Another ramble.

I feel like I haven’t really introduced myself enough on here... What are my interests, what are my non-existent hobbies? Well if you want to know all of that gripping stuff then you’ve come to the right place, my friend. I’m not sure if I’m the only one but whenever somebody asks “Hey, what are your favourite ______?” it kind of stresses me out. I feel like I need to credit every single thing that I love, for the fear of missing out something/somebody vital and betraying them in a strange way...

If you’re one of my friends, you can probably skip this paragraph if you like, you know it all anyway (as I constantly remind you). I like television – a lot – if you hadn’t already guessed. I do watch a ton of shows (way too many for the workload I’m supposed to be doing): Sherlock, Parks and Recreation and Downton Abbey being a few among the masses that I love (again – I feel like a traitor by not mentioning the other 6485 that I love). I would literally be typing for a whole page if I mentioned them all, and I don’t think either of us want that, do we? Keep it clear and to the point, Laura!

Moving onto music, I have to mention my favourite band which is most definitely Coldplay. I love their music so much I can’t even describe. I heard a Radio 4 DJ once describe their music as ‘plugging your headphones into a tin of beige paint’, which is a load of rubbish - one of their albums they spray everything with multicoloured paints, for god’s sake. They are not a dull band, trust me. I do love other music a hell of a lot too, especially Bombay Bicycle Club and Fall Out Boy (who I’m seeing live again this October – yes!).

As for academic interests, I’m one of those unlucky people that doesn’t really have any academic subjects they’re passionate about. I mean I do like History but it’s not exactly the most inspiring at the moment. Half of my AS level course is based around the 1960s in Britain. The amount of facts I have written down about how many fridges people owned throughout that decade makes me want to slam my head into a wall (69% of people by 1971 if you were wondering).I don’t think I’ll do a degree in that era if I do decide to go into History...

Speaking of careers, I actually did something productive today! I sat in on my local BBC radio station show and was shown how things worked. Yes, it was a three hour long show full of 70s music but I found it really interesting to see how it all works. It has sort of made my mind up though that I don’t think I’ll be going into radio. After seeing the producer (the job I thought I wanted) speak on the radio quite a lot and the presenter actually doing a lot of the technical stuff, I’m not sure if it’s really for me – not in the studio, anyway. I couldn’t be a presenter, I really couldn’t. I hate my own voice and I stumble over my words a hell of a lot and I bet I would be that person who accidentally leaves the microphone live or obliviously swears on air. Television is still the route for me, I think. I’m going on a TV production course in London with my friend next Saturday so I hope it’s useful for me!

I am now aware this post has gone slightly off-piste. I try to plan these things but they never really turn out that way, really. My blog is just one big ramble at the moment and I hope it isn’t too terrible to read. I am also becoming increasingly aware of just how many brackets I use in these posts. Sorry about that, I feel like Gollum with his two voices, except one is a lot more sarcastic.

Looking at my other friends’ blogs it kind of highlights how depressing mine sounds at times, so I’m going to try and make this a bit better for you read (if you are still reading, thank you). Don’t worry, I’m not going to link you to one of those cheesy American self-motivation videos that usually have some person playing basketball in them. Whenever I see those I usually respond throughout with sarcastic comments, as I do with most things, including this blog.

I think it’s time for me to shut up now.

Laura. 

Opinions.

Venting. It’s something I need to do a lot. I’m a glass-half-empty kind of person so naturally I have a lot of things that irritate me on a daily basis. I was told recently that I need to be more of a glass-half-full kind of person to be more successful in life. That’s quite difficult in my current situation, with the ‘big dilemma’ forever looming... In the words of Dan Smith: how am I going to be an optimist about this?

“But Laura you vent all the time to us” I hear my friends call from the distance. Yes, that is true, but I don’t vent about everything. It’s those little moments where you see a tweet on your twitter feed that really makes you think “Why the hell would you post that” (I often say it aloud, to be honest) and you feel the need to vent about it to somebody on twitter but wait- the person follows you. You can’t exactly bring those little annoyances into conversation when you’re lying in bed at midnight looking at your twitter feed.

It’s not that I don’t trust people with my rants (well sometimes that is the case) it’s that I really don’t think they would care – I get annoying as hell when I start ranting about something, honestly. Especially with little disputes in groups, you can never know where a small comment could end up, usually snowballed into something much worse than intended.

Opinions are definitely something that are a lot harder to express these days, in my opinion (pardon the irony). Often I can’t get to the end of my sentence before someone tells me how wrong my opinion is (If you’d let me finish...). Obviously some people’s opinions are just fundamentally wrong. Literally one of my biggest bugbears is when somebody insults something/someone and then justifies it as “I’m allowed to have an opinion!” or when they start sentences as “Not being mean or anything but...” and then wow, what a surprise, they say something mean. What is the point? We get it, that’s your opinion. Putting a little disclaimer that the start isn’t going to make somebody less offended by something, you know.

