Lifescouts: Mona Lisa and Eiffel Tower

As it turns out, I am not very good at posting these every day. My apologies.

French was compulsory at my school for everyone up to GCSE level, which we had to take a year early. I'll just let that sink in. Incredibly, I was one of the lucky ones who, for my GCSE year, had the kindest, most creative teacher possible, who succeeded in actually teaching French about 90% of the time. Unfortunately my French education had been abysmal up to that point so it was difficult for the language to stick, and I can now be sure that I know only a handful of basic phrases. So despite the A Miss Humphries managed to scrape for me from hours of speaking and writing practice together, I am not going to take the liberty of claiming the French-speaking badge.

There are other France-related badges I have achieved, however. The French exchange was in Year 9, I believe, though the photographs of me at that age would lead you to believe it took place in Primary School. I was fortunate to be joined up with a completely sane female exchange partner, who had adorable younger siblings. The same could not be said for my best friend on that trip, but it meant that our partners took us everywhere together. While, in hindsight, they probably did not enjoy the experience, it meant that we had a much more relaxing and enjoyable time.

We spent a whole day in Paris, visiting the compulsory landmarks of Le Louvre and the Tour D'Eiffel. Although I hope to do so again at some point, as I doubt my 13 year old self appreciated them as much as they deserved. The Mona Lisa especially felt merely like I was ticking something off rather than appreciating artistic talent. The Eiffel Tower was much more impressive to younger me. I'd climbed it before and felt like a seasoned tourist, admiring the view of Paris and the long, long way down.

For now, the badges are earned and I'm sure I will visit the sites again in my life.

So I claim the Mona Lisa badge and the Eiffel Tower badge.




Bisous,
Abby

Lifescouts: Driving Badge

I wasn't as quick off the mark as many of my peers at the driving game. As a young one, born in July, many people in my year were already brandishing pink licenses by the time I even turned 17, and I couldn't summon a whole lot of enthusiasm for the enterprise when I already had 1 best friend who could drive, and 2 others not far behind.

Nevertheless, by the time late January rolled around I decided to follow the crowd and booked my first driving lesson with one of the friend's instructors.

It did not go well.

The start was fine. You know, breaks, gears, clutch etc. But when I was taken down a road with a limit of 60 mph when I hadn't even practised 5th gear yet, and was only comfortable going 30 mph, I realised this might not be the teacher for me. Apparently some people respond well to this method of teaching; thrown in the deep end, you soon learn to swim. I sank, and was considering slamming my foot down on the accelerator, throwing us into a ditch and ending any chance I had of learning to drive then and there.

Luckily, there are many driving instructors in my area, and I soon found another. She was willing to go at my baby pace, starting off in the shallows with the armbands. I passed my test about 7 months later, with multiple A-levels and holidays in the middle.

My driving experience was yet more proof, as if I needed it, of how I can't get along with everyone. Times like this will crop up again and again, until I learn to accept that I am just too different from some people to get along with them.

With that, I claim the Driving Badge:



Incidentally, one week after passing my driving test I went to university, where I had to drive in (by myself!) for the first few weeks. Turns out sometimes I can deal with the deep end.

Yours, speedily,
Abby

Lifescouts: Sunrise badge

Can we all pretend that I remembered to post this yesterday? Thank you, thanks.

There is a reason that Mount Fuji, Tokyo, is always drawn with clouds surrounding it, like this:



And that is because it is rare to see Fujisan on a completely clear day. (Of course a google search will provide you with every exception).

When I visited Japan in the Autumn of 2008 my class and I travelled on a pirate ship (no jokes) around a lake, to get a good view of the impressive mountain. On an average day viewing Mount Fuji, the snow-cap is obscured by clouds, making it look terribly ethereal and mysterious. Which makes sense, given that that's where the gods live.

A little more unusual was the sight which greeted those lucky enough to be awake on the flight back to London after a week and a half in Japan.

I will never forget the sight of the tip of Mount Fuji poking through the clouds beneath us, while the sunrise drenched the scene in a painfully bright golden-orange glow.

And so I claim the Sunrise badge.



There are other occasions I have seen the sun-rise too, but that was by far the most impressive, and the one I am least likely to forget.

Yours, reminiscently,
Abby

Lifescouts: Nerimon

I've mentioned before about my addiction to Youtube, and it is still going strong. Although currently subscribed to 91 channels, I most definitely have my favourites, with content I will never miss. One of these favourites is Alex Day, aka nerimon, house-mate to charlieissocoollike, and straight-talker extraordinaire. Despite their closeness geographically, in my opinion the nature of their videos couldn't be further away from each other. Charlie is often described as 'cute' and 'likeable' and although I'm sure these words are not oft used to describe Alex, he has no trouble gaining followers either (who call themselves the Nermie Army).

