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endofapaige · 1 year ago

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Welcome to 2024

Happy Not-So-New-Anymore Year! How have you been? How was your Christmas? I’d caught that viral thing that’s been going around right on top of mine, so it was as good as it could be with no voice, running on no sleep, and throwing up. I am hoping to leave the illness in 2023, it did leave me on New Year’s Day which I am hoping is a good omen. That was one of my resolutions this year: get ill less. I am very prone to every cold and sick bug that crosses my path, but it was 2023 where I think I had something at least once a month, which is a lot compared to my usual summer cold and winter cold. Of course, with this, comes every other cliché resolution; eat better, exercise, arguably go outside less because I am sure it’s public transport that is ruining my immune system, but I think I’ll be ignoring that one.

I have high hopes for 2024. I think I said the same thing about 2023 but really, that year was good. This year I want to focus more on myself. I have been eating more fruit, my chocolate consumption has been minimal which is very impressive actually. The exercise is pending, but little steps, and I really need to learn to give less shits.

I’m a very sensitive person, I always have been. I cry at a lot, I care very deeply, and a lot of times that fucks me over. I have lost contact with a lot of friends in 2023, although I have gained some good ones in the people I work with. I am still unsure whether this losing friends thing is because of me or because of them. It is obviously so easy to be biased in that respect, to believe the issue lies with them. It sucks, losing these friends I did think I’d have forever. I’m not particularly good at keeping friends as it is, the reason for this I am unsure of, but I didn’t think I would be sat staring at my blank home screen on my 20th birthday waiting for wishes to my twenties from my friends that didn’t come. That struck something in me I think, if these people I have known for years cannot remember my birthday, or simply cannot be bothered to message me to wish me happy on that day, what is the point in trying in return? I have always been in the mindset of why should I be the one to make all the effort? And maybe, yes in a couple of cases there was mutual effort, but being left on read mid conversation for a month and a half or too many seven text exchange conversations where it feels more like a formality than a friendship before three months goes by and you have heard nothing, you start to wonder why you are even bothering.

This is what I mean, I want to focus on me this year. Protect myself from this endless loop of platonic heartbreak I have been spinning in my entire life. I have crammed seeing who I can into this last week of the Christmas holidays, and it has been so so nice. It’s the first time in a long while where I haven’t felt like I am completely alone outside of my relationship. Granted, as my University starts up again for semester two, they too move back to their respective cities, their schedules never matching mine, and I am sure the feeling will start to creep back in again.

University is going well this time around. I’m actually excited about education again. I have passed my first set of deadlines, having to cram the last two because I was out of commission with the flu for two weeks, but I have completed them and for that I am proud of myself. I am quite excited for what the rest of the year has to offer. While my timetable is extremely inconvenient, the content sound far more fascinating than my first term. I am still writing for the student newspaper Redbrick, though I have fallen off over Christmas with so much to do in terms of assignments. I am Culture Editor for the same paper, I have been nominated as Best Journalist for the TV section for the SPA Awards. I am hoping to step into TV Editor in second year, or Digital Editor, which of these I have not yet decided.

I am slowly starting to figure out what I want from life. Those big unrealistic dreams are shifting into something achievable. I’ll be honest I still have very little clue what I want to do as a career. I don’t think I want this to be writing, because while I am doing it far more than I did this time last year, I still have a love-hate relationship with the art. I have moved on from fiction entirely, that is not my bag. I am coming to terms with my strengths and finding ways I can use these in careers in the media. Where I have landed as of now, though this will change in a month or two probably, is becoming a project manager in a marketing firm that specialises in film and tv advertising. I think my interests and the way I am would combine well for that. How I get there? I have no idea.

My birthday was amazing. It was a very expensive weekend, but it was the perfect way to welcome in my twenties. Three nights in London, a fuck ton crammed in. I am meant to be writing a piece on this for Redbrick, but I am not sure the relevance of it now. I will give you an overview regardless. The Friday we arrived, we navigated the underground and dropped our belongings at the Premier Inn we were staying in. The London Hamstead if you wanted to know, we loved it, not too loud and not all too far from everything we wanted to do. We didn’t mind the travel between though, I do think the underground is one of the most impressive inventions. We then made our way to South Kensington where we did the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. In short, we saw a shit ton of rocks and then got kicked out before we could do any of the cool activities in the Science Museum because it was closing. We went to Big Easy in Soho for dinner that night, we had booked a table prior, and yet we still sat waiting for over an hour. The food wasn’t that great, but I tried lobster for the first time. Overall, not a place I’d recommend even though the restaurant itself was very aesthetic. By aesthetic I mean dark and grungy, but to me, that is perfect.

The Saturday was my birthday, we started the day with a coffee and a slice of cake in Tower Hill Starbucks, and then made our way into the Tower of London. It was an extraordinarily long morning, but I loved it. We then moved along to our meal of the day at El Pirata of Mayfair. Tapas has become a recent love of mine, but this was amazing. We ended the night at the Cambridge Theatre watching Matilda: The Musical, which must be the best musical I have watched so far.

The Sunday started rocky. We were supposed to go to Italian Bear Chocolate. It was tipping it down and we ended up at the wrong branch, and by the time we had made it to the right place we were late. Usually this wouldn’t bother me so much, however as we stood in the queue, we watched the woman in front of us being lectured rudely about being late and her losing her table five minutes after the allocated slot. She got in with a death stare and a huff but by that point I was angry and stressed and I wanted to be anywhere else but there. So, I cried, and we walked, and we ended up at the Hard Rock Café, arguably the better choice. I’ve decided this year I’d quite like to tour the UK branches and collect the glasses, we already have a trip to Manchester pending to be booked in March. The food was incredible, and the atmosphere was even better. After that, we headed to Hyde Park for Winter Wonderland. It was beautiful, everything I wanted it to be. We did the wheel, we visited the Magical Ice Kingdom, we saw the circus. We were there for three hours longer than we needed to be because I had spread out the activities exponentially, but I still adored it. And we had a hot chocolate that I truly believed would have beaten Italian Bear anyway. The only downside was, we weren’t hungry enough to try any of the food up for offer.

The Monday was our final day, we went to Burger and Beyond for lunch, which was amazing, and then we did very little. We were knackered and we knew it was home time, so we just wanted to be home. I’d found it very weird spending my birthday without my parents and I hadn’t had any presents, so I was itching to get back for that. So, we got our stuff and headed to London Euston, where every train got cancelled for at least two hours so we were left stood staring at the board with our feet feeling like they were about to fall off.

I want to do more things this year. It’s those things that make my life interesting. However, money is tight, and I cannot jet off to Mykonos like I want. I do have a few concerts booked in, and a couple more musicals. I have already been to an Arctic Monkeys tribute in January which was a weird and wonderful experience as we stood next to the band themselves, talking on and off before they went on stage. I’m hoping I can fill the void of no abroad holiday with weekends exploring new cities, but I think I’ll miss the sun.

At the base of it all, life really is going very well, if I can iron out a few little creases. I’m getting new tattoos this year, I’m going on holiday with Jack’s family for the first time, I’ll be turning 21 for God’s sake (maybe that’ll bring an abroad holiday, though I doubt the sun will be as I want it in December). I am awfully happy with the way things are turning out in retrospect. I just need to work on myself. I wish the same happiness for all of you as the Earth circles the Sun yet again.

As 2024 rolls in and everything is looking good, I am just so fucking glad I have gotten my mojo back.

#lifestyle #blog #girl blogger #tumblog #2024 #welcome to 2024 #new year

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endofapaige · 2 years ago

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A Letter to my Twenties

Dear my twenties,

As I write this now you are merely a week away, and fuck has your presence hit me like a truck. I will be honest, you are looking promising, but there are things I do wish you will bring me.

You have a lot to live up to really, my teens bought me some very good grades, some really fucking good friends, albeit a lot of these didn’t last, they were still very big parts of my life. I wish for more consistency in my twenties I think, I seem to have gone through a lot of mental phases in my life and I believe to have outgrown that now. I want the friends I have left to last forever, I love them dearly; I want to stop flip-flopping in my passions.

As I leave my nineteenth year, I really do believe things are going well. I have a lot going for me with university this time around, but it will be you that will take me to graduation. It is you that is joining me as I finally begin to care about things again. I am writing regularly; I am editing for a fucking newspaper! What a dream. It will be you who will watch me as I cry and stress and ultimately get to the place in life I want to be.

I don’t know what that place is yet, I am still toying with careers, but no matter where I end up, you will take me there.

You will see me be happy. Happier than I have been in my life, as I take control back of the things that I love and find the place in the world that I belong in. You will watch me build that life, make that name for myself, get that success I have wanted since I was a child.

You will see me cry. More times than I would like probably, because at the heart of it, being twenty is terrifying me when I still feel sixteen. I will have to face the world, grow up truly, You will be with me when I move out of my family home. You will be with me, likely, when I experience pregnancy and motherhood, though I hope you bring me this much closer to when you are handing me over to thirty. You will watch me get rejected, and rejected, and fail more than I ever have in my life as I set myself up for life. I am going to hate it, but you will watch me get through it.

My teens brought me love. My first, my biggest, hopefully my last. I hope you stay true to the latter. I hope you bring me marriage, and happiness, and comfort in my love. As you approach, being in love is hard. I am doing it because fuck I will not let it go no matter how irrational my thoughts become, no matter how many petty fights we have, but I hope you bring me the peace that follows.

I find it odd, I do, moving into another decade of life, walking around and telling people ‘I’m twenty’ when I feel (and look) much younger. I thank my teens for everything it brought me, getting me into writing, letting me experience the world in a way that got me to where I am, protecting me from so much. I hope you bring me as much comfort in myself as I have in my surroundings right now. I thank my teens for getting me into a good job and a good degree, though it was hard, I am ecstatic with where I have ended this era.

I hope with my twenties, I can celebrate everyone else in my life too, I am in the decade where my friends are getting married and starting lives and succeeding just like I am, I want you to bring me every chance to celebrate these things with them and do them all right alongside everyone I love.

I never thought I would be where I am. Doing the things I have always adored, experiencing so many new things, in love and genuinely happy with life as I find little ways to improve myself. It has always been little steps, and I think finally I may have gotten the hang of it. If you try to do too much at once, you will shut down. I give that to you, well to me, remember that fact as you take me through life, especially when I feel like I cannot possibly do it all.

I will be welcoming you into my life in style. It is cold, God is it cold, but where better to freeze your tits off than in Winter Wonderland? I’m excited for my trip to London, it’s my first birthday entirely without my parents. That thought terrifies me, and I feel awful as I am also leaving my dad behind on his birthday. But it is nice, it is nice to be able to make my own adventures and my own memories as I enter true adulthood. And then I will reminisce on my childhood in tune with Matilda: The Musical. It sounds perfect, doesn’t it? I hope it is so.

I have always looked forward to growing up, and now that I am here, I am scared. But all I can say is I hope it is worth it. Even if it is the hardest decade of my life, I hope at the end of it all I am exactly where I want to be. I think I have the passion to make that so, I just beg you help me along.

Welcome, get comfortable, and please be nice as you kick my teens into the corner of my mind. It’s very nice to have you here, well almost.

Ash x

Ps. It’s been very nice to swear while I write again

Pps. It has been a while, how are you all doing?

Ppps. I probably won’t catch you before, so Merry Christmas!

#lifestyle #it's my birthday #turning 20 #twenty #letter to self #blog #girl blogger #lifestyle blog

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endofapaige · 2 years ago

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The Year So Far and More on Me

So, I never really got my mojo back, I still don’t, I still find this whole writing activity more of a chore than fun. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about today, you’ve heard this story before time and time again.

A lot has gone on I think, between then, the start of the year where I was unemployed and miserable to now. Not that I’m not still a bit miserable, but that’s mental health baby, I’ll get into that in a bit too.

Let’s jump back to January, shall we? It seems like forever ago now, but at the time I was frantically searching for something to give my life purpose. I’d not long dropped out of my university course; I had returned home, back to living on my parents’ schedule with all of my friends dotted around the country now or too busy with their own lives to drop everything to keep me company as I go through the most aggressive feeling of uselessness I have ever felt in my life. All the while I was jumping in and out of fuelling my body with hormones as I played trial and error with contraception.

