Sorry, this is all navel-gazing stuff. But since I mentioned it already, I should probably point out that the results are up.

If this happened on the train I would probably be complaining quite vociferously. As it is, I lie between the Brian Taylor and Calum Cashley in Iain Dale’s top 40 Scottish political blogs, as voted for by readers.

More to the point, this list is definitive proof that this blog is the second best non-aligned non-MSM Scottish political blog (behind Ideas of Civilisation). I always knew it. (Any way to make the result sound more impressive, huh?)

Overall this blog is 16th, which is a dramatic fall of fourteen places from my previous position in this list. Still, I got off lightly. The person who was number 1 in that previous poll is nowhere to be seen in the top 40 now. Just goes to show what a fickle world this popularity malarkey can be.

I’m actually quite pleased for this blog to be up there still in 16th place given the increasingly sporadic nature of my blogging. I certainly can’t complain about the blogs above mine in the list, nor a few below mine. So thanks if you voted!

Another point to note is that Scottish Roundup is number 31 (in the week that it celebrates its 100th roundup too). Not bad for a blog that has next to no original content. Scottish Roundup is run by me, but it is a thoroughly collaborative effort with many people chipping in. So if you have contributed to Scottish Roundup before, give yourself a pat on the back.

It’s looking pretty unanimous on the ‘more personal posts’ front. The score is 8–0 at the moment. You nosy bastards! I’m currently facing up to the fact that the real reason I stopped posting ‘personal’ posts was because I’ve realised that I’m actually a bit rubbish, and writing about myself only reveals a bit more of my rubbishness each time. Which probably isn’t a very good idea.

The score on the other question is currently 6–2 in favour of keeping F1 posts here. I came up with a good name if I were to set up a separate F1 blog, although now that I’ve said it’s good I’ve only built up your expectations which would make it a disappoinment. I would call it vee8. Maybe a bit too obscure if you’re not a big F1 fan, and you just know that they would let teams use V10 engines again as soon as I started the blog.

Turnout is high, currently running at a massive eight votes. You’ve excelled yourselves. I’ll keep the polls up for a bit longer, but to be honest it looks as though the result is settled. So here’s one of those boring posts about my life that I promised.

I can’t believe that this is the last week of my summer. University holidays are meant to be long. They are really really long if you look at it on a calendar for instance. And last year’s felt really long, but that’s mostly because I spent all of my time either sitting on my bum or making a general nuisance of myself.

This year, though, I set myself a few goals. I know this is very target setterish, but it had to be done — partly to get myself in shape for life, and partly to keep me busy (staying busy makes me happier). I started taking driving lessons, which was quite good at first because it gave me a reason to get up in the morning. Then I got a job and I lost all interest in the driving lessons!

In a lot of ways I think this summer has been very successful — in terms of reaching some of my goals and so on. In other ways it wasn’t so successful. I mean, I never did all those summery things such as going out to the local scum-club. I think we are getting too sensible as we grow up.

I couldn’t reach all of my goals, mostly because I haven’t had the time! I know, it’s incredible — I’ve hardly been able to keep on top of time this summer. It was all so very different last year.

While we’re on time management, I was sad to see that the Political Teenager has gone on hiatus for the following reason:

Now I am starting University, I will not have time for long winded posts and rants.

This is a bit surprising to me. I’ve always wondered why you don’t find more students writing blogs (I’m not counting those of the LiveJournal type here). It’s not as if students don’t have shedloads of spare time. And in my experience students seem to divide their spare time approximately as follows:

• 40% boozing it up
• 30% “ironically” watching Neighbours
• 20% on MyFaceBeboJournal
• 10% forcing everybody within a 20 mile radius to use Fairtrade goods whenever possible
• 9% pretending to be in poverty
• ¾% being unable to add up to 100 and making ridiculous, mostly fictitious lists with little bearing on anything
• ¼% studying

Surely more of them can squeeze in a bit of blogging? After all, they are always banging on about how politically aware they are.

Sitting here, I think that going back to Uni might give me more time to blog. I really do dread going back to Uni, especially what with it being 3^rd year and all. It is going to be hard work. But at least I’ll be in some form of a routine. I’ll always have a few hours of spare time at the end of every day; ample time to get some blogging in.

