Reason 32 – Being proficient in a deadly weapon is a great confidence boost

Archery is a popular sport, having received a lot more attention since the film Brave, the superhero Hawkeye and the Hunger Games series all increased the appeal of pinging sticks at a target. Having my hipster moment, I got into it before it was cool. Only just though, I took a beginners course in my first year of University and stuck with it for most of my time there. But eventually the uni club started to take a more competitive, slightly exclusive direction though, and being only a mediocre archer, I decided not to go anymore (ending up playing Quidditch instead).
It had been at least two years since I last used my bow, when my dad said he’d asked about me going to the local club and was insisting on taking me along with him on the next session. I was completely terrified and was extremely worried I was going to make an idiot of myself. Even just putting my bow together was going to be a potential source of embarrassment, as it had been that long I was paranoid I was going to have forgotten how to do it.
So I went along, and pretty much followed my dad around like a duckling for the most of the session. I did need help with putting my bow together, having completely lost the technique for stringing it (something I’ve always found difficult with my short arms). But no one commented. And I didn’t shoot brilliantly, scoring just over 400 out of a potential 600, but no one seemed to care how badly I did. One lady even took my scoresheet off me straight away so she could hand it to someone and get me a badge.
I’ve kept going, and gradually I’m starting to get better. In recent sessions I’ve shot 493, which means I’m mostly hitting 8 or higher, and I’m beginning to feel like I’m channelling my inner Katniss a bit. It’s also fairly satisfying to start getting better after the confidence knock from the uni club. It makes a great deal of difference being in an environment that’s happy for me when I shoot well, but also supportive (rather than dismissive) when I’m not so good. And that feeling when you get three arrows in the gold – totally awesome.

Reason 31 – I WILL pass my driving test

Me and driving do not mix. I have a propensity for thinking about all the worst possible outcomes for the things I do, and when you’re driving a car around, there are a lot of options for potential bad outcomes. I’ve been learning to drive since before university and I’m still taking lessons now. Staying vague on the number of times I’ve taken my test, it’s in the ridiculous, and I’ve had to take my theory test twice because the first one ran out. I do feel the need to clarify, I’ve not been continuously taking tests + lessons over this time, did have a break while at uni, but still, the numbers are embarassing.

My main problem is nerves get the better of me on the practical, and either I make big stupid mistakes, or enough little ones to get me a fail. I can drive perfectly well under normal conditions, but put a test person in the car and I go to pieces. And it’s annoying, and really frustrating, and I’m ending up in tears each time I fail now.

So I need my stubborness to kick in. There are plenty of drivers around who should not be allowed on the road, I even saw some on my last test. For basic skills needed for adults, I’m refusing to let this one pass me by. I already can’t cook, so not having another life skill isn’t allowed. The chances are, once I pass my test, my life will (hopefully) improve significantly due to it allowing me easier social time and being able to apply for more jobs. Going on the list of things to do before I die – blow my examiner’s mind with my awesome driving skills.

Reason 29 – Things don’t always go to plan, and that’s fine

There’s been a gap of about 5-6 months between my last post and this one. Safe to say, this hiatus means that I am definately not going to be anywhere near 365 posts by the end of 2014. I don’t have any meaningful or important reason for stopping writing, it’s the typical thing of not being able to keep up with new projects. My job has gone from a temporary thing to keep me going to taking over my life completely, much to my displeasure. It means more money, so can’t complain too much, but does mean I have little time for much else.

When I was graduating, I was under the impression I’d maybe struggle for a while and then would find a job I’d find interesting and would then go out into the adult world all independent and stuff……..so, so, so naive. It’s now been more than a year, and there is nothing to indicate I’m going to get further than my part time job for a while. I’m also still trying to get my driving license. Although there’s no chance of me saying the exact number of tries I’ve had, that’s not exactly going as planned either.

Thinking about how many expectations have not turned out how I hoped, or have just completely epically failed, can get overwhelmingly depressing if I think about them too much. However, it’s not that big of a deal if stuff hasn’t worked out. It does feel crap that I’ve not achieved everything I wanted to have done by now but that doesn’t mean I need to give up entirely on trying to do those things. In the case of this blog, so what if I don’t hit my target? Trying to write a post for everyday was obviously too much, so I can adjust my aims. Not being able to find a better job or pass my driving test isn’t the complete end of the world. There will probably be a time when it gets past the ridiculous, but obsessing over how I’d hoped to have done better by now and feeling bitter about it isn’t going to help me do those things. It just makes me feel rubbish and then I don’t do anything.