It wasn’t all bad though! Jack and I had each other and it wasn’t too long until I was in the my first ever full time office job. I got lucky with Complesso, even now I refer to it as a ‘unicorn job’. I entered the corporate world into a job I was actually good at, surrounded by people who made me feel like I had been there forever and didn’t make me feel so much like the inexperienced kid I was when I started. I do find it odd I suppose that I would consider a lot of these people I work with better friends than many of my peers I have come across through education. Complesso has done a lot for me, of course the income side of things, having money to spend definitely helps, but my confidence has sky rocketed since the blow of university and it provided a very good distraction from the feeling of uselessness and the rising anxiety I developed while living away from home.

It’s all still there, the mental health issues I’ve been trying to and will probably continue to ignore. That’s been another very prevalent lesson over the last year or so while trying to juggle adult life and an adult relationship, that maybe I’m not as okay as I was sure I was at school. Of course, the awareness of ADHD and Autism has become a big thing online recently it’s hard not to start relating that to yourself. But the more of life I experience and the more I analyse how I react to things, complicated emotions to very simple situations, I do start to wonder if I’m on the spectrum in some respect and have some form of anxiety, and the more I research the more I do relate. It’s not something I talk about with people at all, which is strange for me as I have never been able to keep my emotions to myself, but that’s another thing that makes me think I could be. But it’s hard to turn around to your parents and off the bat spurt out ‘I think I might be autistic.’

It's been the last couple of weeks in particular that have been really hard. Jack and I are both attempting university again at the same time this year. And I have found it beyond hard to come to terms with the fact that plans change and people cancel and just because they have said something, it doesn’t mean they will do that exactly if at all. I have always struggled around people, yes, my confidence is much better than it was. I can get on a bus alone, I can leave the house without supervision, I can order coffee in a coffee shop without breaking down in tears in the queue. I can even initiate conversation a lot better than I used to, however I still struggle to maintain that and if I don’t instantly feel like the other person likes me as much as I like them, I take that to heart. Because of this, me making friends never really feels like making friends more so acquaintances that are there when they need me but aren’t much more beyond that. It’s a very pessimistic approach to people and life, but I cannot seem to tell my brain that those thoughts are wrong even though my rationality knows this. Have I convinced you I’m autistic yet?

Enough on me and my inner workings for a second, I’m beyond excited to be back into education. Learning, researching, and writing has always been the only think I find continuously enjoyable in life, but I never seem to have the motivation to do this off my own back. I’m excited to challenge myself again, as much as I enjoy my job, excel spreadsheets are horribly mind-numbing. I’m hoping university will stick much better than it did last year, my approach is different this year. I am at home instead of in Halls, and I’m going to focus solely on academics rather than getting too caught up on the social side of things that left me so depressed and isolated last year.

On the surface of things, this year has been incredible. I went abroad for the first time without my parents, I have seen almost every single one of my favourite bands in concert now, and even more to come in the next 12 months. While I admit a lot of the friends I had last year I have lost contact with, I still have a good portion of people around me that I adore, a couple very new and equally important to me than the ones that have been around forever. It’s my mission to make the most of the people still around me and maybe as I go through university this group will expand, but I’ve learnt now that I cannot force friends and if I try I leave myself more upset than I was before.

I achieved one of my biggest goals this year too, I finally passed my driving test. Something that was a very long time coming and I admit I still hate it as much as I did when I first started. But I have that certificate now, I don’t have the stress of trying to pass and hate it, I can just hate it and not do it. I also got my first tattoo. A little line-art book on my wrist. Reading and writing has always been something that’s been near and dear to my heart regardless of how often I actually do it. I want more, things that nod to the franchises that have shaped my personality. I have an idea for the next one but I worry I only like it because it reminds me of Jack and I’ve never been a fan of getting permanent reminders of people in my life. My cynical side worries too much of the memories it would bring if the person left one day.

Jack and I are doing well though. As I write this it’s just under two weeks until our one year anniversary and we are talking seriously about ways we could move in together. It’s hard with us to actually pinpoint the start of our relationship because we were more than friends for a good while before we made it official. Do you guys remember the ‘it’s messy but we’re happy’? I’m way happier now it’s not messy I’ll be perfectly honest. But no, I still very much value his position in my life and I still adore everything about him. I never realised how nice it would be to have a second support system outside of my own family, but the longer Jack and I have been together the more I value his parents as vital figures in my life along with my own. I’m not replacing my parents by any means; they are still my all-time best friends but it’s so lovely being considered family to them though Jack and I haven’t been together all that long.

I’m not really sure what this post was. A way to rant after an incredibly emotionally hard week? A reminder to myself to value myself and the people I already have in my life rather than searching for more and leaving myself heartbroken? An excuse to give my parents an insight into my brain when I find talking about it out loud so hard? I’m not really sure, however it was nice to sit and write again and chat about how I’m doing. I’m going to join my University newspaper this year I think, give myself an excuse to write actual articles and form a portfolio instead of handing a future employer an archive of emotional rants about my mental state. I’m sure they’d love it but it’s probably not the conversation topic and writing style professionals are searching for. Things are hard right now, and I really struggle which change and adapting, but I’ll get there. For now I will continue to overcompensate by spending an awful amount of money on things I don’t need and attempting to drown my sorrows in coffee. Until next time…

#lifestyle #blog #girl blogger #how do i write #finding my mojo #university

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endofapaige · 2 years ago

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My First Holiday Alone: Magaluf

The title sounds a lot more thrilling than this actually will be. Not because I didn’t thoroughly enjoy my time, but because Magaluf has a reputation of parties and alcohol and rowdiness that we didn’t engage in. We tried to, go out on the piss one night, but apparently PMS mixed with alcohol mixed with your first holiday alone just results in crying. Don’t ask why, I’m not really sure why I cried.

Anyway, Magaluf 2023. A week in Spain, no parents, no responsibility. Me, my boyfriend, the sun, the sand and the sea. We flew out last Friday, the holiday itself was pretty spontaneous. We realised we were both in adult jobs, could actually afford it and thought this would be our only chance before we’re struggling students again. So we booked it, we saved and we went. Going into it I thought the airports would be the most stressful part, trying to navigate security and juggling times and eating and finding our way to somewhere we don’t know in a place we really don’t know. It wasn’t that bad really, before I think I’ve just mindlessly followed my parents and let them do the work unaware of how straightforward it is. We had hours to kill, as you always do in airports, I won’t bore you with the details of every shop we walked into, walked around and left without buying anything.

I’m quite a big fan of flying, I’m not an adrenaline junkie by any means, but I kind of enjoy the flipping feeling of take-off and the few hours where I can just sit and read without being tempted to look at my phone. Jack on the other hand hadn’t been on a plane for 13 years, cannot stand that flipping feeling and the smallest of judder of the plane sent him into a panic. If you ask him, he’ll tell you the turbulence was terrible. But it wasn’t all that bad, the flight home was much worse and even then, lasted maybe 10 minutes and there was only one dramatic drop that was enough to freak me out. Not that you can freak out when your boyfriend is on the verge of a panic attack in the seat next to you.

I found the most stress set in when we actually got into the hotel room. Everything was lovely, big tv, nice view of the McDonald’s across the road. I was overtired by this point, and I assumed the beds in the hotel room would be a double. I was wrong, just two singles pushed together with separate duvets. I was crying by that point, thinking I’d fucked it up and so excited to share a bed for a week. Jack was great, he was straight down to reception asking if we could get a double. It was midnight by the time we got to the hotel, so there wasn’t much they could do. Everything was sorted by the second day though. Once that was stressed, I walked into the bathroom and found a cockroach. I was crying again. Jack killed it with his shoe, but we ended up with blood and guts in the shower until the cleaners came, we thought if we’d left it they’d clean extra and make sure there weren’t any more for us. We didn’t see another one after that. We were telling our parents as it was happening, we had my mum telling us to go and complain and Jack’s laughing at us telling us it was no big deal.

On the first full day the stress had dissipated. We spent the day wandering the little town we were in, reading every menu we saw. The hotel we were staying at was a 2 minute walk to the beach and the strip, a road of restaurants and bars along the coastline that gets particularly loud during the summer nights. I very quickly located the nearest Starbucks, a superpower of mine, and we sat there for a while when it got too hot. There was also a Taco Bell right next door which we got straight afterwards; a fast food place we went to 3 times as it’s very rare in the UK, and can now very confidently say is shit. We ended up back in the hotel by the pool for a couple of hours after that.

The Sunday we got the bus into Palma. The biggest city in Majorca. A city that probably would’ve been lovely if it wasn’t raining, we hadn’t taken a wrong turn and ended up in the middle of nowhere and I hadn’t spent the entire day feeling a bit sick. The downsides of free buffet breakfast. In the evening we ended back in Calvia, the area we were staying, in Blackbeard’s Bar and Grill in which we ate more food than we could handle. The restaurant was incredible though, we sat outside on a bench on the sand, could see the sea just beyond and had a musician singing and playing guitar just inside. They specialised in Rum infused BBQ sauce, much like TGI Fridays but the chicken wings we had as a starter were the nicest chicken wings I’ve ever had. We had burgers for mains.

The Monday we didn’t do much at all, a day on the beach with a Fanta Lemon and an ice cream. I managed to finish two books, the second of which I finished just as we were landing back in Birmingham. I took a break from my Fantasy streak, having been in the middle of reading the Red Queen series by Victoria Aveyard to read Happy Place by Emily Henry, the newest novel by my favourite romance author. A book that was just as adorable as her others and was incredibly apt for a holiday. The second was The No-Show by Beth O’Leary another one of my go-to authors. A book I thought would be pure romance but was so much more than that and I was hooked on. Hopefully, I’ll get round to reviewing these soon.

I couldn’t tell you what we ate that day besides a Caramel Frappuccino and some ice cream. I know we went to McDonald’s a couple of days to try everything we don’t have at home, once was a McExtreme and a three-cheese burger. The former of which was grim. The second was us sharing 25 nuggets with a buffalo sauce and another garlicky-ranch like sauce we don’t get here. The third was our final day where we were boredom eating chicken wings and chicken bites.

Tuesday was by far the best day. We went to Marineland in Palma Nova. As we walked in, a worker shoved a parrot on Jack’s arm and took a photo of us. We saw seals and penguins and sting rays and the biggest turtle I’ve ever seen as well as lots of smaller ones. We even saw a monkey and some snakes. There was a birds show that we watched, it featured various tropical birds, some who could speak, some who could do maths, and some that could dance. We also watched a sea lion show and a dolphin show. Both of which were incredible. In the dolphin show, one of the employees was propelled through the pool by two dolphins pushing his feet. Jack and I sat right at the front for these, and I came out soaked by the dolphins. The first of which I am certain angled himself perfectly to splash me on purpose. We got slushies in dolphin bottles which we then carried around all day hoping to keep them as mementos and then realising we’d probably lose them and never touch them again, so we chucked them. In the afternoon, we did mini golf. Jack won by 3 points, but we were both embarrassingly bad on a few of the holes.

Tuesday night we were back in Blackbeard’s, this time, sharing nachos and ribs rather than wings and burgers. And on the cocktails instead of Irn Bru. All of which amazing.

Wednesday was another quiet one. Day drinking at Bondi Beach, a place we’d gone to to start a night out on Saturday but hadn’t eaten in properly. The food wasn’t as good as we hoped it’d be and was incredibly overpriced. I also tried a Long Island Iced Tea for the first time, which I took a sip of and didn’t touch again.

Thursday, we took a two and a half hour bus journey across the island to Dinosaur land. Jack being an incredibly big nerd, adored. Me, it was cool, but I had much more interest in the caves next door which we didn’t end up doing because Jack revealed in the ticket queue he was scared of rowboats. The burgers at Dinosaurland were incredible though, and then that evening we were back in Taco Bell, which again was minging.

