Long time no speak...

After a very busy May (Uni'deadlines eeekkk!) and a majorly chilled out June and July I am now raring to go with the rigors of daily life again. Deep in the depths of reading numerous books ready for my third, and final, year of Uni' I am so chilled out it is criminal (is that even possible)?! I'm immersing myself in lots of Irish Literature and learning a bit about my culture. I'm a quarter Irish,with my mom being half Irish, and I am ashamed to say I know nothing about, and have never been to, Ireland. So, with this in mind, my aim by the end of 2011 is to pay a little visit. Next year is a busy one - just how I like it- with me hopefully starting a postgrad course in Birmingham ( if I'm lucky enough to be accepted that is), and me and my gorgeous boyfriend going on a much needed holiday in August. So I plan to take a weekend trip to Ireland and see what it is I have been missing, which I am certain is a lot!

Frustration decries the need for a haircut!

I am pulling my already short hair out with boredom and frustration thanks to a bad back. I have torn my ligaments in my lower left back and am sworn off work this weekend. I am under doctror's orders to rest and do gentle walking so my muscles don't seize. I don't 'do' resting very well! I feel like a bit of a fraud because I can walk and move - albeit rather slowly- I just cannot bend or lift anything - not even somehthing as insignificant as a bath towel. ARRRRGGGHHHH! I am trying to use the time productively and get started on some Uni' work I have to do over Easter. So far so good. It would help if the weather wasn't so god damn good though - it isn't conducive to sitting in a room hunched over a laptop!
Anyway, I'm going to stop moaning now and look on the positive side of things. My back is so much better than when it last gave out about six months ago. I put that down to my weekly Pilates and Yoga classes, thank you very much! Lets hope they continue to do their job and, who knows, next time my back decides it fed up and gives out I might be able to use a bath towel without the aide of a boyfriend or mom!

Peace.

Since my time in London and have begun studying Visapanna meditation. It involves self-awareness and accepting your own faults. Alongside this, relaxation is used to get to the point of total self-awareness. I know it sounds a bit 'new-age' and hippy but I've been practicing at least twice a week and am finding really helpful. I am much calmer and have more energy and I have also been sleeping a lot better too. Tomorrow I start a new Pilates class and next week I start a Hatha Yoga class - this also incorporates meditaiton.
My reasons for doing all of this is that late last year I realised I was becoming an emotional and physical nervous wreck. I was so highly strung and every little thing that went wrong bothered me. I knew I had to do something about it. Thankfully it seems to be working. Here's to a much calmer and more peaceful me!

London Town!

I've just returned from two weeks in London doing work experience on a very popular celebrity/fashion magazine. It has been an amazing experience too! I've learnt a huge amount about myself-both on a personal level and on a professional level. Living in London for two weeks was both exciting and daunting, especially as I had never been away from home on my own before. I discovered that (shock horror) I can look after myself without the aid of my boyfriend or the comfort of my parents being near. That may sound like a stupid statement for a 25 year old woman to make but as an only child I've been bought up in a very liberal, but very protective, environment. I was aware that I could look after myself but have never had the chance - that is not a criticism towards my parents, it's just an observation about me personally.
My first night in London was wierd, just because I was 200 miles away from home, getting ready to start work experience on the magazine and worrying I wasn't going to be good enough. On the Monday, my first proper day in the city, I went into automatic and jsut got on with it, and I found I enjoyed myself! In a strange way it was quite liberating walking down the street knowing that I was on some kind of mission ( to impress the editor and survive in London without panicking!). The locals must have thought I was nutter!
Even though I am exhausted and can't stop myself waking up at 6am - the time I was awake every morning while I was there - I had an amazing time.
A great experience but I'm glad to be home.

Why do we care so much?

I was standing in the petrol station today, waiting to pay and I found myself talking to the lady standing behind me. She had in her hands four boxes of cakes and two large bags of Imperial mints. I said to her that the cakes looked nice and she was making me hungry, she said that it would take her months to eat them because she was on a diet. The lady standing in front of me then said that she knew how she felt as she was also on a diet - Weight Watchers- and yesterday had emptied her kitchen cupboards of everything that wasn't 'healthy'. It made me think, why are we all so obsessed with how we look - we are never skinny enough, never pretty enough, never brown enough e.t.c. Neither of these women were large, they were normal, curvaceous, beautiful women - not everyone was born to be skinny. Our society has become so obsessed with celebrity and the endorsement of the so called 'perfect' image in magazine's that we never feel good enough. I am not entirely blaming magazines or the media for this, I think that we all need a reality check and need to learn to realise that these pictures are not real life; except ourselves for who we are and learn to love our imperfections. We are human - our imperfections are beautiful, lets learn to embrace them.

A New Beginning.

I've decided to learn how to meditate. I know it sounds a bit 'other world' and out there but I really need to learn to chill out and stay calm. I've also decided to start practising hatha yoga and have emailed a teacher local to me to find out some infromation on it. I need to be careful because I have torn ligaments in my lower back and I don't want to make the problem worse.
Next week I begin my 'busy time'! Have three days work expreience at the BBC in Birmingham and then it's off to London for two weeks work experience at Now magazine. I'm really excited about going, everything I am going to learn and making a good impression - I'm not finishing that sentence with 'hopefully' because my New Years resolution is to be more positive! If I'm being honest, I am a little daunted by it all. I am going to miss my boyfriend like crazy and will cry my eyes out when he leaves me to get the train home on my first day.I'm confident experiencing this will make me stronger though - and give him a chance to play on his X-Box! Living in London for two weeks on my own is going to be an amazing experience and I will learn a great deal about myself. I plan to sort my mind out while I am there. By that I mean clear away all of the worry and tension that is floating around in there now and become more confident in myself. I am going to return home as a new person - confident, happier and, most importantly, calm.

Consumerism Gone Mad.

Over the Christmas holidays it struck me how, as a society, we have all become crazed with excess, in every sense. I work part-time at a shopping centre whilst studying for my degree and it amazed me over the weeks leading up to Christmas and the week of Christmas of how insatible the genreal public's appetite is for consumerism. There were many times late on an evening when myself and my collageues would have to physically push people out of the door so that we could close the shop. On Boxing Day our shop was flooded with people, haggling for discounts, moaning at the length of the queue they had had to wait in and then being obnoxious and rude to staff. Why is it that life cannot stop for just a few days? Surely we all deserve some calm in the hectic running of day-to-day life?
I remember when I was little - four or five years old - when Christmas was a time for family gatherings, reconnecting with loved-ones and recharging those much needed lowered batteries. In modern society it seems that life has become overly busy, excessively stressful and, as a result, full of increasingly rude people.
Last year (how odd that sounds on January 4th!) I promised myself that I would have a stress-free relaxing Christmas, but I ended getting so stressed I made myself ill. Next year I plan to remove myself from that stress and go away for the week before Christmas. Myself and my boyfriend on our own somewhere quiet - where all the shops close on a Sunday!