How do we equip ourselves for the uncertainty of life?

I am not going to pretend for a moment I have a wealth of knowledge and zen, but as more challenges get thrown at me as each year rolls around I find myself being more at peace with the fact that in life nothing is really guaranteed.

I’ll start by talking about my university and work journey. Studying online was both difficult and one of the best things I have ever done, it taught me how to manage my time as well as push myself as far as I could go. I was very preoccupied when I was studying with the fear that I may not get a job in the industry after I finished my degree, I was so preoccupied in fact that I was blindsided by the notion that although I loved studying media and communications I didn’t enjoy working in the industry.

I spent a great deal of time in denial about this fact, I refused to accept that I had worked so hard to end up feeling this way. It got me really thinking though about how some degrees do nothing to prepare you for the reality of work and how what you study varies so much to what you will actually do on a day to day basis.

I wasn’t my best self for a long time, I had to basically turn my feelings off so that I could deal with my disappointment on the daily but still be a good employee and be a good person to my family and friends. I think of myself as a very optimistic person and dealing with my struggles recently has taught me that you can’t always pretend to be happy nor can you diminish your own pain by using the ‘someone has it worse than you’ methodology. Having the empathy and compassion to understand that people may be facing difficult times is going to serve you better long term than always being in denial about your feelings.

One of my absolute favourite things a friend said to me recently is we should always assume everyone is trying their best. My best when I am happy and my best when I am not differs vastly, but my effort is always there and never waivers.

So although throughout life we grow, we develop and we change I have focused mostly on getting back to my positive and upbeat self, because I know that’s my favourite and best version of me. I have a goal I am working towards and will be happy to share more when I know more myself.

For now I have refocused my energy on making sure my fitness and health are back in check, making sure I take time to do things that make me happy and not miserable and just taking everything as it comes.

As much as I cannot be certain of anything I am embracing the randomness of it all and I believe I have set myself on the path to finding what I want for myself professionally (and personally).

Being an adult sometimes feels like this game we didn’t sign up for and as our responsibilities grow we end up feeling we have traveled too far down the same path to change directions. I truly believe small changes can set into motion what is necessary to see the bigger picture take shape later down the road.

Be the master of you…

It has taken me an awful long time to figure out that I am not just the driver of my own success, but also a driver for my own failure as well. So let me tell you why that is…

I am one of those self-depreciating types whose thoughts are riddled with fear that I won’t be successful, that I will fail and all my ambitions will fall flat. I don’t like to buy into a lot of this inter-generational nonsense a lot of the time but I sometimes entirely fit the bill of the nervous wreck millennial, who constantly worries about her future.

Just another day being a millennial…

I told someone the other day I sometimes feel like I was born just out of my time, I love writing and I love the news, but entered the workforce at a time where print media was declared all but dead. So I digress.

Ironically enough I am reading 1984 at the moment just to see what life may shape up to be like. Wink wink.  I won’t be concerned myself until I see the English language being taken away from us to control our thoughts, or am I already seeing that every time someone on Facebook comments on xyz article with their awful attempts at the use of English language and pissing on evidence or experts opinion? I would say this is what you get when you encouraged generations of people to question everything, now they do, but not to a distinct advantage that I have seen lately.  Anti-vaxxers come to mind very quickly.

So after months of trying to drive my own success I was fortunate to be offered a public relations graduate position which I love to no end. I spend some moments at work worried about whether I am doing a good job, but my wonderful boyfriend explained to me the reason I worry is because I care. It’s true, I really do care. I find it difficult to understand people who have no drive at work or just in life in general, I wonder what people spend their time doing when they have no ambition. Not everyone has to strive to be at the top, we all are suited to different things but to have no ambition in your work transcribes to me that you have little value of yourself. For whatever reason that may end up being it sucks.

What has been difficult to accept at points is that sometimes other aspects of my life may not always go to plan, things like what’s for dinner, or gym days etc. I preach a system of balance but got to a point where the smallest thing not going to plan would induce either small or large amounts of anxiety and unnecessary stress. A lot of that may have been unhappiness at work to but as I keep saying I am the master of my own thoughts.

