Category: Motivation

Imperfections

Posted in Change, Expectations, Growing up, Happiness, Imperfections, Lifestyle, Motivation, Reflection, Self Awareness, Self Help, Self Improvement, Social Comment, Society, Trust, UnlearningLeave a comment

We all deserve a clean slate.

The new year is a big deal for some reason. Successfully orbiting our sun matters to us.  I can’t say I know how difficult, or dangerous it was, but I’m sure it warranted a drink.

Manchester is currently the shining example of how ham we go on a NYE celebration. I have little recollection of my own NYE, but from the accounts of complete strangers who I ran into at the Guinness factory, I was absolutely destroyed.

For those of you that didn’t go full pagan, here’s what you missed out on:

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My own mayhem was not quite the renaissance masterpiece above, but I did my best to try and drown the old year in alcohol.

Maybe it’s the promise of a clean slate with our hangover that pushes some of us over the edge. The need to obliterate the memory cells of whatever it was that made the last year so horrendous. The joy at being surrounded by the people you love the most.

We go out how we have to: Civilised drinks with family and friends, or pinned to the ground by feds.

Either way, we all deserve a fresh start.

With that fresh start come expectations. I mean it has to go better than the last. There has to be progress. I have to be better than I was.

I think I stopped making resolutions in 2003. There were only so many times I could tell myself I was going to be a teetotaling, non-smoking, gym fanatic who read 40 books a year.

I do alright as I am.

I will still get wasted on occasion. I will still have a drunken fag. I will read, but never as much as I could. I will work out, only as much as I need to in order to be able to eat two whole Nando’s chickens on my own.

Obviously there will be change. But it will come at its own pace.

My New Year is all about acceptance.

My resolutions were always about being a better person. Kinder, more tolerant, more forgiving. Or it was about how I could improve my life to fulfil some imaginary standard others would appreciate.

Showing the same kindness, tolerance and understanding for myself never occurred to me.

Moving past my short comings, be it  getting so drunk I fall off a pier, or ignoring my intuition, is something I find hard. My failings are the sun which I have been stuck in orbit around for years.

Rather than trying to evolve into someone perfect, this year will be the year I embrace my dumb ass self for who I am. An alcohol imbibing, wise cracking loud mouth, with an occasionally impressive rack, and a life that often looks a bit like a Manchester high street on New Year’s morning.

Here’s to happiness  and shenanigans in the New Year.

So this is Christmas

Posted in Adulthood, Christmas, Expectations, Experience, Family, Friendship, Humour, Lifestyle, Motivation, Positivity, Unemployment, UnlearningTagged Leave a comment

 

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Not this year it isn’t…

John Lewis and shiny stuff would lead most of us to believe that this is the most wonderful time of the year. Christmas can be pretty wonderful: friends you haven’t seen in years, time with family, spreading joy, giving and receiving, great food, the list goes on. This year my attitude, normally on a par with Buddy the Elf, is a bit more like the weather: lukewarm.

Christmas comes but once a year. At least that was my mantra in past years when I forced a smile when being nagged by my parents about when I was going to meet a nice boy. Or when I was being nagged about when I was going to move closer to home. Or when I was wincing at drunken shouting and trivial arguments. Or when I was joining in on the shouting. I still managed a smile because a week down the line I would be back on a plane and far away. Future conversations could be tolerated. Or at least muted.

This year Christmas feels like it is building up to be Wrestlemania. All the previously small bouts that have taken place lover the last four months will now culminate in this one off spectacular event.

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All things festive

There is no tapping out.

A chair may be employed as a last minute act of desperation.

My plan to hide in the gym was thwarted. I may no longer have any idea what day of the week it is, but most of the normal working world have been counting the sleeps until they could go out, get battered, safe in the knowledge there was no getting up at 7 am the next morning.

This is my life.

Maybe that’s why my cheer isn’t as cheery. The biggest factor in my love of Christmas was desperate relief. The winter term was the longest one at school. After seven weeks of crowd control, marking, observations and prising kids off windows and walls, I wanted to sleep for two weeks. It’s like the Eddie Murphy joke about the cracker you get offered after weeks in the desert.

Christmas was the best cracker I had ever eaten.

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Christmas Hip Hop Carousel

Every day is like Christmas now. In the sense I get to stay at home watching bad television, balancing my finances and drinking anything mulled. All I’ve been missing over the last four months was a festive hat at a jaunty angle.

The traditional Christmas dinner is also a festive selling point.

Roast potatoes, Turkey, Christmas pudding, even sprouts, there’s something about that Christmas spread. It warms the heart.

As I sit staring at the swede that will be the crowning joy in vegan Christmas, I find it hard to get excited.

