Relationships: How To Make Yourself Miserable

1.  Analyze everything he/she says, because they obviously have an agenda.

2.  Tar all members of his/her sex with the same brush.  He/she is of that gender and therefore must be a liar/cheater/crazy bitch/emotionally needy person (circle as required).

3.  Refuse to trust a word he/she says, because someone with the same private parts (same kind - not exactly the same.  Too weird.  Penis twiiiins!!) hurt you this one time.

4.  Constantly worry about how you weigh up to their exes.  Sure, he/she is with you now - but they were with him/her before...so there must have been something they liked about them.  Something they had that you don't. 

5.  Spend every hour of every day wondering when he/she will figure out that you're not all you're cracked up to be and leave you when they realise how gross/dumb/ugly you are compared to the plethora of better people out there waiting for them.

6.  Your partner is being quiet/grumpy/distant: Blame yourself and rack your brains through the hundreds of things you might have done that made them this way.  Await your imminent dumping in between parroting "Are you okay?  Have I done something wrong?  Tell meee!!"

7.  Totally rely on the moods and affections of one person to act as the foundations of your already shaky self confidence.

8.  Don't do anything for yourself.  Only do what makes him/her happy.  Torture yourself if you feel you have failed in any way to do this.

9.  Forget to like yourself because you're too busy focusing on him/her.

10.  Forget that whatever happens between you two (great or horribly painful), you will eventually emerge from it okay.  Because, in the end, you have to be.

Ooh, Soots You, Sir!

Hee...working on some freelance-y bits now (because I've had some incredible luck lately that's lead me to a bit of content writing work to beef up the ole CV - NY resolution number one, tick!), and I'm loving that I get to do this for a living. The task I've got in front of me tonight? Research jokes about chimney sweeping!


Q: What did the big chimney say to the little chimney?
A: "You're too young to smoke!!"


lulz. Sometimes, I love working! You guys got any jokes of similar chimney based cheesiness? If so, do me a solid and leave it in my comments area for all to marvel and laugh at against their own good taste and willpower! Also, I can borrow *cough* steal *cough* them for my own professional gain.

Taa much, lovelies! xx

5 Things To Do... Whilst Dying Your Hair

One of my favourite things - of which there aren't a great deal, I admit, about dying my unkempt head-nest is that magical 30-45 minutes that you have to kill between apply and rinse. It's not long enough to properly get stuck into something, and you can't exactly go for a stroll looking like you're channelling a strong There's Something About Mary vibe, so it feels like a kind of time-vortex that you can spend as you please. During my last self-dye job (before the Spockbrow incident), I compiled this list of things to do whilst dying your hair. How very girly of me:

1. Plaster all of your hair flat to your head and imagine how you'd look bald (fit, I bet!). Crank up some tunes and dance, baldy, dance!! Some old faithful tracks from my playlist:

- LippsInc: Funky Town
- Wild Cherry: Play That Funky Music White Boy
- Blondie: Heart Of Glass
- Florence And The Machine: Kiss With A Fist
- Any Blink 182 song. There is no wrong Blink 182 song.

2. Plan to do some work, but instead end up on Youtube for half an hour. Here are some videos that should kill some time:

http://youtu.be/FYfZwDorJsw - Jenna Marbles: What Girls Do In The Bathroom

http://youtu.be/vl6azn-DzeE - My Drunk Kitchen: Ice Cream

http://youtu.be/MYC-waukYWo - Bad Lip Reading: More Twilight

http://youtu.be/PWXsTaBoD7A - Deap Valley: Gonna Make My Own Money (choon!)


3. This requires some prep before you apply the hair dye:

* Remove the contents of your home dye kit and store them somewhere hidden for later use. Put the box back in your bag/ satchel/ skin pouch (if you're a kangaroo/ have evolved skin pockets).

* Tell your housemate/ family/ live-in luuurve buddy that you bought this awesome hair removal stuff today, which is supposed to leave your legs, like sooo smooth for over a month etc. etc. )You can already see where I'm going with this one, can't you, Clever Clogs? Damn, you's smart!).

* Talk about some other stuff for a bit.

* Casually announce that you are off to the bathroom to dye your lustrous mane.

* Apply hair dye, and go back to the person you were talking to.

* Complain about your head itching and ask if they're cooking something, because you can smell burning.

* Pretend to distractedly root through your bag a bit, only to resurface puzzled with the empty dye box that you stashed earlier. Make confused eye contact. Wait for it to dawn on your victim that you have just caked your head in hair removal cream, and judge them based on their reaction.

4. Stand creepily in the window and stare unblinkingly at passers by. Offer the occasional po-faced wave.

5. Eat everything in sight as you think about how to best kill your time. Before you know it, you'll have a bad case of the cookie burps, but time will have flown!

I Come Bearing Gift....