Life is too short to be miserable, if you follow the news as much as I do you need look little further to be presented with copious amounts of evidence of this. So now I catch an early train to the city to walk or run before work, I scaled back my gym days to be a floating 3 or 4 days per week and I stopped being a complete control freak on every part of my life. Just because I let my boyfriend choose and cook what we have for dinner doesn’t make me less successful in my endeavours. Sometimes I sleep in on the weekend or don’t stress myself out to make that particular gym session, I don’t let going or not going to the gym dictate my day in a way that negatively impacts me anymore.

But first let me show you my guns!

I know I promised to talk about my running journey, and I am sorry I ran out of time, so let me give you a recap…Doing the Run for the Kids was the best decision I made! Setting myself the challenge gave me something to work towards and a sense of fulfilment I had been struggling to find for a very long time. It took me out of my comfort zone and it reinforced one of my favourite quotes which I have used before…

Oh here it is.

Don’t do this stuff for the gram, do it for yourself, I am not saying you can’t share to social media but don’t think that doing that will give you the gratification you seek. I know I don’t live a hard life, but I know that the amount of things I set myself to do sometimes challenge me and make me time poor. At the end of the day that is my own decision and I do it because I have strong ambitions, if I was doing this purely for accolades I would have given up a long time ago.

So take it from me, next time you get down on yourself and think that you can’t do something, tell yourself to shut the eff up and just do it! Be flexible where you can and be driven where it counts.

I was/is/am running!

“If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.” – Stereotypical quote to motivate you.

As you all know I have a very strong stance on silly motivational quotes or images and quotes which only purpose is to shame you into doing XYZ. However, the quote above has a lot of merits, which is why I keep thinking about it when I think about the challenge I have undertaken to do the 2017 Herald Sun Run for the Kids.

No good fitness journey begins without a bathroom selfie. Amiright?

 

I have ummed and ahhed about a mid-long distance run for a good long while, thinking of many reasons not to do it but my main excuse has been not wanting to give up my weight training to train for the run. But as fate would have it a lovely lady from Bens work would be interested in doing it and asked if I would do it with her, and I thought to myself it’s about damn time I challenged myself and got out of my comfort zone. Anyone who does weight, endurance or strength training knows that it is frequently challenging, however it is easy to fall into a trap of complacency.

So the event takes place on Sunday, 9 April which is approximately 12 weeks away, I would describe myself as reasonably fit, however I have not done any running that would take me over 5km for a long time. I have been doing my research, looking at half marathon-training guides from a variety of sources to understand how to program the running, the strength training and other activities to peak for the competition. From late last year I had already started incorporating more running and steady state cardio activities such as the cross trainer as a small goal I had set for myself to extend my fitness.

I guess you could say I already have a good base, but I am not the world’s most ‘natural’ runner either. Although when I was younger I did athletics and cross country, my upright running style failed to be corrected despite all my coaches best efforts, I have a more natural fitness for running but not an ideal running style!

So what I hope to do is share as much as I can with you in my blog, as you know I work fulltime as well as study online. I am in the last 4 weeks of my current trimester and next trimester I only have the availability of one unit to do, this should help give me a little bit more time to dedicate to my running training.

I only do weight training before work at about 5:00am a few mornings a week, so having time available after work to do the running will become less of an issue. I hope to not have to give up too much of my weight training. Currently I am doing a Push-Pull-Legs program on a five day cycle, what I expect I will have to do in the final weeks leading up to the competition is step down the frequency of my weight training, particularly the legs component given they will be very tired.

Currently I am training in my New Balance Fresh Foam Zante’s which are adequate for lower distance running and I do find them very comfy, however I have enquired with one of my expert friends and I will need a more adequate pair of running shoes leading up to my final weeks of training and the race.

