Daily Diaries | Manchester, Ceilidh and Packing

Credit: RNCM freshers photography

Saturday I arrived at my friends house, and we stayed up late gossiping and eating.
Sunday I had the most beautiful American breakfast with 3 of my best pals - I now love love PB&J. I then headed over to my old flatties new house and ordered dominos, watched bad TV and chilled.
Monday was the ceilidh!! So much fun!! I danced the night away, said goodbye to all of my dearest friends and I even felt a little sad that I won't be in college for the next year!
Tuesday I felt a little fragile and had a 5 hour train journey home. When I got home, I curled up and watched an entire disc of Gossip Girl.
Wednesday was the beginning of packing up all my stuff. We then went to a posh new restaurant thats opened near us (this is a big deal cause we don't have many new places opening....especially not posh ones). I had pork rillette, fancy fish fingers and a creme brulee pudding. YUM!
Thursday and Friday: Packing. I am exceptionally bad at packing. I can't do it. So naturally, there have been many raised voices between me and parents. Oh joys....

Been a while....

My dear readers, I believe this is the longest I have gone without writing my inner-most thoughts and feelings upon my web-log. Alas, I have my reasons, some of which will become clear in the not too distant future.

No, but seriously, I've been having a severe case of writers block. I tried, honestly I did. Every other day I'd sit down ready to tap away at my keyboard, but I'd open up a new page, and nothing would come out. Or if it did, it was sheer garbage. If I could, I would have ripped up the virtual page on which I am writing, thrown it in a bin and burnt it.

I've had a lot of things on my mind recently, and writing, for me, is a way to organise some of the things that have been racing around my head. I enjoy it, it's calming. The power of words never fails to astonish me, but recently, I felt that nothing was on my side.

I just believe that with a recital looming around the corner, trying to eat healthily (chocolate is a definite weakness....), so many essays needed to be handed in, blogging stresses, reed stresses, going to the gym, practising, my pathetic excuse of a love life (oh, the hardship of being a 20 year old singleton, woe is me), and on top of all of that trying to get my head around the fact that I'm moving to a different country next year. I shall do a whole other blog post on this once everything is sorted. I thought it was but now there's another complication. Excellent. So many things have been happening in my life, but at the same time, nothing has really been happening.

I find this term very difficult, as we're sort of left to our own devices, I guess, and I'm not very good at doing that. I'm the sort of person that, unless my heart is completely in something, I need a good prod to keep me on track and not to get drifted off into the world of "I'm going to plan a holiday that I'm never going to be able to afford".

So anyway, I'm currently at home at the back of beyond in Wales, just to have a change of scenery, and hopefully I'll be feeling much more clear headed and focused when I return to the Land of the Manc.

I apologise for this long and rambly post, I know it's not the sort of post I usually do, but hey, you can't always get what you want in the world can you?

P.S. I'm going to try and be a bit better with my blogging. I mean, 20 days not writing anything is a bit naughty, isn't it?

A Wonder in the Park

I went for a walk today, for a few reasons:

1. To get me out of the house
2. To cheer me up
3. To find inspiration about what to write about.

I've been somewhat lacking in inspiration recently as I've been so busy what with technicals and erasmus applications that I haven't had any time to think. Since Friday night, I've probably slept around 10 hours every night, so I seem to think that my body needed a rest. 

The past month has been so hectic, it was nice to spend some quality Me-Time and have some time alone with my thoughts, with only the birds for company. 

I think that Me-Time is something that more people should take advantage of. Even if it is going for a walk for 20 minutes by yourself, or even just sitting down in your room and just switch off. It can clear out your head, perhaps making some decisions you've been umm-ing and ahh-ing about recently. In this day of age, we're so reliant on technology and our lives are so quick, with our smartphones pinging us every time we have an email, or having the news at our fingertips. Don't get me wrong, I couldn't live without my ipad, but there are days, like today, where I leave all things technological at home and just take some time out. It can make you feel refreshed and ready to take on your next challenge (or in my case, completely worn out cause I walked about 3 miles, and I'm not feeling 100%. Hence why I needed cheering up). 

