2010

I have to say that 2010 has been a bit of an up and down year for me. Obviously there have been some great highs- James and I brought our first home together, I finished my degree, I got a proper job; these are all good and exciting things. Yet amid all of this I have struggled with unemployment for a time, I mostly hated the last semester of my degree and I have over stressed and worried about just about every decision that I’ve made. Grown up life is scary. And after writing that it sounds to me like it was the process of this year that I have struggled with whilst I enjoyed the outcomes, which is possibly a good description.

All over the blog sphere there are plenty of inspirational posts from amazing women who are reveling in the goals which they achieved in 2010 and setting themselves new ones for 2011. This is a laudable process and I truly, truly admire people who have the self discipline and will to make these things happen for themselves on their own. I am not that girl. I struggle with motivation and general all round laziness. I need a good kick up the butt from our old friend motivation to get me doing things.

Thus I have decided to make myself small goals. Achievable goals. But goals which I think will be beneficial to me none the less. Goals where I will have help getting there. A hand to hold on my way. I am guilty of not taking the time to care enough for myself, I get too wrapped up in working, stressing and letting tiredness overcome me, so my goals are designed to help me overcome these traits.

With this in mind my aims for 2011 are centered round the idea of happiness. I want to be happier. Less worried and more accepting of ‘what will be will be’. Not complacent. But to get a greater appreciation of the idea that there are things in this world which I cannot change and that worrying about them will not help. To be generally more at peace with the world.


Photo Credit

So without further ado in 2011....

1. I want to take the time to nurture my artistic side. I love drawing, taking photos and creating things. But this often takes a back seat. I want this to change for me and spend more time making myself happier by letting myself feel free to do this sort of thing.
2. I want to create myself some ‘downtime’ one evening a week. Some time just to relax and not worry about achieving anything.
3. I want to drink more water and exercise more.
4. I want to create myself a regular posting schedule on this blog and be more disciplined in my writing.

There we go. No where near as far reaching as some of the goals I have seen people try to attempt, but these are goals which I really think will help me be happier and more focused in 2011.

I hope everyone has a relaxing and safe New Years Celebration planned. As I am working tomorrow I don’t think James and I will get much further than a bottle of wine and some time on the sofa, but still, sometimes those evenings are the best!

Its been a pleasure to write for you in 2010 and I look forward to continuing this conversation in 2011.

Stay safe, Lindy xxxx

Christmas Spirit

Hi guys.

If you want to be simultaneously heartbroken, gladdened, saddened, angered by the injustice in the world and have your faith in the ultimate goodness of humanity restored please go and read this post and ensuing comments by the incomparable Jenny at The Bloggess.

I think what struck me most when I was done crying my eyes out (on a train no less) was the amount of people who were struggling because of medical bills or lack of medical insurance. Living in a country with universal healthcare has made me complacent when it comes to the great gift which Clement Attlee's government gave me in 1946. Complacency is dangerous, and reading all of those stories in the comments has made me far more grateful for what I do have this Christmas season.

I thought back to what one of my Sixth Form philosophy teachers once told me. We were debating in class about the problem of evil, and one of my clearest memories is him calling me naive for believing that people were inherently good. I thought that the majority of people operated from the belief that they are doing 'good' (whatever it may be that they define as 'good'), and it is this act of striving for goodness which fuels most of what humanity does and aims for. (No matter how obscured these aims can become with other trivial matters such as materialism etc...) My teacher through this was an incredibly naive perspective and lambasted me as such.

I have thought about this difference in perspectives many times since that day. The fundamental difference that there is in thinking that we are born good and strive to fulfil this intrinsic aspect of our nature and believing that we are born with the taint of evil upon us and that we spend a lifetime struggling against this to achieve good against the odds.

Across the years I have been confronted with the unjustness and pain of the world, and the anger which comes from knowing that most of this pain is unnecessary and man made. I have oscillated between what I believed at 16 and what my teacher told me was the true nature of humanity.

But this little corner of the web has made me look at things afresh. Thank you Jenny, today I am returning to me at 16.

Love Lindy xxx

Update

Well hello there my friends. I have been mucho busy lately so apologies for the lack of serious updates. Right. To business. I haven't spoken about it much on here, but for the last few months I have been seriously job hunting. Since I have now finished my degree getting my adult life started would seem like a plan. Oh yeah, and there is that whole mortgage thing which needs to be paid and all. But. Drumroll please....

I have a job! A full time 'proper job'. I'm so excited its unreal! An interesting job, with lovely people in a beautiful location. Who could ask for more?

Unfortunately there is one draw back. Its only a fixed term contract so for the time being I have to keep my other, permanent, part time jobs. Thus, as of next Monday, I will be contracted for, and working seven days a week, well seven and a half really if you count the extra evening work. Yeah. It seems a little extreme to me too, but it was the best solution I could come up with.

