Author: Sue

I have been writing in various forms since I was a child. I write about what is going on in my life, what I enjoy, and the struggles of dealing with chronic illness and mental health issues. I love live music, football (Scotland and Dunfermline Athletic), reading, Formula 1, Stock Cars, and eating lots of vegan crap.

Absent Minded

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It is easy to forget something, when you don’t deal with it at all. I haven’t been on-line much. Which is a bit of a lie, I was on sites like twitter, but they are updated through my phone. And whilst I do have a wordpress app on my phone, I am not a big fan of typing for long periods of time on the wee keyboard thing. It irritates my hands, to be typing on something so small. Bet not many people have that problem. -.-

So this leads to me waiting till I either have enough time at lunch to write an entry, or wait till I go home. And I don’t use my laptop a lot right now, mostly because of its faulty power cable. So, as a result, I haven’t been blogging very much. Any blogging I do, seems to be just apologetic ramblings about why I haven’t posted. This is my own fault.

Whilst I don’t think I’ll ever stop blogging, I feel that if I am not in the frame of mind, I won’t do it. And I don’t like filling this blog with empty promises. But hopefully change is coming, and it’s going to start with a new banner design. 🙂 Maybe.

Organised Chaos

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I have never been a tidy person. And despite the mess I seem to live in, everything has its place. I know where most things are, and I like  that, but it confuses most people, because everything looks like a disaster.

It isn’t my room that I talk about, it’s sketch books and everything where I would need to be organised. You would think, that would change as I got older, but I haven’t. I have been planning a new project, where I am going to be making my own zine, and my books and things are a total mess. I think that I can be pretty scatter brained a lot of the time, and I think that is why everything ends up everywhere. There is no folders of organisation,  just a pile of papers. But I can easily see where everything is, and it is how I work best.

I speak to a lot of creative people, and a lot of them seem to be similar in their organisation, or lack of it, to me. I think having everything you need in front of you is inspirational, and helps me get through what I need to. Maybe not so much when I am doing things which aren’t creative, but when I am thinking of ideas for my zine, I have so much crap out for me to use.  Be it magazines, books, CDs, I get my inspiration from a lot of different areas, and I like having those things out in front of me.

Weekend Worker.

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For all of my working days, since starting at a bakery aged 16, I have had to accept working weekends. Because I have spent most of my days in some form of education, working weekends was the easiest way to get extra money. And even when I got away from working just weekends, I had moved on to working evenings with a Saturday once a month. Now, I am contracted to work Tuesday to Saturday. Which sounds painful, but it is not as bad as I ever thought it would be.

Working weekends is something that most workers have to accept as part of their job. And because of this, the sense of a standard ‘working week’ is becoming more unusual. The majority of people I know don’t work 9-5, and life works around that. With the change in the working week, people need to be more forgiving with friends and family when planning events. I have seen friendships end pointlessly because someone is stuck at work with no time off. It’s sad, because it isn’t exactly someone’s fault if they can’t get a holiday.

But with banks having 24 hour phone lines and supermarkets being open all day everyday, the world no longer stops at 5pm. It’s getting harder to switch off from everything seeing as it doesn’t stop. It’s hard remembering that every so often, it’s good to step back and enjoy what time off you do get.

Just Deal With It

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As a person, who documents much of her life online, as mentioned before,  I have the habit of being a complainer, rather than a do-er. The same passive stance I feel that many other people experience, things happen but I just talk about it and do nothing.

In some sort of continuance of the last few posts, I am still going to speak about change. Which is something that happens, no matter what your situation. The world isn’t something that sits still and waits for people. Things happen, and a person must learn to ‘roll with it’ or face being left behind, and be left out of life.

So, I guess my point is, that if you have a problem, deal with it. As mentioned previously, it may be change that is forced, which is harder. But by accepting the challenge you are faced with and adapting to change, you can open up the world of oppertunity. Rather than being resentful, and looking negatively at the situation, look at it with a chance to improve things. You can’t complain about your situation, if you are unwilling to do something about it.

Every obstruction which may cover your path, always comes with a diversion round it. Yes the path may be difficult, it may be different, but it will get you back to where you want to be.

