A sincere apology and a serious rant

Okay, I've not been the best. Certainly for someone who promised, PROMISED to keep up with this blog. A gap this big is unforgivable and I will understand if you choose not to forgive me.

The thing is, it's a lot harder to keep this going than I originally thought. A few entries a week? All about my own selfish thoughts? Pah! Easy! Or so I thought...

The thing is, although I'm thinking, thinking, thinking all the time, I often don't have enough time to put my thoughts down on paper... or indeed in a word document (that's how we seem to roll these days...)

Either that or I'm too exhausted with the struggle of trying to make it that I neglect the one thing that is essential to me making it: this blog.

But you see it's so very, very hard to keep your ambitions alive. Every morning on my way to my next placement - where I know I will be working harder than anyone else there yet earning nothing, sometimes not even a byline for my troubles - I pass someone opening up their shop in the morning or simply sweeping the streets and I think: wouldn't it be so much easier if I had no desire to write at all? I could get a job in a shop, open it up in the morning, chat to customers, before coming home to a nice glass of white wine and a warm bed. When I worked in a department store I met so many women who were happy with this life. People automatically think that if you work in a shop or you're 'just' a waitress that means you have no ambition. But ambition doesn't necessarily have to be work related.

I aspire to be loved. I aspire to love. I aspire to make more friends. I aspire to keep the friends I've got. I aspire to having the most perfect Cath Kidston guest bedroom. Essentially, I aspire to be happy.

Which is what the ladies I met in the department store were.

Unfortunately for me, I know that even if I get the Cath Kidston bedding, I keep the friends I have, I continue to love and be loved that I still won't be happy unless I am doing this. Writing.

Yet, when trying to be a writer writing is something you rarely get to do. Captions, nibs, headings, 40 word reviews... these are the bones I am given in between filing, answering the phone, making tea, fetching things from the shop...

And then I return home, exhausted. And I know the next writing task I have is to write cover letter after cover letter and by the time that's done this little blog remains sad and untouched. And I feel guilty. And unfulfilled.

It sounds like a moan. And I guess it is. But at the same time this whole process of finding your dreams is exhilirating. I enjoy making the tea! I enjoy putting the files in their special folder! I enjoy carting post up and down stairs! Because I look around and see the buzzing magazine office and I know that this is where I belong.

A little thing I try and remember each time I feel down about myself is how I felt when I first received the email from wahanda. How excited I was! How I knew that this was the beginning of something phenomenal.

And it is... it still is...

My Dad has started to write in his blog everyday, just something small, something he has thought about. He doesn't try to make it perfect, he just tries to make it represent who he is. I might try that. And if I don't, I expect an allmighty telling off from my followers.

All five of you.

Tantrums over TV

It seems that with television, like presents, the best things come in small packages. Or rather small series’. I’ve noticed a recent trend with my favourite shows: they all end far too soon. Take my current TV love Misfits which came to an end last night, leaving me feeling lost. Without my Thursday night routine of Gavin and Stacey (which is also drawing to a close, sob) followed by Misfits, I’d have to actually do something useful with my time, instead of curling up on the sofa and laughing my way through to Friday.

And it’s like that with all my favourite shows: as soon as I’d discovered BBC’s Miranda she’d slipped away from my life, ditto with True Blood which the nasty TV Guide told me is also ending.

Why does this keep happening to me?

Is it a coincidence that all my favourite shows have this in common, or could it be that a short series is the key to an excellent show?

An all time favourite show of mine is the wonderful Ugly Betty, and for her latest series we got to join Betty in a series of New York romps lasting 24 episodes. At first I was delighted with this, but my delight soon turned to horror when I did some shoddy maths and realised that translated to: 24 weeks of commitment, 24 weeks of always having to be in on a Wednesday night, 24 weeks of always eating my special Ugly Betty viewing snack of Ben and Jerry’s and as a result it was more than likely to be 24 weeks of dieting afterwards to recover from my Betty Binge.

I’m not sure I can cope with long series’ anymore. I might be a television commitment phobe, always chasing after the TV shows that will satisfy me for a short time, but will never stick around long enough to fuel me with entertainment long term.

So, what will I do come January when I’ve slept around with all the short series’ and I’m left with nothing to watch at night but endless documentaries starring my much hated Tony Robinson?

Luckily for me, I have one long lasting television love. Something that never lets me down, always wraps me in a warm hug at the end of a hard day and never fails to make me laugh: the e4 Friends double bill.
Maybe there is something to be said for the long running series after all…

Weaving my web

I have a confession to make: despite working for an amazing website and writing this some-might-call amazing blog, I actually don’t know too much about the internet apart from how to expertly stalk people on facebook.

However, 2009 has been my personal internet revolution. Being a magazineaholic I must spend about a tenner a week consuming all the magazines I can get my hands on, but ultimately they’re not enough to satisfy my addiction in fact sometimes (I’m ashamed to admit) I have to buy TV guides to stop my cravings.

