Buzz Buzz (BEDA)

This is a challenge for me to write today. Not for any other reason than, for a change, I am happy. Which I know sounds weird, but it’s true. And when I use blogging as a way to ‘let go’ of the negativity in my life, I always get a bit lost when I don’t feel so negative. I just don’t know what to write. 

I guess I’ll maybe start with why I am so happy. I have been ill the last few weeks, with a cough and some eye/allergy thing. The cough is still here, but it is on the way out, and my eye isn’t bothering me nearly so much. Which is such a relief, but I found that I barely did anything last week. Because I was getting no sleep, I had no energy. It was horrible. But now I’m feeling a bit better, i have so much energy. The last 2 days I have went for long walks (4-5 miles) to try and get into shape. Because I have been sick a lot recently, and I am thinking that it could be because I am in RUBBISH shape. 

So, in the last few days I jumped back on Weight Watchers and have been trying to walk as much as I can. Why walk? Well, it’s free, is really good for you and can save me money on bus fare. I think it has been so easy to jump into walking more, because it has been a really nice few days. And the sun being out always helps my mood. 

What has surprised me most, is that, despite that I haven’t done many long walks recently, I wasn’t tired at the end. It was the opposite. I was buzzing and was a big ball of energy. I came home, and couldn’t sit down, so had a busy afternoon. It makes me think, I am normally a slow riser in the morning, maybe if I had a walk first thing, I’d have more energy for the rest of the day. I am going to try it for the next few days before work, and see what happens. 

Advice (BEDA)

I am awful at giving advice. And yet, people always approach me for help. I can sympathise with someone and their issues. I can understand that someone is having a hard time. I just don’t know how I can tell someone what to do. I don’t have the most exciting life, what can I pull any advice from? 

Advice isn’t something I like asking for, on a personal level, anyway. I have never liked imposing myself on other people, which is why I keep things to myself. Or I try to, anyway. I also feel that because I am crap at giving advice,  it’s a bit rude to expect others to give some to me

Tired (BEDA)

Sometimes I get tired. Tired of all the effort that has to be put in to make life bearable. It doesn’t happen all the time, just once in a while. I do that thing where I lie in bed and wonder what would happen if I wasn’t there anymore. Like would people give a shit?

I have talked it over with friends, and am assured that I am not the only one who thinks like that sometimes. It happens when it feels like life has come to a dead end. That no one calls or does anything with you, so they wouldn’t miss me if I just disappeared. And how easy would that make any problems? Just run away and forget about them. 

But then, isn’t the point of life dealing with challenges and choosing different routes through life? It is easy to get to the point where you can’t be bothered, but true strength is carrying on through those feelings. And sometimes, something will happen that makes you feel valid and a good person. Those times are what should drive us. Helps us say to ourselves ‘well, life is shit, but look at all the stuff I did’.  

Maybe you need to feel tired, just so you know when your awake. 

Change Is Good (BEDA)

Everyone needs change. Everything needs a refresh every now and then. If we don’t, then there is a chance what we are doing will become stale. In personal experience, I find that is where I struggle to continue to work on a particular task. I need what I do, to be as fluid and ever-changing as I can be as a person.

So, I have changed a few things. For the last few years I have used the internet as Sue Riot Graphics, as Riot Graphics was the design company I planned on running when I left college. Unfortunately, life got in the way, my inspiration stalled and it never really came back to me. As I have been attempting to blog every day for a month, I have been spending more time online again and discovering that having Graphics in my online handles was no longer in-keeping of where I am now. In fact, I found it a constant reminder that I failed to achieve all I had planned. I felt like a failure just by logging into a website. And that lead to me being completely de-motivated with things.

So, I am currently going through the process of re-naming my online account so it is simply Sue Riot. People ask me, what’s the point of not putting my actual ‘real’ name on these websites? My only answer is that I feel that the person I am online, is different to who I am in real life. I also like that by having a slightly different name online, I can be myself, without having to compromise my personal privacy. Because that is one thing when you share your life on the internet, it is how much details we place on the internet. And as much as love sharing my experiences and thoughts online, I don’t want to share my personal details, because you never know who could abuse those details.

But yeah, slight new name change to the blog. Also over the next few days sueriot.com should start working. The blog is set up to start feeding automatically to the new URL, so everything should still be intact and functioning fine. I am so happy about it. Change feels awesome.

Feeling Small (BEDA)

I am still feeling very sorry for myself, with allergies combining with a cold. I am grumpy, tired and have very little time for the bad attitude of others. Two different people spoke to me, and the spoke to me in a manner which made me think of a child being scolding by it’s mother. I felt small and stupid, and both times I just wanted to find somewhere to cry. Which is what I want to do when I am sickly, anyway, so feeling attacked by people around me was never going to help.

Actually, it wasn’t like I was being attacked, it was how things were said to me. Like that certain tone a person gets in their voice when someone isn’t worth their time. That tone that tells you a person is irritated. Add to that, the eye rolling/ staring daggers, I felt super uncomfortable and just wanted the ground to swallow me up. I really should have spoke back, stood up for myself. But, considering I only got 2 hours sleep last night and I felt so ill, it took all my energy to simply not cry. It made me feel worse that one of these people was a manager, who is not even in my department. Like, I have been doing the same job for a while, and as usual, I am finding myself stressing about how I can do my own job. I get awful panicky, and do stupid things, like going in when I am sick. And when someone speaks down to you, as if you know nothing, anxiety levels start to rise.

