Category: Thoughts

Creative, that’s what I am, Creative that’s always my plan. From as long as I can remember, I have been very creative. I have been full of a vivid imagination that would often get me in trouble as a child when I am caught looking out the window & looking as though I am not paying attention. My teacher would then ask me to tell her what she just said & I would recite it perfectly clearly showing I was listening but daydreaming at the same time.

I’ve always loved drawing, from when I was a young child I would sit in appointments drawing fireworks. I was a quiet child & for some reason, drawing fireworks at every single appointment comforted me. My psychologist then linked this to my feelings & said that it signified the way I was feeling which I guess was probably true.

I remember in the second year of high school, we were given a drawing task where we had to fill up a picture using small dots. Most the students made massive dots & didn’t really care. However, I spent hours on this till it was just perfect & even got praised for my effort when I handed in my homework!

Roll on to either third or fourth year of high school & this sees me joining a regular art group of which I have now been attending ever since! I enjoy getting to make all sorts of art from prints to canvas bags to clay work.

It doesn’t just stop there. Throughout school, I got involved in the radio station based right outside my school. From there, I discovered a love & passion for creating content on radio. I have never been comfortable trying to put myself in front of a camera, but I can most certainly put myself behind a microphone!

This has followed to me then going to college followed by the University. I have since organised a journalism competition which allowed me to work with companies such as The Daily Record, The Scottish Sun & the National Union of Journalists. Through this, I was able to put my creative skills to the test when designing promotional material & other resources for the competition!

I run a regular radio show, I write this blog & have applied my creative skills to all aspects of my life. I am also an event steward for a security company now. I am a creative person through & through & couldn’t just settle for a boring administration job where I didn’t get to use my skills!

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Credit: Picture was taken by Project Ability (my art group) of a piece of work I made which featured in an exhibition.

Create

Now, this is probably going to be a once in a lifetime blog post. I don’t tend to ever post about politics & I don’t even have an interest in politics. I only know the bare minimum about politics, enough to know that it will affect me in some way. The way I voted is reflective of the only party I believe in, SNP: Scottish National Party.

Now, this isn’t a blog post to argue about the right & wrong of each party. This blog post is also not intending to cause argument, simply just state my opinion.

We live in a harsh world, but I was hoping that I would wake up to the positive news: that the Conservatives hadn’t won. I got fed up watching the election, so went to my bed early to wake up to the devastating news. Not only that, I suddenly realised the lengths the Conservatives would go to stay in power.

Now, I honestly think Conservatives were the wrong choice: there seems to be something for everyone from every walks of life which this party are doing against the people of the UK. Yet, there were still people who voted for them.

DUP – a party those not in Ireland will know little about, but here’s just a few eye-openers on the situation. The way I look at this situation: this is a party which are discriminatory against people with disabilities as well as gay rights, a party in which Theresa May is happy to get into bed with just to keep her position in power. There are a lot of things they just don’t tell us as they know we wouldn’t like them & that’s the sad truth.

This honestly makes me question: what type of government are we supporting if we allowed this to continue? It’s like some people in the UK want to make themselves suffer.

Conservatives you ask? The conservatives who paid Microsoft money to continue to run patches for Windows XP just so their computers didn’t need to be upgraded? In reality, it would have been cheaper in the long run. The conservatives who want to take away free school meals for our countries children? The conservatives who while under Margaret Thatcher took away free milk for the UK’s children?

The conservatives who changed junior doctor contracts to impose longer working hours on them? The same party who introduced Snooper’s Charter which allowed them to hack your iPhone, laptop and other personal technological equipment without your knowledge?

Not forgetting, the plans to get rid of maintenance grants for university students, therefore holding back many students & even forcing them into not going to university. They also significantly cut disability benefits which would take 200,000 people off the disability registers. In 2015, the conservatives committed electoral fraud by unlawfully breaching election spending.

Under a Tory government, British workers have received an increasing amount of fall in wage value. Since 2010, the Tories have been constantly taking money out of the NHS budget, therefore, causing many hospitals & hospital services to close. Then NHS recruitment process is also declining under the conservatives as well as disabled people suffering massively under the Tories.

Since 2010, child poverty has risen by 400,000 children which are set to increase with even more child welfare cuts under a Tory government. If Tory plans continue, the poorer you are, the harsher the cuts will be. Those with children will be hit even harder than this.

Not to mention, housing will become more unaffordable, more expensive rail services, schools will become even more underfunded & lifetimes of unpayable debt for students when they graduate. Fire services are also seeing massive cuts, therefore putting us at risk of even more house fire deaths. Having known people who survived house fires, this disgusts me. Nearly forgetting the policing cuts putting us in even more danger of crime.

Our government could also say bye bye to our basic human rights if this drama continues. Are you forgetting that bedroom tax that families can’t even afford? Are you forgetting they are getting rid of housing benefit for 18-21-year-olds? School funding cuts? The benefit cuts for the sick who are unable to work?

