It's summer!!!

To help me make the most of this precious time off I've been posting tweets of what I've been doing. It may not seem a lot but I want to make sure I remember each day for what it is. However, I realise tweets aren't always accessible so thought I'd best keep this up to date too!!

The evening of the holiday. I was so overwhelmed by the generosity of my children and appreciation from the parents this year. It's been a tough one to manage behaviourally but the children have been fantastic.   I will miss them but also I'm looking forward to a new start with the new bunch! 

Day one: After realising the errors of my timing on Monday, my car was booked in for a service at 10 and not at 8! So a lie in was semi possible. But a year of early get ups is hard to shake. Still a drive through to the garage in the nearest city was actually enjoyable. The only feelings of anxiety was as I was nearing the place. My anxiety is becoming a huge problem!! 🚗

Once dropped off my partner whisked me off to the Metro Centre where we enjoyed a gorgeous meal in TGIs and did a bit of holiday shopping :) 🛍

A mad rush back to the garage to find that they'd lost my car (temporarily) and back home for a quick tidy and an appointment to get some new heaters. My partner, who knows no boundaries of shame, managed to talk the business man down to almost half of the retail price. Phew on our bank accounts but I felt huge sympathy for the salesman!! Now I can't wait to get the new heaters in! It'll be like living in the modern age!!

Day two: today was going to be relaxing but my father came along and started to help me renovate the garden. 

Despite feeling rather tired,  I then attacked the house for four hours!! You can tell I'm getting old. 

Just as I thought I was going to have a night in, my friend picked me up for a spontaneous barbecue despite the heavens opening after a rather warm week! 

Gorgeous food and gorgeous company brought the end of Day two!

🍃🌿🍗🌧

Day three: shopping, gardening and a night to myself.  At least the garden is 3/4 done - almost back to scratch!! 

 

The evening saw, what I was expecting to be short 10 minute walk, ending up at my parents house. I guess you shouldn't let a dog choose its own route!! If he'd had is own way he'd be back with my partner's parents house!!

 Benji also got to make three new friends!

Day four: today has been rather boring in terms of what I've been up to! This morning I made it clear that today was going to be a lazy day! However, I felt motivated to get out there and start exercising!! So despite rain starting to fall, I was off on a jog! Although it's hard going with my poor leg muscles the state they're in, I managed to jog three quarters of it. 🏃🏻🏃🏻 Need to keep it up now!! 🏃🏻🏃🏻

After that I've done what I said I would. Camped out on the sofa binging on my reading and Netflix before sampling a game. I think this holiday is going to be full of nights to myself...

 

📖🖥🎮

When did I stop living life...

When you're in your twenties there's only one way to live life. Fast and hard. So why do I feel like my younger years are fading away?

Social media is such a bugger. People are living life to the full. Travelling all the way around the world, discovering themselves. Even just laughing!! Oh how much I would love to hear myself laugh!
When I was taking my gap year, I promised that if I wasn't travelling  I was going to try new things. To pick up a new hobby. And so I tried my hand at sketching, I tried exercise, I tried photography. I wanted to find myself a hobby. 
Fast forward 25 and my life is a blur of working and trying to rest in the little time that I have left. My life is slipping away from me. 
So yet again. Let's try it. Let's make something of this year!!

Maybe happiness isn't found in finding yourself.

...perhaps its in pretending to be someone else.

As I was laid on the bed earlier, shattered from yet another day of work and battling anxieties.  I looked around and took in what my partner and I had made for ourselves so far.  This house was finally beginning to look like ourhouse.

Then I started thinking – was this what happiness was.  Had I imagined that I would be living in what was my Gran’s house when I was 13?  No.  I hadn’t even imagined my Gran passing away.  Yet at that time when I did sit there reflecting to the future, I’d thought that I couldn’t actually imagine life after 30.  I don’t know what I thought back then.  Perhaps I’d hoped to be married and have children by the age of 27.  Yet anything beyond that was just black.  Try as I might I couldn’t think of what the future would hold.

Now being an adult all I do is reflect back to the past.  It was like when 21 happened life stopped looking ahead, but began to look back.  And it’s during these looking back moments that I mused upon one thought.  Wasn’t I so much happier as a youngster purely because I spent so much of my time thinking I was someone else.  Most of the time I was daydreaming that I was some other character – Sabrina, Hermione even Mary-Kate and Ashley.  I was always someone else.  Never plain old me.  And I was happier then.  Being me just isn’t a happy place in comparison.