Anyways, my walk. About a 15 minute walk from my house is Fletcher Moss Botanical Gardens. I hadn't planned on going there today, but as I was having a wonder around the charity shops in the village centre anyway, I figured I should go down and poke my nose in and see what all the fuss was about. It didn't disappoint. The photos above are of the gardens, and the smells coming from the flowers were amazing. There is no way I could go in the summer, as I would be coughing, spluttering and sneezing all over the place due to hay fever. So today was the perfect day to go. After looking around the main part of the gardens, I went to have a wonder around the field behind and found the river Mersey. I strolled my way along that before finding a road and eventually finding my way home. There was a great big cloud behind me the whole time, and I tried my best to be home before it started raining, but around 10 minutes from my front door, the heavens opened. 

You're probably thinking "why are you describing your walk?" Well, I wanted to share this experience. The experience of this walk being my inspiration to write when I've had writers block for the past couple of days. I've tried hard to sit down and write something, anything, that came into my head. I read through them all and deleted them because they were so awful. I've been tired, cyntachu (a welsh word...no idea what the translation is), and demotivated. This walk helped me find the words to write and has given me ideas to think about. 

I hope you can find some time in your busy lives to just sit. Or walk. Or run. Or make candles. Or do whatever you do. Without the tv on or music playing. Just do nothing for a while, and see where your contemplations and reflections take you.

What If?

Do you ever stop and think "how did my life lead me here?" I do. 

I wonder what my life would be like if my Parents hadn't of moved me to Wales at the age of 4. I definitely wouldn't be speaking Welsh. Would I still be doing music? Who knows. I might have stuck with doing languages, but would I be any good with them even though I didn't speak Welsh?

What if I hadn't of fallen off the beam when I was 7? Would I have carried on doing gymnastics? I could have been training for the Olympics. I certainly started young enough. Then I may not have done music at all as I would have been too busy swinging off the bar or jumping off the vault.

What if I had never picked up the oboe? Would I still be attempting (badly) the violin because I didn't know that there was another instrument calling to me. I probably would have studied something different in university. I may be reading a serious subject like history, or studying to be a medic. Who knows.

What if my Parents hadn't of moved me to France at the age of 10? Would I still have the itchy feet that want to lead me onto an adventure? Would I have just stayed being a homebody, simply because the seed of different cultures hadn't been planted?

What if I had gone to a girls school at the age of 12, like I had originally planned. I would never have become such good friends with the people in my music service. I would never have had the relationships I did, but would I have branched out from the girls school bubble? Who knows.

What if I had decided to stay in my comprehensive school for sixth form? Would I have made it to music college? Probably not. I would be a completely different person. I probably wouldn't have got the grades I wanted to get into university as I wouldn't have worked as hard as I did. I may have gone travelling the world, or stayed at home and started a business. 

What if I had decided to go to a different Music College? I would be surrounded by different people, living in a different city, and have a different teacher. Would I have thrived or would I have hated it so much I quit?

What about the smaller stuff? Would my life have taken a slightly different course if I had decided to have an apple instead of a banana with my lunch yesterday? 

Let's look bigger now, look at the most successful people who have ever lived. What if Steve Jobs had never started Apple? What if Walt Disney hadn't of been rejected from a magazine for "laimagination"? Imagine a world without Apple or Disney. I wouldn't be sat in College writing this on my ipad because it wouldn't exist, and what film would I have watched last night if Tangled had never been written?

Thinking of all the 'What Ifs' in your life can make someone go mad. I'm beginning to go a bit doolally thinking about it all. However, every single one of these paths were determined by choices. Nothing about your life is out of your control, and every tiny choice you make has an effect on the way you live. So maybe next time you're faced with a difficult decision, plan the different lives that your choices can take you. If you begin to feel that you'd constantly be thinking "What If", then do it. Why not? The most important thing is that you don't live life with any regrets, so that when you're old you can look back fondly the path your choices have taken you. So you don't look back at a junction in life that you wish you'd taken left instead of right. 

