I have been given five writing tasks by my good friend David Tubb and I shall be writing one of these each day this week. These will be somewhat different to my usual entries, and so I am just writing them as well as my regular entries, rather than instead of.

Today’s task is to write about an amazing experience.

I must say that the word ‘amazing’ isn’t really one which really suits any of my cherished memories. The events which have caused me to gain the most happiness in past have generally been very small quiet moments which the word ‘amazing’ might not quite fit. As such, I have decided to take the word ‘amazing’ just to mean ‘meaningful’ or ‘significant’ and so while the following anecdote may not be easily be described as ‘amazing’ for me it still fits the criteria.
    It was hard for me to decide what to write about for this entry as there are several moments or events with friends of mine that sprung to mind instantly and it was very hard to pick one to be the subject of the entry as I would hate to feel I was valuing one over another when all of them are very significant. In the end, I decided to choose a time when I was by myself in the Wilderness at Corsham. It was a sunny day and I was lying on a hill looking out at all the scenery. I stayed there for an hour or two and didn’t do anything at all, I was very happy because I had a complete feeling of contentness. This contentness wasn’t due to everything being absolutely perfect in my life, everything was just normal as it always is, I was just so completely happy to be there enjoying nature. If I can feel so happy when I am alone, then I should never really worry about loneliness. I love all my friends, of course, and while I would like them to stay there forever, it’s an unreasonable expectation, so it’s nice to look at a moment where I was very alone but at the same time very happy.

I have been given five writing tasks by my good friend David Tubb and I shall be writing one of these each day this week. These will be somewhat different to my usual entries, and so I am just writing them as well as my regular entries, rather than instead of.

Today’s is for me to write about three good things that have happened in the past week.

The first is also the most recent: Today I met with my friends Dalfino Madrigal Keyte and Christian Watkins and visited a pub with them. Dalfino now goes to a university in Plymouth and so I, unfortunately, do not get to see him very regularly, though I can still chat with him using the internet. Christian is somebody else I don’t get to see too often, but, unlike Dalfino, he has a very minimal internet presence and so my communication with him is very small. So, it was very nice to see the pair of them today and Christian very kindly bought me lots of Diet Coke and even gave me a hug as I left. Dalfino also invited along my old friend Michael Woodham, somebody who I have known almost my entire life, and while I may not be as close with him as I am with Dalfino and Christian, it was still nice to see him again.
    The second is actually the day when I was given these writing tasks (Thursday). I popped  into Bath and spent the afternoon doing things with David. We popped into the toy shop, the game shop, the sweet shop, had a pizza, got some books and all other kinds of fun things. It was during this day that I discovered the mint flavour M&Ms, which I found rather tasty. At the end of my time with David, I was very kindly given these writing tasks and also got to briefly see my friend Naomi Brennan. Much later in the day, I also had a nice conversation about onions with another friend of mine (who I can’t name).
    The third event concerns another friend of mine who I am unable to name (so similar to the other friend, hey? Almost as if they were brother and sister) specifically, my friend Rhinowater who I wrote about the other day. This won’t take many words to explain, but he and I planned out the storyline for a collaborative writing project we are making together entitled Monster Village. So, that was a very nice and with that there are my three happy things of the week!

I decided I would write a blog entry about niceness as it seems to me that it is virtue which is rather undervalued. How often do you hear somebody say (about somebody else) “Yeah, they’re nice, but…”? My question is: but what?
    I find that a lot of people view niceness as a bonus, but tend to like people if they’re intelligent, funny or any other additional things that are generally valued more highly. But this seems silly to me, from my point of view, niceness is the most important of all virtues. I don’t need the people I like to be funny, intelligent, outgoing, loud or any of the rest of that kind of thing, I just need people to be nice, and the more nice somebody is, the more I will like them. I mean, why do any of the other qualities I mentioned even matter to people? Niceness is important as it is a sign that a person can be depended upon, no other virtue really has that upside. Although, I will say that intelligent people do tend, in my experience, to be nicer, but, to counter that, many intelligent people can be arrogant and rude, and some unintelligent people can be very nice indeed.
    Sorry, this blog entry may be a bit short (and lacking a point) but I just thought I’d raise something which I don’t understand about a lot of people. Why is niceness (the thing which is most important to me) not valued as highly by others?