Day 4 - Electric Date

Mike and I took a trip out on the sunny bank holiday Monday.

Mike likes to plan special things for us to do together, and I got to open another Christmas envelope on May 1st, which is always super exciting to see what he has planned. This month we had a Movie out and dinner. Sounds like a pretty regular date but it had a twist.

This time last year we met for the first time and had an amazing day in Birmingham. It's a very special memory for the both of us.
One of the fun things we did that day was watch a movie at the rather cool and quirky Electric Cinema just on the edge of the City Centre.
As a surprise (which I might have guessed with my awesome detective skills) we rocked up for a matinee showing of Far from the Madding Crowd in the same seats we sat in a year ago. (I know, very romantic!)
What's really great about this cinema is it's a really individual movie experience. They have an old school ticket booth with a window and tear off tickets that say "admit one", a concessions stall, with sweets, cakes, nibbles and booze if you are so inclined.
There are a couple of screens each with 50 or so seats, sofas for two in the back and comfy leather seats with big arms and foot rests at the front. Once you sit down you feel like you are at home in front of a big tv with loads of snacks and drinks, it also helps when the film is excellent and the person you're with is your favourite too.
For dinner we went back to the Miller & Carter restaurant, where last year we spent a long time chatting and had some real deep and meaningful conversations, right up until I had to catch the last train home at 10pm. On this date we had no time limits, had a wonderful meal, shared desserts and got to people watch and guess how many other couples were on first dates. A game I am very good at! Coming back to Birms with Mike was such a wonderful way to walk down memory lane and celebrate an awesome and life changing year together.

Day 3 - Luigi

I have an awesome, gorgeous, wonderful, talented, cheeky and ever surprising Godson.
He is 19 months old and the son of my oldest and best friend. I love him to bits.

Saturday night was my first time babysitting him on my own. EEEEEeeeek I was a bit scared.

I have to say I'm not a natural baby person. I have got better with some practice with other little people but just me and Luigi on our own? so many things could go wrong!
He has an adventurous streak and likes to climb on things that are high and have sharp edges or near glass and electronics. His main aim is to climb onto the arms of the sofa in order to launch himself off and land on the cushions and bounce up and down. He also likes to be picked up and dropped on the sofa by me many many many times over and over. Great game, good for the bingo wings!
He opens doors and is constantly attracted to buttons and switches, every plug socket and device in the house needs to be found and pushed or flicked on and off. He also adores stairs mostly running away and climbing up them. It sounds like a nightmare but we had so much fun and I really enjoyed spending so much one on one time with him.
He was absolutely fine when his mum and dad left for work for the evening. The tiniest bit of shyness crept in when he realised it was just me and him but once I started a game and got him giggling he was more than happy to jump around on the sofa, sit and pop balloons, read stories and sing songs as I attempted to get him to eat food, wipe his nose, put on his pjs and get him to bed.

I feel so grateful I get to spend time with this little person and to see him enjoy spending time with me too. Knowing he recognises me and feels safe and comfortable around me is such a special feeling.

He has such a personality. I can see traits from both his parents shining through but also unique things that are purely his own ways of doing things. I am so excited to see him grow up, I can't wait to be able to have conversations with him. Know what he is thinking. Hear the questions he will ask. Share days out and take him to see new things and teach him stuff too. But for right now I am more than happy to be able to pick him up, have big toddler cuddles and sloppy Luigi kisses.

Day 2 - Something unexpected happened

Sorry I'm late. I didn't manage to post - but I have reasons. One being the title of this post.

On Thursday I was having a late lunch at my current temp job, when the phone rang with a number I didn't recognise. Normally I would't answer, but for some fanciful reason I did.

It was for a new job. Long story short I went for a chat and an interview - thought maybe I hadn't done great as the interview was so short but not half an hour later before I had even got half way home the phone rang and the job was mine! Hurrah

What was really cool about it all was that I didn't even apply, an agency found my cv online, put my cv forward with a bunch of other applicants and I was successful, and I start tomorrow. I'm pretty excited. It seems like a great job, a little bit of a commute from Shrewsbury to Telford but I'm hoping it will be just the thing I have been waiting for the past few months.

That's why Thursday and Friday evenings I was unable to post as I was driving to and from an exciting new opportunity and the weekend will be explained in my other catch up posts.

I will get better at updating each day! I just know it!

Give it 100

Have a dream, idea, hare-brained or otherwise and not knowing how to get there but starting the journey anyway.