Another one that makes me beyond angry: Rape victims now have to PROVE their ordeal? Yes, you heard me right. Really? This is the party some of us voted for OUR government time & time again! They are being forced to provide an 8-page form with references & evidence otherwise they are being told they are lying about the rape? This makes me beyond outraged!

Apparently, £450,000 thousand pound homes are affordable for us all, you heard me right. They have also got rid of inheritance tax for the rich & plan laws which make hospitals check for passports then charge up-front if not eligible for free NHS.

They have also drastically reduced the number of mental health beds available in a crisis. I know for a fact that if I hadn’t been admitted to hospital & got the help I desperately needed that I most likely would not be alive today. Therefore, this is putting people’s lives at risk.

After all this, I am completely shocked that people would still want to vote for this party. I didn’t know all this information before this blog post, but it wasn’t difficult to find.

Before you vote in the next election, PLEASE do your research. Do you research about all the party’s before you make a decision as what you are being told directly by the parties isn’t always the honest truth & in recent years they have certainly gone back to a lot of things which were promised!

This blog post was never intended to start an argument, the aim was to hopefully enlighten some people’s opinions on politics & the conservative party & to make people think more about who & what they are voting in favour of.

Any negative comments will be removed & not allowed on my blog.

I did plan to have today’s blog post up at the start of the week but due to having no internet at home I’ve only just uploaded it. Therefore, as a special treat I am now uploading a second blog post for today! The daily prompt is Lifestyle so today I will be revealing an insight into my student lifestyle most days.

Morning: 

What morning? Students don’t get up till at least 12pm and even that’s pushing it. Unless I have something important I need to be rushing to, I will most likely wake up between 1pm-4pm. This is the reason why I ended up either late to a lot of university classes or not turning up. If it got to 15 minutes past the hour the class was supposed to start then I most likely wouldn’t turn up. I am often seen making most of my appointments/etc for the afternoon so I can have a lie in.

Afternoon:

When I finally make it out of my bed I am more often that not watching Netflix, playing online games or some other fun activity. I often leave all those uni assignments until last minute. I tend to waste away most the day doing nothing. Oh to be a student.

Evening:

If I have an assignment due the following day this is when I start it, or in other words finish it. I stay up the whole night in order to finish the assignment then submit it right before the due time.

If I don’t have an assignment, I get my dinner and then end up yet again watching Netflix, or blogging or doing something fun while leaving those emails I need to reply to until last minute like everything else. Perhaps this isn’t healthy.

This was meant just as a fun “I do nothing” piece. I suppose I am slightly more productive in reality. Depends on the day really. Like last Tuesday night I had an important meeting for three hours. Just depends on the day.

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I planned to have a blog post up since Tuesday but I’ve had no internet since Tuesday. The last time the internet went down was when Cheryl released limited edition signed copies of her last album which of course was all sold out by the time the internet was back up. This time? I was expecting an email to give me the details about the VIP upgrades for Emma Blackery. The email was getting sent out on Tuesday, and the VIP upgrades were going on sale the next day. As a result, I ended up getting a bus into university at 5.30am on Wednesday just to check my emails in case the VIP upgrade went on sale really early. LUCKILY, I managed to get my VIP upgrade by using my friends internet when it went on sale at 5pm on Wednesday BUT I could of missed out and I did everything I could to make sure this wasn’t an option.

I bet you can sense my frustration! This got me thinking how much we actually do rely on the internet after all. You don’t realise how important having internet is in your life until moments like these. Also on Tuesday, I was late to an important meeting for my new volunteering job and since it’s new I didn’t have anyone’s phone numbers. Therefore, the only option was…you guessed it: the Facebook group we were all in. Luckily, my bus had free wifi so that I could connect, let them know I was going to be late and ask which room it was being held in. A classic example of internet reliance.

Further, I could have missed out on a meet and greet with Emma Blackery because BT internet was and still is down. To continue my bad luck, I was supposed to be helping a friend with her college graded unit on Wednesday. She needs to interview people on a specific topic and I said I’d help. I have no call time, texts or internet on my phone currently so I couldn’t phone my friend to confirm the details therefore I had no idea what time I would be meeting her. Also, in order to top up my phone, I either need to go to the shop and get a voucher or I need to connect to wifi in order to do it from my phone. Do you understand my dilemma? It was nearly 9.30pm at night on Tuesday and I had just finished my dinner after a productive meeting so was not intending to leave the house again that night. It is moments like these I get envious of overnight buses in London, whereas here I need to wait till about 4/5am to get a bus. If I’d have gotten the bus back into university, I would have most likely missed the last bus home again. Damn you public transport in Scotland!

I also had plenty of emails I needed to be responding to which I was going to do but had to put on hold. I also needed to log my hours for my volunteer job and communicate with the team over Facebook not to mention communicate with countless other people all over the internet. I had also hoped to blog and update social media for my blog which is another thing I was unable to do.

Also, what do you do for entertainment when your internet is down? Stare at walls? No seriously, you take so much for granted when you have working internet and you forget that previous generations had to go about life without internet and without cell phones.