So far I have done a few runs ranging from 2km, which I did to test my faster pace up to 5km to start pushing some distance and get some miles into my pins. I am still using the S Health app to track my runs, which I find useful and it does the job, I am not that keen to buy any fitness trackers.

Attempting to build some good pace!

So follow my journey, laugh and cry with me and I will offer the best advice I can from my experience and share anything useful I find along the way.

New year, same me (not at all)

I contest that I absolutely hate New Year’s resolutions, but it is funny sometimes on reflection how things do seem to happen around this time of year for me.

So I will reflect, 2 years ago I gave away binge eating and hating my body and worked on becoming more at peace with my body (of course this is ongoing.) Last year, I removed myself from a toxic work environment and coincidentally went on the holiday Ben and I had been dreaming of, and chipped away at my goals again. This year as I have talked about recently fought away at the challenges I have faced, particularly with my mental health and accepting the person I am at the ripe old age of 25.

Now if you have not seen this video, it is a must watch and may help understand some of the odd behaviour you see out of millennials. In my blog that I write for University for a subject called Digital Communities, we delve into some interesting issues regarding digital citizenship and being an active member in this digital sphere we all live in.

I have referenced this video because I think that cross-generationally there is a difficulty in understanding one another’s issues, and sometimes I think this causes a rift – now let me explain. Current and previous generations are exacerbated in their thinking that they have it more difficult than the other does, yet this method of thinking continues to get us two fifths of fucking nowhere. Each have certainly had to face challenges but none of them are comparable, you cannot possibly compare each ones adversities because they are so vastly different.
No one walks away with a medal when you finally figure out who had it harder.

We have to make peace with ourselves that we can’t have impact as soon as we start working full-time, hell I have been working fulltime and studying online for so long the end feels far away, but I know it is near. When I finish studying online that is not instant impact that will have been 6 years slogging away juggling circumstance, life and everything else. But, you know what they say? Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans.

I am taking the opportunities while I am not at work to work through a lot of stuff, and no it’s not a new year’s resolution! I realise all my goals just evolve out of one another and that’s life really, you don’t always finish or tick things off the list you just keep evolving, getting older and wiser along the way. This blog is therapeutic for me and the more time I have to write and dedicate towards it the better I definitely feel. It isn’t about getting followers, or even having impact, but if I can help myself and help you along the way then that would make me so very happy.

So, today I watched Wild for the second time this week, ironically enough again I watched Wild for the first time on my way to the USA (about a year ago) when I wasn’t doing so great prior to that. Wild is this amazing film, I love Reese Witherspoon, I love Laura Dern, I love the whole bloody movie! It has helped me contemplate, again some of my own pain that I have been suffering, but reminds me that by giving up, or getting upset, then what? The only way forward is to work on being my best self. However, like I have said before, I try my best every day, but not every day can I be my best.

Therefore, I am letting go of the idea that things will help fill the void I feel some days, items or things will never make me feel whole but experiences will. I have vowed to start reading novels again, I read a lot of academic literature for school but not stories and I really miss that. I will keep working on finding other ways to improve my health, this year as well as my strength training I am going to do the 16km Good Friday Appeal Run for the Kids.

Right now, as I write this I am looking for my next holiday inspiration, because I need to and want to aspire to do wonderful things. Yes I understand when you are a homeowner it is not as straightforward, you do not get to live your life as carefree, but I will be damned if I don’t even try.

To anyone who wants me to stop talking about my last holiday, or to stop being a dreamer, go fuck yourself.

A short story…

I need to start by sharing some quotes that recently have felt very profound to me…

“Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.” – Are You As Busy As You Think? | Wall Street Journal

“The universe, I’d learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.” – Wild | Cheryl Strayed

Now I will share a short story I have written for you…

Today.

Anna can hear her alarm and she knows she must get up, but today she simply cannot face the day. Anna can hear the rain on the window and feels a sense of irony that the weather is adequately reflecting her highly somber mood. She rolls over and starts to do her morning check of the overnight social media updates that she has missed, scrolling she see’s glorious meals and bodies she cannot have.