Here I go, writing a blog post every day for 100 days.

Why? I hear you ask… well I’ve decided to Give it 100.

“Give it 100 is a place for people who live life 100%!” so the website Giveit100.com says. "Choose what you want to get better at and share a 10 second video of your progress every day for 100 days straight."

Realistically I wanted something I could achieve every day and stick to for 100 days. Definitely not anything exercise related!!

I want to get better at writing, most of all I want to get better at motivating myself, committing to something and sticking with it. 100 days seems a lot but I think if I can do this then my motivation for other things can be improved on too (like exercise).

Writing on my blog always gives me a sense of fulfilment, clears my mind and gets all the random thoughts and emotions out onto the page.

I have so many potential post ideas, nowhere near a hundred, but that too is where the challenge lies, but getting through the list of ideas I’ve had saved on my iphone will be satisfying in itself.

I can guarantee they won’t all be long, I will hopefully get better at taking photos and including them on here too but I am determined to do my best to write 100 posts over the next 100 days, starting with today!!! Wish me luck :D

Dear Teenage self

I'm turning 30 this year. Which actually doesn't feel like a big deal because my state of mind and level of happiness is at an all time high. I am extremely content with myself and what I have achieved and I have also come to embrace the ways I am different to others and that I do the things that I want to do.
As a 16 year old, an awkward, shy teenager I don't think I could have imagined my life now and how I got to where I am, not in a million years. Not because it's crazily out there and different, I'm not an astronaut or a Nobel prize winner but the things that I have been able to challenge myself with and overcome would have scared the shit out of my teenage self. With that in mind here is a letter to that younger me.

Dear Max,
I know you will like the idea of this letter, a 'window of opportunity' if you will from a future self, even if you don't believe or listen to anything I write here, know that I have thought about you and what I want to say. You are, and always will be a little bit cynical and only believe things when you have absolute certainty. That's ok. If you can trust anyone in this world, you can trust me.

I am not going to tell you what happens and spoil the surprise and the decisions you get to make.
I just want to give a bit of encouragement and belief in yourself.

Firstly, friends. From high school, college and beyond. The friends you have now are not the be all and end all. You already know that you don't really fit into the group mold that they want you to fill so don't keep trying. You will make and keep the friends that are important and what makes them so is that they are there for you, as well as you being there for them. No judgement. You feel your true self and even through long absences and great distance your friendship remains. Not all your teenage friendship will make it here. It's ok, in fact you don't even miss them.

Love and stuff is incredibly scary. How do you tell someone you like them? How could they even like you?  Do they even know you exist? How do you know you love someone?Yes I clearly remember all these fears, they don't go away even when you get older.
It will take a while for you to figure it all out, so don't feel like you need to be doing it all now! You really really don't. Do things at your own pace and don't pretend otherwise. You will meet some very interesting and attractive people and they will all be good and bad for you in equal measure and make you so incredibly happy and sad at the same time. Don't worry. Don't be afraid to feel the feelings and to do it all anyway. You learn as much about yourself as you do about them.
Being with boys gets easier. You will have lots of friends of both sexes and you will have people you connect with in special ways. Love people with all your heart, don't be afraid to get it broken. Hugging will become a thing you do and kissing and all the other good stuff too, and someone special will come along and fix the broken heart and help you put it all back together.
I am here on the other side and I am telling you it is all worth doing.
I will tell you one secret. You will encounter one person who calls you Maxxy. This person is important. But you will know that anyway. Forget about it for a while and do what you have to do. It all comes good in the end. You can trust me on this one.

One thing I have learned over time is that you need to stop thinking so little of yourself. You are funny, smart, insightful, kind and loyal. Other people see these qualities and so much more. You are a beautiful person inside and out and sometime soon you will see this. Everyone has things they don't like about themselves and it can hold you back in a lot of ways and maybe I wish I could be more confident in this area now as well as then.

