Happiness and Vlogging

I think that my life is slowly getting better 😀

It’s taken me a while to realise that I have been in a dark place until about 2 weeks ago. Then it felt like the cover had been lifted and I could finally see some blue sky. I don’t know what was wrong with me, but I can make guesses. I’m just glad that now that period of my life has passed I can enjoy life more and get more out of it.

So, I’ve been being productive. I have started a vlog after being inspired by many amazing vloggers such as NerdzRL/Nerdz4L (check out her videos, they rock) and Amy (xbornindiex).

I thought I would post some awesome videos by some awesome people on my blog to share with my awesome readers, so here goes.

http://youtu.be/UnhzA9GrF1o (How To Speak English)

This one was sent to me by Amy, and made me laugh so much. I’m sure that my American friends can relate to this video because there I some things I say that baffle them sometimes, because I forget that they’re not familiar with English slang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRfxbmCQ68g&feature=feedu  (Ask Andzilla Anything Number 22 (With Nerdz4L/RL) )

Another one sent to me by Amy, I was continually laughing all the way through. Another must to check out 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PhgMwuvCks (Depression Through Jellybabies)

This is the final video of vlogs I’ve subscribed to which is inspiring, again recommended through Amy. I love the creativity and abstract ideas behind this video, it actually inspired one of my videos on mental health.

Have been on a roll with my vlog in the past few days, and have had some good ideas on what sort of vlogs to put on there. But now I’ve ran out of ideas, what a bummer. I appear to have exhausted my creativity with last night’s video (see below):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_fnlap6P3g

This is the one sort of inspired by the jelly babies video, and the topic was requested by Amy. I did a little bit of research and discovered how some people with depression or other mental health related conditions felt in general and how they’re sometimes stereotyped, judged or misunderstood by others. Add some sad slow pick me up music, no speaking, black and white and letting myself lose on about 15 pieces of paper with a black sharpie, I made this video. I hope I’ve done Amy’s topic justice. Not too shabby for an amateur, even if I do say so myself lol 😛

Am still in desperate need of ideas for future vlog and blog posts, someone please please please please please help me out? I’ll love you forever 😀

PS I did plan on making it so you could see the actual videos, and I did try, but for some reason it didn’t work so I changed it and put the links on

xx

100th Post, First Day Volunteering and My New Youtube Channel

Well, this is my 100th blogpost   I feel rather pleased with myself that I’ve made it this far and posted this many posts. Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to continue this blog when I was considering stopping it

Today was my first day volunteering, absolutely exhausted but had a really great time. Spent the first two hours helping to set up the resources and get accquainted with Cathy and Carly, who I will be working with quite a bit during my time there. Have to admit, a lot of those first two hours consisted of drinking tea. But the next four hours made up for that period of inactivity with hours where I was constantly on the move and doing stuff. Really enjoyed it though, made paper plate maracas with a lot of little kids, must have helped make about 60 over those 4 hours. It was a really great experience though, and the kids were so polite.

I really enjoyed the more people orientated side of volunteering at the museum, but I can’t wait to get into the history part of it, which I hope to organise tomorrow as I’d really like to help out with the exhibitions. I think it’s good to have a balance of both sides of the museum experience

Also, I have started a Youtube channel, with some vlogs about stuff that’s going on. Have made 3 videos so far, one on my ‘Bucket List’, one on Hypermobility Syndrome and one about my experience volunteering today. People will find it in the end so I may as well post the link www.youtube.com/historynerd27 .

Hope you all have a nice evening

xx

Need Inspiration/Ideas/Suggestions/Requests

Hi Guys, I have a bit of a favour to ask of you.

I’m looking into starting a video blog on a youtube channel, but I’m not sure what to base it on. So if you have some ideas, could you please comment on this blog post or tweet me at @ellisspicy with what I could make videos about and what you’d like to hear from me, if you want me to make a vlog lol.