Sometimes I just sit there in class or in public and just listen to the conversations going on around me and some of the comments just make me think “really?”. Often I end up staring into the invisible camera from The Office, wondering if the person thought about what they were saying when they said it. I am literally Tim Canterbury 90% of the time in some of my classes.

I can’t be the only one to often feel the urge to just come out and tell someone what you think of them, cutting out the dreadfully awkward business of treading on eggshells (it’s even worse when you’re inherently English). But of course, as always, you can’t do that! That one moment of madness can trigger weeks of even more awkward atmosphere. Maybe that’s the reason I’m so sarcastic all the time...

So, in an effort to be a bit more “glass half full” I am going to try and be more proactive! Look, I know I say this every blog post but this time I can absolutely guarantee you I will probably end up saying it next time, too. Just a warning.

It’s funny, I almost didn’t post this rant about not being able to rant about people as I guess this sort of counts as ranting about people. Well anyway, I feel a bit better after writing about it. It’s kind of like therapy and you’re all my collective stress ball. No. Wait. That sounds a bit wrong... I’m going to stop now.

Laura. 

Positive thinking.

Hello everybody!

I was told by a friend of mine last week that my blog is quite depressing at the moment – I laughed. Yes it is! It definitely is! I’m now aware that just blurting out the innermost thoughts during existential crises isn’t the best reading material... So. Postive thinking! What do you even want to read about? My opinions on current events? My analysis of different kinds of fruit smoothies? I don’t know!

Maybe I should just dive in and talk about what I’m happy about at the moment. It’s like Pollyanna with her ‘glad game’ (has anybody else watched that or is it just me and my sister?)... Well. I’m glad for my friends, for one thing. If you’re reading this, which I know some of you are – thank you - I know I’m not exactly the greatest person to be around when I never shut up, say weird things and do everything else Laura-ish... You never make me feel bad for it so thank you. (Dear god this is a bit soppy isn’t it? I’m not a soppy person). Something else I’m glad for... hm... my family? God I am seriously making these up on the spot – Abi I blame you for this blog post idea! (Not that I had any others, mind) I’m terrible at expressing emotions...

I am managing in college, sort of. I am doing fine in my work it’s just the motivation thing again, I guess. My friend told me today that she’d already revised about a quarter of the material on Soviet Russia... That is a lot of notes. I haven’t started. 

My mum keeps telling me to book open days at universities and I probably should be doing that. Last week my sister kindly reminded me whilst I was relaxing that “Laura! You’re going to uni next year”. “If I go” is what I always respond. Everyone knows what they want to do and I’m panicking!

It’s kind of ironic seeing as the topic we’ve conveniently just moved onto in psychology is stress... Just before our mock exams. Wonderful. So we’re sat there going through reasons for stress and there were so many. I just stared at the board thinking “dear god how will I survive as an adult?”.  Not surprisingly, workload was at the top of the list – and fear of failure. Well that sums it up for me! We then started to go through methods of dealing with stress and my teacher kept mentioning exercise as the most effective way of helping stress. I am a lazy person. I sat there thinking “yes! I will do more exercise” imagining myself running the stress away on the treadmill when I got home, not taking into account I am literally so unfit. My friend asked me if I wanted to take part in a run with her in the summer and I had to say no for fear of literally collapsing after ten minutes...

I get stressed over the smallest things, though. I’m not even joking, I get stressed out if I’m watching too many tv shows at once (which I most definitely am). I am supposed to be watching a tv series my friend lent me a few months ago and I have watched two episodes so far. Out of twenty two. I’m sorry Kayleigh, I will try to stop procrastinating watching that show by watching other shows... You can probably see my motivation problem now. I once asked Mark Gatiss how he deals with stressful deadlines and he said "I ignore them". Maybe I should try that (to an extent). I’m currently staring at a whole mountain of blank revision cards and an unticked list of work that needs doing and I’m sat here typing this. It does actually help me de-stress a bit – venting is good. (Although you always have to be wary who you vent to, of course; but I can trust you...)

Laura.

January blues.

Hi all.

Yes – it’s another rant! [audience boos]

I hate January. I really do. Seriously, what’s good about January? It’s cold, there’s nothing to celebrate, everyone around me is ‘getting fit’ whilst I sit here eating my leftover Christmas chocolate (I have nearly finished). Personally, the only thing that’s ever in January for me is a meal out for my dad’s birthday and not much else. I’m going on a pretty cool course on the 31^st, I guess, but that’s only after a whole month of more post-festive dreariness. There should be some sort of holiday in January, maybe... Something to soften the blow of “Wow! Christmas! New Year! And- oh”.

