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Tuesday 4th December

3 good things that set my day today:

1) The man on the tube saw me struggling height-wise, and told me to step over and swap places with him so I could hold the handrail

2) The Macro lecturer said I was “top note-taker” because I kept nodding my head (embarrassing but secretly made me very happy)

3) Cameron explaining to me his “Why don’t you go 2 K Green” business name idea

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4th September 2018

According to my dentist appointment today, my “brushing could be better”. As of now, dental hygiene is high on the priority list.

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1st July 2018

First order of business, get a new railcard. Secondly, I need to get a job as soon as possible in order to make up the money that I’ve lost (ONE HUNDRED AND FIVE POUNDS is the MINIMUM TARGET). Luckily, as I had a comfortable amount of money in my savings account it is okay and I can still comfortably spend. However, I have spent an extreme amount of money in the past few months alone and THIS needs to be sorted out. I need to evaluate how much I’ve spent and what I’ve spent it on, and from now on be much much more responsible. If I get a job when I get home or earn money, I can save up for this summer and the next academic year so I don’t have to drain Mum and Dad. For now, since I still have a comfortable amount of money left in my account, all I can do for now is make sure I sort either another railcard or a new ticket out, but otherwise all I can do is enjoy the next few days with the money I have left and once I get home, get STRAIGHT onto the ball again. However, in the meanwhile there will be no greater distraction than enjoying the lovely trip I’m about to have- everything will be okay,

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5th July 2018

Even if you don’t feel 100% right now, you’ll be back to yourself before you know it.

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Day 1 is always the most painful

But it is always over before you know it

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Facebook / Twitter / Ko-fi / Buy the book

[Drawing of a green and yellow parakeet on a brown branch against a blue sky. The parakeet says “I’m excited for a future in which I love where I am, who I am, and what I do. I believe in that future. I’m making it come true.” in a pink speech bubble.]

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30/03/18

I'm not too sure if I'm okay right now. I'm definitely being melodramatic because I know that this is purely circumstantial in the way that I am not going home just yet, and desperately need to cuddle my mum and get sushi takeaway with Raymond and Emily while watching a movie and go visit the warm familiarity of my friends that have been in my life for over two years now. But I have to try and look at it another way, I have an amazing insight scheme next week that I couldn't have dreamed of getting, the chance to spend time with the lovely people down here who make me feel welcome and warm in my lonelier days, and most importantly the time to discipline myself and finish what I came here to do. It's time to swallow my pride, push shame behind me and focus only on what I want to achieve. The phrase "it starts now" comes to mind, as it is 100% and definitely never too late. Lord, in the coldest and darkest days, give the me the strength to push through all the negative and toxic thoughts inside my head and allow me to see my experience of life for what it truly is, and allow me to objectively view the beauty and grace that I am truly encountering right now.

Amen

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Wednesday 11th April

Something has clicked.

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08/04/2018

One way of looking at life is seeing it as an infinite ongoing spiral of meeting people and saying goodbyes. As hard as they get, you just have to think that you’ve been through probably hundreds and hundreds of ‘final goodbyes’ before in your whole life- I wonder how many I’ve actually had. Today (and yesterday) as I said goodbye to some co-workers at Topshop, two of them gave me massive, tightly-squeezed hugs that made me feel loved and appreciated. It’s really one of those things: it’s sad, but ultimately it’s life and it’s got to happen. It’s beautiful.

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Be your own hero

I don’t have to wait for anyone to make me feel better, less nervous or less sad. Rather than waste time, I can pick myself up. There’s no such thing as being scared right now, the only one who can control how I feel is myself. Don’t give anyone else the privilege of having that power or do the weak thing of placing that responsibility onto someone else for you to rely on. Be your own hero. 

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31-03-2018

Dear Lord,

One day I will understand why the events that have spiralled out of control and escalated in a controlled manner to lead me to where I am today. No matter how lost or confused I feel, I know that truthfully deep down the feeling of control and awareness is such a superficial layer, and that I should stop chasing this ideal or else face driving myself insane by getting hopelessly lost inside a maze with no exit. Be calm and collected, for I am aware that I have the strength and power to take control and fulfil my destiny and become the person that I want to be. It starts today, and here from now on the only goal I will ever have in life is to work to achieve this every single day, even if it’s bit by bit. Take this as a promise to myself, becoming officially stated right now. A promise to myself, a promise to you, and a promise to destiny. I solemnly swear to fulfil my destiny every single day.

May blessings be upon us.

Daisy

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Thursday 22nd March

It appears as there has been a little rocky encounter within my relationship with food. I’m not entirely too sure what’s going on- I’ll have a revision session and suddenly crave food (the fact that I’m watching Great British Bake Off certainly doesn’t help). After making the effort of going all the way to the shop to buy unhealthy snacks such as biscuits, crisps, chocolate etc. and engorging myself with them, I will suddenly bloat until I can barely fit into my jeans. This is nothing a cup of green tea and night in bed can’t fix to make myself feel comfortable again. However, this here today is a landmark that I need to take note of. This can’t go on if I want to be the healthiest, happiest, and quite importantly fittest version of myself. Today I have bought three new pieces of clothing, two of which are mom jeans (size 10) and a small, size 8 Misguided Vice pair of jeans very much resembling the Topshop Joni brand. If I want to follow in the footsteps of the fresh renewal of my wardrobe, style and overall attitude then I need to make sure I’m in the best shape possible. And this- means discipline.