Our final day was the slowest day I’ve had in a very long time. Our transfer back to the airport wasn’t until 7pm, and we didn’t have all that much to do after checking out at midday. We got milkshakes and wandered back into Palma Nova to a cute little restaurant called The Olive Tree which my mum found for us. I had a Caesar salad, and Jack had yet another burger. We also had freshly made lemonade which was amazing. The rest of the day we just lounged around in the foyer of the hotel wishing the time to pass before getting the plane home ready to watch Eurovision last night. Which Finland definitely should’ve won, right?

Jack’s back in his own house now, and we’re both back at work tomorrow like our holiday had never even happened. Wishing the time away until the next one, which for me is 5 days in the forest trying to relax with our two dogs in an unfamiliar environment, Jinx for the first time. Jack’s week in Cornwall might be a little bit more relaxing.

#lifestyle #day in the life #holiday #magaluf #girl blogger #blog #lifestyle blog #what I got up to

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endofapaige · 2 years ago

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The Social Media Identity Crisis

I have had many names online. My real name: Ashleigh shortened to Ash usually but once upon a time Leigh. My middle name, Paige. I’ve been endofapaige, ohitsash, tragiclittleworld, scarletsvision, a few more embarrassing names from my Dan and Phil era. Every single one has once felt almost offensively wrong.

Even offline I’ve played with nicknames; I’ve never really gone by anything other than Ashleigh that even introducing myself as Ash feels wrong on my tongue. I prefer Ash though, the way it looks, the fact that nobody can spell it wrong, I love the way it sounds coming from my best friends and my boyfriend. But I can’t stick to it, to me I’m Ashleigh, always have been always will be. It’s different online though, because I don’t have to hear myself say the words, so online I’m Ash, not Ashleigh, just Ash.

I find it fascinating that the world is obsessed with pseudonyms and aliases. I know so many people who go by a nickname online, or simply by their middle names like I have. Every time you change your name it’s like you’re a different person entirely.

Ashleigh is me, the quiet girl who listens to everything but has nothing to say, who thrived in academics and is itching to get back to it after a break. Ashleigh is who I am to my parents, the sarcastic kid who comes out with the weirdest things and laughs at her own jokes. The only one to answer when a question is met with silence and will pick up on a dad joke that will lead to fits of laughter that confuses the ones who didn’t listen.

Ash is who I am online. The writer, the sarcasm that doesn’t always come across right, a lot louder than I am in real life. The girl with a lot of opinions and the need to share them with everyone I can. Ash is who I am to my friends, the one who gets drunk first and has to sit on the floor in the bar bathroom before I can drink any more. I’m the one who will sit and try and solve space and time on a Wednesday evening when I’m craving Nando’s. The one who starts the questions about what old classmate is with who and where they are now when normal conversation dims. The one who swears a bit more than she should.

To very few, I’m Ashie. My cousins and my uncle, who don’t see me all that much, grasping to an element of me that’s still the little kid I was when they saw me the most. To my boyfriend, though he uses all of them. Ashleigh when he’s mad or I’m having a moment, Ash normally, but Ashie mostly. When we’re messing around and acting like kids, play fighting and licking each other’s faces. Ashie is when I’m dancing to no music, when I’m making weird noises, when I’m jumping around like I’m 5 again singing songs out of tune and getting the words wrong on purpose.

That’s my social identity: Ashleigh, Ash, Ashie. So why have I spent so much of my online life wanting to be someone else? Why have I wanted an air of anonymity when my entire online presence is centred around talking about my life in its most truthful form?

Once there was an element of embarrassment, the horror I felt if someone found my Wattpad or my Twitter. It’s not like that now, I’m proud of my writing because it’s one of the only things that makes me feel special. I promote my blog now to anyone who will listen, even if I only post on it thrice a year, I’m still proud I have it.

That’s why I’m changing it all again, I think. I’m bored of the pseudonyms. Though no matter how many times I change my name now, I think endofapaige will remain. Because endofapaige is who I am online, as close as I will get to me. A name my mother came up with rather than a generator like the others, a name that contains the part of my name that gets mentioned the least. A name that sounds right when I say it. Endofapaige is me.

It happens a lot, my need to remake myself. But for now, hi, hello, I’m Ash, not Paige, though you can call me that if you’d like. This is my blog, my life, my identity. I’m sure the colours and branding will change a multitude of times since now, though look at how much prettier the purple looks to the blue! But that’s enough name changing for me, I think. It’s time to start again, being true to myself, and making use of everything I’ve been given from my name to my sudden fascination in media fandom culture to my writing abilities.

edit: please give a hand for the emerald green

#lifestyle #what is the obsession with online aliases #girl blogger #blog #please don't actually call me Paige #insight into my internet past #let's leave the dan and Phil fan accounts in 2014

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endofapaige · 2 years ago

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Losing My Mojo, 2023, and Money is Ruining My Life

Hey… it’s been a little while. The new year has arrived, Christmas has been and gone. It’s been the first New Year I hadn’t spent with my family, which was weird, it did feel a little bit like I’d replaced my family with my boyfriend’s, but it was nice, nonetheless.

I’ve decided 2023 is going to be a good year. I can’t tell that for certain yet, but right now it already feels a bit better than 2022, but simultaneously it feels so much worse. Losing my mojo is one way to put it, I think. Feeling like everything I like isn’t so fun anymore, nothing’s satisfying, the days are merging into an endless cycle of sleeping and sitting and sleeping and sitting. I’m not doing much in those sitting phases, because nothing’s really taking my fancy anymore. Writing feels like a chore, there’s nothing good on TV, the words in my books feel like they’re 10x longer than they actually are. Mojo gone. Motivation lost. I wouldn’t call it a depression, not yet, it’s a bit empty in here but it’s not terrible.

I’ll catch you up on what I mean by that. Last time you checked I was at university. Not anymore. Me trying to convince myself the crying will get better just ended up with me crying a bit more. Add in the realisation I can’t afford to live second year and the job crisis of young kids nowadays where you need experience to get a job, but you can’t get experience if they don’t give you a job. Didn’t seem worth it, I hated my course anyway, and I realised I am far more introverted than I make out in my head. I dropped out. I don’t regret it, not really, I was miserable there and I like being home with Mum and Dad and having my bed and my boyfriend close and my best friend closer. I wasn’t prepared for the slump though. I’ve been out of Uni since the end of November, middle of? I’m not sure anymore. I’ve been looking for a job since then, and money runs low quicker than I expected. I’m still unemployed and I can barely fund my caffeine addiction with the money left in my bank account now.

There’re things I miss about Uni, going to the bar every now and again, living on my own schedule, being able to walk into the middle of campus and grab some food and coffee and not feel bad because I actually really don’t have any alternatives in my kitchen cupboards. I think I forgot that everyone at home have lives too. I missed home and the people, and then I got home and everyone was busy and their lives didn’t just stop because mine had. That’s been the worst bit, the boredom. Boredom mixed with not much money. That and having no one to go do things with even if I did have money. I mean Jack’s here, Jack is always here, and I appreciate that, that he’s always here when I’m bored. But even with company, which has become just normal now, that he’s always here and it doesn’t feel like he is anymore. Does that make sense? It sounds bad but I like it, it’s comfortable and he’s just here. Anyway, even with company I still get antsy to get out. And there’s nothing to do, not where we live and not with not much money. Cost of living crisis man, ruining my sense of adventure.

I’ve decided 2023 is going to be good though. I’m going to get a job, very soon hopefully, then the money crisis won’t be so bad. Life really is determined by money, isn’t it? I don’t believe money can buy happiness, I mean you can’t buy your severe depression away, but it helps, doesn’t it? My happiness comes from exploring new cities, from meals out, from friends and the outside. Not hiking, I’m not an exercise person, but I like to be outside rather than sat inside in my room, I’d just rather be walking down a Highstreet than up a mountain.

There’s a lot going on this year really. Seeing my favourite band in concert, seeing my favourite comedian live, getting my first tattoo. Another couple of concerts, playing to my inner emo side that was my entire personality at 14. I want to travel this year, drag Jack to London because we’ve talked about moving there one day but he’s never been. The family holiday in June after my brother finishes his GCSEs, a week I reckon will be full of humble bragging on his behalf. Hopefully a trip to Paris with Georgia because we’ve always wanted to go, and to Barcelona with Jack just because we can. Looking at it from the start of the year, I have a good year ahead of me. I’m just hoping I can fill the boring parts in between.

I turn 20 this year, which makes me feel a bit ill to think about. It’s like all of a sudden, I can’t get away with being a kid anymore. I have to get a full-time adult job, pay rent, my parents are going on holiday without me now. I’m being trusted to run the house by myself for more than a couple of hours at a time. One of my friends is getting fucking married this year. My best friend is moving to Leeds. I think that’s why I’m so determined to make 2023 good, because in some ways it feels like my last year of semi-childhood. 20 seems so different to 19. I am so sure it won’t feel like that when I get to it. But right now, it's like time is running out. I think it felt the same last year because it was ‘the last year before we all moved on’. It is different now to what it was, but I think it doesn’t feel so drastic because I was still in school and it felt just the same. Yes, half my friends are now scattered around, but really none of the important ones have gone that far. And I’ve ended up right back where I started.

I’ve fallen out of love with writing. I’ve had an iffy relationship with it for a while. It used to be a big part of my life, more Wattpad than anything really, and that happened because one of my best friends was in it too. It was like we’d do it together and because she was doing it, I wanted to do it too. I haven’t spoken to her in a while, life moves on, people move on. But inspiration lacks. I realised a long time ago that fiction writing wasn’t my calling, it’s fun every now and again but not something I could ever dedicate my life to. That’s when I started the non-fiction, the reviews, the life writing, the blogging. That was fun for a while. It’s still what I prefer. I like to talk about myself, because myself is the only thing I really know. But then nothing was happening, and reviews weren’t fun anymore because school has always taught me to counter my argument and I start to wonder if I actually have an opinion at all. It only happens in writing, when I’m trying to sophisticatedly prove my point, I start countering. And then I counter too well, and I ruin whatever I’m reviewing for myself because do I really like it if I can find so much wrong with it? It’s weird when I can angrily rant about how much I love or hate something in a text conversation to a friend, and I can debate the fuck out of my opinion and stick to it. But writing a review I start to forget what an opinion really is.

I don’t know if part of the problem was coming out of a creative writing degree. I like writing to prompts, university didn’t give you that, but you were all still writing the same. You start to compare your ability, of course you do, you sit in that seminar and let other people interrogate you and rip your writing to pieces and little parts of you die inside. But that’s the creative process. My sensitive little heart isn’t cut out for that, I question if I’m any good at this as it is. Then the lectures just take the process and make it technical. Then it’s boring, and you have to think about things you just do naturally, and then writing becomes a job not something fun. You lose your mojo. I want it back, I want it to be fun again. So often it just feels like I have nothing to really talk about, not when these rambly pieces about my life and state of mind are the only things I like writing anymore. I want to be able to use this style on other things, blog properly, about things that matter to me. But what matters to me? I’m not too sure, still films? Celebrity culture? But how do I make that sound like it matters? I suppose when I figure that out and I can put that into words my mojo will come back.

It’s hard when I realise, I’ve neglected my only actual hobby. We think because I have nothing going on with my day, I’m starting to use what I once found fun as time fillers now, so they’re not really fun anymore. Because that’s all I’m doing and it’s not just leisure anymore, it just is. I think maybe when I get a life back, get a job, get a real distraction, these things will become leisure again. I’ll start writing again and enjoying it, I’ll start reading and the words will finally start to look real. I’ll get back to that this year, because 2023 is going to be a good year. I will will it so.

#lifestyle #life sucks #blog #girl blogger #lifestyle blog #help me get my motivation back please

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endofapaige · 3 years ago

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I Moved to University...