But the net! Oh the wonderful internet allows me to get my fix anytime I want. Why didn’t I begin exploring it earlier? I should never have let my stubborn hatred of World of Warcraft get in my way.

There is a site for all aspects of my personality, from my shameless love of pop music to my interest in modern day feminism. And best of all, my favourite sites feel so personal –it’s like having an intelligent discussion over red wine with your best friend or bitching about celebrities with your GBF, all from the comfort of your living room.

Take a look at my top 7 sites (I'd love to get this number up to 10 so if you have any suggestions let me know...)

1, DorkAdore: an excellent site reviewing all things dorky that women love, from True Blood to the latest technology. It’s also a site I’m lucky enough to write for occasionally and want to continue in the future.

2, What Katie Wore: I’d love to be friends with Katie from WKW, she’s so fun and brightly dressed and she and Joe seem to be the perfect couple. When this project ends at the end of the year I’m really going to miss seeing Katie in her bright clothes, so much so I may actually have to track her down and make her be my friend…

3, PopJustice: I love pop music and I’m not afraid to admit it, this site celebrate today’s pop music in the same way the much missed Smash Hits used to.

4, I Don’t Like You In That Way: A very, very guilty pleasure – the writers of this site are so bitchy but so hilarious you can’t help but love them.

5, Running In Heels: I feel like intelligent, stylish and fabulous whenever I read this site. What more could you ask for?

6, Domestic Sluttery: I want to have a nice Cath Kidston esque home but I don’t want to live my life like a desperate house wife. This site encourages me that when it comes to my home I can have my cake and eat it too (even if it’s not home made…)

7, Wahanda: The key to happiness is indulging yourself every once in a while, with wahanda you can do that- in the best places for the absolute best prices.

Monsters In My Closet

I’m not someone who is particularly scared of ghosts or aliens, bugs or worms. But monsters, monsters are a different story entirely. And I’m not talking about the monsters that live in your closet or under your bed, but the monsters of the mind – the ones that truly have the power to control your life, ruin it even.

There’s one particular monster that has plagued me for years and no matter how hard I fight him he still crops up in the most unlikely of moments: the green-eyed-monster.

I often wonder whether envy is a trait of those with just one sibling. I’ve noticed that friends of mine with just one older brother or sister tend to spend their lives comparing themselves to said sibling or even worse seeing everyone around them as better than them.

It is certainly the path I’ve gone down. When I was younger I felt constantly compared to my sister, with older relatives commenting on how smart she was whereas frowning on my artistic abilities. I longed to be like her, even fashioning a pair of glasses out of play dough to be like her. Luckily my parents loved us both so much, even more so for our differences, that I learned that comparing myself to her was pointless. I had to be my own person.

Unfortunately, my dalliances with the green-eyed-monster didn’t end there. As soon as I became old enough to don a uniform, wave goodbye to my parents and embark on my first day of school it became scarily clear how many other girls there were just like me - in their pig tails, ironed uniforms and shiny shoes. And worst still they could colour in better than me.

For the rest of my school life I made the same mistake over again: I chose to be friends with who I thought was the prettiest, smartest, well dressed girl and lived my life putting myself down because I wasn’t like her.

It’d be easy to blame my choice of friends but it wasn’t and still isn’t their fault – I love to be around them for the precise reason that they are pretty, smart and well dressed. I’d hate to be the type of woman who surrounds herself with dull, less attractive friends in order to make her feel better. It is my own demon that makes me resent them for everything I love about them.

And it seems I’ll never learn…

A very good friend of mine got offered a job today. I am delighted for her, it’s a dream job and it will be amazing for her career. However, it was also one I went for and didn’t get. And despite being very happy in my internship and concentrating on how well my life is doing, my same old feelings of inadequacy and self doubt kicked in. And then I began to feel guilty for not being 100% happy for my friend, which made me hate myself even more.

But then do you know what I did? I told someone how I felt. And not a close friend who will love me no matter what but someone who I’m just getting to know. Confiding in her a side of myself which I wasn’t proud of was a risky move – I’d hate her to think less of me. However, she didn’t react with disgust and order me to erase such hideous thoughts but told me what I was feeling was perfectly natural. It’s human to feel jealous every now and again, just make sure you don’t let it consume you. She told me she believes that in order to get what you want in life it throws a few challenges at you and sees how you react before giving you what you really want. You have to make the most of everything before you are rewarded.

So that’s how I’m now seeing this situation: the job is not only a great opportunity for my friend, but an opportunity for me. I have to take the high road and not use this as an excuse to wallow in self pity but simply keep on applying for the jobs of my dreams and use her as an inspiration that the right job is out there for me somewhere…

Todays Interesting Tit Bit...

... depends on what your idea of interesting is.
But if you make spaghetti bolognese using tagliatelli it tastes much, much worse.
Who knew pasta could make such a difference?

I had a bad day...