Actually, I say that, but I am in fact one of those people who gets kind of sick of Christmas after a while, a decorations-down-by-new-year’s-day kind of person. I just want something nicer in January rather than a brick wall of reality and work slamming you in the face (basically this week for me). I can deal with the short daylight hours in December because Christmas is still looming, but after that it’s bit depressing, honestly.

"New Year, new me!” really isn’t living up to its hype, to be frank (not that I believe in all of that anyway). I am still the same as before new year’s, just with slightly less chocolate in my hoard... I know I am not going to be able to change myself as easily as 2014 passes into 2015.

It made me laugh the other day when our form tutor made us do a 'life satisfaction' survey and watch one of those "if you dream it you can do it" motivational videos (wow, yes, I can really achieve anything if I just want to). I'm not even joking, some of the questions were a bit strange - for example, was I satisfied with my social life, appearance and alcohol consumption? Apparently all of these 'relevant' questions would help us in setting targets for college - "yes, my academic target for this month is to have more of a social life". Right...

Sorry again – why is it I am only capable of negative posts at the moment...? End of January aim: actually post something positive on here for once. GOALS!

Laura. 

'The big dilemma'

I need to become motivated. Now.

It’s not a great feeling when you know you’re slowly sinking deeper and deeper into the pit of uncertainty for the future... God, that was a bit melodramatic, wasn’t it? Basically, I feel a bit useless at the moment. College is very uninspiring, I don’t have any hobbies to speak of and I have no idea what I’m doing after college.

I would go to university, I still will probably go to university, but I’m just unsure what I’d do there, honestly. It’s difficult when I feel like everyone’s already getting their lives planned out and I’m still not even sure what degrees to look at! The thing is, I don’t really love any subjects that much, if I’m honest – academic ones I mean. I wish I had a passion for science or a passion for something that I could realistically do a degree in. I mean I like history but at the moment I’m not sure if I would want to commit to three years of it!

It’s all very frustrating, especially when I know what job I want to do at the end of it all. I want to go into either television or radio production but it is impossibly hard – especially when 99.97% of the work experience is all 18+... And you need to actually have experience in the first place to get any worthwhile experience. Do you see my problem? It’s a bit of a catch 22 situation, really.

Coming away from that existential crisis I like to call ‘the big dilemma’, I need some motivation for my college work at the moment. I told myself at the start of the year that I would make more of an effort this term (again – not a new year’s resolution, thank you...) but that ‘motivation’ is already waning. I still look at the list of deadlines with utter dread, worrying whether I will actually find the time to be bothered, you know? I’m one of those “I’ll do it later” people. I should probably change that...

Well, this has been a bit less inspiring to myself than I was hoping it would be...

GET MOTIVATED LAURA.

There we go, that’s a bit of a note-to-self.

Right! Next post will be a bit more upbeat, I hope... Thank you for putting up with my rambling if you’ve already got this far down the page. This is the end, I promise...

Laura.

I'm not sure what to call this one.

So. I told myself that this year I’d start a blog and now here I am... Now I’m not calling that a new year’s resolution, because I don’t really believe in them anymore. What is the point? I mean, yes, of course sometimes they work, but personally whatever I tell myself to do in the forthcoming year usually ends about...February. At the most. I did tell myself I would start a blog, though. I really cannot rationally call my Tumblr a blog, even if it technically is.

Well I’m not honestly sure what I’m going to be writing on here, really, just felt I had to make a start on it. Not the best timing though, seeing as I’m doing a test first thing tomorrow morning and I am supposed to be revising for said test right this very moment... Oh well. I may rant, possibly? I rant quite a lot in real life so that’s highly probable, honestly.

To the people who do know me, hello.

To people who don’t know me, (I’m not sure who you are, mysterious person on the other side of the screen) my name is Laura and I’m 16 years old currently (If I was seven years old I would probably add the ‘and a half’ bit on the end). I’m currently at college studying history, psychology, english language and maths (help). To be totally frank, I don’t really have a lot to say about myself, which I hate, really. I'd like to change that. I’m always that awkward one at family gatherings that only has their current education to talk about and no future plans as yet (I am the youngest). I should get myself some more hobbies really, shouldn’t I? Does television count as a hobby?

I do love a lot of things – mostly television and film and music. I would ideally love to work in television when I’m older (not that that’s easy to convey to relatives when they ask) but I have no idea what I’m doing next. Now I hope I can look back at this at some point in the future and say that I did get where I wanted to be in the end but.. we’ll see. Oh why couldn’t I have had an easier career preference?

Right – before this drawls on into sounding like one of those ‘about me’ pieces you write in year three, I’m going to sign off.

Laura.