Saturday 28 February 2015

The Past, The Present And The Future




When we are children we have less responsibilities and more freedom. Everyone is guiding us through life. As we grow up we begin to gain independence and one day we will be entering the world by ourselves. I find the thought of that both exciting and scary.

Sometimes I just want to start living my future. But then I remember how important it is to be living now. I may be surrounded by exams and  school work but I'm experiencing so many other things. Things that sometimes only come round once or twice in my life. What I experience today contributes to who I am and helps me learn to live.

The past, the present and the future hold my whole life. I shouldn't be wishing to just live part of my life. You wouldn't start reading a book half way through because you wouldn't know the things you need to know to understand the rest of the book. So why do we sometimes catch ourselves wishing for the future?

I guess I sometimes wish for the future because it's completely unknown to me, which is exciting for me. It may be scary but it is exciting. The future may hold the reality of my dreams.

Every moment we move closer to the future, there's no rush; It will come in time. Even though I know this why do I still wish for the far future to come?

Without the future we may be prevented from driving for our dreams and the unknown. The future would not be my future it would become my present. But if I skipped the current present, it would no longer be my past as I would no longer have memories and experiences to look back on. A large part of my life would have been torn out.

We need the present to write our own stories. What we do now influences our future. The decisions we make can create the futures we desire.

The past, the present and the future make up our story.

Saturday 21 February 2015

A Book Review: I Was Here By Gayle Forman


I’m not really someone who sticks to specific authors. But I always keep an eye out for books by Gayle Forman. I was pulled into WHSmith a week or two ago by a friend of mine and I saw a book by Gayle Forman so I immediately went over and read the summary. I found it quite intriguing but I decided to leave it on the bookcase.

However as you can guess I did end up buying it later on. It was quite a short one and a lot sadder than I expected. But don’t let that put you off it. I learnt a lot from the book.

As I started the book I thought I knew what to expect but as I turned page after page I discovered things I never would have anticipated.

As I learnt more about the book, the main character, Cody, learns more too about a life she thought she knew but didn’t really. It made me identify that life is so valuable and dare I say it, you only live once. But it also illustrated how once we die we carry on living among our friends and family.

I would recommend it if you want a short read but a book full of emotion.

Saturday 14 February 2015

A Day For Love

When I first started my blog I didn't want to tell anyone I knew that I had one or what it was called as I didn't want it to influence the way I wrote. That may seem silly now but I was afraid it would prevent me from finding my own 'voice'.


Over time though I have become more comfortable and wanted to share something that made me really happy with my close friends. A few months after I started my blog I told two of my close friends about it. Neither of them thought it was odd and to be honest I wasn't expecting them to judge me as I trusted them. However I didn't tell them what it was called as I still had the fear it would affect the way I wrote.

Time passed and the day my best friend found out the name of my blog happened. I wrote about the day it happened here, A Mistake. I will never regret that day happening, I'm glad it did. She gave me so much support and I think it gave me a little push of encouragement towards telling more people. Once this happened it seemed so silly to have thought that knowing someone, who I knew was reading my posts, would influence the way I wrote. Her support and kind words gave me more confidence in myself and my writing.
Following that day, I began to share that I had this blog with the rest of my friendship group. Then over the last few months some have asked if they could read it so I've given them a link to this and sometimes on impulse I've just asked others if they want to read it which has left me sending them a link too. I think another reason why I started to tell others was actually just out of curiosity. I wanted to know what other people thought of my writing.

I've been so lucky. All of them have been so kind and supportive. This seemed to be an appropriate day to upload this as Valentine's Day to me is about showing how much the people you love mean to you. It's not only a day to just focus on your partner. I believe it's a special day to illustrate what the people you love mean to you. Saying this though I don't think we should only demonstrate our feelings on this day but I do think this is a day when we can spend time and remind our loved ones what they mean to us. Happy Valentines Day! 

Saturday 7 February 2015

The Liebster Award

I couldn't think of a photo that would be appropriate for this post so here's a photo I took a while ago

I've never uploaded anything like this before.

I'm starting to identify that I keep saying that. Sorry. I guess as this blog, this space, this thing, its relatively new so it is expected for me to upload quite different things every once in a while. Also in my eyes this blog is me. It's not a place which I regularly just use to upload for the sake of uploading. I upload whatever is on my mind or what is going on in my life. It's me.

Anyway I had a reason for uploading this certain blog post today. A few days ago I saw that I had a comment in my most recent post. And someone very kindly nominated me for something.

So I would like to thank you, The Punk Theory for nominating me for the Liebster Award!

And here are my answers to the questions:

1. Why did you start blogging?
Honestly, the idea had never occurred to me before until my Dad mentioned it once during our dinner on a ski holiday. Other than me being in shock that my Dad knew blogs existed, I immediately knew I wanted to start blogging. I read many people talking about how they have always loved writing but my love for writing didn't start until I started secondary school, possibly after the first year. It's now always my space which I can just go to and it instantly feels like another home.