Bad days, everyone has them, right? And today I was blessed with one of the worst days ever. From the moment I got up to the moment I got home in the evening things just seemed to go from bad to worse.
But now sitting on my sofa thinking about my day I realise it wasn’t that bad at all. I brought all the irritating things that happened today on myself - by not just grinning and bearing it.
I’m normally a half glass full type person but looking out the window this morning from my boyfriend’s warm bed onto the dismal, wet surroundings outside I felt dread in the bottom of my stomach: today was not going to be a good day. Deciding to be brave and not pull the tempting sickie I so wanted, I dragged myself to the bus stop. Only for two busses to pass me, full up with people not wanting to walk in the rain. Harumph, I thought, as expected today will be terrible.
After taking some time off, work seemed to have piled up and I had no idea how to do any of it. This came as quite a shock as everything I’ve done so far in my job has come as a breeze and I suddenly felt very insecure in my ability to be a journalist.
It didn’t help that I had also received feedback on a job I had applied for, which despite my previous entry on wanting to receive criticism, actually upset me a lot.
All the typical annoying day ruiners followed after that: getting caught in a rain storm on my lunch hour, just missing my bus home, terrible traffic and having that evening’s plan cancelled. But actually these are things that happen to people every single day; every day this week I’ve felt low in myself or got caught in typical London rush hour but I didn’t let it get me down then. The key to that was because I woke up feeling good, on the right side of bed - I looked at the positives in each bad situation and found them, whereas this morning I decided it was going to be a bad day and it was.
I’ve seen so many people succumb to negative thinking and let it ruin not just perfectly good days but how they live their lives. Today I made a promise to myself never to become one of those people and from now on I will make sure I always get out of bed on the right side (even if what’s out of the bed isn’t as appealing as what is in it…)

Confessions of a Comper

Since moving to London I have had to (painfully) spend all my money on boring things like rent and food, only allowing myself the occasional extravagance of a discounted bottle of white wine. This, as you can imagine, is a very dull life for someone who takes a great deal of pleasure in spending a lot of money on a lot of crap. So I’ve had to seek my thrills elsewhere. Mainly entering as many competitions as I can find. This allows me to indulge my need for things I don’t actually need without spending any money, I can ogle the prizes in the picture then daydream about what it would be like to win them. It is incredibly satisfying.

However, there is a down side…

Like most things in life which are thrilling my new found pastime is also terrifyingly addictive and damaging to my emotional wellbeing.
I am a naturally optimistic person, sometimes so much so that I’m borderline arrogant. This means that every time I enter a competition I assume I’ve won it, resulting in a stream of stressful thoughts such as: “if I won this holiday for two who would I take?” and “what the hell am I going to do with £1000 worth of beds?”

It also means every morning on the bus I’m thinking about checking my inbox and finding I’ve won one of the many competitions entered only to arrive in work, see the small bracketed (1) beside my google mail, let out a squeal of delight shocking my colleagues only to discover the email is another depressing one from milkround informing me that there are no good jobs for graduates. Going through this exact same routine daily means my bright, glass half full personality is slowly being eaten away at and I’m becoming a negative person who believes she has no luck (after all surely it is impossible for me to enter ten competitions daily and not win at least one of them) and who is not going to get a paid job ever (the depressing lack of jobs becomes even more real when you’re expecting the news of it to be a 5 star holiday to the Caribbean)

The catch 22 of the competition entering is that you only really win when you least expect it. Like the proverbial watched pot my constantly checked inbox is never going to deliver me an amazing prize unless I stop expecting it to. Yet I’m constantly expecting it to because I spend so much time entering competitions. It may not seem that hard thing to do but being a ‘comper’ (the official word for a competition addict) is a full time job. There’s the constant searching for new competitions you haven’t already entered, the trying to explain how much you want to meet Zac Efron/Jim Carrey/Jodie Marsh in under 15 words when actually you have no desire whatsoever to do so and the never ending debate with yourself about what would actually happen if you won.

Whilst writing this I’ve not checked my inbox in the last ten minutes and maybe, just maybe taking my experience and doing the proactive writer thing of actually writing about it will have upped my karma slightly and there’ll be an invite to a worldwide premiere waiting for me. I’ll let you know…

The Top 5 Crap Competitions I have entered:

1, Win! the new Joss Stone CD (when I win this I’m burning it and not in the good: I want all my friends to have a copy way)

2, Win! £1000 worth of beds (as aforementioned the thought of winning this prize stresses me out more than anything, and when I think of it all I can see is my house full of beds and no room for any of the other prizes I WILL win)

3, Win! the DVD of Robssesed (I have entered a total of 6 competitions to win this DVD and unlike the rest of the female population I don’t fancy Robert Pattinson)

4, Win! a vibrator covered in semi precious jewels (why would anyone ever need such a thing? It is worth a whopping £1,500 so when I win it I’m going to ebay it)

5, Win! a lifesize cardboard cut out of Edward Cullen. (again no desire for Mr Pattinson and his cheekbones whatsoever)