Seizing Opportunities

School commenced in September and I had no conscious decision to accept opportunities, which were whispered in my ear. When something used to arise at school I would always be one to brush it away with an excuse of ‘that’s not me’ or ‘I don’t have the time to do that’. A lot of my life when I joined secondary school strived for academic achievement and success. I felt I had to achieve greatness in the form of letters and numbers after exam papers and essays. In the last two to three years I’ve understood that life needs to be lived in numerous forms to attain success. But honestly I feel I’ve only truly and completely implemented that belief in my actual life in the last year or possibly the last six months.

In the last few months I’ve taken the extra step and said yes to opportunities that have been flickered in front of my eyes. They’ve included me standing on a stage in front of a bunch of strangers and volunteering to speak out. I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and it has filled my life with more enjoyment. If you had asked me four months ago if I would be doing what I have done in the last two or three months I would have laughed and walked away.

It can be very easy to say no to an opportunity and leave it outside the door. Unfortunately I’ve done that numerous times. Yet again some opportunities cannot facilitate everyone’s interest or be available during our free time. But if an opportunity offers something of interest to you and you have the chance to say yes, do it. It’s incredibly important to embrace life and ensure you balance your work life with your non-work life.

Merry Christmas.

Mumbles

I find myself writing but not writing what I want to write.

I write because I enjoy it.

As I have control over my keyboard, I have control over what letters are used to create words. Then sentences. These sentences portray my thoughts, feelings and my side to something.

I love reading writing. It can cause numerous emotions to be formed from the reader and so influences someone. To me that’s something truly special. People’s accounts of anything from events to emotions should be shared. They can be shared through the use of words. And those words can be written to be easily repeated to many anywhere.

Writing, especially fiction, can transport someone to a new place and show a different perspective to an experience or event.

I shall be patient and wait for 'the' writing to come.

The Beach In The Rain

It was a wet and cloudy day, in my eyes, a pretty good day to go down to the beach. I’m aware that sounds odd but it always means it will mostly just be you and the beach with a few people passing.

Up my sleeves, my hands hid from the cold, harsh wind that whipped my hair across my face. I wish I had brought a scarf to cover my neck. The beach huts dotted the land with colour and the sea galloped in and out.

I hope you have had a good week and next week will be even better.

A Child Or An Adult

Sixteen always sounded so grown up when I was younger. And now I’m here, I do actually feel different. However I don’t feel grown up or young. I feel in between. I’ve lost the desire to play with dolls and have tea parties with my teddy bears. I no longer need my mum’s help to tie my hair up or dress me.

I now have my own key to our house, am able to walk around by myself and am presented with the decision to make my mind up for what I want to do. But do adults ever actually have that one thing they want to do forever. Don’t they still own that desire to experience new things and find new parts to life just like when a child wanders off from their parent in the park and comes across the swings.

For years I’ve wanted to become things, different things. Does that even go away?

Part of me wants to remain growing and changing throughout my life. Alternatively though the idea of wanting to do the same thing forever is attractive. But is that reality? Don't people find themselves changing what they want to do in life as they change themselves due to experiences and where they've gotten in life.

If you any views and thoughts on the topic of the future and career choices etc please comment below. I'm really interested in what you have to say.

Pray For Paris

I don’t know much. But I know this

Treat everyone as you would want to be treated

Love the people around you every day

You never know when they may go

Today they announced that 180 people have been injured and at least 129 people were killed in Paris after the attacks from last night. What happened in Paris is truly devastating and wrong.

Unfortunately many innocent people are dying and being affected by cruelty all around the world all the time. Humanity has the capacity for cruelty but so much ability for kindness too.

My thoughts especially go out to witnesses, victims and families who were affected by the attacks in Paris.

A Letter To My Seventeen Year-Old Self

Dear seventeen year-old me,

I hope you have taken every opportunity to see the world even if it's just a trip down the road. And please tell me you are keeping up with trying new foods even if they smell terrible and remind you of primary school meals. Just maybe you have finally gone swimming in the English sea. When I say swimming, I mean shoulders under water. If you still haven't when you next read this, go and do it.

Also I hope you haven't lost your love for fairy-lights. I seriously believe the world would be a prettier place if it was covered in them.

I hope you haven't lost your excitement. That feeling that makes you smile and bounce. Never lose that. And don't let one person stop you from asking anyone if they are okay.