After successfully wasting ten minutes of her day Anna rolls out of bed and begins her routine, placing her oatmeal in the microwave, boiling the kettle and tossing up between which strength of coffee pod she will need. Intense, is the only adequate answer to this question, today is going to be hard. Whilst her breakfast is cooking, the smell filling the air, Anna takes her first look at herself before she enters the shower and her already dismal mood plummets even more.

The water runs over her and she rubs her face, she contemplates the symbolism of the cleansing nature of water running over your body but realises this won’t work on her today. She scrubs and exfoliates harshly believing this will have a much more gratifying effect on how she feels, maybe she can scrub away that dead layer of skin and the hate will wash away simultaneously.

Anna scrubbing furiously pauses for a moment and closes her eyes, thinking of a vivid memory she has of her 16 year old self. There she laid outside on the footpath, in the beautiful summer heat, she stared at the stars and took in all their beauty, certain that day she knew everything about the world and her life.

But today is different, today she feels empty.

 

And then it hit me…

And then it happened…A year on from the trip that changed my life those post trip blues finally hit me. I believed I was immune from them, I believed that so much time had passed that I would never suffer from this disease!

We all scream for ice cream…

The trip to the US did many things for me emotionally and physically, before I left I was still miserable at work and miserable in my attitudes to eating and fitness. For 6 weeks I didn’t lift a weight and had nominal control over what I ate a lot of days, funnily enough I lost weight on that trip, some was muscle mass and some was emotional baggage.

It was more than just a holiday for us, it was an amazing journey that we had wanted to do for so long, Ben had finally finished Uni and I just wanted to get out of here! So why a year on I am finally suffering from those terrible post trip blues that everyone so famously talks about? Well, in short it’s because a year later I am not entirely where I had hoped to be, but in saying that I appreciate every day where I am living with a clean bill of health.

Merry Christmas ya filthy animal…

I am plenty of things, today I told a stranger that I am forever the blind optimist, however lately I have been struggled to maintain the facade of eternal optimism. Ben best describes me as a doer and analytical, I struggle to stop doing things and when I do physically stop, mentally my mind is still analysing. This is why I need to go to the gym at 5:00am, because if I am not physically exhausted by the time I go to bed my mind just keeps on ticking.

My incapability to shut down is why I have been struggling to cope with the fact I am still not exactly where I want to be. We have been tested this year with the purchase of our wonderful first house, almost anything that could have caused an issue has been one and we haven’t even started building the house yet! I remind myself that I am fortunate that being able to purchase a house is a blessing, and that every hurdle in the grand scheme of things means very little.
However, in the heat of the moment it is difficult to find clarity at times.

When I was away I got to be myself without a care in the world, it was a time for us to do all these amazing things we wanted to do and enjoy ourselves, be present in the moment! There is a lot of talk around mindfulness and being present, I believe that some of it has its merits but I fear that we are also venturing into buzzword territory. I like many others who are busy have trouble focusing on what they are doing in the present, always focusing on the next task we need to tick off that never-ending list. The other day I joined the very exclusive club of smashed phone screens, all because I was trying to do too many things at once rather than concentrating on doing one thing at a time.

So I have vowed to start using a diary again in 2017, why I stopped is beyond me but it is another item that used to help give me clarity which has sadly gone on the wayside. The only thing I can focus on now is trying to make myself as present as possible, and enjoy my life at the moment and work hard to get to the places I want to be.

How to not be Silly, during Silly Season

It’s that time of year again where seemingly normal and capable people start to lose their marbles. No I am not having a dig at anyone because we are all soooo guilty of this! My main point is that we are all generally very capable people but for some reason this time of year brings out the worst in us.

He is sooooo cute!

What agitates me the most the festive season is (asides from terrible covers of Christmas songs) the fact that we get caught up in the nonsense of this time of year that we need to be careful of our waistline. Hello again Diet Culture! Look at this absolute gem from The Sun in the UK.