Change because of defeat is victorious

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I tried to explain yesterday,(indirectly) the difficulties that arise when a person has to admit defeat on a particular subject. As hard as it may be to accept, not everyone is born experts at everything. Sometimes we need to learn that the best way to overcome a problem is to face it head-on.

This may be something that is just as difficult, if not more so, than admitting that there is a problem. But if you ‘suck it up’ and deal with the problem, then look to change things away from the problem. Resolve a change can be the best, most productive thing to do in any situation. Again, it is a challenge, but that is a part of life, it is full of challenges. The only way a person will make it through life is to take on the challenges, pass or fail.

This idea has come from me trying to be positive thinking. It’s trying to find that silver lining that you hear about in all the songs and movies. And it has actually made things easier to accept and work with. This is so that I can make the change in my life, and turn things around.

Here’s hoping anyway

 

Admitting Defeat

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I find the hardest thing to do, is admitting to myself that I can’t do something. I have always felt that I should be able to deal with things, without help. If not because I ‘have to’, more because everyone else does it fine, so I will too. The thing is, not everything is easy for all people, some things are hard to take in, and deal with.

The worst thing is, asking for help. That is admitting that you can’t do something. You can’t do something that EVERYONE ELSE can do. I know it isn’t just me who feels like this, but I hate admitting that I can’t do something. Which sounds silly, because everyone has something that they can’t do. But, it’s hard. Especially when it is something you need to do on a daily basis as part of your job, or something.  If you start hating the thing that you struggle with, it can end up being the focus of all your energy, and it is negative energy. It’s hard to get over the obstacle that is in your way, if it seems to be something you have to confront regularly.

The worst thing is, when you think you are coping with said task, and it is evident to others around you that you aren’t. If forcing defeat yourself is hard, being told that you need help is even worse. Especially when you fool yourself into thinking things are okay. The self-pity takes over, and you feel ashamed that you didn’t have the guts to say you were struggling.

I think the lesson that comes out of such experiences, is that a person needs to be honest with themselves, through the good and bad. Honesty is easy when things are good, but when things are bad,  you have to train yourself to be honest. That is a challenge that I have to try and tackle over the coming weeks, and I think more people need to be honest with themselves. But I think honesty can also be linked to confidence, and that is where the problem lies for most people.

Content Error

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Adding personality and uniform to my online self is hard. I find I am struggling to keep things interesting. I am currently in a state where I have so much in my head that I want to say, but I always seem to be writing the same things constantly. Which, whilst being quite freeing to myself, it does end up that I post the same old grumblings day in and day out.

I love writing, I always have. But I am finding it harder and harder to keep up any momentum with interesting posts. Sure, I am great at moaning about my life (or lack of it), but I struggle in making things interesting for readers. I guess I have to start ‘feeling’ what I write again. I know that sounds strange, but I feel that I seem to have been really honest on here before, and the reaction kind of shocked me. The internet is full of people who give hate for no reason, and although it is easy to say that people should expect the worst, it doesn’t prepare for the hate that can be angled at you, for just posting your own thoughts.

And when I have received hate, it has shocked me, and kind of made me a little hesitant in posting so much. Which is sad. As mentioned I love blogging, and feel that it is a good way for me to talk through the issues in my mind. So I have just held back, and been posting a lot less than what I used to. This is something I regret letting happen, but it did. I am going to try and get back into things online, which means I need to start thinking up some interesting topics.

I am doing a ‘Sketch-a-day’ challenge, so I am going to try and post some of those pages, and see what happens.

Currently Listening to: Wicked- Defying Gravity

Hating the Beautiful?

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Yesterday an uproar was caused by yet another Daily Mail article. This time, 41 year old, Samantha Brick, complains the trials and tribulations about being beautiful. She claims other women hate her because of it, but she gets what ever she wants and people should be happy for her. That is a pretty vague idea, but to read the article, just employ Google to search for the article in question.

