Wait, I have a blog?!

It’s been so long since I’ve written a blog post, I had almost forgotten about it and was pretty sure everyone had stopped reading it! This week though I got an email from Stephen who asked for help with making inserts and he was kind enough to say that my blog was ‘one of the most readable, interesting and intelligently written.’ He also wished it would be a shame to lose it and I should persevere with it. So in honour of Stephen I have written a blog post…and hopefully this will be the start of a new trend. I think for the time being I will aim to get one a week and try to work on posting regularly.

My interests have changed a lot over the past year so I’ll be updating some of the types of posts that will be on here and ending a few threads.

So watch this space where hopefully something will happen…

New Year’s Resolutions – A month on

1. Drink water everyday
2. Cut down on Coca-cola
3. Eat fruit and veg everyday
4. Write a journal
5. Be more positive
6. Keep writing my blog
7. Monitor and keep a healthy weight
8. Love myself more

On Sunday, it was the end of the month so I took some time in my journal to review my new year’s resolutions and see how well I had progressed.

Firstly, there have been a couple of things I have failed on. I set myself the ambitious task of going cold-turkey on drinking Coca-cola. Coco-cola is my regular source of caffeine and sugar. Although I eat sugary foods like chocolate and donuts, I do not eat these everyday, so Coca-cola is the major source for these addictive substances. It was also my major drink, so I would drink quite a lot of it. I lasted seven days, which was good going considering I had practically shut off my sources of sugar and caffeine. It wasn’t a completely pleasant experience, so I caved after seven days.

Whilst I also initially attempted to drink more water and fruit and veg, as I went back to research and began to make regular trips to and from Leicester, and left home. I also slipped into my familiar habits, drinking more coca-cola to avoid the nasty side effects of cutting down, snacking on crisps rather than fruit and vegetables and not drinking water. These were my major failures.

Although I did manage to write a journal everyday where were a couple of occasions where I didn’t drink everyday. I think the longest I went was six days. This annoyed me and meant I quickly wrote them up if I wanted to write something about today. I think I need to spend a little more time jotting things throughout the day or when I have some spare time. A major bummer is that I found it difficult to write on a train because of the movement – this is a shame because I think using my commuting time would have been an excellent opportunity to take stock of the day. In contrast my blog writing is going from strength to strength and this weekend I have done some big changes, which include organisation and a new way to organise some posts.

On Monday I received some bad news. But in addition I also I received some bad news which caused me to worry on Friday. I immediately became quite stressed and felt like crying, a usual reaction when it begins to get a bit too much for me. I also began to have some thoughts I get when I am depressed. I hide in my room and avoided doing anything, especially making and eating dinner (even though I hadn’t eaten all day). I decided to challenge my behaviour and decided that it isn’t worth worrying about what ifs when they have not happened yet. So I got up and made dinner.

The following day, I still could feel depression tendencies, I didn’t want to get out of bed, eventually after 5 hours of my cat demanding attention, love and milk (she had already been fed) I got up. I still felt like sulking and feeling sorry for myself. My blog needed some organisation to it, so I did that for a couple of hours, but I still felt like I was in the beginnings of a depressive episode, so I stayed in my Pjs, made something to eat and vegged out on the sofa. But I after three hours of watching TV I felt disgusting. My Pjs had been on for several hours, my hair felt yuky and needed some work to it and I looked like an unkept mad person. I was also beginning to get really thirsty. I had only drank coke for the day, because a) I’m still not sticking to my drink water everyday and b) I felt like I needed coke to cheer me up. Wrong. I needed water, I needed to get out of my pjs, get washed and dressed. I needed to get my bed washed as I do every week and I needed to enjoy the treat of going to bed tonight all fresh and clean, with clean bedsheets. I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself and get on with it. This was a major breakthrough for me in my be more positive resolution and I feel I nailed that this month.

Life may give us blows, it may give us happy moments, that is life. Sometimes it is rubbish and it decides to rain over all parade, but life isn’t about waiting for the rain to stop so you can enjoy the sunshine. It’s about learning to get yourself up get dressed, putting on your game face and getting hair done nicely, so you can be rained on and decide it doesn’t matter that I am not perfect, I can still dance in this rain.

And you know what I may have failed most of my new years resolutions already, but it’s February so I am just going to dust myself off say goodbye to January and get on with completing my resolutions for February…

…and that is why I did not fail my resolutions for January, because I have changed my attitude and that is the first step in beginning to make yourself the best you, you can be.