In addition I hope you still have an extensive list of things you want to do. As well as have completed a number of them and are constantly adding to the list. I hope you still want to drive across Canada, visit a proper American diner and add a letter to Juliet's wall in Italy. But most importantly seize every opportunity to make people happy.

Love, your sixteen year-old self

PS: Honestly I haven't looked back at my post that I wrote about a  year ago, A Letter To My Sixteen Year Old Self . The way I wrote then and who I was has changed so significantly. I'm not sure how to word this but I feel unconsciously the way I write here is so much more comfortable and open than it was before.

PPSS: Sorry for using the word 'hope' far too much in this post.

An Autumn Day

My mum and I spent a day in London as it was her birthday.

The ground was covered by blankets of leaves. Our feet stepped through browns and oranges.

People ambled down the paths with warm drinks in hand. The smell of pumpkin spice and cinnamon wafted in the air from a drink stand.

 As I've gotten older, the less time my mum and I have had available for us to spend together so it was really nice. Thank you and Happy Birthday again Mum.

A Sunset From The Summer

Summer lingers in my shadow. I can look back at it but it’s out of my reach.

A warm, soft orange swam away from us. It was beautiful.

Something Unfinished

The bright light glared at me through my half closed eyes in the darkness of my room. It taunts me. There were words but none that seemed right. A spark awakens in my mind and I quickly type the letters on my keyboard before they escape. A strand of my hair falls in front of my face hiding what is on the screen. As I pull it behind my ear, the words don’t seem good enough. With only my index finger I remove the letters and the screen is left blank once again.

A web has trapped my words and won’t let them go. I brush my hand over my eyes and a yawn escapes my mouth.

Suddenly light breaks and words tumble out onto the screen. Line by line builds and I'm left stunned by the rush.


I'm not sure where this came from. I just started typing a while ago, trying to write something fictional and never knew how to finish it so here it is unfinished. Maybe you can finish it and comment below. Anyway I hope you have a good weekend.

Blue And Orange

Shades of blue and orange scattered the sky as we stood watching it fade. The trees below hid themselves in the shadows of the sun. No bird flew past. And the sound of cars was alien.

I love sunsets.

A Trip To North Wales: A Geography Trip

Can you spot the castle?

I really enjoy going to different places even if they are just down the road. As I said last week I went to Wales for my geography GCSE controlled assessment. Wales is just a bit further than down the road though.

There were late night chats, squeezing into friends’ dorm rooms, playing hairspray songs and throwing in a dance here and there, rushing for showers and realising that I had forgotten my shampoo, praying for an appetising meal each day for dinner, a beautiful beach and sheep. There were a lot of sheep.

On our last night a few of us sat in the corridor leaning against the walls and talking about anything. There wasn’t anything specific we talked about or anything different from other times. We just talked. I wish I could word why the memory is a fond one of mine. Maybe it was because it was our last night and a pause button had been pressed on our school life.

Anyway I hope you have a good week and have the opportunity to visit Wales one day if you haven't, it is beautiful. Don't let the rain stop you.

 

My Thoughts On Writing

So often I fear uploading something because I feel it’s ‘not good enough’. I don’t think that fear will ever disappear but it’s useful to remind ourselves that our writing is constantly changing.

Last week I compared my writing from when I was younger to childhood photos of me: they exist because they were a part of me but years later they cause me to cringe and try to hide them in a cupboard. It may not be the best comparison but I do find myself looking back at my writing even three weeks ago and asking myself why I wrote the way I did.

Our writing changes due to the fact that we change. Before now I’ve written things and left them in my blog drafts and looked back at them months after and thought ‘how did I write like this’. I feel each day we all experience new and different things that influence who we are. Therefore the way we feel about and how we word things changes.

In addition there’s a quote I apply to many parts of my life and it is ‘don't compare your chapter 1 to someone's chapter 20’. In a way that applies to writing. I inevitably find myself yearning to write the way others do, their writing to me illustrates maturity and wisdom. Not until today, this second as I type this, I realise that I’m on my own writing trail and their on theirs. I’ve only reached the first gate, they’ve passed many.

To me, writing is so similar to who someone is. It’s a form of us expressing ourselves. I admire these people, whose writing I’m lucky enough to read, as I enjoy their writing as its individual to them and displays what they’ve been through. My writing would be boring if it was like theirs. The thing I appreciate the most is that their writing is individual and original.

