Updates

For the last 5-6 weeks I have felt like I have lost my voice, and by that I mean my writing voice. It’s as if I woke up one morning and it had left without a note to tell me where it had gone or when it planned on returning and I have been finding the silence very frustrating. There have been so many things that I have wanted to talk about or reflect on but when I sit and look down at the blank page or the clear screen in front of me, nothing comes. I used excuses like being unwell (which I was) and my laptop needing to be repaired (which it was) as a kind of procrastination that I didn’t HAVE to write anything but really, if I wanted to or could, I would have. 

I believe my inability to write might stem from not allowing myself the freedom to think and have a voice. Every day, my world is filled with work or TV or the laptop or being online or my phone or even music in the car… it’s all noise buzzing around me and I never seem to allow myself the space to just think about things. Maybe I need to take up some form of meditation or yoga so that I actively allocate time to switching off. 

Anyway, last Saturday I had a well-needed catch up with my cousin Clare who mirrors my mind set a lot of the time when it comes to writing and life itself. We swore to each other that we would write something over the weekend yet for me, Monday came and went and I still hadn’t attempted to get anything out on paper. I actually attempted once but nothing. Then over the last 2 nights between the heat and a lot of other stuff on my mind, my sleep started to get really disruptive so I decided to just rant it all out on a piece of paper. I think that broke it for me…  I woke up this morning and thought ok I think I can write today. 

As the name of this blog so obviously indicates, I will attempt – without boring you - to update you all on a few little things which have been going on since I was last on here:

About 2 blogs ago I told you about how I was invited to get involved with a volunteer group, well since then I have been at my first group meeting and I’m delighted to say I think it went really well. Besides the fact that I nearly got lost on my way to it, I felt very welcomed and accepted when I arrived. I think that was very important as they are already an established group and I’m kind of a stranger just jumping in! I have another group meeting tonight which I’m really looking forward to.

With regards to my business, I have been a tad relaxed about getting that off the ground. All the paperwork that I was dealing with has been FINALLY sorted and I was able to secure my domain name which was very important to me but after that, I haven’t been able to give it any more attention. This is all connected to my writing blank of course because what I intend to do next was write up stuff for the business. Maybe now that I’m back on the horse things might progress here? At least we have started to do up the room which, in the interest of quenching a possible world war 3 in the house, has been named “The Meditation Room” instead of “Sarah’s Massage Room”. It has been cleared out and the plan is to paint it in the next 2 days.

At long last the garden has been properly planted and we now have colour growing in it! With all the construction the last while, the garden started to look very brown. 

In amongst these we have managed to find a purple rose, which I have never seen before… 

And of course the classic red

Some of you might recall how a good while ago I decided to grow some plants from seed? I set out a tray of about 40 little pots, some were herbs, some were plants, and some were flowers. Well here are 3 of my sunflowers that have survived :) 

I also have some herbs that are still with us but I might show those to you again in another blog sometime. 

And finally, I finished my wood turning class last week for the summer. As I had mentioned before I have a new hobby which I had fallen in love with and I’m really taken aback by how positive the whole experience was for me. When I started out I honestly thought it would be just a bit of fun that would double up as some quality time spent with the aul mammy but soon into the first few classes I realised that it actually meant an awful lot more. The 9 classes felt like an escape. Twice a week the four of us who took the class would trudge through the mulch, past the chickens and the allotments into our little cabin and as soon as we walked in we were all equal with a common goal of learning a skill for the pure enjoyment of learning. I forgot about everything outside in the world while I focused on the wood, the sound and the rhythm was almost meditative. It was just so peaceful but at the same time, we had such a laugh too. If we made a mistake, we learned to fix it and moved on. Even just writing about it now makes me miss it but the classes will start up again in September so I have something to look forward too. 

 

I took pictures of some of the things that I made; My first was the kitchen roll holder. This one here is made out of oak which was a hard wood so very different to work on. Everyone who starts off makes one of these as all the different areas you will learn are covered in making one. After that it is up to you what you want to make next. 

I decided that my second piece would be a bowl. I made this out of ash and I think this was my favourite piece to make; I loved getting the curve into it. It was also with the bowl that I started to do some wood burning which was so much fun! I really want to buy a burner so I can go mad around the house haha.

The final completed piece that I made was a… hmm container? Box? Anyway it is a hollowed out piece with a lid made out of spalted beech. Spalted beech is basically beech wood that has been left on the ground somewhere and almost forgotten about, it hasn’t been dried correctly or cared for so it starts to disintegrate in parts and change colours etc. That’s why the piece is all veiny and has a varied tone in colour :) I got to burn a design on to this one also.