University. I’m here in the tiny single bed bedroom with the lights that are either too bright or flickering too much to even claim they actually work; on FaceTime to my boyfriend, procrastinating 30 pages of reading I need to do for my next English Language lecture in two days. The weeks leading up to moving to university were probably some of the most anxiety fuelled weeks of my life. My friends moved before I did, and those who didn’t go already had their lives set in motion, and then there was me sat with little to do just waiting for move in day. It was the Wednesday before the Sunday I moved when things started getting busy. Mum and Dad took the rest of the week off work so we could get everything together and pack things away ready for me to move. And while they did so to spend time with me, I spent the rest of the week trying to see everyone I’d leave behind. One day that week, I don’t remember which now, Georgia came round. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, our plans the week before falling through, her starting to get busy with work and me spending most of my week with Jack. We went out for lunch that day, to a pub down the road from me, which I was sure I’d never been to despite my mother thinking otherwise. She paid, ‘a going away gift’ she said, although she also showed up to my house with a disgustingly cute card, the biggest bottle of Vodka I’ve ever seen and a book on Creative Writing for Dummies. A book I need to start reading because my creative writing seminars are already starting to get hard.

Jack came to mine the Friday afternoon, we made gingerbread and white chocolate cookies (all thanks to Jane’s Patisserie) and watched a couple of our favourite Marvel movies. I fell asleep on his chest while Shang-Chi was on. It was that day that sparked something for us, a realisation how much we loved each other and how desperately we didn’t want to be without each other. So, the messy and complicated but happy has now turned into serious but still a bit messy but still very very happy. I’m just very glad I can now go around introducing him as ‘my boyfriend, Jack’. It has a nice ring to it.

On the Saturday, my dad’s side of the family came round to bid me adieu, we ate more food than anyone would ever need, from sandwich platters from M&S to their entire picnic range. It was nice to see everyone together, because while they’re the side of the family we see most often it’s still relatively rare we are all in one place at one time. It’s odd to think this year they’re going to have gatherings like that and I’m not going to be there for them.

Sunday 2nd October. Move in day. Waking up at half past 7, rushing around the house first thing making sure I didn’t miss anything because fuck if I missed anything I’d be screwed. With a McDonald’s breakfast and a coffee, we began the road trip north to my home for the next year. If you don’t know, I’m currently studying English Language and Creative Writing, minoring (now, but that’s a tale for later) in Media and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University.

I’ll be honest with you guys, usually I write these sorts of posts as they're happening, a way to capture memories of big parts of my life so I can read back on them later. It’s now a month since I started university, the start of this post being written so long ago I can’t actually even remember when. I usually have a system, recount events, share emotions, be funny. But I can barely remember what happened now and when I’ve spent almost every day I’ve been there crying to myself in my room, it’s hard to be funny.

It's not that I don’t like university, if you ever get the pleasure of visiting Lancaster, it’s bloody beautiful. The campus is self-contained and acts as its own little village only a 10-minute bus ride from the city and I am so glad I’m there. There’s a sense of pride in myself I don’t usually get, with the knowledge I am at one of the best universities in the country studying something I thought I loved. That’s the issue though, I thought I loved English Language. It was my favourite subject at A Level supposedly, but as I go through years at school, I realise I cling to the subjects I am good at as well as the ones I have the most fun in. At A Level this was English, because I was best of the class and I had Emily and Eleni to keep me entertained through them. What I forgot to realise was that I don’t like English, not really, I never have. I hated it at GCSE, I was dozing my way through it at A Level. I remember searching for universities, telling myself not English, anything but English. Yet here I am doing an English degree, and without Em and Len, it has finally hit how much I hate it.

In addition to this, I’ve also realised I’m not a huge fan of creative writing. I mean you could call this creative writing, me writing to you ranting about mundane issues in my life. But it’s not so much, not in the way a degree wants you to creatively write. So, I’m at a stalemate. I hate my degree.

At the start of this post, a very long time ago, I told you I’d tell you a tale of my minors. Lancaster, unlike a lot of universities, allow students to take a second (or in my case, third) subject as an optional module alongside their main degree. For me, this was originally Moral and Political Philosophy. A subject I took because I thought it’d be different and maybe it could be fun. But two lectures in and they were talking about capitalism and farming or something I’m not even sure and I had to watch most of it online. The module didn’t work with my main degree, I had a lecture clash meaning every week I’d have to skip a lecture and catch up with the recording. So, it was like I was learning in covid all over again. Not a fan, I switched it to English lit. I told you I hate English right? English Language is the more bearable of the two. Hated that too, obviously, so I switched to Media. Media was the original plan; the one Georgia told me to do because she knew a month in I’d be hating English and wanting to change to Media. The girl was right. I didn’t take Media because at the time I was knee-deep in the A Level, hating every second of it because lessons were more casual chat with Scott than it was the course. But I loved the course, I did really, even when I thought I was doing terrible I loved it, like how Film was my favourite at GCSE. I’ve always wanted to go into that industry in some way. At the minute it’d be a dream to write for a media news outlet like Screen Rant or Cinema Blend or Comicbook.com. So yes, as much as I hate to admit Georgia was spot on, I’m probably going to change my degree at the end of my first year.

People describe university as the best years of their lives, the social, lively side of it all, the lifelong friends, the partying. But truthfully, it’s fucking lonely. I know I’ve only been there a month; I know I’ve spent most of it either at home or with Jack, but it still just feels like it’s me vs the world and there is no one in my corner. I’ve made friends, of course I have, my flatmates are fucking lovely and the lot of us genuinely get on quite well, when Jacob isn’t screaming the words to Beggin’ by Måneskin at 4 in the morning in the kitchen. I’ve made a couple of friends in my seminars too; everyone seems so nice. But this social side of university sounded great, until I realised I was an introvert, add to the fact I have the biggest fear of missing out and a chronic tendency to convince myself everyone I have ever met secretly hates me. So, when my flatmates started inviting me to play drinking games, I started passing it up, and then started wondering why they stopped asking, I got myself all upset. I don’t know why either. I’m a freak.

No, maybe at the minute university isn’t quite my thing, and I’m sure Alyssa and I will have many more drunk conversations about dropping out while crying in my bathroom. I didn’t realise how much I’d miss home, not just my family as people, but the blueprint of the house, the knowing where everything is, the familiarity, the pipe under the sink that isn’t leaking like the one in my room still is. I miss the decorations, the homely feel. Of course, I miss my family too, the ability to walk downstairs and someone be there to chat to and it not feel forced or awkward. The walking into my brother’s room to pester him while he plays his PlayStation. The watching TV with my dad in the evening, tormenting him as I sit next to him, rubbing the bald spot on the back of his head because he hates it or putting my feet in his face to block his view. I always knew I hated watching TV alone, but I hadn’t done anything I enjoyed until last week. I never felt right enough to get a crafts project out or sit and read an actual book. I just did work and talked to my parents or to Jack.

Maybe getting with Jack just after moving to uni didn’t help the homesickness. It’s not solely because of him, I know I like my comforts. But it went from seeing him three times a week to all of a sudden, he was 110.8 miles away. It was hard. It was so hard starting a relationship and falling in love with someone over FaceTime. We managed it though, we’re managing. He stayed the entire week last week. I had always been someone who couldn’t do sleepovers, because by the second day I missed my own company. But he stayed the week, and it was so blissfully perfect. Me and him, together, living life pretending to be grown-ups. I told him before he came it’d be a bad idea, that I’d get used to him being there, start to depend on him. And I’ve done exactly that. The thought of being by myself now scares me, because it was him and then I was home for a week and still then I haven’t spent more than two nights in a row without him. I go back tomorrow, and I’m dreading every second of it, even though I know it’s only a week and a half and I’m back again. But a week and a half alone. In that tiny single bed bedroom. Just me.

That’s me now. I’m at university and I am struggling. Every day it gets a little bit harder, every day it feels like something goes a little bit wrong. But at the end of the day, I’m there, I got in, and I’m so proud of myself for that. And I know as time goes on it will get easier, maybe it’ll get a lot harder before it does, but I know it will. Maybe university won’t be the best years of my life, or maybe I’ll finally find my place. But for now, I’m surviving each day as they come, knowing at the end of it every second will be worth it. Because this is the start of the rest of my life, and the rest of my life is going to be fucking brilliant.

spoilers: I dropped out

#lifestyle #university #it's not as easy as everyone makes it out to be #Lancaster #life update #blog #girl blogger

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endofapaige · 3 years ago

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Everything is Changing

TLDR; I fucked a boy, went on holiday, watched Dear Evan Hansen and got sad about my friends leaving for University.

I never realised how fast life can change. This time last year I was stuck in a rut. Leaving the house was few and far between, I was halfway through my A Level courses and everything had started feeling too real, I was starting to feel too old. I was starting to question everything I knew and trying to distract myself from it all. This time last year I wrote ‘it must be the best summer yet’ but seventeen-year-old me, with her new friends and so much of her life yet to figure out had never really experienced ‘real life’ before. And I suppose a year later, eighteen-year-old me hasn’t really either. Though while maybe, I don’t have it all figured out, I’m moving to a new city, I’m meeting so many new people, and a new chapter of my life begins; it has finally hit me that nothing is the same as it was. Ferris Bueller once told me: ‘life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it’ and ever since I first watched that film in a GCSE Film class in year 10, that has been the quote that resonated with me the most. It’s the one I believe to wholly be true.

Summer this year has felt different, I don’t know if it’s because we’ve all known it’s just 3 short months and everything we know gets obliterated into fragments of what once was. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so vastly different to who I was back then, not only in character but in passion and ability. I never thought for a start this blog would become an important part of my life, that it would become part of who I was to others. ‘The girl with the blog, the blog endofapaige’. It’s been this very blog that sparked the best part of this summer actually, but we’ll come back to that later.

There was a vast juxtaposition to the start of the summer and the head-banging stress that came with my exams. The day I finished, I was packing for a week in Portugal and in that week in Portugal I was wondering what to do with the empty space left in my brain. Schools spend so long warning you of the stress of exam season, but never once do they prepare you for the numbing emptiness when those exams are all over because it really does feel like you’ve lost your purpose in life. It’s tough to stare into the sea and know you’re meant to be relaxing but have your brain convince you you should be revising. Madeira is lovely though, the hotel we stayed in was one of the fanciest I’ve seen. If I were to go complete travel critic on you, I’d tell you that the food was definitely on the nicer side for the buffet style restaurants in holiday hotels. The hotel had four restaurants, a traditional Portuguese, Italian, the Buffet, and the pool bar. We ate at all four, and while yes, the Italian was clearly the worst (probably because we weren’t in Italy), nothing was disgusting. The Portuguese restaurant was actually some of the nicest food I’ve had in a long time, and the traditional Madeiran sandwich ‘bolo de caco’ was to die for. We spent the week alternating between walks into Funchal and sitting by the pool. In Funchal we spent more money than we should have on a cable car ride that wasn’t quite worth it, and I saw some lizards who I named Stan, Steve and Sebastian. None names I purposely pulled from my obsession with Marvel but all that fit as pointed out by my brother. I read two books in total: One Last Stop by Casey McQuinston, another queer romance that made my heart melt just like Red, White and Royal Blue did and To Kill a Kingdom by Alexandra Christo. A fantasy book that successfully relit my adoration of YA fantasy when I was in a phase of romance book after romance book.

Looking back on the holiday to Madeira, it doesn’t so much feel like it was part of my summer. It was my first week of freedom, and everyone else’s final week of hell so by the time I got home, it was like I hadn’t missed anything at all, like I had blipped from existence for the week. It was after then that summer began to get quiet again, back into my routine of waking up late, watching something I’d already seen on TV and walking up and down the stairs until something sparked in my brain and I was no longer bored. I saw Georgia a few times to break it up, the two of us sitting in my living room gossiping for hours about things I couldn’t even begin to remember now until we had nothing left to talk about and we put a movie on instead. I know we watched Dear Evan Hansen once, because with the start of July came our trip to London to watch it on the West End, a day I enjoyed so much I wrote an entire post about it in the days following. If you haven’t read that, which I think you should, it was incredible. The show is by far one of my new favourites and the day sparked a goal in me to live the big city life in London once I can afford it and have reason to.