Writing is like art work. Some you personally like and some you don’t. Many artists in the world dismiss favouring their own work. We are all our own biggest critics.

If you are ever in the situation where you are scared to put your writing out into the world  as you worry it’s ‘not good enough’, do it. Then you can start writing the next thing, whatever that may be, and you’ll soon identify that your growing and so is your writing. And I will try and do the same.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect would find its way onto this page. I’m going to leave it as it is and upload it. I hope at least one person can understand what I’m trying to say. Hope you have a good week. 

A Creative Piece

Tommy breaks the silence. ‘Do you think we will come back? I mean does anyone want to?’ he questions. Chase playfully shoves him. ‘Don’t be stupid. Of course we will’ he laughs. In the rear view mirror a last glance of what was fades. Laughs and smiles had danced along the sand. An ice cream scoop had fallen to the ground from a child’s cone but the ice cream man had been kind enough to provide him with another. My shoes had swung in my hands as I ran between sandcastles.

Now we are submerged into the back of a worn truck. A drop of sweat clings to Tommy’s neck. Even though the windows are open we are imprisoned in a sea of hot air everywhere. ‘Is no one afraid… of what's to come?’ Ebony quietly mutters as she tugs her hair behind her ears.

‘What? Why are you talking about that now?’ Chase answers whilst quickly turning his head back to look at her. Her head bows when these words hit her as she’s weighed down by them. ‘Chase seriously’ I scowl at him. ‘It’s okay Ebony, it’s inevitable.’

‘I guess’ she answers as she pulls another strand of her hair behind her ear. We all face the back of the car ahead. She’s opened a door to a room that I’ve kept closed all summer in my head. I say it’s okay but is it? I appear to only speak the words that I wish I could believe. I yearn the stability of knowing what I want to do but its presence never lingers long enough for me to make a decision. For the last three years I’ve been living, making decisions only when the deadline has awoken. All I know now is I want to be happy.

I've been really hesitant as whether to upload this or anything else creative but I’ve done it because I know that my writing will change over the next few weeks, months and years. I forget that so often and it prevents me from uploading things. If you ever fear uploading something because you think it’s not good enough, just do it. With writing I feel you grow and change. So when you’re writing is different than it was a few months ago, it’s due to the fact that you’ve changed. We are constantly changing, as we do so does our writing. Our writing is a part of us. In a way I find my writing from months or weeks ago like those childhood photos of me: they make me cringe and I try to hide them as I’ve changed so much but them being there actually results in me appreciating the fact more that I’ve had the opportunity to change and develop more. I’m going to stop rambling on and I hope you can understand what I mean above. Anyway hopefully in a week to come I will have a full post explaining what I mean and it will be understandable.

If you’ve read this far thank you and I hope you have a good week. I will be in the rain collecting information for my geography GCSE controlled assessment on a beach in wales.

Notebooks

This may be something odd to write a whole post about but I thought why not try something completely different.

Basically I have a problem with using notebooks. It’s not that I don’t like the notebook. I just feel whatever I do in that notebook I will be ruining or damaging it. However saying this and being aware of this, it doesn’t stop me from buying more notebooks. In fact only a couple of weeks ago I bought another one and as I write this I know it’s going to be a struggle for me to actually use it even though I love it. So as you can guess I have quite a big collection of unused notebooks.

Last year around this time I finally began to use two notebooks that I was given four or five years ago. This may sound pretty odd but I think the prettier the notebook, the harder I find it to use it. Does anyone else experience this?

A Day At The Start Of Summer

Summer is about to be over. On Monday I’m back to carrying textbooks and sitting through lessons. If summer went on for ages we wouldn’t identify how valuable the summer holidays are. I’m always going to wish for more holiday but I think that’s a better situation than wishing I had less and becoming bored with my time. The holiday is so valuable and appreciated as a result of it being relatively short and rare.

Anyway as it is the end of the summer holidays I thought today would be a good time to look back at a day from the beginning of the holiday.

I’ve lived in the same town my whole life. And it’s not the biggest of towns. So I’ve pretty much visited everything there is to see in my town. However a few months back I noticed a road that I had never gone down and my interest was triggered. My good friend and I visited the place where the road led to one day and discovered a lovely bench with a view that was for once not just trees and brambles. I hope you like the photos above and good luck to everyone going back to school.  Also notebook update, I found it!