The charm of Alex is that he won't pussy-foot around a topic. He just turns a camera on, and talks to it about whatever is on his mind. If his audience is being stupid about something, he has no qualms in telling them so:

He never owns more than four T-shirts and two pairs of trousers at a time, because he said fairly recently that that's all he needs, and he likes to appreciate what he has. These items of clothing are usually faintly outlandish, and it should be becoming clearer why I am an admirer of his...

However, he's not one of these people who takes advantage of the internet and free speech just to spout whatever he's thinking and create controversy. He also creates things which he really cares about. Oftentimes  don't need real words this is his music. His fame has come solely from his Youtube channel, which means he has broken records by entering the charts on three occasions. His highest reaching single was 'Forever Yours' which got to No. 4 in the UK top 40, and has an accompanying music video featuring himself and Charlie.

But, and I am arriving at my point here, music is not all that Alex creates. He has recently launched 'Lifescouts', an online version of scouts badges, but with more relevance to the real world. He's chosen topics that might not usually come up in conversation, so that people can share new stories with each other, even if you think you know someone quite well.

I think this is a wonderful idea, not least because the internet has taught me that quieter people often have the best stories to tell, and they are more likely to share them online.

A new badge goes live every day, and it's been running for 21 days already! I'd like to share my badges and their stories with my readers, so I'm going to start posting those I have earned, hopefully on a daily basis so that I can catch up.

Check in with me tomorrow, to read the first of my stories.

Yours, adventurously,
Abby

Pride

Just a little thought:

When you put hours of work into something, whether it's an essay, or an entire iPod's worth of tunes, or a cake; anything quantifiable that can be judged by another. When you've put as much thought and effort into it as you possess, and you really think you've done a good job. The emotion when you get that piece of work back, and the person marking it put nowhere near as much effort into looking at it as your attempt deserved, or someone scrolls through your music ("You still listen to them?) or someone disagrees with your cake-decorating style.

Your righteous anger when you've worked truly hard at something, and it's just not appreciated as it should be.

I wish that's how people could be when any platform, be it a television programme or an advert or an acquaintance, makes you feel bad about how you look.

'Hey, Big Shot, I've created this body with 19 year's worth of thoughts and experiences, of course you won't think it's perfect, because you have an entirely different idea of perfection to me.

But it's too late. I've put all this effort in and now I'm not going back. This is what I think is right, and I've got the evidence to prove it. I'm alive, aren't I?

Just because we have a difference of opinion over this, it doesn't mean either of us is wrong. But you should know that you can't change my view by looking down on me.

We make up a diverse and interesting world, and we need a world's population's worth of thoughts to make it as rich as it can be.'

Our appearance and our actions, all going in to create the delicious assortment of humans there are.

Stay positive, and stay yourselves.

Yours, proudly,
Abby

How to Procrastinate

Exams coming up, am I right? No? Ah, must just be a 3,000 word essay, no big thing. Not that either? Damn, you lucky thing. But you know what I mean. When you have something to do, something quite important, which what's more will undeniably improve your life by completing it, and you just can't do it.

Well, I am here to aid that process.

No, really. In my view you should treat procrastination like a teenager determined to be a rebel. The more you make it clear that the teenager can drink in moderation in it or it's friend's house, or can have sex as long as it's safe, the less the teenager will do it just to defy you. In the same way, give in to your procrastination, and soon it'll stop pestering you.

So, procrastination tips. Here we go...

1. Keep trying. Be honest with yourself, have you written the title of your essay/centre of the first spider diagram and grown bored? Don't give up straight away, or that teenager will just drink itself to death. Give it a bit of discipline. Try and keep going for a bit longer, please.
2. Realise that you're no longer productive. You're straying again and again onto Youtube/twitter/tumblr/facebook and just not concentrating. I advise you to stop trying. Give in to the whiny brat. Recognise that it is break-time.
3. Have a break. TIME IT. Make it count. Go outside; grab something to eat (You deserve it - you've written a whole title after all); interact (properly, I mean like face-to-face) with someone. Take your mind off your work.
4. Find an outlet. I find that when all hope is lost, running will rekindle it. I'm yawning, I'm losing all faith in the subject I study, I don't think the high I get from the production is worth the work that has to go into these lines. When running, you don't have to look good, your legs will be moving too fast for anyone to see if they're shaved or not (probably...), and it's real me time. Alone with my thoughts, a stitch in my side, determined not to stop no matter the cost. A better motivator to realise that doing my work IS worth it in the end, I have not found.

So, you return, refreshed and ready and raring to go. Rrrr. The procrastination is over for now. Take tea, remind yourself of the world outside the bubble of hell you're inhabiting. Concentrate.