A couple of weeks before held a University Open Day. My parents, brother and I travelling up north to visit the campus that will, though we didn’t know that yet, be my new home for the next three years. With Covid, I never really got to experience the university in a way prospective students usually do. Big talks, all buildings open, something going on everywhere you looked. Instead, we visited in the dead of winter when nobody was around. And even with no students and no atmosphere, I fell in love with it. So, we visited on July 2nd, the first open day for next year’s class of potential freshers, when everything was back to normal, and everyone was bumbling around. I fell in love with it even more. Ask anyone I know and they’ll tell you how I’ve never been more excited for something so utterly terrifying in my life. I’ve made friends already; I’ve researched and read everything I can about the city and the school and what’s tradition and what’s frowned upon. It’s the first time I’ve been so secure in my decision in something, and that in itself is horrifying to me.

Thor: Love and Thunder came out on July 7th, another marvel movie I saw on opening night, another one I had so many opinions on, said I’d share and then never did. Being a fan of the MCU has gotten hard, not because their content has gotten bad, though worse maybe, but because it’s turned solely into a money maker. What was so special about the MCU before the end of the Infinity Saga was that there was suspense. A film released, ties were loose, and we’d have to wait an entire year for the next release to find out what was going on. Now, we get new content almost weekly, so we don’t even have the chance to get excited. That ruins it for me. Thor: Ragnarok has always been one of my favourite MCU films, with the release of Love and Thunder and the return of Taika Waititi directing, I was obviously excited. But it’s hard to be now. The film was good though, great even. Gorr was such an incredible villain and addition to the storyline. They kept the stupidity that did so well in Ragnarok. But it got too much, it was too stupid, too funny, it overrun the genuinely quite heartfelt and traumatic plot points of Thor and Jane. Though not so much that I hated it. The end confused me, I don’t like Thor having an adoptive daughter, I don’t like that Korg’s story seems to be completely wrapped up, I don’t like whoever this Hercules character is and how they made it a big thing. I was clueless. But it was good.

The weekend after that began something I was not prepared for. A simple birthday party, a group of people I didn’t know too well, a mismatch of people in a situation that can never end well. I’m not one for partying and alcohol, you won’t believe that by the end of this, but I don’t drink much, I’ve never been drunk and being around people is hard for me. Yet Em’s 18th birthday party came and went and all of a sudden, I had so many friends, so many plans, and a boy on the scene. I’ll tell you now, developing a crush on a guy a couple of months before you move away is never a good idea. Not even when you’ve kind of liked him since January and he’s kind of likes you back just as much. Mutual infatuation or not, it’s messy and it’s complicated. And for us messy and complicated does not even start to cover it. But messy and complicated is exactly us, and we kind of love it. It was Em’s party that started it all, a fun night of me and Katie stumbling around Em’s house, I a bit tipsy and giggling at everything, Katie practically unable to stand straight. You’ll find even at house parties girls go to the toilet together, though in this case it wasn’t in fear of a potential Katie Bell in the Goblet of Fire moment, but more in fear Katie was going to fall down the stairs and kill herself. You’d never think you’d meet the perfect guy outside the bathroom. Or that your first real encounter would bounce off you trying to get another guy to remember your name and end in a joke about the Olsen twins. But that’s Jack, Jack who remembered my name having met me only once, Jack who bought up this blog to impress me, Jack who had planned to talk to me the entire night, did so for two minutes outside a bathroom and then disappeared while I was stood wondering what the fuck had just happened.

The party was messy, too much happened, but it fuelled the gossip for the next two weeks. The day after I was supposed to go to a music festival, we skipped that one. My social battery had started to fizzle and spark, the friend I was going with didn’t have a great night before. So instead, we sat in bed watching old YouTube videos we used to love.

Another party planned, and that one conversation outside the bathroom turned into an all-nighter and talking every day for a month. He drunkenly asked me out that night, we went out the following Monday. Two basically strangers on a date that neither of them actually knew was a date. It was fun though, he took me to a comic book shop, talked my ear off about characters I’d never heard of. I took him to a bookshop and did the same with the books I’ve wanted to buy but never got round to. He doesn’t read, that’s what he told me, yet we spent an hour in Waterstones. Him stopping and picking things up, flicking through them with a ‘this is so cool’, reading bits out and giving me facts a normal person shouldn’t know. I loved every second of it. We ended the day with a round of mini golf, the same place I went with Elly and Katie just a couple of weeks before which ended in an attempt to ask him out where I got ‘seen’ in response. He won the game, he’d talked himself up the whole day, but I won a free round on the 19th hole. So, who’s really winning Jack?

The 13th of August marked the end of the wait for my mother’s birthday present. Her birthday was back in March but my dad, brother and I all chipped into get tickets to see The Book of Mormon at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. Another musical I loved. I truly believe the theatre is one of the things that makes me the happiest. The show was unbelievably funny, I had no idea what to expect going in because unlike Dear Evan Hansen I only knew a couple of the songs from the soundtrack and hadn’t tried to find bootlegs on the internet. It truly surpassed any expectations I did have, and even my brother enjoyed it which is not an emotion I knew he could feel. We didn’t stay long in Liverpool, we’d explored the town two years before, and me and Georgia had done so again the summer before this one. But I thought it was pretty cool I was back there almost exactly a year after I was there trying to take photos for my Media coursework.

Results day week was a fun one, the stress was overwhelming, but I did all I could to distract myself. The Monday was the date, the Wednesday was the best day of my life. Georgia and I ventured down to Watford and spent the day at Warner Brothers Studios, the making of Harry Potter for those of you who might not know. I’d been a couple of times before, I went with my family when I was 10, and with school when I was 13, but they had added and expanded so much since we’d last been, it was still just as magical if not more so the third time round. Most notably, they’d opened Gringotts’s bank with statues of the goblins and a projector of the dragon that the golden trio escape on in the final movie. They’d also opened the Herbology greenhouse and had a ‘Mandrakes and Magical Creatures’ theme where there were plaques everywhere quizzing visitors on their knowledge of the magical creatures in the franchise. I made it an unspoken competition between me and Georgia – I clearly won. We learnt to duel, we took a ride on a flying broom, we danced about in Bellatrix’s vault. I took more photos than was necessary, and I made everyone sit while I showed them all. The best day of the summer so far, no question, if you ignore the bit where we had to stand up, exhausted, on the train most of the way home.

Abigail and I spontaneously went to Aberystwyth earlier in the month, we hadn’t seen each other since she’d started a new job and I was apparently a social butterfly now. It was a Sunday night, and we were both free the next day, so we spontaneously booked the train and decided to spend the day at the beach. It was hot, and the day was lovely but there really isn’t much to see and do in Aberystwyth. We walked the high street, had lunch at the Wetherspoon’s, I pretty much finished A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. An INCREDIBLE book by the way, I’m currently halfway through Good Girl, Bad Blood. Abi slept over that night; I don’t remember us doing anything of note, but I do remember that she’s become one of my parents’ favourite people.

The day after Harry Potter was Doom’s Day, and the day after that was yet another house party. I spent the day in Birmingham with Emily and Eleni which was lovely. It’s hard pushed to get Len to come anywhere so it was nice to have the trio back again for a few hours. We just wandered aimlessly, in the bookshops, into Lush, Tim Hortons for lunch. All while discussing results and joking like we always used to in English. I went back to Em’s before the party, met up with her boyfriend and one of his friends and Em made us a makeshift Sex on the Beach cocktail that I don’t think anyone else actually liked. Then we were back at Elly’s house, the place the friendship group I’d seen so many times in the last few weeks had first met, back in Elly’s pretty kitchen with Katie and I not fully sober, where I spent the entire night thinking I was going to get kissed. I’d hugged more people than I’d ever hugged in my life that night, I was practically attached to Elly and Katie’s hips and if I wasn’t I had Jack’s arm around my waist. For someone who claims to hate physical touch, I really had a great night.

Another spontaneous plan found Em, her boyfriend Zakk, Jack, and I in a bar in Birmingham for a Marvel quiz. Zakk, Jack, and I have been huge Marvel fans for years, Em knows practically nothing about the franchise, but it was safe to say the three of us went in terribly confident. And by the end of the quiz we were still adamant we’d only lost one point and sure we’d get the bonus points for the best team name. In the end we came 4th, all three of us absolutely gutted. I still think we should’ve gotten the bonus points for ‘The Civil Whores’ was a tenfold better name than ‘MC. Mjolnir’, but I’m convinced the quizmaster had a thing for both Jack and Zakk despite claiming to have a boyfriend and wasn’t impressed when Em and I made it very hard to believe either of them were single. After an almost fight, being kissed, and successfully not throwing up on the bus home while Jack nattered about something I can’t remember, we made it back to Em’s where I stayed for the night. A sleepover one would call it if I’d actually slept at all.

That Monday was the Monday just gone as I write this part of the post. I’m now sat in a little cottage in Anglesey with my brother snoring beside me on our final night of a 4-night getaway. Knowing that it’s getting late, and words aren’t quite wording anymore, and I need to be up early in the morning for a 10am eviction. I’ll get back to you later, maybe soon, maybe just before I move. All I know is I’ve got a month, people are starting to leave, and I need to make the most of the time I’ve got left with all the people I adore.

I’ve decided Wales is not my favourite place, not for any particular reason besides my family holidays have always been in Cornwall or at holiday parks and there’s such a distinct divide between the bustling of children and entertainment and the quaint and peaceful villages like Beaumaris where in truth it’s mostly older people. Don’t get me wrong, Beaumaris was fucking beautiful, there were a plethora of adorable little shops, a bakery we could walk to every morning, a castle and the sea was just around every corner. The biggest problem we faced was the fact their only supermarket was a Spar, and in said Spar there was nothing in terms of substantial meals. So, we lived off crisps and peanuts. It was a good week though, the weather did us well until the very last day. I finished Good Girl, Bad Blood, which I read on a very cute bay window chair I talked about to my friends more than I talked about the actual holiday. I do have to say I think Holly Jackson has become one of my favourite authors, the second in the Good Girl’s series was just as entertaining and gripping as the first and I’m genuinely so excited to start to third, though I haven’t gotten round to that yet. This holiday ended in a situation my family are actually in quite a lot: my mother looking at puppies, my brother and I begging my dad to get a new puppy, and my dad getting more and more pissed off by the second until he shouts at us telling us to shut up. Difference is, he wasn’t pissed off this time. Mum had found a cockapoo puppy at a rescue centre in Wales, he was tiny and apricot and adorable, and his name was Jinx. I fell in love with him. We already have a dog, a black cockapoo named Bella who we got 8 years ago now and we all love her to bits. I tried telling them that because I’m moving away for university soon, they need a new dog to fill the void in their lives I will have left.

It worked. Well, something worked because the following Monday after we returned home, we were on a three-hour road trip to Many Tears Rescue Centre to pick up baby Jinx. He made a beautiful first impression, he trampled in paying no attention to Bella in the slightest (a good thing for us, Bella can get very aggy with other dogs) and just sat in his water bowl. Since bringing him home we have discovered he is in fact a stupid little fucker: his stubby little legs mean he can’t quite get onto and off the sofa, his huge paws just slip and slide all over the laminate flooring, he has run full pelt into the back door and he’s quite a big fan of trying to bite your feet. But he is the most adorable little thing I’ve ever seen in my life, and him and Bella don’t completely hate each other, so a complete win for us.

The Saturday before this marked Jack’s 20th birthday party, a night of lads getting drunk beyond coherency and screaming like a drunk group of lads do. It was a good night, but for reasons that had nothing to do with the shouting men. Though I never expected a 20th birthday party would end up with a group of 15 sat around watching the KSI fight on twitch, us having to swap streams every now and again because copyright would strike and take it down. Also, who’d have thought university drinking games would be so hard to wrap your head around? I sat around watching them play ‘beer goggles’ and ‘the triangle game’ for so long and for most of it I was beyond clueless of what exactly was going on. I grasped it in the end, definitely skills I’m going have to remember for when I go in a month.