Though I have mentioned it before, I do intend to now keep this up more regularly and as I appear to have my voice back a little, I really have no excuses haha. Thankfully I have a few ideas for my next 2 blogs so that will keep me going and I won’t leave it so long next time. 

"I have to get into a sort of zone. It has something to do with an inability to concentrate, which is the absolute bottom line of writing." Stephen Fry

xx

The Good Life

Apologies for being quiet as of late, I have had a rather hectic 2 weeks which was made even MORE hectic by the fact that I was unwell… I am, however, back to full health and I promise I will be writing more regularly as it does tend to keep me (somewhat) sane! 

Other things which have kept me sane and happy the last 2 weeks have been:

                                       Sitting out the back listening to music, candles lit and a fire 

                                                   Me and the dog went for a ramble in the park 

                                                                    Self-explanatory!

                                                             
                                                                    He was hilarious

                                    I haven’t had the chance to bake in a long long time, really enjoyed it

       
      I didn’t expect to stay up so late the other night and I was greeted with this glorious show before I went to sleep

                                                                    Mental little things

Yes it looks slightly phallic but I am actually really proud of my first finished piece! I have yet to decide what else I want to make… maybe a bowl? Or a little container… 

 “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”  Anne Frank

xx

Sunshine on a rainy day

I suppose the best way to stop complaining about being idle in life is to either stop complaining or stop being idle… well this week I put that theory to the test as it was probably one of the most productive weeks for me in such a long time. After airing my frustrations on here 7 days ago, I decided that I was going to fill up my “ok” life with fun and new experiences thus create a more colourful, interesting day to day world for myself. My aim was (and now is) to try enjoy at least some a part of each day. That sounds kinda odd when I read it back… at least some part… almost like I am settling instead of announcing that EVERY DAY WILL BE HENCEFORTH *POSITIVE* :D But let’s be realistic here, not every day will be a good day. If you’re like me then at least 4-5 times a week you might find yourself in a scenario where you just don’t want to be right there in that place, doing whatever it is that you are doing, at that very moment. You probably pause, take a breath and then continue on with that ugh gut feeling, questioning is this how my life is going to be…  Would it brighten your day just a little to think that after you go through the crappy whatever-it-is, you then have something positive to look forward to? In my head that was do-able. I can’t change every single day to be my dream life but I can change a few minutes or hours! 

Some of the things that I did this week may seem mundane or insignificant but I would argue that, firstly, with the attitude that I have had the last while I have often over looked the simplest of pleasures so consciously stopping to recognise them brightened up my day when they happened. Secondly, a lot of people assume that you have to go out of your way or spend a lot of money in order to enjoy yourself – that’s not true. Anyways, here are some of the things that I enjoyed:

I went to see Dark Shadows after work on Friday. Anyone who knows me will understand my love for Mr Depp and my fascination with Mr Burton… this movie for me was hilarious, quirky, unique, cheesey and so utterly camp but that made it even better! 

After about 4 months of holding out, I got my hair cut… only a trim mind you haha, I am still growing it but it needed a tidy so I felt like pampering myself. I really love when people work with my hair (brushing, massaging, playing with it etc.) so this for me was heaven.

With the parents off at a wedding, I spent the day with the pooch and when I say spent the day I mean I literally spent the entire day hanging out with him haha. We had lunch, we played on the floor for an hour with his toys, we explored out the back and we sat on the couch (shh he isn’t allowed up on it) cuddling while watching Britain’s got Talent…

After noticing that the movie The Proposal was about to start on tv, I whizzed up and got awesome popcorn from a certain local renting dvd store, snuggled up with pjs and wait for it… I turned off my phone and laptop. Now that for me is huge. I have gotten in the habit these days to watch movies/shows while browsing online, not giving either my full attention. It is like I have a need to always be in communication or available to communication with friends and family instead of taking time for myself to switch off. I enjoyed the movie 10 times more and I shall be doing it a lot in the future.

Sometime ago I was approached to do some volunteer work which due to other commitments, I couldn’t take part in. It however planted a seed in my mind about doing some work in the future and I loved the idea that I could interact with new people. I also felt a huge need to give something of myself purely to help others. Well my commitments have changed and thankfully I got a call the other day inviting me to volunteer 3-4 times a month with a youth group.