On a major plus side James is being incredibly supportive of this next venture. So much so that last night he lit a whole bunch of vanilla scented candles in the bedroom for me, so that the room smelt nice for me when I came to bed, so that I could get a good night sleep. I practically melted at the thoughtfulness of it all.

I think what i'm trying to say is bear with me here people. I'm going to try and be more purposeful with my blog since I do love doing it, and I think that its the only way in which I going to get anything done anymore. No more slacking for me!

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Wonderful Weekend

This weekend wasn't shaping up to be any good to tell you the truth. I was stressed about my inability to find a job, and we had many errands to run on Saturday, plus I had to go to work in the evening. But then things started to change. Whilst out and about in town, running the aforementioned errands, I found this wonderful little book in the Oxfam bookshop.




(More on this tomorrow)

Then on Sunday, oh on Sunday James took me on my surprise trip. Being the best boyfriend in the known world he was trying to cheer me up after a difficult week. I didn't get a job which I went for that I really wanted, and all in all I was struggling with being unemployed, and generally the job market as a whole. Damn recession and all that! So to cheer me up James organised to surprise me with a little trip on Sunday.

You will never guess where he took me!... The Centerparcs Spa for the day! Nine hours of relaxation, doing nothing, swimming, and generally being pampered. We turned up, and they immediately furnished us with robes and towels etc... then we went in to their stylish little cafe and we got given a delicious breakfast. I had a fresh croissant filled with ham and cheese, with a refreshing fruit smoothie. Then it was in to the spa, where you could relax in a variety of different steam rooms or saunas or simply luxuriate in the jacuzzi pool. A girl couldn't ask for a better gift where relaxation is concerned!

After nine hours relaxing in the spa (which involved a little sleeping on waterbeds!) we went to have a delicious Italian meal at Bella Italia before going in to the main pool at the village to have a swim before going home. The Subtropical Swimming Paradise was the perfect way to round off our amazing day.

So really this is a mostly a thank you to James for looking after me so well, and an explanation of my weekend!

Hope to see you back here tomorrow for a little more stitchery!

Unemployment

Image from here

Just in case you were wondering, unemployment sucks. This might not seem like a revelation to the rest of the world, but it certainly is to me.

Sorry, I think this post needs some back story. I have a 12 hour a week contract as a junior manager at a local supermarket. This was perfect whilst I was university. It gave me a nice balance between having the time to do my university work and having a job to do, something to distract me from my degree (in a good way). Now when I finished my degree, I had assumed that I would either have another job to go to (more fool me), or that I could get some overtime at my current work place in order to keep me occupied.

Neither has happen. There is a complete overtime ban at work at the moment which I don’t see being lifted anytime soon. Hence why I feel unemployed. My 12 hours is spread over 2 evenings at weekend. So all day everyday I sit at home on a weekday and watch people go out and be productive members of society. This has become harder now that J has gone back to work. For the first few weeks of living in the flat, he had booked it off on holiday so we were both at home, and it felt like a nice relaxing holiday, albeit one with a multitude of boxes to lift in. You have no idea how guilty I feel siting in our beautiful new flat without a full time job, and without much to do.

I have naively thought that I would be okay with sitting at home and relaxing. It was the one thought that kept me battling through my degree- the idea that when it was all over the stress would end, and I could relax a little. Well i’ve relaxed enough now, and I need something to do! I don’t react well to having nothing to do. It makes me lethargic and un-motivated, a vicious cycle of doing not much.

So I have come up with a few ways of combatting this whilst I look for a job. And believe me I am looking for a job like I have never looked for anything before, but there are only so many times a day I can fill in forms telling people that I am fantastic.

One of the things I am doing is NaNoWriMo, I wanted to get back in to writing and this seemed like the perfect structure that I needed to keep me on track. I’m writing complete balls, but just the practice of writing something is good for me I think. J’s Dad has also lent me one of his old guitars, so i’m learning, badly I may add, to play a few chords on that to give me something to occupy myself.

For some reason its hit me particularly hard having nothing to do. My normal response to boredom would be to go and do some volunteering, but whilst looking for a job I can’t give a long enough commitment to make it worth a charities while to train me. Its all rather depressing.

No one tells you this when your doing a degree. Perhaps i’m the aberration. Perhaps the rest of the world is good at doing nothing. But I certainly am not.

So this is why, ladies and gentlemen, unemployment sucks. I completely fail to understand how people can do this long term. (I don’t mean unemployed in the sense that your staying at home with children or something, but just staying at home and doing nothing.)

So okay. Rant over. Now I have to go find something else to do. Damn.