Jack was round mine on the Tuesday following, I told him it was only because his birthday present hadn’t arrived in time, and I needed to give it to him. Though, I think we’ve both gotten to the point where we’re just making excuses to see each other as much as possible. It was the first time he’d been to mine, or over my way at all as he lives a twenty-minute drive from mine and everything we’ve done has been over his way. It was a pleasant surprise he said, because my city is very infamously a shithole. It was a good day though, he met the dogs and my family (which I’m sure he was just as terrified about as I was meeting his family at his party) and we watched The Social Network. The dogs were so distracting I genuinely couldn’t tell you what happened in it. However, the girl who plays Anna in The Vampire Diaries was in it.

He was here again on Friday, another day of movies though not nearly so distracting. We watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Breakfast Club, both movies he had never seen and both ones I believe are musts once in your life. He enjoyed them both which made me incredibly happy. One of my biggest joys in life is sharing the things I love with the people I love so I did watch him watch the movies more than I watched the movies themselves. That night we headed to my friend Molly’s house for a farewell party before she moves for uni. Another great night, I drank a bit, watched Jack play beer pong and pool and we played ‘For the Girls’ in which I was nominated most likely to become friends with Kylie Jenner and most suited to become President of the US. Both I completely disagree with. Jack and I walked home, while mine and Molly’s houses are only a half an hour walk apart, the walk back in the middle of the night felt like hours. Jack was also drunk, and it was awfully like I was walking home a five-year-old on the verge of crashing from a sugar high.

The day before Georgia and I tripped into town for some football boots. She met the dogs, we went to Nando’s, and then I sat for an hour in Sports Direct while she handed me boxes of shoes and tried on ten pairs just to end up with the second set she tried on. I decided that day that I’d be a great girlfriend, because I have such a supportive nature that anyone could drag me into anywhere while they shop or game or do something they enjoy, and I will cheer from the side-lines no matter how much interest I have in the situation at all. I like to see others happy, and I will do what I can to support that for them.

It's Sunday as I write this now, and last night I got drunk. Like actually really drunk. I couldn’t see straight, couldn’t quite keep my balance and everything was another level of hilarious drunk. And you could tell too, Katie and I stumbling around a Wetherspoons arm in arm laughing about something. I’m sure nothing was actually that funny. The night started off with a plan to go to a themed pub night and dance to old music and drink a lot. The pub was full of 50-year-old men, and the drinks were expensive, and the music wasn’t even that good. So, we ended up in Wetherspoons, drinking two pitchers each and gossiping about men. It was genuinely the most fun I’ve had in ages; Katie is one of those friends you can talk to about nothing for hours and it’s so mad to think this time last year I didn’t know her at all. That’s exactly what I mean by you never realise how fast life can change, because this girl who I barely even considered a friend 6 months ago, has now become one of my favourite people and it’s been the same with so many people I’ve met this year. Everyone’s moving next week, and it’s hitting how much I’m going to miss them. Life is starting to move really fucking fast, we’ll all be moving on, and I can’t quite decide if it’s a good thing or not that I’ve still got a month to go until I move on too.

I always mark Georgia’s birthday as the end of summer, because it technically is. Now Georgia has entered her 19th year of life, and I’m just 3 months behind her. Summer no longer feels like summer. My brother is back at school, most of my friends have moved into their uni accommodation now, Georgia starts her job on Thursday and Jack starts a full-time training programme tomorrow. So that leaves me, three weeks exactly until I move, left behind with nothing to do and no one to see. I started this post discussing how fast life changes, and reality has just hit again. This ‘making the most of the month I’ve got left’ has turned into ‘fuck I can see my friends 3 more times before I’m off’. It’s hit me now, that everything’s changing, and the excitement is beginning to be overrun by anxiety. I’ve made the most of the last week since getting drunk, Elly, Katie and I went to some 1920s mini golf arcade thing that was incredibly fun and I’m hoping to go with Jack before I leave. I saw Spider-Man: No Way Home in cinema for the fourth time, slept at Jack’s and then went back to his the day after I left to watch movies in the shed he claims is his house. The Queen died, that was something. And with the new week, real life is punching me in the face. I’m thinking the next three weeks will just be prep, settling back into the routine of Netflix and my bedroom, what summer has always been. Jack is staying over Friday night, Brooke is coming up on Saturday and we’re going to see Daniel Howell’s We Are All Doomed.

There’re still things to look forward to. But as Summer shifts to Autumn, the decay of the trees and nature to prepare for new beginnings is such a perfect metaphor for how I feel inside right now.

#lifestyle #oh my god this is so long #three months in my life #mini reviews #girl blogger #blog #lifestyle blog

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endofapaige · 3 years ago

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The School Saga: Results Day

As I write this now it is very almost 11am on the 11th of August, exactly one week until A Level results day. And I am shitting it.

The nagging of stress that comes with results day has been in the back of my mind for just under two months now, but only today has it hit me full force. I’ve spent the last few weeks having moments of ‘oh shit’ but then I forget, and I carry on with my life. Yet today, I woke up with a pounding headache and my eyes too heavy after having a nightmare of failing my exams. I can’t remember the exacts, but I definitely got a C and in a depressive rage I checked UCAS, discovered I didn’t get into either of my university choices, and promptly threw everything I had in my hands at the window of my mum’s car. The letter C has been mocking me for months now, it was the grade I got in my final Media mock after years of As and A*s, it was the grade that made me realise that my exams were coming thick and fast, and it was the grade I have convinced myself I’m getting three of next week.

My predicted grades for my subjects (Psychology, English Language and Media) are as followed: AAA*. And what I need to get into my firm choice of university (studying English Language and Creative Writing) is ABB. Though the uni offers a £2000 scholarship for those who get AAA or above so really, I’m hoping for that. I’m not sure why I’ve convinced myself of CCC, because I know I worked my arse off in Psychology, a subject I’ve still never gotten a C in despite it being my worst, and English Language has been a strong suit of mine. So realistically, not joking around, I believe/hope I have gotten ABB or AAB, I’m not sure but definitely a B in Media. So, let’s hope me joking about my three Cs is actually just me being self-deprecating and I do not fall victim to the self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s not just the stress of the grades that’s freaking me out, though it’s definitely the biggest cause, it’s more the not knowing of how results day is going to play out. With the pandemic, the last two years results have been sent via email and students were not able to go into their school to collect the envelope. We’d been promised this year it will be back to normal if we wish to go and collect, but this was by teachers not the people in charge, and as the day draws closer, we are still not entirely sure if we can turn up and what time to do so. We’d also heard word they might be texting us our results, a prospect that is utterly terrifying considering I will not have chance to prepare myself if I wake up to a text or just three letters on my home screen. I’d already told myself I was going to delete my email app so I can avoid any unwanted emails from college, my chosen universities or UCAS track, because at the end of the day I want to do this all in my own time.

I haven’t decided which way round to check yet either, to get to college and see the grades and then check UCAS track, because then at least I am almost certain of success or failure as I log in, and if the university decides to be nice and let me in regardless of not meeting the requirements it would be a pleasant surprise. Or to wake up at 8am with the rest of the country and try to fight the crashes and lag of UCAS before I get my results, because then I’d still have the almost certainty but if I don’t get in it’ll be a day of heartbreak. And if the university does decide to be nice, I’m still going to be gutted when I don’t get the grades I wanted. I think I’ll open my results first, but then UCAS is at my disposal and I’m very impatient. So, stay tuned.

And then is the question of where do I open the envelope. In front of all my friends where they will jump to look at what I got? In front of a teacher to see the drop of the eyes and the sad smile when I don’t get what I was predicted? In the toilet where no one can see me, but the innocent passers-by can hear my sobs? Not that one, not the story I want to tell in the years to come. My mum is dropping me at college so I could open them with her, that’s probably the nicest thing to do for me and for her, Dad and Reece won’t be there though which sucks a little bit but that’s okay. But when you’ve done great things at school all your life, and your GCSEs ended up with three 9s, it’s hard for people to not expect great things from you. And I am terrified of letting everyone down. I guess we’ll just see how the day plays out, hopefully I go out for brunch with Emily and Eleni afterwards, but we’ll see. But I’m so scared, I’m just hoping the cool things I’m up to over the next few days are enough to distract a bit. But enough on that because I’m going to do a summer round up like I did last year. For now, Georgia is coming round in a bit, and I keep making awkward eye contact with the guy washing our windows. I’ll be back with more thoughts, or my actual results, who knows. AH.

There are three days left to go and the unbearable panic is setting in. Still no word from college. And now my mother is counting down the days, sticking her fingers up and wriggling them in my face like a reminder of Doom’s Day. She’s been reading articles to me this morning ‘thousands of students likely to miss out on their first-place university choices among significant grade drops after the pandemic’. I don’t know if the media are being dramatic, because we’ve known from the start that grades would be lower than last year but it’s scaring me. Of course, it’s scaring me. I have worked my arse off for two years (the last two months) and have gotten my heart set on a university that might just be too far out of my reach. And all because the government has decided to say a big ‘fuck you’ to the entire class of 2022. I’m hoping the media are being dramatic, I’m hoping their wrong and my god am I hoping to scrape that ABB. Only time will tell.

The day has come and gone and so many people have been emailed. My mum emailed somebody and got the response of ‘we won’t have the results at the college, but an email will be sent at 8:30 on the morning of the 18th’. Abigail then phoned them, and they said an email will be sent in the morning and we will then be able to pick up the physical copies of our results at 1pm. My mother then followed up with another message to another staff member who said that the plans are still being finalised and we should receive an email today with the plan and these will then be published on their social media pages tomorrow. It’s 8pm now and we have heard nothing. But regardless I’m in a bit of a mood. Because if the first person was correct, all we get is a pathetic little email, no seeing friends, no nothing to make the day notable. Just me, my laptop and some letters on a screen. And if the second person was right, who in their right mind is going to wait till 1pm to get their results when we have access to them from 8:30. Everyone else I know from different schools are allowed in to collect their results between 9 and 11am. They clearly have the results there and ready to give out by 8:30am, so why make us wait 3 and a half hours when you can get it over and done with and give us the ’normal’ results day we were promised before we even took the exams. It’s only fair when we are being set up for mild failure and had to take the ‘normal’ exams. It’s pissed me off a bit, I’ll be honest. The dread is just mounting up with every stupid email and conflicting message.

I tried to watch Thor: Ragnarok last night. I thought that if I watched something that ultimately comforts me and makes me laugh without fail maybe I’ll be okay. I only just got to the Thor vs Hulk fight, and I had to turn it off. I couldn’t focus, and I was genuinely tired. I didn’t think I’d sleep. I thought I’d be tossing and turning and driving myself insane. I lasted until 6am; a solid, dreamless 5 and a half hours of sleep before I woke up and the slowest two hours of my life began. I tried to get back to sleep but what felt like an hour was only twenty minutes. I’d told myself all along to avoid my phone, in case an unwanted notification popped up, but the boredom overruled.

8am came around. I’d decided that although there was finally confirmation that I could go in and pick up my results from college if I wished to (though they advised against it), I would stay home and open the email with my family. Going in wasn’t worth the stress, a forty-minute drive for a piece of paper to just come home again. At least at home Dad and Reece could stick around and share the experience with me. The email was late, so I checked my college website instead. There they were. The three letters that would decide the next 3-5 years of my life.

A*A*B

So, I was stress crying for 4 hours on Tuesday night for nothing. I do have to say though it was not what I expected. Going into exams I thought that Media would be my easy A but when I finally sat them, they were so frustratingly difficult I thought that there was no way I was getting much more than scraping a B. Yet I got an A*. Psychology has been the subject I have struggled with the most, it’s the one I cried about, it was the only one I did not have the safety net of coursework and it involved Maths. I do not like Maths. My parents and I have always joked ‘can you imagine if you had done the best in Psychology when you struggled and dreaded it so much’. Yet I got an A* and the highest marks of all three courses. English Language had been my favourite, it’s the subject I research for fun, it’s the one I have done so well in for two years. It’s the subject I am going to study at degree in October this year. Yet I got a B. I know I should be proud of that, and I am because I know a B is still an amazing grade, but the perfectionist in me instantly said ‘wouldn’t it have been nicer if that was an A’ because straight A’s would have been a dream. Maybe, now I feel like a fluke because I did the worst in English but it’s that that I’m doing for another 4 years. But there’s also a sense of unfairness because my friends haven’t done as well as they wanted in their English exams either, and nobody so far has received an A, so I’m wondering if it’s us, or if we can pass the blame to AQA.