Another favour I have to ask of you is another request based one. I’m running out of ideas for blogs, my blog is becoming a place where I blog daily updates and its becoming quite repetitive and dull given that I have a really dull life. So if you have any suggestions about what I could blog about, then again, comment on this blog post or tweet me with your ideas 🙂

I would really appreciate your help 🙂 Thank you 😀

xx

Sunburnt Day and Busy Summer Planned

Evening everyone, hope you have had a good day.

Once again this summer, I have been stupid and forgot to wear suncream, thinking that it won’t be that hot, and it turns out to be that hot :S So once again I am sunburnt, in fact I’m sunburnt in exactly the same places as I was before. Hello skin damage!

But today’s been quite a funny day, I went to a boot sale with my mum to sell some of the stuff we don’t need that clutters up our house. We didn’t sell that much tbh and we didn’t make that much money, but it was a funny experience sitting in our car playing Trivial Pursuit and eating freshly made doughnuts. We must have been the least proactive sellers there, we just couldn’t be bothered. We probably spent more money than we made, but hey ho.

Came home to sit and read, which is all I appear to be doing these days. Not that I can complain, my brain’s loving absorbing all of the historical stuff I’m reading. Am still reading Mein Kampf at the moment because it’s very draining on my brain to read it, it’s definitely a book to be read in small doses. But I’m about 340 pages in, only 280 ish to go.

Have got a busy week ahead of me, volunteering, meeting up with people, meeting new people and catching up with the girls 🙂 Had a great time yesterday up Chingford with Catherine, having lots of random chats, some meaningful, some serious and others just pure hilarious with Cafe Nero milkshakes/smoothies in our hand being casual. Also awwwwwing repeatedly at the cute kids/babies at the park, then taking the piss and calling each other paedos 😛 All good fun.

Need lots of meet ups with the people that matter most this summer, because my friends are just too amazing. Girly nights, alcohol and shopping will definitely be required 🙂 Can’t wait.

I start volunteering on Tuesday, which is an exciting yet daunting thought. I know the people who run the museum pretty well, and they’re awesome people, really friendly. But I feel like I’m being thrown in the deep end because I have literally not been given a briefing, I’ve just been asked to turn up at 10am and help with a kids art workshop. Should be interesting. Just have to find time to fit it in with driving lessons, meeting up with friends, going to open days, sorting out my theory, going on holiday and a freakish amount of reading. It’s going to be a hectic few weeks 🙂

Hope everyone has a good evening 🙂

xx

Unnecessary early starts, being an idiot, getting excited over books, Mein Kampf and bad jokes

I really do have nothing really of substance to say given that I’ve spent the past day or two doing nothing particularly interesting apart from running errands, sitting on my arse and reading as much as I can.

I did some productive stuff yesterday and sorted out when my volunteering work would be starting. It’s been arranged for next Tuesday, where I’m going to be helping out with a kids art workshop and figuring out on what days I’ll be volunteering at the museum and what I’ll be helping out with. Should be really exciting to gain experience working in and around history and with children, plus it will get me out of the house and stop me from being so bored.

This morning was an unneccessarily early start, mainly due to my stupidity. I thought my driving lesson was at 9:45am this morning, it turned out it was at 4pm this afternoon. That will teach me for looking at the wrong date. This is why I don’t like it when my driving instructor books lessons 2 or 3 weeks in advance. Deciding that there was no point going back to bed and relishing the lie in, I decided to get up and do something productive, which ended up being watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Not very productive but hey ho.

Got incredibly excited when there was a parcel delivery because I knew that the only thing we’d ordered had been my books. All of them were history based, so the history geek within me smiled and got all happy 🙂 So to honour my history geek side, I am sitting here with some music playing reading Mein Kampf, which if you didn’t know was a book written by Hitler. It’s weird stuff and hard to read but quite interesting. It’ll be interesting for when I visit Auschwitz in October to understand the background behind the Holocaust as I’d already learnt quite a lot from GCSE but I’d never got to read Mein Kampf like I wanted to.