Keep being funny, ridiculous and silly and keep looking for new things to try and challenge you. Your creative side is something to be proud of. The more you try the braver you will become and more opportunities will arise for you to say Yes to. This is the most important thing. Be a Yes person. Be positive and you can literally do anything.
Exams won't matter. School and education won't matter, but do it because you want to, not because you feel you have to. It doesn't matter that you keep changing your mind about what you like and what you want to do. You will keep doing that, and I hope we keep doing that for a long time to come.
Most of all be happy. You have so much to look forward to and so many plans to make, people to have fun with and places to see and explore and its all coming your way very soon.
You will be awesome no matter what you do! lots of love,

Max

Self Belief

I do have 'Self Belief' as this post is titled - the definition I am loving the most is "trusting in your own abilities" I most certainly trust myself and know what I am good at, and even go out of my way to try new things and get better at stuff I think I suck at.
I know when I have a job I can do it. It's getting someone to the stage where they want to employ me, where they have read my CV and think "Yep, we must have Maxine come and work for us!"

I am applying for jobs right now and finding it very difficult to "sell myself" and know what my skills and strengths are. Being able to write in a way that makes people want to pay me money for using these skills!! Man, that is a job I am willing to pay someone to do.

In the past, people I have worked for have asked me back on several occasions, and this has happened more than once, so I can confidently say I have skills employers want and need. I am a irreplaceable member of any team, so why oh why can I not bring myself to sit down and write a CV that I can be proud to say yep that's me. Give me the job!?

I think the self believe starts to waver when rejection enters the room. I do not do well with failure, rejection or not being good at something. I would rather not try than fail or be rejected. But realistically I know I have to try, it just takes me a long time to get the courage to do it.

I know failure is an inevitable part of life. But I can't help it. I hate that negative overwhelming feeling of "I suck at life" that I always get when I do not succeed at a thing I want to do.

In a previous post I quotes "Doing something and getting it wrong is ten times more productive than doing nothing"

I know this. This is why I feel defeated and unproductive when I put things off and do nothing. I know applying to dozens of jobs and having interviews will get me a job eventually, but right now the process and the thought of not getting a job I want is really blocking my will to try.

However, today I think I have turned a corner because there is a job that has presented itself to me that I really want and have sat down and filled in the application consequently giving myself enough skills and motivation to use in an actual CV that sounds good, and hopefully will sound good to employers and this particular employer most of all.
 From now on, my self belief is going to flow through me at all times and when the time comes I will trust that my abilities will shine through and I will get the awesome job I want!

2015 - New Year's Resolutions

I don't often make or keep resolutions, but there are a few things now the New Year is here that I think would be a benefit to me and make 2015 a pretty memorable year.

1.  Write more - I really like writing. I used to keep a journal growing up and wrote in it nearly every single day, right through my teens and university and I think I stopped when I got to summer camp and my days were so busy I had less and less time to write things down, which was a shame because sometimes the brain needs a way to vent, and gather thoughts and de-compartmentalise things to help me figure out what is really going on. Over the last 2 years I have kept blogs to record the big life changing travel experience and I still enjoy reading my thoughts and feelings on them but when it's a blog on the internet, sometimes I do sensor myself and that is not always healthy. 2015 is here and I have a lot of plans and new life journey stuff going on and I think its time I got the notebook out again and had a handwritten thought filled journal. I'm going to try and write a page a day and make sure I write all things I have in my life that I am thankful for.

2. Get up earlier - I am a notorious sleeper in. My boyfriend Mike is an early riser and gets so much done with his days because he gets up early. Since he met me he does enjoy lie ins a lot more. But I am beginning to think once and a while it is ok, but not all the time. However, I know realistically, I am never going to be that person who gets up at 6 or 7am. No way Jose!! Of course when I have a full time job again it will most likely be the case where I have to get up early, so on days off and weekends I want to be up and at them by 9am.

3. Procrastinate less - Kind of a similar theme to the above. Even when I do get up it takes me forever to get anything done for myself. Since returning home for India I have taken a very relaxed approach to life. I needed this time to regroup and figure out what I was going to do. I have to admit I am still not 100% sure about the path I am on but I know that putting things off is also not going to get me anyway fast. Now it is the New Year I need to knuckle down and just do it. No facebook, youtube or afternoon naps to distract me!

4. Be nice - Sometimes I don't think I am the nicest, best version of me that I can be. I have a short fuse and a quick tongue that doesn't always engage with my brain. I often hurt people's feelings because of things that I have said or done and not really meant. I am going to make a full and conscious effort to stop, think and if I can't say anything nice than saying nothing is best. I am also going to be nicer to myself. I am my own worst critic and can be much harsher on myself than others would be.

5.  Be grateful - Simple enough. I want to appreciate what I have and not take it forgranted. Not be materialistic. Use my money wisely and for things that will bring me and others happiness and joy.