2. What’s the story behind the name you chose?
Hmm I'm trying to remember... I actually wrote down a few blog names down before I started my blog. (One day I must find that list of names.) I decided on the name 'In My Shoes' but when I started to set up my blog the name had already been taken so I simply added 'Pair Of'. I didn't want the name to be too specific just in case in the future I went off whatever was in my blog name. I can't express how strange it felt to just write 'In My Shoes', it really feels like something is missing. I'm incredibly grateful that whoever has the blog name 'In My Shoes' had it before me otherwise I doubt I would have the name I have today. My blog name just feels like me.

3. Of all the post you wrote until now which one is your favourite?
Oh wow. I don't think I can choose. I like different ones for different reasons. They each hold a memory of mine. I guess I do particularly like A Winter Walk as it wasn't planned. It was a completely spontaneous visit which I hope to do more. Lastly I love all my posts about where I have travelled to. I just find it really exciting and nice to write about different places and experiences, which I can then look back on in years to come. As well as I really want to travel more in my life.

4. Tell me about your favourite song.
I don't really have a favourite song. My choice in music changes practically every day. When I'm into a song I will just listen to it non stop until I just somehow stop listening to it.

5. What’s your favourite book and why?
As I have said before in a post, my favourite book is 'If I Stay' by Gayle Forman. It's not necessarily the most exciting or interesting book I've ever read now. But it was the first book to get me into reading. It led me onto so many exhilarating and fascinating books. And its always a book that I can just pick up and start reading from anywhere in the book: I take it everywhere.

6. What’s the worst movie you ever saw?
I've seen a lot of movies in my life. A lot. I can't really pick one.

7. What was the best and the worst thing that happened to you in 2014?
I don't know if I can pick the best and worst thing that happened to me in 2014. But starting this blog is definitely at the top of my best things list. Whereas one of the worst things to happen to me was probably my summer holiday ending and having to come back to school to start my first GCSE year. Things got serious even though I am excited for the future.


8. Tell me about something you’d really love to do (but never dared to get it started).
Does doing a marathon count? I really want to run a marathon and raise money for a well-deserving charity, close to my heart. I've never done a proper marathon as I don't have the best fitness so after I've run for a while, an annoying stitch normally appears. One day though I will practise running and prevent these stitches from occurring and run a marathon. I really want to put as much as effort as I can to raising money for a charity and running a marathon to me is a way of doing this as I'm not the fittest and it would mean I would be doing a lot of preparation for it so more effort would be done for it.

9. Tell me about your favourite person (not some star, but someone close to you).
I don't really have one favourite person but I will talk about one of them. We may not have known each other for ten years or something but I feel like we've known each other our whole lives. (clique I know) She always supports me, in particular, she supports the fact that I have this blog. So if your reading this thank you, I can't express how grateful I am.


10. What subject could you talk about 24/7?
Hmmm... I'm not sure. I tend to talk and talk about random things without just sticking to one subject. I guess though to answer this question, I would say Gilmore Girls. I know just about every episode as I've watched them multiple times and have been addicted for years.

11. What’s your best and worst trait?
I may have asked my friends on this. (Is that cheating? I hope not) Apparently I'm incredibly dedicated. And my worst trait apparently is self-doubt.


My questions are:

1. What’s your favourite childhood memory?
2. Of all the post you have written until now which one are you most proud of?
3. Do you prefer Summer or Winter?
4. What was your childhood dream?
5. What’s your most prized possession?  
6. Has anyone changed your life? If so how?
7. What's your favourite food?
7. If you had to pick a memory of yours to relive, which memory would it be?
8. What's your favourite TV show? 
9. Do you have any odd habits?  (Like always eating chicken with ketchup... that's one of mine)
10. Are you a morning or night person?
11. If you had to change your blog name, what would it be?

I nominate:
  1. Design Dinner Dogs 
  2. Emma's Treasures
  3. Danielle Hunt Photography
  4. Midwest Modest 
  5. Tainted Blues
  6. Madeline McGowan
  7. What Katy Knows
  8. Hiya Its Ashley
  9. Love, Emma
  10. Arnella Vanilla 
  11. Two Backpackateers 

If you are interested or didn't know before just like me the rules are:
  • Answer all the questions given by the nominator
  • Nominate 11 other bloggers who have less than 200 followers
  • Notify all the bloggers you nominate
  • Made 11 new questions for your nominees to answer

Before this week I didn't completely know what the Liebster Award was. But now I know, I really like the idea of the Liebster Award: it enables everyone to hear and learn about more bloggers. I'm looking forward to reading all the posts about it. Whoever started it, thanks! If you have some time and want to answer any or all of the questions please leave them in the comments. I would really enjoy reading them!