was traveling I was experiencing so much, and doing so many exciting things, that I could easily lose track of everything I wanted to write about and miss countless topics each week. These days the wonderful things are still there, but they're much less obvious and much harder to write about. Wil Wheaton can take a D&D session and turn it into 4 blog articles, and that's a skill I admire, but it's not a skill I have. While I was in Australia I worked late into the night on blogs and I came to understand exactly why so many writers prefer to be nocturnal, although I couldn't put it into words, but now I have less time to blog and more distractions as such it's even harder to turn all those wonderful things into valuable reading material. Blogging has simply switched from an easy thing, where the words couldn't fall out of my head fast enough, to a hard thing, where the words I write feel inadequate for consumption by my audience. It's tempting to take the easy way out and say that this shift has been brought about by my life becoming boring, but that's not it at all. My life remains absolutely fascinating to me, and sometimes I think I'm going to burst with potential: I have so many ideas in my head that I feel paralysed by the possibilities. Things are just different, and I'm not sure how to write about this strange new world. Right now I'm on a bus to London, this crazy city that I'm only just beginning to come to terms with, to sit in a pub and watch the sun go down with people I've never met from my girlfriend's work. In the seats next to me, a girl is putting on makeup using the silver backing of her iPod as a mirror, and a couple are asleep in each other's arms. Just an hour ago I was on Oxford High Street, standing beneath some of the most outstanding architecture I've ever seen, much like the rest of the city I am privileged enough to call home. I feel so alive and so free and I barely even know where to start to describe all this, but I'll do my best.