The best thing I can tell people over Christmas is to be mindful and not to get too caught up in the nonsense. Enjoy this time with your friends and family and indulge a little if you feel like it, but what I know from experience is binge eating does not leave a nice feeling both physically or mentally.

Do you eat until you feel sick normally? If your answer is no then why would you treat Christmas Day any differently?  If your answer is yes then there may be some other mental health or issues related to eating disorders which should seriously be looked at.

In the height of some of my worst obsessions with my health, fitness and disordered eating habits I would really worry about Christmas Day, often eating less in the lead up to it and taking a similar approach to alcohol. What would all this result in? An all out binge on food and alcohol that would leave me feeling sick and sorry for myself, my body in some ways loved all the food because it so desperately lacked it on a day to day basis.

What would I say to anyone struggling? Like I have discussed all throughout this blog the most important thing to practise is a mindfulness approach, listening to your body and understanding your hunger signals. I know myself and plenty of people, who have, in their attempts to take control of their health and fitness, used apps such as MyFitnessPal and forget how to actually listen to their body, instead eating to a plan or eating every 2 hours or other various things.

One of the things I love about Christmas because I am such a BWB (Basic White Bitch) is the Christmas themes drinks and foods. You will see me trying various different crazy flavoured items such as the Gingerbread Latte Frappe pictured below. The old me would never have enjoyed something like this because, well, they aren’t very healthy! What I failed to see in the past was that my attitude towards eating was unhealthier than perhaps this drink.

mmmmm Christmassy goodness.

The results of me taking a more balanced approach to health and fitness have seen me with the body and level of fitness I have desperately sought for so long. At times I need to remind myself that I need to love my body because, unfortunately women are wired and taught to hate their bodies from ages as young as 4. If you don’t believe me here is a little side story for you, I was at the races the other week and whilst touching up my lippy a young girl next to me no older than 5 proclaimed to her mum “I am hideous.” I was mortified. How does she even know that word let alone know it well enough to use it to describe herself. The difficult part is not rectifying the issue by just saying, “No, you are pretty,” we actually need to back this up by saying, “No, you are intelligent, kind, funny and wonderful.” Above all else.

Does anyone look perfect mid skip?

So be mindful as always and put this into your daily practise, there is no better time to start than right now. xo

If you are interested in digital media…

Please if you are interested in digital media and want to engage in conversations about this come on over to my Tumblr Page for my university studies project – Digital Communities.

When your mood is a little like Melbourne’s weather….

I know its been quite a while now since I have posted – WordPress reminds me adequately its actually been 2 months since I made a blog post. This has been due to both the overwhelming amount of work I have had to do for my online studies at times mixed with the fact I actually haven’t had anything worthwhile to write about…until now!

So what has my title got to do with anything? I know its very specific and only people who live in Melbourne or have traveled here will know exactly what I am talking about, but to give you a little context on Friday it was a beautiful sunny 27 degrees and on Saturday it was a miserable raining 14 degrees.

From Friday to Saturday the way I was feeling declined as quickly as the weather.

I have spent a lot of time on this blog trying to give people an understanding to the range of mental health issues people may have and have tried to empower those suffering as well as help people be empathetic to those who are. There a lot of people like myself who live with what has been referred to a lot more recently as high functioning mental health issues.

As Madison Rambeau explains here on The Mighty, people suffering with mental health issues are faced with enough stigmas, then there are those of us who are capable of functioning ‘normally’ in life and it adds a whole other difficult element.
I remember the tragedy of Robin Williams passing and this hit a lot of people quite hard as I think we can all remember a time where he made us laugh and feel joy. What was even more difficult for people to understand was that someone who seemed so happy and ‘normal’ was actually suffering deeply with a mental illness.

I remember how profoundly this sentiment hit me when I saw it for the first time. It is something I have tried to apply for a huge part of my life, sometimes I define my own worth by my ability to make others feel better about themselves.