Bad jokes have also been a funny feature of my day, most of them unintentional and stemming from the fact that I’m tired and seem to be acting like a complete and utter scatterbrain. I think it’s because I know my brain can have a rest now I’m not at school, but everything I say today has not made much sense. So Catherine said to me, perhaps you need a CAT scan, so I replied ‘but Tigger (my cat) said I was fine’. Well at least it made her laugh, I was facepalming at my own stupidity.

I’m really excited about this summer as I’m going to try and be more sociable and meet up with my friends a lot more 🙂 girly nights, sleepovers, alcohol and gossip ftw 😀

xx

Yr12’s over, childish comments and summer

Well today was the last day of Yr12 and we’re all heading in our various directions for summer. This summer break has been needed for so long, for everyone its been such a hard slog through the exams that ideally we shouldn’t have gone back afterwards. But we had to, which was a pain. Once you’ve finished your exams, it is not wise of your sixth form to demand you come back in to start next years work. Most pointless 6 weeks of my life, but its over now and we can all relax.

Whatever everyone is getting up to, whether it be holidays, work or just relaxing, I hope you have an amazing time 🙂 Resting and recuperating over the summer is going to be everyone’s number 1 priority I think, getting ready for another fun filled year next year (and I say that with all the sarcasm in the world).

It’s summer but not summer it seems, it doesn’t feel like summer. I think that perhaps its because of the weather, its so soggy it can hardly be considered summer. I’m half expecting to be woken up tomorrow at the usual time of 6am.

And to those who keep posting weird and rude comments on this blog, no one’s laughing apart from you it seems. But carry on, I’m not too fussed. And to those who hate me who read this blog and judge me, I’ll remind you that the more you come on here the higher my hits go and the better I feel. Just saying.

Think I’m going to have a well deserved afternoon nap 😀

xx

Fuming, Confused, Bad Weather and Realisations

Yes I know, I haven’t posted for days. I suck.

Anyway, felt the need to have a huge rant on here after something I have just found out.

Being a supremely childish prick that he is, afraid of confrontation, Leo has decided that rather than talking to me, avoiding me and deleting me from facebook is the only option. Could this man be any more childish? I thought I would feel more upset but more than anything I am fuming.

But it has made me realise a lot of things. One is that I really cannot remember why I liked him as much as I did, maybe to the degree that I thought I loved him. Two is that he is someone I can never see myself having a relationship with, because I honestly thought that we would work through our issues and accomplish that. Three is that he is the most flawed man I have ever met, with so many negative aspects to his character that I looked through with rose coloured glasses and saw as perfect. Four, I’m an idiot for taking over a year to realise this.

I know that I have constantly been saying over the past 9 odd months that I’m reevaluating my life and things are going to be changing, but now this change is fixed. I am completely over a man who was insanely wrong for me in so many ways, my emotions aren’t bound to him anymore, I am trying to enjoy my life and set things up for my future. If anyone doesn’t like that fact or doesn’t fit in with how I want my life to be, then I have no qualms about leaving them behind. It’s time for me to be selfish. In my mind now, all I want to strive for is my future. My ambition is skyrocketing and I’m leaving the old me behind. I’m ready now to leave Leo behind and find someone who is right for me and who will treat me right, the way he never did.

So as always when I’ve had some kind of realisation/emotional ploy, I turned to poetry. This one is a lot more positive than my previous work revolving around Leo 🙂

Things are changing and I’m leaving the past behind,
To explore my new freedom and cut the ties that bind,
A year my emotions were bound to you, a year I was in purgatory,
But who you really are has acted, and it has set me free
It’s like for the past year I have been dead,
Now who you are has raised it’s ugly head,
I don’t feel tethered to you, I feel liberated
But in the past I would have been incapacitated
Now a new me is beginning to arise,
One that doesn’t need you and your pleading blue eyes
Your false promises and your emotional block
Were becoming the pattern, the fixed deadlock
But all it took was one action to set me free
And open my eyes to all around me
This past year I have lost so many chances
For hanging around waiting for your advances
So here is my verse, letter by letter
To say I don’t want or need you, I can do better

I am breaking out of this cycle that may eventually have led to me breaking down on a more permanent basis. I am a strong person, I fight my body everyday to overcome the pain of my condition. But I was mentally very weak, codependent and easily led. Well if people took advantage of that, they’re not going to anymore. I am changing, and I am loving every second of it.