To get the most out of your procrastination time, it is best if you break up sessions by doing some work in between each one. I have tips for those, too! So prepared.

1. When you get back to your laptop, CLOSE THOSE TABS. Yes, even that one, which you NEVER close. Do it, you'll thank me later.
2. Try to get back to work. Time yourself again, work for an hour, and then you can go back to procrastinating! Safe in the knowledge that you have done at least one hour of productive work today.

There we have it. Abigail's Adventures. Promoting healthy procrastination since 2012. I wish you all the very best with the new hobbies you will invent, the hours you will spend social networking, and the miles you will run.

Yours, distractedly,

Abby

Selfish

There are but a couple of things in life that get me really, and truly angry. One of those is when people stand too close to the luggage carousel in the airport. I mean, come on. It's not gonna make your bags arrive any faster and if you just stand a foot away, we can all see!

Selfishness, is the other. We all have to live together in one world, don't we? It might be lovely if we could all just care about the things that concern us. My life would be so much easier if my actions only affected me. Unfortunately however, they don't. Pretty much everything I do will have a knock-on effect on someone else, and a lot of the time it's difficult to tell if it's going to be negative or positive:

"Should I break up with him now, or let him carry on thinking we're right for each other?"

"This top is similar to the one Jess has, do you think she'll be flattered or will she think I'm copying her?"

"Do I tell her that her bag's ridden her skirt up and I can see her knickers?"

But every so often comes a situation where it seems so painfully obvious what the right, or wrong thing to do is, that I can't believe something different to that has happened.

If you're moving out of a house soon and the rest of your housemates will still be there, how would you leave it? Would you get the bathroom filthy and throw a party in the living room for your housemates to clean up?

If someone has cleaned your entire house from top to bottom, what would you do? Very carefully tramp mud into every single stair so that same person would have to scrub them clean?

I can't help feeling that life would be so much easier if we all gave and took in the same amounts. The problem is that it's quite difficult to point out when someone's being so painfully selfish.

Oh well, it was one of my New Year's Resolutions to stick around people who actually care about my feelings, I guess this is just encouragement to stick to that.

Resolving to stay the same

I don't think I like resolutions made in January. Yes, it's a new calendar year, but what in your life is actually changing? For me, not a great deal. If you recall, I made my resolutions at the end of August for the new Academic year which lay ahead of me. I've completed all of them, too. When you're about to start something new, like a job or hobby, or when you're changing situation, such as house or partner or country, I think then is a good time to make changes. You are aware that you're not going to be able to continue the way you lived before, so changes have to be made. When your life is going to continue on exactly as it did in 2012, for what reason are you going to change? Where is the motivation going to come from, if you don't already have it?

I don't like setting myself up to fail, and to me it seems that trying to start a hundred things at a random point in your journey through something (in this case, my second year in university), is just that. It's cold, wet and miserable, it's a time of relaxation, so you're going to be fighting against the break your body and mind needs, and you probably don't have enough time to set up a new habit before your life continues after the holidays.

However, my goal here is not actually to crush people's hopes and dreams. Being a holiday, you're probably going to have more time on your hands, and as a seemingly big change is about to occur, that of the changing of the year, it is a natural time to reflect. So when you're thinking about the ways in which you'd like to change your life, make it a bit easier for yourself. Keep your resolutions:

• Achievable and realistic
• Quantifiable If you can't measure your success, you're more likely to become frustrated and give in
• Few Trying to make one new habit or change one thing about yourself is much more likely to succeed than ten
• Within your best interests Chasing someone who's not worth you, caving into advertising or false perceptions of beauty etc seem to be common themes in New Year's Resolutions

Despite everything I've said, I do have ways in which I would like this year to go, and so, though I don't want to call them resolutions, these are the things I will continue to do, and possibly do more of or improve on:

1. Surround myself with people who make me feel good improve my life by being in it. I have some very valuable friends, but I need to learn that some people don't consider my feelings in the way that they - that everyone's - deserve to be considered. I do not need these people around.
2. Have adventures. They are fun.
3. Experiment with *stuff* outside my comfort zone. What a terrible word, but I wanted to leave it open. I want to do new things :)

That's enough! I don't want to complicate my already-busy existence with changes I don't need to make. I need to be safe, happy, and... No, that's it actually. If anything in my life is pulling either of those aspects down, and I can do something about it, it's gonna have to go.

Laci Green has a lot to say on the subject of body confidence, staying healthy (in ways you sometimes forget about) and accepting others. I think people's resolution should be to learn from her more :)

Laci's Tumblr

Laci's Youtube channel

Good luck with everything you wish to achieve.

Yours, happily,

Abby