You know the sort - white sand, turquoise waters, swaying palm trees and blue, blue skies. I'd never been anywhere like that before, always tried, but never been able to afford it at all. It became that mythical place I escaped to in my mind on a miserable, wet and stressful day in an English January (or July tbh), but not somewhere I thought to get to for a while.
Then I somehow found myself in the Whitsundays. Now I realise this is extremely ignorant of me, but I had no idea the North of Australia was so tropical. I was expecting red dust, not white sands! Tropical it is and extremely beautiful.
I took a day cruise out to Whitehaven beach, lay down on the soft sand, watched the crystal clear waves gently brushing up on the shore and thought, 'Check.' Granted it's not a glass bottomed 5* hut in the Maldives, but for this year and stage in my life, this'll do just fine. Better than fine. Perfect.
This has been one of those 'go on do it's' hanging around the back of my head for a while now. I felt like if I didn't do it now, I never would and it would always be a silly thing I wish I'd done when I was younger. Why such a big deal for so little a thing? Well, one, my lovely bf asked me not to and, two, I'm petrified of needles.
As far as 'one' goes, he's not seen it yet (yay for terrible Skype video quality!) but I hope once he realises it's very small and pretty he'll like it as much as I do. Also, it's my nose. As for 'two', I dithered and dithered until I woke up one day and just thought, 'Yes! Let's do it!' and got all excited. I was nervous, but once I'd set foot in the piercer's I only had to let events take their course and it was over before I'd even thought about it.
Any other nervous peeps out there, it barely hurt. Your eyes water, but it was honestly nothing. It didn't swell at all and it's healing nicely. Best of all, everytime I catch sight of it in the mirror I can't not smile. I flipping love it!
It's been about a month since my 29th and the big 3-0 is looming in my head. I don't want to go back to work and feel like I did when I was teaching - that my whole life was just about my job and everything I loved slid by the wayside.
I love lists and achieving things, so when I saw this idea doing the rounds I couldn't resist getting in on the action. I think it'll keep some focus on the old work-life balance. I may be being as over-ambitious as ever, but I'll give it my best shot!
1 - Run a half-marathon 2 - Visit a postcard perfect desert island
3 - Learn three more songs on my guitar
4 - Take the sleeper train to Edinburgh
5 - [to be revealed soon, shhhh....]
6 - Go to Secret Garden Party 2013
7 - Brush up on my German
8 - Cycle more often on my shiny new bike
9 - Replant the garden
10 - Take at least one Brazilian JuJitsu class a month
11 - Bake a three-layer cake that actually looks pretty
12 - Finish repainting the house
13 - Clear out my wardrobe of anything I don't love anymore.
14 - Revisit Lille with my Dad 15 - Get a mani-pedi
16 - Start using my Filofax 17 - Get my nose pierced
18 - Make a real home for my records and track down my top three 'must haves'
19 - Get a mini-skateboard and have fun falling off it
20 - Take a horse-riding lesson with my best friend
21 - Get my driving licence
22 - Take 'The Historian' world tour (even in installments)
23 - Finish that short story
24 - See a West End show
25 - Visit the London museums with my mum
26 - Make icecream/sorbet at home
27 - Go to Bath and bathe
28 - Clear my student overdraft
29 - Get a full health MOT
30 - Do yoga everyday for 21 days
If you decide to join the fun, leave a link in the comments. I'm curious what would be on your wish list!
I always wanted to be a runner, wanted to be one of the fit, healthy, strong women I saw jogging along the beach or triumphantly finishing the runs shown on TV. Alas, my short little legs and dodgy knees never got me past the first 2 weeks of any official program. For years I stopped and started, but never got to the point I could geniunely call myself a runner.
Until one day...
Now I run three to four times a week, even while travelling, have completed a couple of 5 and 10k's and am training for my first half marathon. For the longest time I had no idea what I'd done differently, but the tips below are the result of some quality self-reflection. Some are more, some less personal, all can be modified to apply to you. I'm not special. Anyone can do this, so go lace up your trainers!
Start small and slow, like really small and really slow. My first three month's runs never went above 2 miles, a great many were even 2km and were completed at little above a walk. PS. It's also ok to walk a bit when you need to.
The absolute biggest mistake everyone makes when they start is to bound out the door at a brisk pace and promptly die 100 metres down the road. You want this to be a pleasant experience, not utterly hateful, so push, but not to the brink of despair. It takes practice to find your personal line and it changes for me day to day. Just remember if you're slacking, the only person you're cheating is yourself.
Gradually up your distance by no more than 10% a week. I just added another block to my loop whenever the previous one started feeling too easy, but google maps or mapmyrun are great for plotting routes. It helps me judge my progress to stick at the same route for a little while. It's tres motivating to realise the hill that killed you first time around is now barely a blip on your struggle radar.