The day is fast approaching where I do things that I need to do rather than brushing my wants and needs aside for the sake of others. Of course I still want to help people, but I am not going to put my heart and soul into everything because I’ll burn out. Right now, it is all about my feelings recovering, exploring my independence, having fun and paving the way for my future.

xx

Tug Of War Day

Sorry for not posting yesterday, I was really busy and had hardly any time to get ready, let alone blog. Literally as soon as I got home I had to start getting ready for the Youth Council premiere night of our new safety DVD. By the time I got home from that, I was too exhausted to even contemplate blogging.

But, here I am.

Today’s actually been a pretty entertaining day. To be honest I wasn’t looking forward to it, and I’ve come away with a catologue of injuries and aches and pains, but I actually really enjoyed today’s activities at sixth form. It gave the forms a chance to compete against each other in a marathon of tug of war sessions, which helped us find the strongest form, who then took on the teachers (comical).

At first this morning, we were resigned to the fact that we were not going to win. We as a form appear to lack motivation, you could call us lazy but I say that we’ve got the brains. Our form tutor didn’t like the fact that we were being so negative and tried to raise morale in our bored and uninspired form. It worked, but not in the way he wanted it to. We turned to our little creation of ‘sarcastic optimism’, well, Niamh and I did at least.

Got to the first rounds and we lost dramatically. Words could not describe how badly we performed. And we were accused of cheating (which apparently we were, blame that on the overcompetitive form tutor). But somehow, in the second round we seemed to recover, and won against another form. I think that was a good boost to morale and we somehow got stronger.

We all took a break after a while and decided to hang around in the sports hall, where the teachers randomly started playing cricket. It was funny to watch, especially the look on Mr Jenkins’ face when he accidentally hit the ball at speed into a poor unsuspecting Ms Evans. It was like he’d gone and smacked his own mother from his look, but bless him going and giving her a hug and apologising repeatedly. We had a great laugh shouting Jenklebear whenever he hit the ball. Mr Taylor shouldn’t have told us about that nickname, because its stuck and its hilarious.

We got back to tug of war, and we did pretty well, winning all of our games except those we had against 12U, who later won it (possibly due to the fact that pretty much all of the guys in the form play rugby). But we did really well and came 3rd, which is not bad for the form that everyone was expecting to come last. We cheered so much when we won our last game, the look on everyone’s faces (including that of our form tutor’s) was of pure amazement and surprise.

The teachers tug of war against the winners 12U is a sight I shall truly never forget. Seeing grown men and women ditch their shoes and socks, looking cocky like they’re going to win and straining to pull this rope against our year’s strongest form was actually a hilarious thing to behold. And despite all their efforts, they didn’t win, in fact they lost about 5 times quicker than anyone else did. Arguably 12U were on top form, or on the other hand perhaps the teachers needed to share tactics and/or go to the gym

But on the downside, my hypermobility made the day less fun. I cannot actually believe that over the course of the day I hyperextended 4 of my joints and accidentally popped my finger out of the socket. I don’t know what possessed me to carry on, but I guess my competitive drive overrode the pain until it was over. Then the wave of pain hit me like a tsunami. Whoa it hurt, I dread to think how much it will hurt tomorrow. I also find it annoying how people are sceptical about my condition. I may not look like I have a handicap, but in many ways I do. Everyday life hurts and given that you don’t feel my pain, you can’t judge.