I’ll also finally be able to listen to all those podcasts that I’ve been stashing away, never to be listened to. There’ll be plenty of time on the train for that. And reading all those economics books that I somehow never found the time to read.

The thing about this summer is that I’ve just been arranging lots of things without thinking about whether I really have the time to do it, simply because I’ve been so eager to keep myself busy. I’ve actually had to strike things off my list because I’ve got so much to do this week. For instance, my driving theory test is on Thursday. Thursday morning indeed. Why oh why did I book it for that time?!

I said I couldn’t believe that this was my last week of summer, but technically that was last week. This week is freshers week, and all the cool kids are out having fun. Here I am getting pale in front of a computer. Oh well.

Anyway, I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to matriculate this week. Regular readers will know that commuting to Edinburgh involves roughly a three hour round trip for me. This week I’ve got to go through to Edinburgh to write a time when I can meet my Director of Studies on a piece of paper. Then I’ve got to go back and meet him at that time. Six hours of my life wasted on bureaucracy! Aargh!

And then once I’ve got work on Saturday out of the way I’ll just have a teeny weeny bit of time left to get rested and make sure I’m all set to start University. Do I have enough pens? I don’t know. Did I clear out my folder from last year? Can’t remember. Have I done any preparatory reading? Of course not. I need to get my hair cut, my shoes have chosen this week to wear out, and I really ought to buy myself a jacket that doesn’t make me far too hot whenever Edinburgh doesn’t happen to be an ice cube.

If any lecturer makes some smart-arse remark about how we should all be fully refreshed after the summer, it truly will be the end.

The problem with this blog is that it’s never really had a purpose. The best blogs are always set up for some kind of reason. Maybe they have an interesting job, or they want to bring attention some kind of political issue. This blog has none of that. It’s just a toilet for my poo (words). And that gets to me sometimes.

Now this is dangerous: whenever I’ve asked people what I should write on my blog, everbody says, “just write what you want — it’s your blog.” That’s fine if only two people read my blog as was the case in the good old days. But it’s a bit off-putting to write something knowing that a few people are going to read it.

This blog has evolved uneasily over time. In the coming week I will write a bit more about what will happen to this blog in the future. But first I have a couple of questions to ask you. I’ve installed the poll plugin especially for this, so make sure you answer them!

A couple of recent trends. Firstly, the number of Formula 1 posts I make has grown and grown, often at the expense of other subjects. Look at my blog at the moment and you might think that my only interests were Formula 1 and Facebook!

Fair enough, you might say. I like F1, so I’m going to write about it. But the thing is that either you are interested in F1 or you aren’t. That’s unlike just about everything else I write about on this blog, which I hope at least has the potential to interest a broad range of people. And I know that a lot of you lot don’t like F1, because some of you have told me so!

So I think it’s time to consider setting up a separate blog for my F1 posts. There would be some disadvantages to this. The first big disadvantage would be that not everything that I write will appear here any more — but that would hardly be a new development because I already have three or four blogs whether you know it or not! The other disadvantage would be that setting up a separate F1 blog could potentially seem as though I’m trying to pass myself off as some kind of authority on the subject, which is blatently not true.

The other big recent trend recently is that the amount of posts I’ve written about my day-to-day life (as opposed to my personal opinions, which there are still plenty of) has fallen to almost zero. This is kind of related to that Facebook thing aswell. The more people who read my blog, the less about my life I can write.

The thing is, I do have the LiveJournal for posts like that, but I have even neglected that in this summer state of limbo. Often I think, screw it — “loads of popular bloggers write personal posts, so why can’t I?” Well here’s the reason why I don’t: I’m scared that you’ll find it boring.

So here we go. A question. Answer ‘yes’ for personal posts here; answer ‘no’ for personal posts on the LiveJournal. And if you answer ‘yes’ and this blog becomes a giant snooze-fest, you’ll only have yourselves to blame.

Update: Right, I’ve had to change the plugin I was using, and this new plugin only allows me to have one poll going at a time! So that’s why the options are more complicated than the simple ‘yes’ / ‘no’ questions I was wanting. I’ll keep it in the sidebar of the front page for a couple of days.