When you do up your distance, drop your speed a little again. This is especially important for distance work. You can't expect to immediately run 6 miles at the same pace you were running 3. The first time I ran 8 miles I did not take heed of this and ended up limping into a local pub and begging the barman to call my boyfriend to come get me! A definite 'How Not To...'
Some people love the walk run programs around, the Couch To 5k is especially comprehensive, but I found checking my watch every minute stopped me from getting into the running zone. Try them out, though, they might be perfect for you.
Breathe (or you'll die) as my Pilates teacher says. This is the thing that took me the longest to get used to, because I hate feeling puffed out. You should not be sucking air and trying not to throw up. You're not on The Biggest Loser. Until you're doing threshold runs (and really everyone hates those, I swear), you should be running at a pace that allows you to carry on a conversation, albeit a slightly breathless one.
When I'm finding a run harder, or I can feel myself getting properly out of breath, I count my breaths in and out like you do in yoga. Three paces in, three paces out and so on, until I feel back in control.
Also be aware that the first 10 minutes of any run tend to feel the worst. Think of it as your body shifting up a gear. I tell myself if I don't feel better in ten minutes I can walk for a bit and then tend to forget as I warm up...
Get professionally fitted for the right shoes. Most good running shops offer this service. And when you find them, keep buying them. I will replace my Mizunos forever, because every other pair of trainers I've tried have left me limping (thanks dodgy knees). Plus, now I know what I need, I can get great deals on past season colours on t'internet.
Buy a tracker of some description or download an app for your phone. I've used the Nike+ Band for the last two years and just upgraded to the iPhone app. You can go much more detailed and pricey, but I think it's technical enough for beginners, has a great community, online challenges and a cool interface.
Whatever you use, make sure you look back over the data from time to time. It's so motivating to watch your distances climb and your pace fall.
Realise no one is looking at you unfavourably (or if they are, they're assholes and why would you listen to an asshole?) When I first started I would never make eye contact with the super-fit runners I crossed paths with, because I was so embarrassed by my puce face and wibbly thighs. Last week I ran by another girl who was clearly just starting out. I smiled at her, but she averted her eyes like I used to and I wanted to let her know I wasn't thinking, 'What a noob,' but 'Keep it up, girl!' Everyone remembers how hard it was to start. There's no need to feel self conscious.
Book a race, but make it a nice, friendly one. Running Bug has details of all the UK races and a wealth more info besides. There's nothing like getting a medal to feel like you're really a runner now and nothing like a race deadline to get you out the door when you don't feel like it, especially if there's sponsorship charity money hanging in the balance.
Listen to whatever keeps you going. This might not always be the same thing. For fast runs I need music with beats that help me keep my pace (180bpm is about a 7 minute mile). There are lots of free podcasts at varying bpms you can download.
However, on runs over 30 minutes I like podcasts or audiobooks. For medium runs I love the Jillian Michaels Podcast - it's funny and she's inspiring, plus, at 45 minutes, an episode is a run.
Runs over that time need a story! Audible is great for high quality recordings of major titles. Sometimes I get a little too into it. 'The Hunger Games ' definitely improved my pace fleeing from those trackerjackers!
Get the right kit. Girlies a sports bra is an essential. They are horribly expensive and need frequent replacement, but I picked up several Shock Absorbers on Ebay for less than a fiver just because they had a tiny bit of pigment damage. They're under my vest and I'm sweating on them, so it's hardly a dealbreaker.
Look outside the obvious sports brands. I HATE my Adidas leggings. They're uncomfortable, lack stretch and fall down when I'm running. You should find specialist running brands that really know what you need. Granted this isn't such a problem when you're doing 15 minutes, but when you get to an hour and 15 (and you will if you want to) every seam on your cotton tee can feel like sandpaper.
For summer weight clothing I love Salomon's trail kit and the best winter gear I've gotten is by NewLine, a Norwegian company, only sold online by Runner's Retreat. They're half the price of the big brands and twice as effective, I'm guessing because they have a lot more cold to deal with than we do!
If you stop, know that you can start again. Life will get in your way sometimes, but if you've started once, you know you can do it again. You may have to step it back down a few, or many, levels, but you can build it back up and a lot quicker than you did when you first began. A tough week or a busy month is not reason enough to throw in the towel. Just get back on the metaphorical horse as soon as you can.
What about all you other runners out there, any tips to share or techniques that work for you?
We've all been there. You have a essay due, a meeting to prepare for, even just an appointment to make. It could be a three week long task or a five minute phone call, but for some reason you're watching a repeat of E.R. and have a sudden, unprecedented urge to clean the bathroom.
