Is monotonous routine the wheel by which we drive ourselves to insanity?
Feels like it.
It is easier to point to the injustice than it is to the fairness; it is easier to ignore the fairness while you dwell on the injustice. The easy option and the best option are not always synonymous.
Do not try to understand a person.
All will be in vain.
For nobody really understands themselves.
Keyboard surgery
It’s 2012 and we’re at the height of modern technology as we know it: a programmed dashboard computer with numerous delightful voices can direct us to a destianation better than we ever could with a map; communication between people thousands of miles away can be instantaneous and when people long for an apple, it’s not one of their five a day they desire! So tell me this, why is it still virtually impossible to clean a laptop keyboard!
I have just sat for the best part of twenty minutes with a cocktail stick and cotton wool, delicately trying to clean the gaps in between my keyboard keys, to be left feeling nothing short of a hay-fever victim from all the dust - Achoo! I was once grateful for the extra number keypad down the right hand side, now I loathe it for being nothing more than a dust magnet!
I could really do with a solution to this problem, and I am not talking your cheap,fall-apart-in-your-hand, wipe type solution, I am talking removable, easy clean keyboard that does not cause me to break out into a sneezing fit!
Is it possible to wait for something which is never going to arrive?
Is there anybody out there?
It’s been some time since I last blogged, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out why: I have literally done NOTHING with my summer!
I am in a tough place at the moment; battling against the confines of the rural end of the earth and (quite literally) counting down the days until I return back to Leeds, where someone is kind enough to press ‘play’ on my life again. I really struggle when I come home and temporarily lose my independence, my new friends and the life to which I have become so accustomed. The transition from uni to back home is a million times more challenging than that of home to uni for me! Unthinkable really, but true nonetheless. A night out has to be planned like a military operation around here- meeting time? Taxi booked? Sleeping arrangements? There’s no sign of the Leeds morale here, (oooh it’s five to eleven, shall we go out at half past and chance a cab at 3am with Amber taxi’s before strolling into uni for a 9am?) so to save the hassle, it’s easier to go without the night out!
It doesn’t help either, when I go to move my belongings into my new home for next year - which I have already paid an extortionate amount of money for despite not yet living in! - only to find that not even a tramp would be grateful of stepping foot through the newly painted front door. It’s okay decorating the outside, but what about the DISGUSTING fridge, broken blinds and utter grime concealed within the property which I am supposed to call home?! As mum often says… there is no point decorating a dead christmas tree… or something like that anyway!
Students are constantly being exploited in tenancy agreements. Just because we are young and yet to properly own/rent property, it is assumed that we do not know our rights or even where we do, we are not expected to stand up for them - that said, even if we did, we would receive discriminatory treatment just because we fit the specification of the ‘student stereotype’ - well my landlord has picked a fight with the wrong law student! I shall very much enjoy fighting for my cause and trying to get my house in some form of habitable condition before my planned birthday celebrations next weekend. Why should I compromise my weekend of fun for someone who should have had the house spotless almost 5 weeks ago?!
Aside from the house dramas, the ruined birthday plans and this summer shaping up to be the worst one in the history of my life ever, at least I have a job to keep me going… although it is slightly depressing when you need a job to relieve the boredom more than you do for the money!
And the moral of this story is…..? You can take the girl out the city, but you can’t take the city out of the girl… back to Leeds now please!
Up until last week, I thought once something had been lost, it could not then be taken again before it had been found: I was wrong. Mumford and sons took my breath away in Newcastle, and then Coldplay took it again in Manchester. I feel very fortunate to have been able to attend two AMAZING concerts in the space of a week, with some very special people and I hope this is only the beginning of my concert addiction. I have certainly been bitten by the ‘live music bug’ and I am more than willing to allow it to feed for a long time coming.
Yours Sincerely x
Chapter 1
War had ruined him. It had seeped into him and, with every reflex, he subconsciously kicked out yet another reference to fear and fighting. He wasn’t how I remembered him, so weak and feeble, he was my brave heart and, at this point in time, he still was – just a fraction of the man he used to be.
‘His condition is stable Mrs Simpson. You may see him now, though I warn you, he is tired. Though he may not recognise you at first, he will come round.’
Tattooed on the inside of my eyelids, is the burning image of his last day with me, his last day of discomfort, his last day of war. As I walked into, what for Eddie was a room of no return, I felt an uncontrollable surge of helplessness flow through me, like the electric through Eddie’s heart monitor. Once blue sparkling pools, his eyes now mirrored a grey core which can only be described as matter. No shape, no structure, no substance. His sallow face sank into the pillow like a stain, unable to move of its own accord. What had originally drawn me to Eddie, was his impregnable self confidence, now no more. He lacked self respect and could not come to terms with his somewhat ‘new’ appearance. Years to make him into what he was; seconds to destroy it.
I walked over to the bed and he forced a cold, unrecognizable smile from somewhere in the depths of his shockingly burned body. I cried. I did nothing but cry. Grasping is hand tightly, I sat. Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours, in the same way the past 15 years had blurred into one. As I got up to leave, he murmured something which I made out to be, ‘go and find my mind, it’s in a box in my bag.’
He’d lost it, his sanity had been stripped along with his skin and now I was going to feel the consequences. What was he talking about ‘go and find my mind’, like that was possible.
I drove home slowly, unable to come to terms with the sight I had just seen. I always knew he would come back, I just didn’t expect our reuniting to happen in a small, dark hospital room, surrounded by uncomforting sounds of death. I switched the kettle on to make myself coffee, maybe I could stimulate my brain into gear. While sat on the sofa, I stared at a blank T.V screen and listened to the rain beat dismally against the panes. The weather reflected my mood –as always- dampening any high spirits that remained in my seemingly depressed body. The only thing I could think of, were the last – the only – words Eddie had said to me while I was there: ‘go and find my mind’. Every few minutes, I felt my eyes wander to the corner of the room, transfix on Eddie’s bag and then almost instinctively look away, as if trying to look at the midday sun. I feared that bag like mice fear cats but somehow, in a battle against fear and curiosity, curiosity came out on top.
(Source: yourssincerely)
Inside one person there are hundreds of stories: inside those stories are hundreds of people. Maybe if you listen, you will open a world of possibilities.
There’s no shame in being proud.
This evening, I had to write a letter to one of my scholarship donors, thanking them for their generous contributions to the Alumni fund at the university. In the letter, I was to include updates about what I have done since arriving at Leeds, how my course is going and the impact being a scholarship recipient has had on me. Upon proof reading the letter, I realised that there, before me, was written documentation of all that I had achieved in the past 8 months; I am not afraid to admit that it made me proud, knowing that I have really taken advantage of every opportunity presented to me. There is a certain hostility toward being proud of yourself these days: pride is misconstrued as an expression of self-absorption and big-headedness. I believe that everybody has something, numerous things in fact, to be proud of. It may not be something life-changing to others, it may not necessarily change your life in a substantial manner, but one thing is certain: if you can learn to be proud of any achievement, no matter how small, this will be directly proportionate to increased confidence, self efficacy and perception of self-worth.
I believe in the ethos that what you get from life, is determined by what you put in. While at times this seems difficult to comprehend, as life throws one more spanner in the works… and another… and then a brick, effort and determination will mainfest themselves in a positive and rewarding output eventually.
Why is today a good day to evaluate your life achievements and be proud of the person you are today? Why is today a good day to break free from the stigma attached to personal pride? Well why not?
