Beginning

Hi.

Not sure how people start these things. At the beginning seems a good place to start.

Well, you see, I was going to call this blog 'an idiot's guide to deduction', but I have it on good authority that this isn't something idiots can learn. I'm not sure if that's good for me or not, but I suppose we'll find out sooner or later. I'm writing this blog for two reasons: one, because I'm falling prey to the stereotypical teenage need to blurt out their feelings online, and two, because I thought some people out there might be interested in my journey.

Tomorrow, I move into uni hall and start my first semester at Victoria University. I intend to complete a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Criminology, but that's not important right now. The point is that while I'm here, I want to learn the science of deduction. Or induction, as it should rightly be called.

Sherlock Holmes geek-freak? Yeah. Shh, don't judge.

I'm told no-one's ever been as clever as Sherlock Holmes, but really none of it seems impossible, exactly, does it? It's all just knowing what to look for and then looking for it all the time. Well, I want to be able to do that. So I'm going to train myself. If you, too, want to learn this elusive art, I'd love to hear from you. I aim to update this blog weekly with comments and progress reports, but knowing me it won't happen every week. Just most weeks.

My plan of attack, so to speak, is to practise. Basically, that's it. Spend an awful lot of time people-watching and making a fool of myself trying to deduce as much as I can about passers-by until I start to get them right. I figured it'd be easier to start with something like profession - work at it until I can guess what a person does every time. Then start to look for other things.

I'm also going to learn how to pick locks (the internet is a very valuable resource) because I'm told it might come in handy if I ever need to do a spot of burglary...

Obviously I'm open to suggestions as to how I might go about this, and if you have tried/are trying something similar, please get in touch. Meeting like-minded people over the internet is one of the greatest pleasures of the 21st Century.

Because of my geek-freakness (as you can tell, I'm completely comfortable with it. Everyone's got to have an obsession, and this is mine. There are worse. It could be Twilight.) I am also on fanfiction.net, where I write practically constantly (it's my hobby) under the penname of thisisforyou. You can find me at:

www.fanfiction.net/~thisisforyou

I mostly write for the BBC's modern adaption of Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock, co-created by Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss) because... well, it's just brilliant, isn't it? If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. Thoroughly. Gatiss is something of a hero to me, because he's a novelist and a screenwriter and an actor and a producer all at once, and he'd bloody fantastic at all of them. It shouldn't be fair. But I don't judge. Not when what he creates is so amazing.

Hello to the people I pointed over here from Tawa College who've just moved elsewhere. Hope you're having fun wherever you are. To anyone I showed the way from fanfiction.net, I'm amazed you're interested but definitely not complaining. The shift in lifestyles will mean I probably won't update for the next week or so, sorry, but I have started the next chapter of Can't Let You Steal My Heart. To anyone else, hello and welcome. I'm thisisforyou. Charmed to meet you.

Hope to hear from you along the way!

-for you