I think part of the problems, that in companies where there are many different departments, the departments can be operating against one another. As if the working day is one big competition. But the thing is, all departments have the same goal. They are there to serve a customer. But nobody seems to see that in large companies, its all competition between different departments. Which could be good, in some ways, like competition in targets and things. But sometimes, people refuse to help people from other departments. And that can be anyone from general associates, up to department managers. It is a really awful way to work, and the bad attitude to people ‘outwith your team’, can also be applied outwith work. People hate those who come from different backgrounds, believe different things or look different to them.

By making people feel small and insignificant, it can make people feel taller and more powerful in comparison. It happens everywhere in life, really. The truth is, that if someone is doing something, who is anyone to tear them down. I got up today and I was sore, puffy and struggling to catch my breath, I went into work. Something I am glad I did, something I did because of willpower, because I don’t want to beaten. But when I used so much energy, just being able to function, I had nothing left for when I encountered a problematic person. But maybe being made to feel insignificant isn’t my problem, it’s the problem of the manager who feels he is better than me. I know, after thinking about it, that I have changed a lot over the years for me to even think about going into work today. I have a motivation that I never had, one that I had lost when I started getting problems with depression.

I am sitting here in a very different mood to what I was in when I started writing this blog. I was feeling very sorry for myself, because I feel like crap, physically. But, the more I rambled on, the less sorry for myself I felt. I feel like I have achieved something today, even if it was just a few hours at work. Though that might be helped by the fact that I am out of work, and don’t have to see that manager when I am feeling so bad. I guess, it is looking for your successes, rather than focusing on what others see as failures.

Out & About Again (BEDA)

Today I was down the the public park in the town I live. Used to love going down their for a picnic when I was a kid. There is some ‘gates’ which looked like old prison cells, or that’s what we believed when at school. 

   

          

It’s great looking around where you live. I love taking a camera with me. It helps me realise that there are some nice things about living where I do.  

Keeping on track (BEDA)

Whoops! Someone forgot to post yesterday. I was actually socialising for a change, and forgot to post. I only actually thought about it this morning, when I checked my blog on my phone and realised I didn’t update. This would be an easy place to give up on the challenge, but I thought I’d carry on regardless. It wouldn’t be a challenge if there were no hiccups along the way.

That is something that I am trying to change about myself. I have always been very good at giving up when things get a little bit hard. It’s like I have been programmed into thinking that I should quit something before I fail at it. If I do that, it is like I am taking my fate into my own hands. Except, that isn’t really true. I take the easy way out, because giving up is easier than trying hard at something. It’s maybe why so much of my life hasn’t met my expectations. I haven’t really seen anything through to completion. And then wonder why I am stuck in a minimum  wage job.

I have the dreams, to be better at what I do. To get paid to do something that I am passionate about. That was why I went to college, to hopefully get me on the path to a job I loved. Unfortunately that hasn’t worked out for me, and I think it is my issue with seeing things to completion. I always think I am going to fail, so it’s easier to quit. It says a lot about my self confidence that I think that. But I have never had a good self confidence. And it’s hard to gain belief in yourself, especially when you never had any before. I want to change it, but its only possible if you take one thing at a time. Doing things like writing challenges may seem silly, but it is motivational, and helps me believe in me. Something I need to do a little more of.

Bad At Being Sick

There are things that have changed as I have got older. I try to save money every time I get paid. I always try to better myself. And I am comfortable about who I am as a person.  Despite this, I still act like a wee girl when I get ill.

I am writing this from my bed, where my body seems to be trying to make me cough up a lung. It has been for the last few weeks. I am just feeling a bit sorry for myself. It’s one of those things where no matter how much medicine I get, the cough doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. And it’s one of those things where there is a constant irritation that won’t seem to go away. My breath catches in my irritated throat and I get into a coughing fit. 

Its one of those things that happens every now and then. I guess the weekend ahead is going to be a quiet one. I’ll try and catch up on sleep, and find something to calm down this tickle throat. This is not how I expected my weekends to be when I was younger *sigh*

Working Life

I always remember being told when I was younger that it was ‘better to work to live, rather than live to work’. As if to say that a job isn’t the ‘be all and end all’. And that working is just one small part of our lives. 

But in reality, I have never found it so straight forward. 

That job which takes up a ‘small part of our lives’ actually takes up a lot of hour time. In fact other than sleeping, I would say that work is what people spend most of their time doing. But that job is only there so that we can afford the life we want. Because you spend so much time at work, it is essential that you should find joy from it, or at least part of it. Whether it’s the actual job you do or the people you work with that makes you get up in the morning, it’s important that there is something. It helps work become more bearable. 

Everyone has had that one job they hated. Where there was no joy, and work seemed to be all that you could focus on. Sometimes it happens, whether it a crappy medial job, or your dream job.  Where work becomes stressful and your focus seems to be on what is making you stressed. And that makes things seem so much work. It’s times like this, that you need a bit of scope. You need to take a step back, and realise that work isn’t everything. Your life is not just work. And if it is, maybe you need to invest some time in you. Go out for a movie, or have a pamper session. Make you feel special.

For a long time, in a previous job, all I worried about was my work. It wasn’t that my job was hard, I just got real anxiety about it. And it brought me so far down, and at that point it seemed everything in my life was about work. I couldn’t switch off at the end of the day, and that made me so stressed. I work somewhere else now, and my attitude is so different. I work there, so that I can go out with friends and buy what I want. I finish work for the weekend, and I can just relax for a few days. And I am so much more relaxed and happy. 

Whether you love or hate your job, you have to be able to ‘switch off’ when you aren’t working. If you can’t relax a little, work could become a bigger issue than it really is. The most important thing to remember is to look after you. Make sure you see the benifits of all your hard work. Because you deserve it.

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**Sorry this is a ramble, again. I am still not 100%. I haven’t been sleeping and have an awful cough. Here’s hoping it goes away soon**