Hello, Blogspot.

I have something for you. But first, I want to talk about me. Me, me, me! Bear with.

I am one of life's impossible stress-heads. Though I'm prone to bouts of childlike regression and silliness, I take pretty much everything I do WAY too seriously. Life-or-death seriously. I give too many fucks in most given situations, which has a super-fun side effect of sucking the joy out of everything I do.

I've been battling with my innate lazy creature all month, trying to get it to go to the gym, trying to get it to strive toward forging some sort of career in writing (anything, lord, help meeee!!). Trying to just make it try. I feel under immense pressure (by myself, of course. No one else would be mean enough to constantly berate me like this) to be better at everything I do.

My relationship with the gym is probably the easiest example to demonstrate this. I am not a natural fan of exercise. Once, at primary school, I even "accidentally" poked myself in the eye to get out of playing netball (I don't know either, but somehow it worked!). So, since I realised a couple of years back that I didn't want to be immobile and wheezy by my middle age, I decided I'd better keep up some kind of routine. Ever since, it's been a continual cycle of;

*lolloping around neighbourhood in trainers*

"Yeah!! I didn't die that time!! Soon, I'll be running like Flash if I keep running lots! Nothing can stop me this time!! I won't be anywhere near as bad as last time I took this up. I actually like it now! Hahahahaha!!

Ow. Stitch."



"Wow, I'm still REALLY fucking slow. Why aren't I good yet? How is that pensioner overtaking me??"



"I know, I just need a little break, take the pressure off. If I stop making such a big deal of this, I'll remember how to run for enjoyment...yeah...just a few days..."



"I'm such a fucking fatty! Why can't I stop eating?! I could go to the gym, but the idea just makes me want to eat more cake and cry...I'll go tomorrow. I'll go tomorrow."

*picks some old cheese flakes out of clothing and eats*



"I DON'T WANNA GO TO THE STUPID GYM!!!!"



"Hey remember I used to run a lot? That was fun. Might take it up again..."


See? I'm a fairly regular exerciser, but my bursts of activity come in an infinite loop of hope, optimism, disappointment, attempted self-bullshitting and then crushing self loathing. Not a fun trail to jog, skip then crawl, bleeding and weeping down. I've tried trying really hard(ish). I've tried not caring. And neither method has worked.

So, Blogspot. You've been patient so far, so I'll give you your present now. It's our new new life motto.



.....Half arsed is better than not arsed


(replace arse with ass if American).


Write it on your arms and face, tattoo it on your body, put it on post-it notes and stick them on your mum. This, my friends, is what a genius sounds like! We live in a world whose positive, sugary "you-can-do-it-follow-your-dreams" sentiments work for some, but not all. The idea of everyone always being their best person and trying REALLY hard and doing REALLY well at everything just terrifies me. If I fail at anything I give even the tiniest of shits about, I beat myself into such a pulp over it I'm that barely recognisable for a few days. Too much free time overwhelms me because I think I should constantly being doing something, anything, that will make me a better person at any given moment (i.e not a lazy, cake dribbling sloven). For this reason, I don't know how to relax. I'm incapable. And, to top it off, society tells me I have to be happy and fulfilled, or my life is worth nothing. After all, we could die tomorrow.

What is this horse shit?? Gunning after happier, better, fitter, wiser, prettier, richer, more sociable, more successful all at once just freezes me like a rabbit in the headlights. I care so much about having it all at once that I can't physically move. And I'm fairly confident that there are droves of equally stuck people out there too.

To you, my fellow rabbits, I say be happy being the sometimes-conversationalist who, instead of being the life and soul, interjects with the odd funny comment when they can. If you don't feel like you're making progress on the treadmills, just ponce about on the bikes for a bit. If you aren't a gourmet chef yet, eat a packet of cous cous with lumps of cheese for dinner. Hell, at least you had to boil the kettle to do it! Boiling is cooking, right?

What I'm saying is, don't berate yourself when sometimes you just want to do the bare minimum. Let yourself. I'm not saying don't give a shit. Just do enough to unstick yourself a little. Who knows, you might even end up actually excelling in and enjoying doing those things you avoided doing because they just seemed to immense when the pressure was on. And if you don't? Who gives a fuck? I'm not going to tell you off. I doubt your friends and loved ones will. You can't fail at life, because the only one making you feel so crappy about not hitting every single target is you, stupid.

Half-arsed is better than not arsed.

Amen.

Becky's Guide To Life: Employment Enjoyment

Part 1: How To Suck All Potential Fun Out Of Your Work Day

1. Look at the clock every twelve seconds and complain about how it seems to be moving backwards.

2. Think and talk incessantly about food from the second bum is planted on seat.

3. Over think everything you say to your colleagues. They obviously all think you're a massive tool.

4. Complain about being bored whilst staring wistfully into space. Pick at nails.

5. Sigh.

6. Bury every bit of criticism management give you in brain for use during future meltdowns and "oh fuck, I'm getting fired!!!" Crises.