My brother is an excellent cook. It will be a Vegetarian/Vegan delight. But it’s not quite Christmas this year.

I nearly went full Scrooge when Facebook asked if I wanted to see what 2015 looked like. But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

The Ghosts of Facebook Statuses past have helped me to gain some perspective this Christmas Eve.

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Still smiling. Kind of

This hasn’t been my worst Christmas. Not by a long shot.

There was the Christmas Air France lost all my luggage. The Christmas I lost my phone in a taxi on the way to the airport. The Christmas I nearly lost my hand and had to have surgery. Last Christmas, when  I was sent blow by blow details of how my then boyfriend liked to get down in the bedroom, and then had to spend the day comforting him.

This has been quite an uneventful festive season in retrospect.

Christmas has it’s good points. I get to make it magical for my nephew.  I stay up watching cheesy movies and playing board games with my siblings. It’s the only time of the year when I can hit reset with my parents and start afresh. I also get to see friends I love and laugh. Drunkenly.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. If I let it be.

So I’m going to get me some wine and listen to Jingle Bell Rock until the spirit of Christmas, or Christmas spirits restore me to my normally hyperactive Christmas state.
Happy holidays. Get merry. ’tis the season.

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Rewiring my Radar

Posted in Change, Dating, Humour, Infidelity, Lifestyle, Love, Motivation, Relationships, Self Awareness, Self Improvement, Trust, UnemploymentTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Even the dickheads teach you something.

“He fucked her.”

The one thing you have to love about London is that if you dare to converse openly in the street every Tom, Dick and Harry will give you their two pence worth. As Galia and I made our way to Rebel Bingo, I started rehashing the whole did he/didn’t he of my ex’s supposed infidelity, and secret friendship with a girl whom I’d never heard of until last Christmas.

This was random man’s opinion on the debate:

“Who describes his bedroom to a girl via a text message? Take a picture, yeah, send it to her, but who describes it?”

He made a very good point.

“It’s easy love, the simplest answer is most probable.”

Was it more probable a psychopath became obsessed with my ex after staring at him too long?  Did she then lie to her husband (yes husband) about an affair? Did they then conspire to ruin an innocent man’s life?

Or was it more likely he just shagged her, got caught and now regretted it?

“Simplest answer love.”

Camden’s answer to Confucius turned to a cash machine and started to get money out, leaving me and Galia nodding our heads. Why we were nodding I don’t know. I’d never know which story was true.

Why do I keep bothering with dating when my instinct on men is so off?

I once had dinner at a Mexican friend’s house and was discussing yet another failed relationship when her Nana came in. She joined in the conversation with the promise of bestowing her years of experience and wisdom. At the end of my tale of unreturned texts, a terminally ill relative that never died, and crucial gym commitments, I looked to her for her wisdom.  She delicately placed a hand on my shoulder, looked at me consolingly, and said “Mija, pero tienes radar de pendejos.”

When I turned to my friend to ask what she had said, she replied “Nana says you have asshole radar.”

Thanks, Nana.

My love life reads like a a serial killer’s scrap book.

I have been on a one woman mission to perfect the art of reverse man alchemy, where I take a guy that looks golden and turn him into a shit. Complete success has been achieved on more than one occasion. That doesn’t bug me as much as the fact my life has become one big dating anecdote.

The things that I have done, places I have seen and people I have met are the backstory to a failed love life. This realisation has lead me to my new plan: rewiring my radar.

As dumb as I may already sound, I am not so stupid that I am going to sit crying into a tub of ice cream about how unlucky I am. Well, not anymore. I don’t really believe in luck, or karma. Up until now I used to think that I believed in myself, but it was clear to see after months of flailing around struggling to come to terms with a whole new life in London, and a lot of disappointment, I didn’t believe I could make any of it work alone. Me. Who moved to a Mexico alone at 24 with no friends and 100 pairs of knickers because a) why not? and  b) you always need clean underwear.

Those of you that know me, know me as a fearless, loveable idiot who won’t shut up. Those that have known me longer know  might think I’m quite tough and cynical. No one knows you better than yourself though, and after the last dating anecdote I’ve decided to take time off life as I’ve known it.

I have a pathetic amount of money saved and will be funding the ‘having-a-life-and- being-happy-project.’ During this time, I will be going out and about in London. Travelling to a city near you, perhaps. Writing about what I see along the way, the people I meet, and setting my radar to ‘no pendejos’.

If you need a partner in crime, call me. If you want to go somewhere you haven’t been to before, I’m your girl.

It’s been two weeks now, and it’s absolutely terrifying. I have only just stopped waking up with the kind of pain in my chest that makes me have to pat myself down to see if I slept with my bra on.

Still totally worth it.

Wish me luck.