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How it is scientifically impossible to have a bad day

I am a person with high-functioning and hidden anxiety. I personally don’t believe it defines me and surprisingly I don’t even believe it has contributed greatly to the person that I am today. Rather than seeing having anxiety being a relevant factor to my personality and how I act, I view the disorder as more of an external characteristic to me entirely; like the concept of wearing makeup. This may enhance what I look like and possibly even result in me becoming more confident or having an attitude change for the time being… but it’s temporary. My makeup gets wiped off at the end of the night, the layers of thick mascara and heavy eyeshadow are removed and I finally return to the raw version of me without any mask to disguise myself with. This is how I view having anxiety, a simple clump of chemicals that changes who I am completely for a short amount of time.

This led me to wonder why I don’t view everything in this simple way, why don’t I just research the scientific reasoning behind everything to give me comfort over the silly little things I worry about just because human instinct tells me I should be? I’ve always been an extremely optimistic person as everyone tells me and I always get asked why that is. While I was doing this pondering on my mac late at night, researching “the science behind having panic attacks” and “why humans make mistakes” something suddenly clicked. A few months ago I remember excitedly explaining to my friend how I had an epiphany as to how “there is no such thing as a bad day”. In a world where reality is completely subjective and only exists in our own interpretation, you may have a day where ‘bad things happen to you’ (that is something that is unfortunately out of our control) but it is entirely up to you to determine that that is indeed a so called ‘bad day’. Of course everyone looked at me as if I was completely insane, but I was and still am 100% sure that this is the answer to being happy. From this I began to look online and research studies such as Peter J. Bentley’s work on how people who believe in bad luck will have more accidents on Friday the 13th or articles on “the Placebo Effect” which examines the neurobiological effects of placebos, showing that definitively our expectations directly impact our interpretation of reality. There were even blog posts from other people who have experienced panic attacks explaining how their parents have given wisdom on how life is what you make it. This reassured me and comforted me in remembering that having anxiety is one of those very things that I cannot control happening to me (for reasons unknown-that’s a whole other article), but it is literally impossible for it to change who I am and determine how I feel- that part is up to me. 

As you can see, I extremely enjoy learning about the science behind why we do what we do and I feel as though researching these topics may actually just be a soothing release for me that I need to turn to ‘when things get too tough’. I’m also passionate about learning about how the mind works and the psychology behind our deepest emotions because I really do feel that it could benefit us and allow us to have more control over ourselves even when we feel the most isolated and lost we have ever felt before; which is one experience in which we all have in common.

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Mid-March Madness

Okay so we’re fully past the middle of March, and it kind of feels like I’m in a bit of a slump. If we just take a step back, and just take a deep breath, and get ready for a sprint. That’s right, in order to turn this whole month around in the space of THIRTEEN DAYS, we need to hit the big, red emergency button and have a full on BRIDGET. JONES. SPRINT. If we were in a movie, this would be the part where inspirational Marvin Gaye music comes on and I go HAYWIRE on a treadmill and in the library. It’s time to be brave, face the consequences and man up. 

Okay, looking backwards at my ‘goals’ for March, here’s what we’re gonna do.

1) What the FUCK happened to ‘Month of Fitness’? Literally, where did that go? Okay so, no excuses. If there is such a day where I am unable to go to the gym because of otherwise obligations, then I am required to do at least half an hour of yoga, stretching, at home-workouts- ANYTHING. This may be a bit of a stretch and also fairly unhealthy, but I think I’m going to try a thing of NO rest days. Make sure you keep updating your Month of Fitness plan.

2) Allocate times this week to working on your Chinese for another phone call to Grandma and Grandad, this time focusing on a time to arrange going over to eat. Ideally try and call Grandma and Grandad THIS Sunday evening.

3) We are working on our sleep this month, I have positively no idea why I am so tired all the time but let’s try set a target of approximately 6 hours of sleep a day, so my goal is to be SETTLED and in bed by 1am and wake up at 7am ready for the gym.

4) Revising; get these MIDTERMS SMASHED. You also need to stop being such a baby and get your A-levels sorted out; this is YOUR doing and you need to prove to everyone you can do it. Get those mindmaps up on your wall!

5) Spending only 20 minutes to get ready, honestly you’ve not been doing too badly with that so see how it goes.

6) Maybe forget about trying to find the Spring weeks, it’s a bit too late for that! Now, all I need to do is focus on preparing for UBS which is only in a FEW weeks.

7) It’s safe to say I am SO HUNGRY THIS MONTH; but at least we know it’s deffo not because of pregnancy, no, I’m just suddenly turning into a whale. This week I need to buy LOTS of snacks to prep myself during library days and try and meal-prep my days out. Look at instagram inspo pages to see how to do this.

8) Skincare routine: not too shabby, keep going and moisturise grrrrl.

Let’s do this BISH. BRIDGET JONES MONTAGE TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIME!

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Friday 16th March

The first half of this day constitutes the entire body of bad experiences relating to why getting enough sleep is important. As the 18-year-old version of yourself, it is very important that you listen to me right now when I tell you that you MUST get enough to sleep to properly function and not doing so will entirely ruin your day, brain functioning qualities, and tendency to hold back form killing people. As a recommendation to keep the bad energies out, I pray to God that you GET. ENOUGH. SLEEP. PLEASE. FOR YOUR OWN BODY. DO IT. 

(And also perhaps in the future, DO NOT EVER CHOOSE TO HAVE FLATMATES WHO STAY UP ALL NIGHT WITH GIRLS AND DON’T EVEN GET LAID). 

Now go and make sure you do everything and achieve all goals set for your day so that you have enough time to sleep tonight. Trust me.

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Have a genuine energy, be truly happy, don’t give off fake emotions and don’t lie to yourself, the more genuine your energy is the more of a person you will be

You can tell when people are truly happy. Their energy is genuine.

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i hate to toot my own horn (**honks horn**), but this is important