However is this just because I’ve become an adult?  A boring old adult with no imagination.  Having to run from place to place without a moment to stop and think about myself.  There’s always something I should be doing or some responsibility that I ought to be doing.  There’s no place in all that to just live life and just be happy.

Perhaps for a day I’ll think again that I’m someone else.  Alleviate all the responsibility and just become not-me.

The encompassing feeling of loneliness

I am in a happy long term relationship. I’m moving in with the bloke. Well moved in already really.  But a heavy feeling sat on my chest tonight as I was cleaning up a meal.  I was just feeling ever so lonely. 
For 8 years I’ve been travelling. Not travelling in the sense of moving around the world. But moving around within a few miles. Living out of a suitcase, plastic bags, backpacks until now. And it’s only now when I’m finally becoming rested and stationary that I realise, I’m just so lonely. 

My partner works completely different shifts to me and for the next five nights, all I’ll get to see him is when he wakes me up on a night when coming home. Or when I wake up and see his sleeping form. In the time between I’m busy working, or busy sitting by myself. Now admittedly I enjoy this time for time. Just being by myself and not having to make myself speak to people as is so often the case with my problems. However there becomes times when I do get fed up with my own company. Noones there at the end of the phone or online. All my friends have seemingly disappeared part from one or two. 

So when it’s times like this I’m left feeling rather sorry for myself.  Stuck in my own pit of misery. 

A New Year. A New Me.

  So 2016 arrived in a rather demure manner.  Sober yet bursting with a Chinese takeaway, I spent the night in the same way that the majority of 2015 passed - moany and grumpy. 

However, things have changed so far this year. I feel a sense of being more confident within myself. Something which has been noted by work colleagues. I feel so much more comfortable and mature somehow. I seem to have the right attitude now. 

It may have been due to finding out that my friend has been hiding that fact that he has been suffering from a fatty liver for around 5 years and he hasn't mentioned it. Nor changed his life for that matter. Nothing is more sobering than hearing this while sat there with a can of Fosters in your hand (other lagers are available). 
It seemed to me like this was a sign for changing myself. If he was suffering from such ailments then God knows how I'm surviving myself. And so I pledge to get fit this year. 

My last years resolution was to get sorted into a house and get a new car. I accomplished those. This year it's to fix all the years of damage I've been doing to myself. I mean now I'm in my own house I do not have an excuse.  I can actually buy what I want and eat what I want without having to put up with quick fixes. It's now my responsibility to make that change. And when the weather has cleared up from its incessant attack, I'll be heading back to the gym!!
Here's to a new start. A new me. A new year. Here's to 2016. 

Holidays go by so quickly

Sat all hunched up on my new sofa.  I'm thinking 'Where has time gone?'

I keep thinking back and remember leaving work.  Full of hopes for what this holiday would bring me.  A London trip?  A surprise engagement?  Will the house finally be done?

Now I'm sat here the night before the night before I go back..and I just think - Where has time gone?

We did go on that London trip and we did our Christmas shopping in Oxford Street.  We saw Bill Bailey at the Vaudeville theatre.  We finally spent more than three nights at the new house.  Our sofas arrived and we finally decorated the tree for Christmas.  It was done with four minutes to midnight!  We did our massive shops and spent our money willy nilly.

We had New Year but even that was sober.  And now it's the night before the night before I go back and I'm still sat here thinking - Where has time gone?!

Still six weeks until the next holiday.  maybe then it'll feel like I have a life!

   

    

 

London adventures - 20th - 22nd December 2015

I love London.

I'm from the countryside.  A small rural area that really has nothing going for it.  A previous mining town, it hasn't exactly recovered from the closure of them.  High quantities of people on benefits and living in council estates.  Aside from the occasional crime and police helicopter, life here is pretty much sedimentary.

So  when I'm faced with going to a massive city - the capital city, the senses explode.  There's so much to do, see, hear!  It's overwhelming and I love it!

I got my boyfriend hooked on it too, and now twice a year we embark on 'the London trip'.

It really was just a glorified Christmas shopping trip with us battling the crowds of Oxford Street and working our way through the numerous Christmas markets that spring up for a few weeks and then disappear.  The most impressive of which is the Hyde Park Winter Wonderland - a must see for every age.  It's hard to believe that the structure isn't permanently embedded there all year around.  It's jam packed full of rides, stalls and bars and restaurants, complete with it's very own ice rink.

The only other purpose of going to London was to see Bill Bailey.  He was fantastic live!  So full of enthusiasm and gust!  Definitely go to see him if you get the chance!

Here's a few pictures of our time in London :)