Friendships

I find the nature of friendships fascinating. Since I was born I've moved house countless times (there was a time between the ages of 14 and 16 where I joked I was homeless as my family kept moving between 3 houses), and I've moved schools 7 times, including going to College.

I began in nursery in Surrey, then moved to Wales were I attended an all welsh school (being a 4 year old from England, in one of the Welshest part of Wales not being able to speak a word of welsh isn't easy). I stayed here until I was 10, when my parents dragged me out to live in France for 6 months and I attended school here), I moved back to Wales ready for Year 6. Then when it was time for high school, I went to the place where the majority of my class was going; an all welsh high school. I regretted this almost immediately and after a few issues, I convinced my parents to move me for year 8 to a bi-lingual school. I stayed here until 6th form, where I moved to an all-girls boarding school before finally moving to Manchester to go to Music College. Mixed in with the various schools, I've had musical commitments, I attended a Saturday stage school, and was in the Girl Guding family for 10 years.

What I'm trying to say is that I've had many friends over the years. 

But what I find interesting, is how they come and go, and how do you know that you've found a friend for life or if they are what I call a "friend for convenience". I know this isn't the most pleasant way of calling a friend, and I often haven't worked them out until after I've left them. We all have them, the friends that we look back on and think "actually, I was only friends with them because they were there and I saw them every day" and you realised that you never really saw them outside of school or whatnot. 

Friends come and go, we all know that. In my first secondary school, I was bullied pretty bad which was one of the reasons I left. When I did leave, I felt that I had no friends whatsoever in that school, ironically, two of my closest friends went to that school, and I believe (and hope) that they'll both be my friends for life. Granted, one of them did go to my primary school, and there's a running joke between my primary school classmates that we have unusually close relationship. There were 27 of us in the class, and if i saw any one of these in the street we'd exchange an "aright?" as if I saw them yesterday and I was going to see them tomorrow, even if I haven't seen them in about 2 years, because (I only speak for myself here) I feel so comfortable with them that I don't feel I need to say anything more. Don't get me wrong, I love meeting up with them and having a proper catchup, but one of them once said "I think we have a special bond cause we all went to primary together" and I completely agree.

Through having all these changing people in my life, I've come to realise that friendships are often a two-way relationship. It takes equal effort on both parties two make a relationship work. Sometimes, I have lost friends because I realised that it was me making all the effort, and although it always upsets me losing a friend, I have never regretted it. I always try and have people in my life who enrich it, and who want me in their life. 

Others, I've just lost contact as we've both gone away to university, or they've moved country, but I know that if I were to call them up, it would be as if we haven't not spoken at all and we'd yabber on as if no time has passed whatsoever. My best friend and I from sixth form are a bit like this. I can text her the day before and say "can I stay with you tomorrow night?" and it's fine. We text each other the most stupidest things, even if we haven't spoken in weeks, and I can't wait until she comes and visits me in May! 

Weirdly enough, the people I am closest to are the people I don't seem to see every day. I best friend, Cariad, lived in Surrey with me. When I moved to Wales, we pretty much lost contact apart from Christmas and birthday cards and such, until one Christmas. She sent a card when we were 11 with her msn address, so naturally I went and added her straight away. Since then we've spoken non stop and I can tell her everything and anything, and I know I'll have her support no matter what, and I'd do anything for her too. But we also both know that if I had stayed in Surrey, we highly doubt that we'd be as good friends now. 

Walking around College, I see my friends (old and new) and I wonder if those that I fell out with will ever see past what happened (see the Boy Troubles pat below) and I wonder if I'll still talk to my friends in 20 years time. My best friend in College, I don't know what I'd do without her. She's the one person here that will tell me the truth, even if I don't want to hear it. I really do hope that I stay in contact with everyone from College. 

I look at all the people who've been in my life, and it know that I wouldn't be the person I am now if even one of those people hadn't been there. I think of them sometimes and I wonder if they think of me. Each person has helped me become the person I am, and I am so very grateful to each and every one of them.