This is not a peppy post of semi-chastisement over how much use-able time there is in a day or making lists will give you a sense of achievement. Those articles always seem to be written by people who have never experienced the frustration and self-hatred that waits at the end of a day you really didn't have the luxury of wasting. Also, there is a slight misnomer in the title. I remain unconvinced you can 'cure' procrastination, much like any heavily ingrained responses to stress, but you can learn to manage the symptoms, so it seems like you're cured.
I struggled with procrastination all throughout university, during my time teaching and only really begun to get on top of it during my Masters, so I speak from bitter experience. These are just some of the strategies that I have amassed over the years, the first and most helpful of which I created during a stress strategy session with my lovely friend Jamie. I can't say I'm 100% cured, but I can say I'm managing it well enough no-one who's met me in the last few years knows my little problem.
False starts and fake deadlines
Most applicable to essays and anyone who works from home, this is time planning 2.0. I found that normal timetables didn't work for me. I would make my little table, plot the deadline and work backwards planning what I needed to do each day to complete on time. Then pin it on my wall and proceed to spend day one and sometime two, three and four in my pyjamas, making cakes or on the PS3 suffering from stage fright. If by some miracle I got to work, I would never finish on time, but find myself sprinting to the faculty office at 5 minutes to 5pm with the ink on my essay barely dry.
Now I make a plan, but I pretend to start 2-3 days in advance of when I actually need to start and give myself a deadline another 3 days previous to the real deadline. I don't write that they are pretend on the plan, because they aren't really. They need to be real to act as buffer zones.
Now I know on that first day when I get up with the best of intentions that dissipate before midday, it's okay. Not great, but not cataclysmic. I still feel that sense of guilt and shame that annoyingly can be the only thing to motivate me sometimes, but I don't hit the panic spiral of doom.
The earlier deadline allows time to finish all the extra little bits that net you the highest marks and, more importantly, compensates for my perennially over ambitious planning.
I know it sounds a little crazy and you would think that my own knowledge of the falsity of the plan would make it not work, but trust me, it gives you all the kick up the ass of a tight timetable, with padded edges to keep you calm enough to work.
Talking to yourself and timers
Not in a properly mental, Gollum way, but taking stock of what's happening in your head when you just can't seem to start. Pay attention to your triggers. It took me a long time to notice how many times I would physically leave my desk when I was panicking about the work. It seemed entirely reasonable to check for the postman, make a cup of tea, call my nan. These were all things that needed doing, so it wasn't a problem, non? Except when I stopped and looked at my behaviour I was like a jack-in-the-box desperately trying to avoid the blinking cursor of anxiety.
Now I can catch myself before I lose a whole morning to trivialities. If I do find myself waiting for the kettle to boil I have a little chat with myself about what's scaring me, why I felt the need to physically remove myself from my workspace. Invariably it's that I felt overwhelmed or stuck for how to proceed. A better plan is to sit back down and look, really look, at your task, then find something small to do just to get over the hump. I like to make a list of my research articles and their main points to remind myself what my focus is, but it could be as simple as picking your sub-headings, or re-reading your brief.
This is where using a timer is really handy. I set mine for 45 minutes and don't allow myself to leave my desk for anything not directly related to the task until it pings. On a bad day, start with 20 minutes; it's less intimidating.
When your time's up have a break (15 minutes for 45, 5 for 20). If you're really struggling make sure you time your breaks, too, so they don't dribble into a half hour or worse.
Keep track of the pings, too. I tally each 45 minute segment of work on my whiteboard and have a target for the day, usually 5 or 6 strikes. It's good to have visual evidence of how much you've worked each day to build confidence that you can accomplish what's necessary.
Or any other net blocking programme. This one worked for me when I had to do internet research as part of an assignment. Usually I leave my laptop in another room when I'm working (from textbooks) or disable the wireless when I'm typing. Somehow the fact I would have to take a positive actual step towards wasting time stops me 9 times out of ten, but when I'm all hooked up and it's just a click away I can't resist the lure of the internets.
Cold Turkey is a free download that blocks all major timewasters (facebook, twitter, ebay) and allows you to add your own nemeses if need be (pinterest, blogger, amazon). You specify a time limit (works perfectly with the 45 minute segments) and it prevents the pages from loading. Any attempt to get around it results in a sarcastic rebuff and attempts to hack cause a week long block to be put in place. It was clearly written by someone who understands the procrastination mentality!
Lower the stakes
Don't try to write as though it's your final draft of perfection each time. Start small. Tell yourself, 'I'm just going to give it a go and see where I am now.' If you've planned well, you have time to redraft and hash out any teething issues later once the bulk of the work is done.
That sounds like one of the glib pieces of advice I referred to earlier, I think a lot of procrastination does come from a perfectionist outlook, so being kind enough to yourself to allow imperfection safe in the knowledge it's unnecessary at this stage, is pretty darn important to learn.