So it’s fine if things don’t go as expected. You can just adjust and try move on from it. Unexpected benefits can come from different places, such as I now have more confidence in standing up for myself against people who are in the wrong, something that might not have happened if I’d gone straight to finding a graduate job straight away. I’m keeping going because yeah, things haven’t worked out, but it’s not a reason to drag myself down.

Reason 26 – Random acts of kindness flow

The internet craze of NekNominating seems to have died away now, and the number of copycat things which sparked off from it have as well (the one involving Nicholas Cage being most disturbing). One of my friends took part in one of the more pleasant ones and I still have to live up to my nomination from it.

She took part in NiceNominating, pretty obvious what you do – perform a good deed, get a video or picture, then name a few other people to do their own nice things. As part of hers, she did her good deed then tagged on a bonus present for me at the end of it, which was really nice and thoughtful of her and made me feel really loved. At the end of her vid, she nominated me as one of the people to do a nice thing, and to my guilt, I’ve not done it yet. The intention is there, just not the inspiration. And I really want to make my nice thing something that at least lives up to what she did a tiny bit.

The bonus present did give me the push I needed to finally sort out some long overdue gifts for other friends (the intention was to have them sorted before Christmas), and I think I’m safe in thinking they went down well and provided a little bit of happiness. I like the idea that one person doing a nice thing for another leads to the recipient passing it on to another and so on. You can see it with general moods, if one little thing makes me happy, you can almost guarantee I’ll spend the rest of the day being cheerful to everyone else and will try do things to make them happy too. It’s a very naive, sickeningly optimistic view, obviously there will always be some grumpy gits who are never going to be happy and will never do random favours, but I can believe that at least some happiness will get passed on. And that’s awesome.

Reason 25 – The blog is helping

A couple of weeks ago now my general mood took a bit of a dip. I am currently looking for an alternative job to the one I have, but the search hasn’t been very sucessful so far. I keep looking for stuff and either it’s impossible for me to do (a year’s unpaid internship) or I’m not qualified for it by not having the correct degree, or in one case high enough A Levels. I then had a few bad nights of arguing with a parent, and my own insecurities started creeping up on me. The isolated feeling started to come back and the part of my mind that suggests self harm as a sensible way to deal started getting louder.

Over the course of a few days, I went from feeling fairly average to absolute crap. And one night, I was close to resorting to usual coping tactics when my sensible brain decided to tell me off. My aim is to put lots of hope and positiveness into this blog, and it’s not exactly a shining example if at the first time I start to slip back into feeling bad I don’t put up a decent fight. I don’t know exactly who I’m setting an example for, but I’m going to feel that I’ve let them down if I give in so easily.

I’ve not done nearly as many posts as I’ve aimed to so far on here, and the quality of writing isn’t great, but for my sensible brain to be using it as a positive argument means it must be doing some good.  Having that moment of my brain reasoning with me led to going back and rereading some posts, which resulted in a trip to see some of the previously mentioned awesome friends. The problems causing the bad feeling haven’t gone, but now I’m back to feeling more positive, more able to deal and can add another thing onto the list of things to make me feel better. Also renewed determination to try catch up a little on posts. This may or may not only last a few days.

Reason 24 – I’m a survivor, I’m not gon’ give up…(breaks into song)

A fair number of songs about surviving bad things tend to be related to relationship break ups, for example the Destiny’s child song I’ve used for the title, but it doesn’t stop me have them on repeat when I’m in need of cheering up. The choruses are always catchy, good to sing along to and can help you feel a little less vulnerable. Additionally, you can choose to ignore the irrelevant lyrics and just focus on the ones that mean something to you. Anytime I find any song with a reference to being a survivor or surviving, I will sit up straight away and listen. This is mainly because, kind of big headed and immodest as it might be, survivor is a word I apply to myself.

Obviously, I am not referring to the Bear Grylls, out in the wilderness type surival. It would take less than a day for me to be mauled to death by a hungry bunny rabbit or something. I use the label for myself because I feel like I’ve had to fight to still be here today. *insert warning – self pitying explanation ahead*  Being honest, from the start I was a fairly weird kid, but this made me stand out and made fun of, which only served the purpose to make me weirder, and therefore get made fun of more. This meant by the time I was twelve, I already had some pretty bad self esteem issues, and teenage hormones plus me and my mum being stubborn as mules made for constant arguments at home. All the stress ended up with me using self harm as a way of coping, a problem which gradually got worse as I got older, being made fun of increased, arguments got worse, and the pressure to do well got worse and worse. There were points where in Year 11 I was harming in class just to keep calm and couldn’t get through a day without doing something at least once.