I’m hard on myself I know, but at the end of the day I am proud of myself because never in my right mind did I truly believe I’d be capable of two A*s. And at the end of it all, I am going to university. My place has been confirmed at my top choice, the one I had gotten my heart set on to the point I’d almost convinced myself it would be life or death if I didn’t get in. I’m so excited to start. I’m in a lot of group chats for this year’s freshers, and it’s been so lovely seeing so many others sharing that they have gotten in too. And it’s nice having that certainty of how the next two months are going to pan out. I move the first weekend of October, none of my September plans have been dashed (a genuine concern, I had a show the Saturday night of move in weekend for my insurance choice) and we’ve been given quite a detailed plan of what information we will be given and what actions we need to take to ensure a smooth enrolment before we actually get there. And I can finally put term dates in my calendar!

Nobody prepares you for the anticlimactic nature of results day though. The morning is stressful, the anticipation dimming any excitement as you scroll through the tag on Twitter. And then you get your grades, and it almost feels like Christmas and the tag on Twitter melts your heart rather than stresses you out. Then you really do spend the next few hours just texting all of your friends, desperate to find out how they did but not wanting to ask outright in case they don’t want to share and trying so hard not to brag when they ask how you did in return. All of my friends have done incredible, I’m so proud of every single one of them even if maybe it didn’t quite go to plan. At the end of the day, the class of 2022 have been pushed and shoved and thrown about with very little clue of how all of this will go for us. ‘We’ll make it easier’ they said, then they send grade boundaries sky high. ‘We’ll help you out’ they said, then all their help was wrong. It’s not been easy, but it’s over now and we have all survived. And for that only we should be proud.

I should wrap this up, Mum and I are going to get 22% off at TGI Fridays in a bit, but then that’s the excitement of results day over. No seeing friends, very little drinking. And that’s not because we don’t want to, but you think results day and you’d like to believe you’d catch up with everyone one last time before you move across the country but then emails exist and half don’t even go into collect. Then everyone already has plans with their parents or their partners or other friends, and you realise how many groups of disconnected friends you have and how it’s impossible to see them all. Then comes the realisation that you went to a college miles away from your house, and there is no central meeting point even if everybody was free. And yes, Birmingham exists, and it would be such a good shout for an afternoon out drinking and golfing or the like and then you realise the trains are on strike today and you wouldn’t be able to get into the city even if you wanted to because no one can drive and nobody lives quite close enough to walk. So, you settle for texting, and promises that you will see each other soon and you just look forward to the house party on Friday night where only half your friends will be there anyway. And that’s it, you bid farewell with a ‘I’m so proud of what you’ve achieved, I love you’ as you strut or stumble into the next chapter of your life.

#lifestyle #results day #a levels #blog #girl blogger #idk how I've done this lads

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endofapaige · 3 years ago

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A London Day in the Life and a Little Theatre Review

Anyone who knows me will know my three joys in life, in no particular order, are: cinema, books and musicals. Obviously, books and cinema are much more accessible than musicals nowadays, and 300x more affordable. I mean I have access to the soundtracks but writing reviews about soundtracks doesn’t sound particularly substantial. Anyway, end of May or early June this picture-perfect afternoon (it actually was) my friend Georgia and I were sat in my bedroom trying to revise for our A Level exams. We were bored. Georgia and I spend money when we’re bored. And that ended with us in debt but a day trip to Central London booked to see Dear Evan Hansen.

With the release of the movie starring Ben Platt, who now is the Evan Hansen thanks to him bringing the character to Broadway for the first time, being released October of last year, which I saw in cinema, I didn’t go into this musical blind like I usually do with such shows. I’m going to see Book of Mormon next month knowing 4 songs at most. However, by no means did it sour my watching of it in the slightest.

For those of you who don’t know, Dear Evan Hansen is a musical production that follows depressed, anxious teen Evan as he falls into a spiral of lies following the death of his high school classmate Connor Murphy. It’s a heart-breaking yet refreshingly comedic take on mental health and suicide with the key message of ‘you will be found’.

The current face of Evan Hansen in London is Sam Tutty, who from a plethora of YouTube videos I discovered was insanely and unfairly talented. However, we had Marcus Harman in the titular role. Also disgustingly talented by the way. He played the role to perfection, with the incredible vocal range and the very Ben Platt-like gestures and stutters I loved in the movie. So perfect in fact it took us until the interval to actually realise it was an understudy at all (we we’re sat right at the back and we’re both relatively blind so that could’ve been it).

The highlight of the show had to be Rupert Young though, who played Connor’s dad, Larry. With vocal abilities that make your jaw drop to him being the reason I finally let loose a tear, it’s no wonder his CV on the DEH website is so bloody long. (As I write this I’m starting to wonder if I’m actually getting the actors right, I’m going completely from vague face shape I remember and the pictures on the website).

As with every live performance, there’s a couple of mishaps. We had a wrong line in a song, a timing issue in the opening song and a couple of pitchy harmonies. None of which really ruined it though so I can’t spend too long grumbling about it. Plus, there were so many good parts that largely outweighed everything else. The set was incredibly cool, I cannot wrap my head around how they can just walk on and off moving sets without tripping over their own feet. Jack Loxton, who played Jared, was hilarious the entire way through. And I adore all the extra dialogue they cut out of the soundtrack, partly because I’m never quite sure what’s scripted and what’s improvised and partly because that’s the bit that gets me obsessed with the characters to the point, I start muttering the extra bits I remember in the gaps when I’m singing the songs in the car.

When comparing it to the movie it’s a tricky one, because at the heart of it all the film is an incredible remake of the stage production. Though I think it’s easier translating stage script to screen than it is with the likes of a novel. The movie cuts some of the best songs, namely Disappear and Good for You, both of which were my highlights of the stage show. It’s hard to be mad though, because watching it on stage you can tell the songs we’re written to be performed live, and the film wouldn’t have done it justice at all. Obviously on stage you miss the cinematic elements with the camera shots and time cuts. A lot of the show consists of two characters stood in boxes of light taking to each other via the internet, a device that shouldn’t really work on stage, but DEH does do quite well, however it’s an easier watch in the movie. There’s also a repetitive flashback sequence of Evan running towards a tree in the film that was beautifully shot and adds that sense of ‘oh fuck’ to the film as we learn more and more about how Evan broke his arm. Something the show loses, however the show’s final reveal of this in a scene with his Mum which was much better done and hard-hitting than in the film. The show also incorporates a lot more of Connor Murphy whereas the film leaves him behind for the most part (physically I mean, the entire plot is about him, he’s mentioned throughout the entire thing) after the first act. The pop up of Connor throughout the show made it for me, embarrassingly he might be one of my favourite characters, no matter how much they antagonise the poor kid.

Overall, I don’t think anything quite compares to a good musical and this was a great one. We had an all-boys school school trip sat in front of us, they must’ve been 15/16, and a lot of them were crying, so when I tell you it’s heartbreaking. I really and truly mean it. But don’t let that deter you, and if you can’t afford to see the musical, which is closing for good on the West End and Broadway very soon, I’d definitely recommend watching the film as soon as you can. It’s not far off a masterpiece.

While I’ve got you, if you’re still reading of course, the day didn’t start and end with seeing Dear Evan Hansen. We spent the entire day in London and got up to some cool stuff. So, if you care, I’m not subjecting you to an entire blog post about it, but I’ll run you through it quickly. We started our day in Euston, where we walked off the train saw some attractive lad in a suit and tried to decide if he was going to a wedding and if he was actually attractive or he was just in a suit. We made our way to Taco Bell, which was my choice I’d never had it and wanted to try it, while we sweated in the 25º London heat and I tried to keep my bra covered by my top. I’ve never faced such a difficult feat. Taco Bell was average, I got a crunchwrap supreme and realised a bite in that when I’d dislodged my braces the other day I can no longer bite or chew on my back teeth. Not fun.

We made our way to the theatre, sweating some more, walking past all the other theatres and advertisements for musicals, Georgia and I pointing at them and claiming we want to see that one every few seconds. In the theatre we were sat next to another attractive lad, spent the wait for the show to begin deciding if he was actually attractive or he was just taking his Nan to see a show (incredibly cute).

After the show we wandered into Forbidden Planet, I walked around the whole shop pointing at overpriced collectibles claiming that I can’t afford them. Oh, how tempted I was to spend £140 on a Mjolnir replica though. We accidentally walked into a book signing, we googled the guy while we were stood there, found out he’s a comic book artist for DC. Incredibly cool.

The only must we had for the day other than seeing the show was to go to Waterstones Piccadilly, considering we are both massive book lovers and it’s the biggest book shop in Europe. Luckily, I didn’t spend a month’s wages in there but as we walked in, I did see a big pop up that the set of Charlie Spring’s bedroom from the Heartstopper show was still up, which I was convinced closed down last week following London Pride, you can imagine how excited I got. Heartstopper is one of my biggest hyperfixations at the minute. The Waterstones was beautiful though, spread across 7 floors, most of which had little bookish knickknacks like a set from Where the Crawdads Sing, the swinging bench from the Bridgerton show (which I unfortunately didn’t take a picture on) and a massive LEGO Harry Potter statue. Highlight of my day.

We then got lost, obviously, and somehow ended up in Trafalgar Square. We went full tourist. Walked to Covent Garden, there was some street performer who got some poor man to climb under his legs with a chain. Twice. It was very odd, and he took too long to get it over with, so we left before he finished his act. Leicester Square we saw another street performer, couldn’t tell you what he was doing I couldn’t see over the people. But we did see some very very very big posters for Thor: Love and Thunder. I think the remnants of the premiere were still floating around.

We got the tube from Leicester Square back to Euston, in traditional Londoner style, and Georgia and I decided that our future would be spend in that city sharing a shitty little one bed we can barely afford with two jobs, but it’d be worth it for the vibes. And with a pasta salad from the M&S Food Hall, we were back on the train on the way home. Exhausted.

Now I’ll let you go and watch Dear Evan Hansen while you and I both hope I post something at least before I end up at University with no time to spare again.

#dear evan hansen #musical theatre #west end #london #leicester square #tourist #theatre review #day in my life #lifestyle #blog

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endofapaige · 3 years ago

Text

The School Saga: A-Levels

TLDR; I'm stressed

As I write this now it’s very almost 6pm on the 7th of June, the night before double exam day. I have watched hours of media focus videos and spent more hours on twitter than I care to admit. I have always known I wanted to record my experience of my A Levels and my getting into university, but I have never been one for YouTube videos, as talking to my phone in my bedroom is extremely embarrassing no matter who can or cannot hear you. So, we’re going to attempt this as a written journal thing and as fashionable of myself and half of the internet, yes, I forgot about it until just.

An introduction to me, I am studying A Levels in English Language, Media Studies and Psychology and I am already over halfway finished. I think it’s ironic that English was the first to be done, the one I have had no problems with over my two years, while I’ve still got a week and a half until I can finally forget about the methods of modifying addiction, which I promise you is not as interesting as it sounds.

Not to pass the blame, but as someone who has never been fazed by exams, these ones are getting to me. Not because I don’t think I don’t know the content, which if you ask me now with my research methods paper a mere 15 hours away I definitely do not, but because I haven’t been prepared. My year must have been one of the worst affected by the Covid pandemic, it hit in 2020 just before we were supposed to take our GCSEs so we never got the chance to experience that stress and trauma of last minute revision and the relief mixed dread that comes with walking out of the exam and realising you used a word in the entirely wrong context and wondering just how badly that will fuck you up (hegemonic is now my least favourite word fuck you). I think if I’d sat these exams, I would’ve learnt that I cannot go two years without looking at my notes outside of lessons and expect to learn the entirety of first year content in a week. Not without a few tears and a fortnight-long headache anyway. On top of that, we have never done real exams, AS Levels were yet again cancelled, and the 25 mark topic tests where you know the questions a week before surely cannot count as valid preparation. However, I am here now, having revised more than I have ever revised in my life despite not attending a single lesson for a month. Let’s hope my university offer truly doesn’t take in to consideration my attendance as I’m scared to even look at that now. (I have since looked at it, it’s still at 87%, nothing to worry about...)