Went to the Media Oscars Awards as well, which were a bit rushed but fun nonetheless. I didn’t win anything, but well done to Keely’s group for winning on originality. Hovered around for a while before going home, where I haven’t really moved since.

On the off chance that you find this tonight Mr Armsby like you said you were going to, your nickname is Buzz Lightyear and congratulations on finding the blog.

Tomorrow should be fun, BBQ, a comedian and non uniform. Hopefully all of our muscles will have recovered by then.

P.S Keely you’re going have to keep reminding me, iforget.

xx

I hate it when people aren’t honest with me….

I’m a firm believer in if you’re going to tell someone something, you should tell them the truth. Not a lie, not a pathetic half truth, but the whole truth. What’s the point in confiding in someone if you’re not going to be honest with them?

I always thought that I was unjudgemental enough for my friends to be able to confide in me, and be truthful. I know that I can’t expect to know everything, but I hate the feeling that people are keeping things back from me. I swear people must think I’m stupid and naive enough to be convinced I know everything when they confide in me. Well, my instincts are strong, so I know when you’re not telling the whole truth. I was just waiting for the shit to hit the fan and oh what a surprise here it came.

I’m just going to sit here and yell at the wall. Things really need to be resolved tomorrow. And I need to find someone to completely confide to about this who’ll give me a straight answer without their biases getting in the way. The only thing is that everyone is biased, so I need to think carefully about who will be the most objective.

This has ruined the perfect evening

Kent Uni Open Day Yesterday….

Morning everyone.

Quick catch up from yesterday because I realised when I woke up today that I didn’t fill you all in on how the open day went at Kent because I was too busy.

Firstly, it was amazing, I was actually in awe. The campus is so modern, the people there, students and staff are so friendly and helpful. There’s so much in the way of assistance for students that with every second that passed, I wanted to go there more and more. It’s reasonably close by, but not so close that I’ll lose my independence.

The History department there is amazing, one of the professors there is probably borderline crazy but what he said was so witty, captivating and zany that I could really imagine myself being taught by him. The modules on offer seem really good, a huge variety that when I looked at the list I struggled to find a small selection of what I wanted to do. I would have gladly done all 70 modules.

What surprised me is how good the university are in dealing with disabled students. Now, obviously everyone who reads this blog will know that I have Hypermobility Syndrome, which gives me a lot of pain and restricts my movement. It’s not a disability that you can see but it does impact my life and the choices I make. I went and spoke to the team dedicated to assisting students with health concerns and was told that they would do everything in their power to assist me. They told me I needed to apply for DSA (Disabled Students Allowance) which would sort out any equipment I needed or anything that would assist me when studying at university. They gave me a form and were really nice about it, which is good because I am used to my condition getting a sceptical reception where people don’t really take it seriously. But the woman I spoke to was so helpful and friendly. She said that if I was assessed as in need of the DSA, it could pay towards accomodation, which would be a key choice for someone with my condition as I sometimes have trouble getting up stairs. The proximity of accomodation is also something I would need to consider, it would need to be reasonably close to lecture halls etc. But I was relieved to see that things would be put into place for me.

Their other financial help was also a shock to me, and made me want to go there even more. Apparently there are a variety of scholarships and grants that you can apply for if your parents are earning below a certain amount of money, some of which are offered exclusively from the university rather than from the Government. You also automatically get £2,000 a year directly to you if you get 3 A’s at ALevel. All of this is on top of the usual student loans for fees and living costs. I got bored in the finance lecture and left, but from what I’ve heard, I’m amazed.

The accomodation was also really good. On our tour we went and visited a student flat, which had something like 6-8 bedrooms in. They were all pretty big rooms, with all the stuff you’d expect in a student room, desk, drawers, wardrobe, shelves, bookcase as well as a bed.

I really do believe that Kent will be my university. I fell in love with it yesterday. But I have nothing to compare it to as it’s the first I’ve visited. But it’ll take a lot to beat Kent in my eyes.

xx