Throughout Years 11 and 12, I was constantly trying to stop self harming, and also had more than a few times where I wanted to kill myself. I got myself out of that pretty much alone. Two friends knew about the self harm but I rarely talked to them about it, and I certainly never told them I was suicidal. I managed to survive and start to feel better, although slowly and painfully. I spent most of the past few years without self harming, I had the odd slip up occasionally, but that was maybe one per year, a definite improvement.

For 2013, I had some setbacks. Pressure from my course and from my mum led to more than a couple of slip ups over the year, graduating uni to come live back at home meant the frequency of our arguments increased again, and the depressed feeling that started as soon as leaving uni didn’t really make me feel on top of the world either. Then it hit the significantly bad stage, and I resorted to using self harm as a way of preventing the suicide.

So why am I describing all this self pitying, miserable stuff?

I’m still here. Despite all the times I’ve felt hopeless, depressed, alone and like I can’t keep going anymore, I’m still here, alive. The phrase “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” can be annoying. After all, anytime I’m feeling bad, all the previous bad times rush in to haunt me as well. And I might have lived past this December, but one of the side effects of surviving was some additional scars to my legs that mean I probably can’t confidently wear shorts or skirts for the next five years. What doesn’t kill you can leave a fair amount of damage, but I still get a lift when I think: “Well, I made it through all of that”. I’ve kept fighting through all of this, and when I’ve been close to giving up entirely, I’ve said “Just one more day”.

I’ve survived this far, what was the point in all that fighting if I give up now.

Reason 23 – Wearing the Crazy Cat Lady label with pride

One of the most popular jokes concerning internet addicts or people procrastinating is that they spend all their time either watching videos of cats, or looking at pictures of cats who want cheeseburgers and have bad grammar (not that I’m one to speak). While day to day I don’t spend hours on those activities, I do occasionally spend more time than I should on them. This is mostly due to my ongoing transformation into a crazy cat lady, I already have talking to them like they’re humans down perfectly.

For the past two weeks where I’ve been home alone I was kept company by my two pet cats, a brother and sister that we’ve had for about 16-17 years, and it was a nice little reminder how entertaining animals can be. They do cute things, such as following the rule of “if I fits I sits”, leading to them squashing into bags and boxes, they fall asleep upside down, with paws in the air, snoring and escort you down the road when leaving for work. They also do a whole bunch of stupid stuff, like walking into cupboards because they’re too busy watching the treat you have, bat ping pong balls around like they’re kittens, and on one occasion when the brother was sleeping on my bed and the sister decided she wanted to too, jumping and landing on him. There was yowling from both of them.

Cats do lots of things that are entertaining for no one but their owners. I know my friends get bored with me talking about them, even as I’m telling them stories I can tell they’re losing the will to live. Also, being scientifically realistic, motivation for most of the affection the cats show is probably because I feed them. Sleeping on my bed for the past two weeks was certainly only because they’d know as soon as I got up, so could feed them breakfast. Caring for pets and getting whatever affection they show means a lot to me though, and the little moments help me keep going just by breaking me out of my own worries for a bit. Also you don’t know entertainment until you’ve seen an adult cat chase a laser pointer up a wall.

Reason 22 – Being Home Alone (without the burglars)

When I was younger, I thought getting left alone for a few hours was amazing. I could watch a film, sing along loudly to music, grab not one, but two bags of crisps from the kitchen…it was amazing. Now that I’m older, and supposedly wiser, you would have thought that the novelty would have worn off somewhat. Nope.

I’ve been at home alone for the past week and a bit, and am not looking forward to when this state of affairs changes. There’s been a different disney film every night, playing my favourite music over and over and over again, dumping my coat/bag/shoes anywhere I like when I get in from work, staying up until ridiculous o’clock, and to go with that, nothing to wake me up in the mornings. It’s nice having the freedom over not getting questioned about what I’m up to, yesterday I went and got myself lost in the woods, which although it was a little unerving given it was close to sunset, was nice to go do without worrying about what time to be home.

Being home alone for a decent length of time again is unlikely to happen anytime soon and it is likely to bring me down a bit (seriously, past week has been like heaven). However, legally speaking I am an adult, and allowed to own property. Hopefully I won’t have to wait too long before I can get my own place (not in terms of a house – no chance of that, but at least a little flat or something), and just the thought of having that independence makes me smile.

Reason 22 is that eventually I’m going to be living in a place that I own, and can do all the silly stuff that I do now the second I’m the only person in the house. Freedom can’t be more than a few years away, and it’s going to feel awesome.