I like to write some of my first draft by hand and simply pick whatever section I feel comfortable tackling. It's true that the starting is the toughest challenge, once you've got something, anything, to go on, the rest flows easier.
So those are my tips, do you have any strategies for dealing with procrastination or writer's block?
Two weeks. Je-sus Christ. Two weeks. Excuse me while I hyperventilate...
Okay, deep breaths. Can you tell I'm freaking out a bit? I don't know what exactly happened. One day I was happily packing my back pack, the next I'm sitting on the floor, holding my new first aid kit and having a spontaneous crying jag. I'll hazard a guess that it had something to do with the serious telling off I received from the travel nurse that morning about not getting my jabs sooner and the lengthy session on the CDC website investigating Japanese Encephalitus, while my jab sites grew increasingly bruised. Mild hypochondria has escalated into a three day long anxiety attack about dying horribly thousands of miles from home and everyone I love.
Just casting my eyes over the news this month, America's full of gun toting maniacs, Bali's crawling with terrorists and a serial killer is beheading hikers in Nepal. Conversely, Wickford is free of all three of those dangers. I even got bitten by a mossie the other day and pleasantly did not have worry about malaria or brain mushing encephalitis. It's nice. Safe. Familiar.
When I went travelling at 18 I never even thought about this stuff. I worried that I didn't know how to do a weekly shop for myself, or that I would look stupid trying to buy a bus ticket. I got scared about leaving my parents for the first time and whether my flatmates would like me. I was volunteering at a hospital in Shanghai. Later I backpacked alone across to Bejing and Xi'an. It was the height of the SARS crisis, but not once do I remember thinking of my safety or worrying about getting sick. It was great being 18 and invincible.
At 28 I realise just how easily hurt we are. Shit happens, all the time. All. The. Time. And I'm scared. Scared of plane crashes and rabid dogs and getting shot and bears and drug smugglers tampering with my luggage. Scared of mosquitoes carrying any number of hideous diseases, terrorist bombs and something happening to my loved ones while I'm so far away. I've lived with my boyfriend (not a big enough word really - soulmate, love of my life etc etc) for five years. We've not spent more than a fortnight apart in all that time, so I'd be lying if I said leaving him for three months wasn't going to hurt like hell. Hurt like ripping my heart out through my stomach. I won't panic too much at him, or he'll come over all Edward Cullen about my leaving.
But I can't not go, if you'll forgive the grammatical error. I planned this trip precisely because I wanted to get away from nice, safe and familiar. I wanted to challenge myself, find out who I am now, when I take all the stabilisers away. I've changed a lot in the last 5 years and I can't think of a better way to cement my progress than leaving everything I know and hitting the road.
I know this will pass, just as I know I could get hit by a car tomorrow on a road I've walked a hundred times. What I'm trying to convey here is firstly that this fear is okay. It would be more worrying and surprising if I wasn't nervous. Sometimes in all the, 'Travel is amazing! Quit everything and go!' articles and blog posts, people forget to tell you that it's not 100% brilliant 100% of the time. So it is okay. I will endeavour to be kinder to myself. Secondly, I will use this anxiety as motivation to stay alert in crowded train stations, to get all of the vaccines, wear the insect repellent and research the major scams. I bought really comprehensive travel insurance. Like all aspects of anxiety, this travel fear will decrease when I take steps to regain control over whatever I can control.
Your fears shouldn't be allowed to dictate your actions. It's sensible to perhaps avoid travelling to Iran right now, or heading out unprepared into the Himalayas. It was foolish of my teenage self to travel alone to one of China's most dangerous cities. I'll be more careful now I'm a grown up (shhh!), but there's a difference between being smart and being chicken-shit. There's a difference between taking sane precautions against unnecessary risks and staying on my sofa forever. Perhaps sometimes the line is thinner than others, but it's still there.
Right, that's me talked down off the anxiety ledge. I'll finish now before I start quoting 'Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway'...
...It's what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless." Eddie, 'Empire Records'
A big part of learning to love my life again was music, specifically new music, at least new to me. Before I'd always deferred to my brother, or cooler friends when it came to discovering new things. Now I've learned to trust my own ears. There's a longer story for another day, but for now this will be a weekly post of the most interesting/exciting/beautiful thing to hit my ear drums in the preceding seven days.
This week it's Brother and Bones, a big, bluesy rawk 5-piece that blasted my hangover into submission at twothousandtreesfestival last weekend. 2000 Trees is a festival by music lovers, for music lovers and I always find several of what will become my favourite bands there every year, so it's high praise indeed to state that these guys came out top of my discovery list. They had two drummers. Two drummers! Love. Plus look at them; definitely not a hardship is it?