This next one occurred over about 2-3 days and I must admit is pretty huge for me; I decided that it was about time to join the IMTA seen as I am qualified – oh wait. I never got to talk about it! Yes about 2 weeks ago my results arrived in the post and I am now a fully qualified holistic massage therapist. Whoop! – anyways as I am now employable for that type of massage, I would need to get insured in order to take on any clients. The long story short - it is cheaper to do this in conjunction with the IMTA not to mention the benefits of belonging to an association etc. Having organised both of those, I started to brain storm what would I call my trading name should I go down that route in the future. I searched through loads of websites to see what I couldn’t use and after a lot of research I settled on something that I truly feel fits with the ethos I want to bring to my company. No I won’t be telling you what it is haha, you will just have to wait until I launch it! Of course having found a name I then wanted to make sure that no one would have taken the website for it. Thankfully no one had so I decided in case it gets snapped up, I will buy the domain. Unfortunately for me, the regulations have changed when it comes to buying .ie domains so I have a lot more paper work to sort out before I can say it is 100% mine BUT it has lead me to register my business name officially (haha can you see how this whole thing has just snowballed??) which I am chuffed about. The next step will be to sort out a graphic for the name and/or logo which I will then get trademarked. Needless to say, I have been buzzing with excitement from all of this!

Finally, today’s pot of gold at the end of the rainbow took its form in a new hobby that I have just discovered: Wood turning! My mam had been nattering on for some time about doing this course during the week days which I thought was a lovely idea, but had no real push to do it. That was until while at the Festival of Fires, I came across a few different examples of wood work. Some were carvings, some were turnings, some were demonstrations but all of them looked amazing so I agreed to go along with my mam for the craic. Tonight was our first night and wow I am in love with wood turning! It is a lot easier to do then you would think however to do it with any proficiency or grace you would need a lot of skill and patience. 

Here are a few quick pictures I sneakily took during the class:

This was the first practice piece that we did; the block started out like the one which you can see laying down. We then rounded it off and started to mess about seeing what shapes we could do ourselves.

We then moved onto a piece of Oak which we also rounded off and carved down into this. It took ages to get it even! Haha

 

Do you have any highlights which have lifted your day?

“A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst and it sparks extraordinary results”  Wade Boggs

xx

Grrrrr....

It appears I have turned into a see-saw; the moods of my blogs are rocking back and forth between positive and negative when I had set out thinking that they would try to be uplifting. Having said that I also said I would be honest and talk about things that people don’t tend to verbalise even though everyone may feel the same thing from time to time so I am trying to stay true to that. Right now I feel very frustrated with life. Due to uncontrollable circumstances, my projected goals which I wanted to reach this year have altered and I am left feeling in limbo for the next while. Maybe I should embrace it and come up with a new challenge in the meantime but right now all I can think about is how I am set back and things are slowing down for me yet again. 

Ya see as I was growing up, I have somehow consciously but not intentionally given myself a personal time line for how I feel I should live my life. I have always pictured that I would reach certain life goals by certain ages and that my life would be “established” by now. In doing this, I have fallen trap to this schedule and each time that I take stock and see that I’m nowhere near that, I feel like I am failing in life. It’s a ticking clock. Tick “your 24…” tick “your 25…” tick “your now 26…” Have any of you seen the episode in Friends called The One Where They All Turn 30? There is a part where Rachel is sitting at the table with all the others and she starts to talk about at what age she would like to get married and start having kids. She lists off timelines and as she counts backwards, she realises she has passed some of them? Haha that’s me.  

The part that I find the most frustrating is actually not the marriage/family situation, I know that will happen whenever it is meant to, it’s actually the job/living at home situation and the fact that I can’t seem to change that in the near future either. I vowed when I was 24 that I was going to move out… I’m now 26 and with the projected direction I’m heading in with my life, there is no way I can move out until at least this time next year which means I will be 27. That kills me. It actually hurts sometimes just thinking about it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I’m not welcome at home or anything of the sort, I just need to leave for my own sake. I want my own place and I want to be fully independent without having to run things past my parents. I see that as a natural thing when someone is an adult and the fact that I am still living at home makes me feel silly. I just can’t afford any other options at the moment so I have no choice. 

Then again, who said life had to be a certain way? Who said you had to move out, find the love of your life, be in the midst of your career, looking to start a family all by a certain age?! And yet that’s all I seem to think about. That I should be doing those things and that I’m not. I want those things, I’m ready for those things but life hasn’t ended up that way so I can’t have those things right now which makes me feel… inadequate. Especially because literally everyone around me seems to be ahead of me in some form or another. I’m not looking for sympathy or reassurance by the way, I’m just expressing that right now I feel like I have a very straight forward “ok” life while everyone around me is DOING things with theirs. 

I will have to find a way to be happy with my life where it is and try let go of my own pressure to be at a certain point in my life when I’m just not there yet… which is a hell of a lot easier said than done! 

“I was an accomplice in my own frustration.” Peter Shaffer

xx