Family

I haven't yet written a blog about my family. I don't know why, the subject matter was just never at the forefront of my mind while I was pondering what to write about on the particular days wen I managed to update my blog, but for whatever reason, today my family is at the forefront of my mind, and I'm thinking about them a lot. 

I guess I have a couple of varying definitions of family that I work with, and these definitions are very personal to me, as I am sure your definition of family is personal to you. I have my direct family, which consists of my mum, my sister and my brother, and my two nieces who are all very dear to me. We all get on very well and we know that each of us is there for the other, even if we don't talk every day. It has even got to the point when my mum has textedme to check that I'm still alive as it has been a while since I have spoken to her, but I know that this doesn't mean we love each other any less, it just means we haven't spoken for a while, that's all.

I then have my extended family, all of whom are equally dear to me, and, again, I knowthey would be there for me whenever I needed them. These consist of my nan, granddad, aunties, uncles and cousins. As before, I don't see them all the time, but I always make the effort to see them when the family is having a big occasion or if someone is in need of support at an event. Most recently this was at my cousin Lily's street dance competition. 

I guess that my family are at the forefront of my mind today, because I was offered a job at the Bristol hippodrome. My mum was the first person I called about it, and probably the first person I would think to call for all my major life events.

My Emotional State

I've been trying to write a blog on emotion, but I feel like I've failed. I never usually start a blog with a title. The title usually comes as I'm writing and has something to do with what the blog is about, but this time, I tried starting with the title 'Emotion'. I wrote a couple of lines, but it started to sound too much like an essay rather then a blog post. After all that is what a blog is isn't it, my emotions pretty much laid bare for anyone who clicks onto my blog to read?

I mentioned in my Missing In Action blog that I was feeling on a bit of a downward spiral at the moment, and that the total feeling of a loss of control over my life scared me. I was encouraged to write about it, which is why I set out a title much to my failing, but there was another reason that I couldn't/didn't write about my emotions. How am I meant to convey any emotion in words to somebody else when I have absolutely no idea why I felt that way, and I pretty much still don't?There was no reason for me to feel sad or for me to lose control as much as I did over my own life, and yet I did, and in some ways still I am still sad, and I am still out of control. I'm not going to make excuses for it as what I'm feeling is for me to feel, just as your feelings are yours to deal with, and yes it did make me feel a little better to try to explain things to you, even if I mostly I didn't really have an explanation at all. We all feel our emotions in our own personal ways, and I won't judge you for yours if you won't judge me for mine. 

I guess what's left to do now is to resolve them, to gain control over my life, and take charge so that I don't let that control slip away again. After all, it's all too easily done.

When technology fails

I had to go without an iPhone for most of today. 

For any of you that have never lived through this terror, it's honestly very annoying. 

I was talking to the guy at the apple desk about how much we forget how often we use our phones everyday. I'm writing this with the assumption that the majority of you will own, if not an iPhone, you will at least be in the possession of a smartphone of one make or another. Anyway, without my phone I was completely lost. The simple task of being able to check the time had suddenly become difficult. I used my phone for this. Due to my iPhone dying, I had to go out and buy an alarm clock. I used to own an alarm clock as a kid, I'm sure,like most of you probably did, but I sure don't own one anymore. Why? What's the point? I have a clock on my phone and I constantly have my phone on me, so what need do I have of another device to do something that my phone was quite happy to do for me, among a million other things that I could just not get by without. 

Another simple task was the joy of listening to music. Again, as my iPod broke last month, all my music was on my phone. I didn't need to spend money on another device when again my phone was so readily available to be able to do it for me. 

Just two examples of how I, and I believe as a general population we are very reliant on technology, and without it I feel like I live in the dark ages.

Technology

Sometimes I feel lost without my phone, the internet... hell even technology in general, but there are times when I can't be bothered with any of it. If I have my phone on me at work I usually end up running down the battery playing around on Facebook, twitter or any of the many apps I have happened to download. The main culprit is usually googling whatever topic is being discussed at the time, but sometimes I just want to throw it all away and not bother with any of it. This isn't all the time obviously as without Facebook or twitter how would I know what was going on in the world or in many cases on Facebook get invited to nights out. We all know there are many other ways I could get invited to an event, but Facebook seems to be what my friends use to invite me so if I didn't have it I do feel that I would miss out. 