Reason 21 – Friendship is Magic

Okay, I brought in another reference to My Little Pony, couldn’t resist. Also I find it difficult to express sentiment to people I’m close to without resorting to humour or references, so forgive me.

Before I began to feel suicidal last year, I’d already started cutting myself off from people. Part of what was contributing to the general depressed feeling was that it had been difficult to physically see some of my closest friends due to a change in where I was living, and with my current situation it’s difficult for me to see anyone. Only speaking to friends online made it really easy to lie about what was going on or how I was feeling, and on the occasion where I did see them, I didn’t have to fake anything cause I was genuinely happy for a while. When things started to get seriously worse, it was really easy for me to just stop engaging properly and minimise any contact I had with other people, which of course is stupid, because it made me feel more alone, so more depressed, and would be even more reluctant to talk to anyone.

After I passed a breaking point, I knew I needed to start talking to people again, not necessarily about my problems, but just talking to them in general. And as soon as I started talking to them again I felt better. Even though I still don’t see them (haven’t seen some since November, and not seen another since August), I talk to them nearly everyday and it helps. I think I’ve mentioned previously, at Christmas something happened that destroyed my self esteem, made me feel completely worthless and nearly had me back to square one again. My instinctive reaction was to curl back into my cave and cut myself off again, but luckily I’d already learned this wasn’t a sensible idea and forced myself to keep talking. And this stopped me going back to how I was before, and without doing any damage.

Right now, one of them is going through crap (and hopefully won’t mind me putting that on here, no names involved will hopefully make it okay) and they are talking to me about it and I’m so happy that they are, because I’d hate for them to be feeling like I did. While I was talking to them, they took the time out of worrying about themselves to say that I could talk to them about things if needed.

This has had a dual effect on me. Firstly, it made me feel kind of guilty. If I’d have killed myself, I think it would have left my friends devastated. If I’m so grateful that they’re talking to me about their problems rather than keeping it inside themselves, how would they feel if I’d killed myself without them even realising anything was wrong. I’m trying not to focus on the “suicide is selfish” and “live for other people” side of things, because I want my reasons to be more positive reasons to live rather than reasons why suicide is bad, but I hate to think of the effect it could have had on them.

The second was that it reminded me properly that if I’d go to them with how I’m feeling, they would be prepared to listen to me. The support and help is there if I just get the courage to go ask for it, and it would be such a waste for me to give up without even trying to talk to them. It’s really difficult to put into words how grateful I am that they’re there for me just for talking about nonsense, never mind that they’d be instantly offering help if I’d let them know it was needed. Hopefully, when I eventually give them the link to this blog, they’re not going to be too annoyed that I didn’t go to them for help in the first place.

So the basic summary of this post is that although I didn’t make use of it and would probably struggle to in future, they are there for me as much as I am there for them. They’d be horrified that things had got so bad and I hadn’t told them. If I ever get to that stage again, I am going to make the effort to go to them for help. To put it simply, my friends are awesome.

Reason 20 – Epic Belieber fail of 2014

This post might technically fall under the “fandoms” post from a bit ago, but it’s inspired by a thing that happened last week that I was quite glad to be around to see so I’m giving it and things like this their own post.

Typically, I try not to judge other people on what their personal tastes are, whether it’s in music, books, film, food, whatever. But, I draw the line on Beliebers. As a fan group, they seem to be awful people. Fine, like the guy’s music, but they treat him like he is a god that can do no wrong and they see themselves as avengers born to bring down furious anger upon anyone who dares besmirch his name.

So you can guess what happened when Jared Padalecki (of Supernatural fame) tweeted Bieber asking how much he paid his friend to claim the drugs found at Bieber’s house were his. A bunch of 12 year olds declared war on Jared and announced their intentions to boycott Supernatural, which of course had the Spn fandom in stitches, and announcing their intentions to get as many people as possible to watch Supernatural that coming Tuesday.

The show had its highest viewing figures in 3 years and has been renewed way ahead of schedule. As far as I know, the Belieber front has gone incredibly quiet on the matter. Of all boycotts in history, this has to be the biggest failure of one ever. Admittedly in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter, no one’s lives are going to be seriously impacted because of it (probably, Spn was most likely going to get renewed anyway), but it’s just funny and satisfying to see the Beliebers sense of importance get taken down a peg or two. This is making the list because this little bit of internet drama has kept me laughing for a week and as ridiculous, and maybe a little mean, as it sounds, I am really glad that I was still around to see this epic fail of a not particularly nice fan group. Who knows what embarrassment they’re going to go through in the future.