Now I do not think for a second that Ms Brick is a bad person, just a little shallow. She has today posted an article where she doesn’t understand why people are hating her and calling her ugly. If you are going to write a couple hundred words on how pretty you are, then it doesn’t take much brain power that people will call you ugly. It is trolling on the Internet, it is what happens when people can hide anonymously and give out hate. To post opinions anywhere, you need to have a thick skin, because people will attack what you say. And the reaction given by Ms Brick, to say that she has been proven right, is not dealing with trolls, but feeding them.

People are annoyed because pretty people can flirt their way through anything, it seems. And that is the picture Ms Brick paints of herself. She gets free meals, free drinks, free everything, something that if she was just getting on with her day, wouldn’t happen. To anyone. But she flirts her way through life, where others have to work to get what they want. People who pay for every drink, are nice to everyone but get nowhere. In walks a long legged blonde, who whispers in the bosses ear and gets a promotion. THAT is the world most women live in. That is why people can’t feel sorry for Ms Brick. I mean, no paper would publish a story by a banker who says he has too much money would they? It would cause a riot because so many people live month to month on nothing.

As a girl who has worked extremely hard for everything I have, it does grate on me when people moan about getting things for free. And more people are in the same situation than me, than are in one as Ms Brick. Which is why people feel the need to lash out, for making it seem that hard working normality is wrong. It puts woman’s rights back several decades, when someone gets treated like she’s special, just because of a pretty face. And because of all this, I am not surprised that Ms Brick gets met with hostility.

There are plenty of people like Ms Brick, and they aren’t bad people. The bad people are the ones who allowed the story go to press. The headline chasing Daily Mail does this a lot. Uses writers to whip up a storm, and provide cheap promotion. She is just a tool, something that the mail will throw to the side once the drama dies down. The have got an article and a front page story out of the self centred rambling, which would have a better place in a private blog. The Daily Mail KNEW Ms Brick would be lynched for what she wrote, and they published it anyway. The Daily Mail is a worse publication than the Daily Star. At least the Star is knowingly filled with rubbish, the Mail seems to be sensationalist rubbish, pretending to be a proper paper.

I hope Ms Brick realises she was set up, and gains some perspective on what has happened. She will lose her looks, but her bad attitude will stay.

Lust for Life

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How good am I?

It has been a while since I started the PMA lifestyle change, and I am still going strong. I don’t think I ever thought how hard it was to make the change. I think it is expressing myself that changes most. As a frequent user of social media, I am used to posting any gripes with the world for others to see. For no real reason, it just made me feel like I was complaining to someone, and helped relieve some of the stress incurred by a particular situation.

This didn’t work. What it did do, was get me into a complaining mood, and I moaned about everything.  And this would set of a chain reaction by anyone who read what I had posted. So they would start thinking about their gripes, and it could really sour the moods of a lot of people, without much thought.

The lack of thought could have quite a chain effect. So I have been making a solid attempt to stop myself from making negative comments online., in a bid to get me out of that mind frame. Whilst there has been a lot of challenges with this, it has went pretty well. I have tried to keep a smile on my face, and at least keep my negativity to myself, and shift my focus to something else.

It has allowed me to enjoy where I am more, and I feel more comfortable about any situation I am in. The key for getting past any negativity, for me, is to focus on that silver lining, there always is one, and focus all your energy on that. It really has helped, and I am in a better place for doing so.

Challenged

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So, around a week into being all positive and I’m stilling doing well. It’s one thing being positive in general circumstances, when dealing with your job and things. But sometimes there can be something which challenges this new ideal. It’s normally work or family circumstances which throws a spanner in the works, and makes it harder to see the light side of things.

This is where I need to practice. Seeing the bright side of things, can be hard when all you see is cloudy sky. It is a challenge. But I have found a way of coping with such problems. I often got depressed because I focused on the problem in hand, which ends up making the situation worse rather than better. So instead, I am focusing on on other way round such things. Like if something is causing me a problem at work, I need to focus on something else about the task in hand. So if I am being shouted at by a customer at work (which happens a lot), it helps to think about what the main issue is, and focus on that, rather than what the irate customer is saying. It helps me stay focused and get through the call.

I guess it’s just finding a way out of negative thinking, no matter what.