7. Avoid conversation with colleagues where possible.

8. Look at the clock some more.

9. Decide you hate any and all customers before you speak with them.

10. Fantasise about other, better jobs you could be doing right now because you're, like, so under appreciated in this one....pick nails and look at clock.




Part 2: Holy Beeps, Bruce, This Is Fun!! AKA How To Enjoy Your Job (even if you're not a cake tester or super hero.... Yet)

1. Take full advantage of spinny chairs. Wheeeeee!!

2. Doodle whenever the opportunity arises.

3. Laugh along at all the brilliant, ridiculous things your peers tell you. Feel inwardly chuffed when they laugh with (*cough*at*cough*) you.

4. Get stuck the fuck in. Whatever you're doing. Enthusiasm = faster hours (not too much enthusiasm, though. I once smacked myself in the face with a phone before I could bellow any "hello"s down it).

5. Smile. But only if you feel like it.

6. Build something out of paperclips/stationary... E.g binder clip robot

7. Make effort to recall weird customers, and later regale others with tales of their screwiness for mid afternoon giggles. Unless you're a psychiatrist. Confidentiality and that...

8. If someone brings in cake, love them forever, eat the cake, and spend the following week reminding everyone how good the cake was, so that people feel obliged to bring in more cake.

.......CAAAAAKE!!!

9. Drink so much coffee that you leave the office in spirit and enter a new dimension where everything takes on a buzzy, cartoonish quality (when in reality, you're freaking your co workers out by giggling and shivering at them).

10. Realise that, despite the ghoulish mass moaning about the pay, the hours, the boredom etc etc, you probably never would have had the luck to meet any of the people you get to spend at least 8hours a day with, faffing,laughing and eating, five days a week if you hadn't worked there. And you know for a fact, that wherever your life takes you next, you know you'll remember the good WAY more than the bad, and part of you might even miss it a little.


Aww.


Retch.

2013: You Can Do Eet!!

Happy slightly-belated-because-I-was-hung-over-yesterday New Year!!!

If your New Year's Eve celebration was anything like mine, you spent it in a friend's house, talking way too loudly and enthusiastically in your loved ones' faces and waiting for the moment you were allowed to set the poppers off. The things that go "bang!", not the...y'know...poppers... It wasn't that kind of a party.

...Mine had a round of The Big Bang Theory board game in it, so it was better than yours. Obvs. Or sadder. Depends on which way you look at it. Whatever, my team won! Give me a big, posh "hooray!"

I have great, big, sexy feelings about 2013. Yesterday, I had nauseous, hungry and sleepy feelings, but a dangerous nap in the bath in the middle of the day (because I like to live dangerously) followed by an early bedtime has left me feeling pretty optimistic today!

One of my favourite things about the new year is making resolutions I almost never...no, wait, never keep. And up until now, (and I think that this is what most people do too) they have mostly been based around making myself a bit less shit. Here are some familiar ones that might overlap some, if not all fellow resolut...ers' (?!) January to-do lists:

* stop biting nails
* be less wobbly/rotund/jiggly/skinny-impaired than previous years
* get off arse and exercise til lady-beefcake style buff
* be less socially inept
* kill less often

Sound familiar? ... The last one was a joke, by the way.

*hastily nudges hatchet behind sofa with foot*

In recent months, I've had the odd epiphany that has brought me to my temporary sanity, and looking at these old, pretty pointless and ultimately stress inducing goals, I've realised that if I were to choose a resolution from such a list this year, I'll do what I always do. And this means sitting on the sofa, wailing and fretting about not achieving my new "goals" for a while, and then biting my nails, stuffing myself with chocolate and sleeping because it's February and I'm not Wonder Woman yet.

This year I'm doing something different. I have allowed myself two achievements that I want bragging rights to by 2014, and neither of them involve changing myself too drastically. And I know that failing to achieve them won't leave me sobbing in my jammies about what a lardy, lazy she-klutz I am. And this lack of pressure makes them feel much more achievable. By the end of the year, I want to:

*run at least a 10k race
* get paid for at least one piece of writing. Any writing.

Easy peasy! And to make me feel even better about this decision, the fates have handed me a bit of luck already! My manager overheard me talking about wanting to write anything at all for money, and instead of firing me on the spot, he's arranged for me to meet a freelancer friend for advice and lunch on Friday. I love advice! I love lunch!!

Mmm. Lunch.

But, seriously, handful of mostly anonymous readers... My soppy bit of advice (you listening, self?!), stop trying to change yourself and just get on with just doing stuff. Less worrying, more scurrying!

2013.... The Year of Doing!

*nods self importantly, gets up with purpose, heads to fridge*