To start off exam season, I had my first psychology paper, after having seen twitter uproar about exam boards not sticking to the advanced information it’s safe to say I was terrified. I had spent two weeks committing the advanced info to memory, and any other topic was but a distant memory and a jumble of words that didn’t make sense to my too-tired brain. The morning came, and sleep surpassed me (not as badly as I expected mind you) I woke up feeling like I was going to vom. Not in an I’m sick way more in an if this exam is hard, I’m going to sob so hard it hurts. Getting to college, the stomach was still churning. Meeting up with my friend Emily, she ran me through all of the revision she had done, and all of the content she knew that I did not. That didn’t help. I did not need to know that being left-handed affected the brain activity in Raine’s research Emily, but thanks for the stress. There was a quick flip and a friend’s breakdown that helped the nerves pass, because I was far more worried about her than I was about myself - the few advantages of not needing any special requirements in exams is that they cannot get them wrong. The paper in the end went well, not to jinx it, the questions were nice and straightforward, and I wrote until my hand was in a cramped claw that I couldn’t quite move. I remembered the five stages of Little Albert’s conditioning study for no reason at all. But all in all, it was a very very pleasant start to the four weeks of hell.

The day after, my first English paper came around, children’s language acquisition had always been a strength of mine so the feeling of throwing up wasn’t nearly as bad. My friends and I spent half an hour just spurting random knowledge at each other hoping that anything we’d miss would finally stick and then we walked into the exam hall yet again. There’s something odd about being sat behind your friends because while I was writing frantically about the nature and nurture debate in the effect on a child’s language, I was mutely aware of Daniel staring at his paper doing not much at all, well it didn’t look like it anyway. Considering children’s language gave us the easiest question known to man, AQA had successfully led me into a false sense of security. A false sense of security that was instantly and horrifically dashed by textual analysis. When you read ‘this section will be on a cooking text’ I think it’s safe, fair, and correct to assume you are likely to be faced with a recipe of some sort. I along with the entirety of the nation were frantically prepping for a Jamie Oliver guide to something or another, a recipe for his kids or something I don’t know, to be faced with an article about how to survive a student kitchen and a narrative piece from the opening to a 1960s cookbook about God knows what. I think it’s safe to assume if anything has bought my grade down for English language, it was that.

Friday the 27th bought my first media paper, missing an English lesson I would have much rather have been in, missing my two best friends for the final lesson we would’ve had together, I was suffering in another exam. With media comes the watching of an audio-visual product and therefore being in a separate room which apparently leads to nothing but shambles. In our case the product was the Up All Night music video by Beck, a song nobody in the room knew bar my friend Charlie who only recognised it from FIFA. Contemporary my arse Eduqas, we were all waiting in anticipation for Olivia Rodrigo. Analysing music videos has never been something I particularly struggled with, however that was when I could actually see the music video I was meant to be analysing and I wasn’t very aware of the 5 minutes we were supposed to spend watching this music video had turned into 25 because the invigilator was so fucking useless, time we lost out on writing by the way. I am not happy. Obviously not off to the best start I didn’t have high hopes for this exam, which was good because the entire thing was a travesty. I would explain but I might cry, let’s just say that easy A is a solid C and I can kiss my dreams of university goodbye.

Half term rolled around, and I had an entire week to revise for my next three. Did I? Funny you should ask. No, I didn’t, I sat at my desk watching The Big Bang Theory, I should have regrets, but I don’t, it was nice. I’ll let you know if that changes. A little bit of cramming on a Sunday after a summer holiday shopping trip and the Queen’s platinum jubilee, English Language paper 2 had quickly snuck up on me again. A positive start as Emily, Eleni and I walked into the exam hall still cry-laughing about inky crotches (don’t ask) and trying to spell Schloffer? Schodloff? Shodffer? I still don’t know. This exam must have been the peak of exam season because that was the nicest paper I’ve ever sat. If there’s one thing you learn about exams, it’s the topic that came up the year before is very unlikely to come up again. However, my entire class actively ignored this and still wishfully revised language and gender hoping AQA would be nice and give us the easy topic. They did. And thank fuck that they did. Discourse analysis wasn’t bad either, a mix of standards of English, occupational lexis and accent and dialect. Not as strong as language and gender, but not one I couldn't’ve messed up too badly. So, all in all, with my English course done and finished, I can say that I’m not too scared. A bit scared but not shitting bricks.

As I write the next couple of paragraphs it’s somewhere between the evening of the 8th of June and the afternoon I should hope of the 9th. Another two exams have passed, I am officially finished with Media and I have just over (as of 11:38 on the 8th) a week until my final paper for psychology and I am done with my A Levels for good. Today had been the day I had been dreading since the beginning, Psychology research methods in the morning and Media to follow the same afternoon. In my humble opinion, yes it should be illegal to sit two exams in one day because once you’ve done one the wrist ache and brain pain is too much to take 2 hours and 30 minutes’ worth of waffly essays on a French TV show you’ve only half-assed watched twice and a youtuber you haven’t watched or thought about since 2014. But it’s done, I did it and the exhaustion is another level. I say as I’m still writing and awake like I don’t have to get up at half 8 tomorrow morning for a driving lesson, Emma if I fall asleep at the wheel that’s not on me.

Upon reflection, psychology paper 2 could have been much worse. I only revised a very small section of the spec, having convinced myself that everything else was common sense and making up some strengths and weaknesses was a walk in the park. Something in my brain must be psychic because the very small number of topics I revised, was everything that came up on the exam. There were a few questions where wording caught me out and my bullshitting superpowers came into play yet again, like my attempt to justify the use of a directional hypothesis in a study rather than a non-directional hypothesis. Or my attempt to convince the examiner the line graph was used because it was a test of association when it tells me on the next page that it was in fact a test of difference. I didn’t go back and change it I thought writing something down was better than a load of scribbles and the written format of a mental breakdown. I did however finish with half an hour to spare in which I checked, checked and checked again that I read every question right (yes Dad I actually read the questions) but I still managed to come out of the exam having definitely lost two very easy marks, after writing it wrong, correcting it and then changing it back again. But hey that’s only two marks.

The media paper was another story, a very appropriate and consistant follow on from the hell on paper that was component 1, but that’s a story for tomorrow (it’s still the 8th!) while I try to avoid having to commit the social explanations of addiction to memory. For now, sleep must embrace me, so I don’t kill myself on the road and my brain doesn’t start leaking out of my eyes. Stressful evening to follow a stressful day, never try to plan a holiday with your friends it’s bound to end up in arguments especially when you’re used to being the one organising and you are not the one organising, sorry Elyes the control freak in me jumped out thick and fast…

Okay, it’s the 14th of June and realistically I don’t have time to write this at all. I’ve just worked the busiest weekend at work I think I’ve ever worked, Paul is yet again creeping me out, and I’m supposed to be memorising the NICE guidelines for Naltrexone. Instead, I’m drinking coffee from my basically broken coffee machine and listening to Hamilton, so I thought I’d run through how my media exam went very quickly. I always thought Media was going to be my easy A, I’d spent the last two years getting As and A*s and being praised to no end by my teacher (I love you Karen x) but Eduqas really took that and crushed it to dust. The first exam was traumatic, no time to finish, couldn’t see the screen for the music video, not enough space to write, no spare paper in the room, horrendous invigilator. Luckily, paper two was in the Sports Hall so the invigilator issue was better. It had been my only exam where I’d been sat right at the back. I could not see the clock. The clock is a vital piece of equipment when you need to time essay responses. Great start.

Yet again Eduqas decided to fuck us over, giving us a page and a half worth of space for a 30-mark question, and making the layout of the exam incredibly confusing. With media, the teachers get to pick which set texts to teach from a long list, all schools do different ones so at the start of each question you have a tick box to say which texts you are writing about. You then have the answer space for question 1, what I didn’t realise until after I’d spent 25 minutes writing about Humans, was that despite that being my first question, to the exam board Humans was question 2. There was a separate space for question 2. I had written a 15-mark essay in the wrong space. Obviously panicking, I asked what to do. I basically asterisks'd the booklet 4 times and now I’m hoping the examiner can figure out what goes where… so if I fail Media that is one of many reasons. I could sense my friend Abi practically laughing at me from behind, only for her 5 minutes later to realise she had done the exact same thing, as did half of twitter by the sounds of it. So, it’s definitely Eduqas’s fault not me being an idiot.

As for the questions, the exam boards’ claim they would make it easy for our year due to the pandemic definitely should’ve been taken with a pinch of salt. The Human’s question was to evaluate the fandom theory. The theory half of the country didn’t learn at all and the ones that did learnt it as an A* push. The theory very simply states that an audience interacts with a text nowadays by creating their own content relating to it, like fanfiction or fan edits and the like. It’s not a substantial enough theory to drag out into a 15 marker without repeating yourself until it hurts or ignoring the question entirely. The first of two 30 markers later on in the exam we found out was content taught in the third year of a media degree and wasn’t anything we were expected to know at A Level at all. So that was another 50 minutes of pure waffle and loose links to the question hoping if I dropped enough names and referenced enigma codes enough, I’d still get the marks. I’m not convinced. So, coming out of that exam and finally finishing my media course (thank the lord, I was promised interesting, I was highly disappointed. I also think I learnt more about my teacher’s take on football than the content itself but hey ho) I’m starting to think that easy A is practically impossible. Let’s just hope the grade boundaries are 6 feet underground and I can still scrape a B to get me into university. We shall see. For now, though, I really should return to psychology. Just two days to go and 10 topics I am still clueless about. I’ll update you Thursday evening when I am finally free, and newly stressed about making sure I have everything packed to go to Portugal the day after.

Thursday evening has arrived, my parents have both left the house shouting something I couldn’t hear, but something I’m sure I don’t actually want to know what it was. The temperature is uncomfortable, I have been sweating in the most ungodly places for hours, but I am free. Free from revision, free from Psychology, free from college. Forever. By forever I mean I’m done with revision for at least 4 months, bur the rest of it forever forever. Obviously, I’m beyond excited to be free from it all, but something in me is now a bit lost. So much time, so little to do now I don’t have anything to memorise. The exam this morning was a shambles, well not really, but it was the first time I’d walked into an exam hall and blanked. No names, no research, no content. Appropriately, everything in my mind went ‘shit!’. The questions were cruel, three methods of modifying, no characteristics and the ethical costs of research controversy. Just like Eduqas to fuck us over at the last second. I can’t complain though, I answered every question and my hand ached like hell by the end of it. I wrote a conclusion for every question that needed a conclusion, one of which cost me a very valuable five minutes I needed for the antipsychotics question. But I answered them, and I got in as much content as my melting mind could remember, even if I have jumbled up names, dates and what they did I should hope the examiner gives me marks for trying. It was the general consensus that component 3 of psychology had fucked us over, we all came out pulling faces and complaining to our teacher. We all are hoping we made up for what we lost in this one in the first two exams.

But this is it. My A Levels finished. I no longer study Media or Psychology. I am now technically an undergraduate studying English, or Publishing (we’ll see which university I actually get into) and I have three months ahead of me where I will be spending more money than I have. If you were wondering my plans for this summer: after Portugal, I’m going to see Dear Evan Hansen in the West End, and then between watching and rewatching movies, reading as much as I can, hopefully, maybe, I’ll start on writing a romance book that I’ve been planning for months. And I will do all this while I wait anxiously, always niggling in the back of my mind, for the dreaded Thursday that is August the 18th where my future will be decided for me. Where I’ll find out just how badly Eduqas has fucked me over, and if I’m officially a student of Lancaster University or another burnt out gifted kid scrambling for something to do when September rolls around. And that day is when I will write to you again, like I have now, in the style that I usually save for my notes about feelings I don’t usually have, to update you on that dreaded Thursday and share with you my fate.

#lifestyle #school #don't do what I did #blog #girl blogger #I've discovered tagging

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