I know how crushing it is when you feel worthless, on Friday night someone might as well have punched me in the stomach because I instantly felt like the air had been sucked out of me. From that time for another 24 hours or so I was crippled by these feelings and what was worse was my wonderful partner in crime was flying out in less that 48 hours to go away for work.
I then began to feel more worthless and selfish, how could I be suffering an attack like this when it should have been an exciting time to celebrate his success? But that’s the thing isn’t it, we don’t get to decide when we might feel like absolute shit, it happens whenever it feels like.

So whats bothering me at the moment? Well a vast majority of things that namely relate back to my place in the world. I am 5 units away from finishing my degree, I am so close! But I constantly worry that I might not get to pursue my true passion in life and that I have peaked at the ripe old age of 25. Because I pursue and invest myself in things so passionately when things don’t come around the way I hope its devastating for me.
Whats is also painful at times is I feel tired from having to constantly pretend that I am happy when perhaps I am not. I know that’s a worrying statement for my friends and family but rest assured I am never disingenuous about any of you.

Being a journalism minor, I love reading and watching the news, I love to know whats going on and I love feeling more knowledgeable. The news isn’t particularly uplifting nor should it be if it aims to be factual, however, I do feel pained by a lot of stories that I read and hear about.

This also makes me make a lot of comparisons about how I feel and the suffering of others. As Madison discusses there appears to be a system where people compare there traumas and mental health issues, but this is highly toxic and a worthless endeavor.
In my life overall I am much more fortunate than others and I am thankful everyday for that, but there is also no value in making myself feel worse about how I feel because it does not measure against this imaginary system of trauma I have made in my head.

Make sure when you pass someone on the street if you catch eyes take a moment to smile at them, you don’t have any idea how much this might mean to someone.

Attitude is everything.

 

Keeping the Promises I made Myself

It is very cliche to say this but I am going to say it anyway – I can’t believe that we are already in August, the 8th month of the year….That means 4 months until Christmas!

I made a lot of promises to myself this year to shift my focus from material things and start to focus on experiences. At the start of the year I had my trip to the USA which was one of the most amazing experiences of my life and saved me from my slump I was suffering from at work.

A rare picture of me hanging out with all my friends…

From there a lot of things have happened this year – I really have done a lot of growing up I guess you could say. At 25 I am so ready to start living my life and be challenged professionally, which is why I am working so damn hard to finish my studies online.

I don’t talk about my life in great detail sometimes because I concern myself with the idea that it might sound like I am either complaining or bragging. In my mind I am scared of either one but really I should be a little more proud of myself and my achievements so far.

I met an interesting person recently who asked me to describe myself to him, I used the words passionate and kooky because of the way I commit myself to a task. He told me that the way I used the word kooky was almost derogatory, and that I didn’t exemplify a lot of self belief or pride in my capabilities.

He talked about the idea that I should regard my passion as a competitive edge, this was amazing to me because I really never described myself as competitive.

I love when people give me feedback or constructive criticism because I absolutely thrive on making improvements in myself. One of my greatest desires in life is to have impact, I know that’s perhaps a difficult thing to measure but I am not worried about how other people think this looks, I am only worried about how I measure myself.

Its my desire to have impact that often makes me worry about whether or not people view me as a good person or question my integrity. As a whole I don’t worry about what people think of me and my interests, but it does play on my mind when I feel that people don’t think I am being genuine. It ultimately makes me anxious because I know that I put my whole heart into everything I do.

There are exciting times ahead and I can’t wait to see the next 12 months unfold and see where my experiences take me. I used to buy clothes and other material things to make me happy but I realise now that these material things aren’t the summation of my achievements.

Gosh, I love Melbourne.

One of my new favourite ways to celebrate small achievements week in, week out is eating my way through Melbourne. Everyone knows I am a big fan of wholefoods such as donuts.

The most important thing that you can learn in life is to embrace all your experiences and relish in opportunities to improve yourself continually.