But I'm honestly ok If I'm not constantly attached to my phone. Sometimess I like some time off. I have a different iPod so I do not have to see all my Facebook notifications etc when I’m in the gym, so I can just clear my mind and concentrate on my workout, and nine times out of ten its not as if anyone has contacted me the whole time I have been in the gym so I honestly don’t need my phone anyway. Sometimes I do enjoy the fact that no-one has bothered to contact me all day, and I can just have my own space, be alone with my thoughts, and have time in my own company where I can just let me be me. Then again, after a day or so of that I just want to be around other people again. I’m happy to be alone at times, but other times, put a glass of wine in my hand and put me in some decent company and I’m even better.  

Missing in Action

Some of you may have noticed that my blog has kinda been MIA recently, and I'm really sorry about that. I'm not sure exactly why I have been MIA, but currently I have been on a downward spiral and have lost the motivation for almost everything in my life. This has led not only to me not updating my blog, but also to me leaving the virtual world with all my errant thoughts and feelings.

This downward spiral has not only led to me neglecting my blog but in no uncertain terms has led to me neglecting myself in terms of my diet. I've completely forgotten about it. I've eaten what I've liked and have even narked off the occasional gym session, complaining of lethargy and a general lack of motivation to go. In the last few months, this has led to me putting on a stone of the five stone I had managed to lose. This means that my gut hangs out far more then it did before, and the nice clothes I bought are a bit tighter then they once were.

I did, however receive one bit of good news yesterday. I go an interview for a job at my local theatre, the Bristol hippodrome, so things are looking up, and I resolve to do better.

Defining Love and Family

I feel compelled to write a blog about this. I had my friends round my house for a couple of drinks, when I say a couple by this point I had almost polished off two bottles of wine, and we started on a discussion about love and family! Different dictionary definitions and our own personal definitions on the ideas of love and family! We seem to disagree on what family and love means. Everyone has different definitions and this is what we use to define ourselves and our belief systems. I may be drunk, but I do have to write this down before I forget about this and it is completely erased from my memory.

I would consider family to be my mum, sister, brother, my nieces and my mum’s side of the family as they are the only people who I get to speak to on a regular basis. I haven't considered my father as family in over five years since we stopped talking. I wouldn't consider my father and his side of the family as family, because I don’t know them a well as my mum’s family, but others would as they talk to their fathers, and their fathers still play vital roles in their lives. We were also pondering the idea of being in love, but also when you consider your other-half’s family as family yourself. My friend Chris would have considered himself as part of his girlfriend’s family before he even decided to get engaged to her. My other friend Rachael, who hasn't been with her boyfriend Mark for as long would not consider his family as her family  until she got married to him, because without that bit of paper there is nothing tying her to his  family in any permanent/tangible way.

The same goes for love. I'm not in love with my friends, but sometimes I do feel that the word love is used so easily. I love my family, but that is a totally different kind of love from the love I have for my friends, and it would be a different kind of love again from when I fall ‘in love’. I would not use the words ‘in love’ until I actually have the feelings that I'm in love with someone, but I would say that I love my friends but I'm not ‘in love’ with my friends, and who would know that ‘in’ word would change the definition of the word love so certainly and so completely. The way we use words is as important as one insignificant word can change the meaning of our sentence so completely. 

A blog about Confidence

I was reading my Auntie Nicola’s blog the other day, where she was talking about corsets and how good it made her feel to wear one, and how people wouldn't like it if she posted a picture of herself in a corset, because some may see that as degrading. I say hey fair play to her for actually posting the picture of herself on her blog for all to see, for me that is true confidence. To put yourself out there on the Internet for others to judge you without truly caring what people actually think of you, I honestly think is brilliant.

I guess the equivalent for me would be to post a picture of myself in my boxers, but I can promise you this simply wouldn’t happen. I do hope that maybe one day I would feel comfortable to do this, not so that other people could look at it and think I was hot, although I’m not saying that wouldn’t be nice, but just to say I’ve had the confidence to do it and hell yeah I look good.

Now I have probably already explored my wavering confidence levels in this blog, but I always believed it was because I was fat that my confidence was low. Now I have started to believe I was fat because, quite simply, I wanted to be fat. I could have put the fork down at any time, I could have eaten better and done things like eaten an apple instead of a bag of chocolates. The same is true of how I lost weight. I lost over four stone because I wanted to. I did it on my own terms, and I did it for myself and not for someone else. If you are doing it for someone else the likelihood is that you will fail because you have no drive to do it for yourself, and without the drive what is the point? You have to commit yourself to a complete lifestyle change and not just a crash diet or something similar, as the moment you come off that diet and start eating the same way you did before the crash diet the likelihood is you will put on all the weight you have worked so hard to lose,  and all the effort you put in would just be wasted.