Normally at that time of night after I’d done all my work/communicating/what I need to do I would either be playing games over the internet, watching Youtube, blogging or watching Netflix. There are countless other forms of entertainment I also do, but these are normally all over the internet. I had written this blog post on a word document and aimed to post it on Wednesday. This was also delayed because of the internet being down. As I upload this blog post, I am in university using their internet. BT are supposed to be fixing my internet this afternoon and here’s hoping they do.

I also listen to most my music on spotify so therefore ended up hunting out all my CD’s of which I haven’t used for a long time due to the use of spotify.

Thanks BT internet, you’re a star.

Sincerely,

A frustrated media student/Emma Blackery fan.

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I have never been a strong lover of Perfume. Throughout my childhood and growing up I was always a tomboy. In my teenage years, my grandparents got into a habit of buying me a really nasty smelling perfume every Christmas for years on end. I, of course, pretended to like it as I didn’t want to upset them. It would then go into the back of the wardrobe to be forgotten about never to be seen again.

I don’t know if them buying me the perfumes was a last ditch attempt at trying to get me to act more girly but it didn’t work. It wasn’t until my later teenage years when I began to like girly things all of my own accord. I was never going to be persuaded to act a certain way by anyone, family or not.

Perhaps it was the awful perfume from my grandparents that put me off perfume for life but even today I don’t tend to use perfume. However, I do make the rare exception when it comes to Kylie Minogue and Cheryl.

If you don’t know, I am a MASSIVE fan of both Kylie and Cheryl. My aunt gave me two Kylie perfumes when I was younger that I didn’t use, but once I actually became a fan of her I began to use them and liked the scents.

The same can be said about Cheryl when she released each of her three perfumes I, of course, had to buy them. I even donated £100 to her charity as part of a competition once to get a signed bottle of her perfume. It may seem mad but I have a strong support for my role models/idols/inspirations and firmly believed in what she was doing with her charity. That and the fact I loved the scents.

Apart from this, I have never really been a perfume person, I just see it as a waste of money if I am brutally honest. I will continue to use my Kylie and Cheryl perfumes and will probably re-purchase when I run out. However, I won’t pursue the interest in buying other perfumes as I am a student without much money and don’t think it is something I can justify spending my money on.

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Picture credit: Cheryl promotional material for her perfume range

My heart is almost enclosed within a blanket protecting it from the dangers of the world. The more living and growing I do and the more I learn, the stronger that blanket becomes.

In other words, the blanket around my heart is like a restrictive barrier you can’t see that stops you from getting too close to me and stops me from letting you into my heart.

It’s the way I have learned from experience when you give too much of yourself, to begin with, there is a high likelihood of that reflecting back and hurting you instead of helping you.

You don’t know someone’s personality the second you meet them, you may think you do but you don’t. It may feel as if you have known that person a lifetime when the reality is you haven’t.

I know from experience that there have been times I have felt a strong emotional connection and understanding with someone right from the moment I have met them. As a result, I’ve jumped in the heart over head and given them everything, every little piece of me just handed to them on a plate. This is the case for friends, relationships, the whole lot.

As a result, those people gave everything to from day one have turned out to not be the person I thought they were, have let me down or worse, seriously hurt me mentally. There are even times where I have taken a long time to trust someone than when I’ve eventually trusted them they’ve changed and let me down or hurt me.

Nowadays, I keep that blanket around my heart for a lot longer until I am 100% sure I can trust that person. I have discovered from experience that personally it seems to hurt more when it’s someone I have given everything to from the start who has hurt me. I guess that’s because right from the start I have perceived them as someone they were not and then there’s the shock and hurt when I realise they are not the person I thought they were.

At least if someone hurts me who I took a long time to trust, I know within me that they were the person I perceived them as and they either made a mistake or changed as a person and I guess that is easier to accept. So in life, I will keep that blanket protecting me from pain until I know I can trust you. Cause I can’t keep opening me heart up, again and again, to be broken. At least this way, it hurts less, at least this way I have the chance to find those that mean what they say and are who they say they are. At least this way I can find the ones that are true and keep them close instead of letting the fakes in only to hurt me. It’s a happier life this way.

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Blanket

Roots. Roots to me are more than just the grassy, muddy variety of roots. The grassy muddy kind of roots is quite frankly boring unless you are a gardener. Quite frankly, I doubt anyone would want to even read this blog post if those were the type of roots I was writing about!

Fear not, my life hasn’t suddenly become that black and white……YET.

Today I will be talking about two different type of roots. 1) Family/Friends roots and 2) Career roots.

Family and friends roots are the deeper type of roots, the type of roots which inspired the title for this blog post in regards to today’s Daily Prompt: Roots.

Family and friends I feel are really the people that shape us and help to define us as people. They are the ones who pull us up when we’ve fallen down and always have our backs when something goes wrong. I know that today, I would most likely not even be alive if it wasn’t for those I am blessed to call my friends, my real friends, my true friends.

I’m sure I can say that for most people they always have that one person who puts on the front of being a friend when in actual fact they have never been there for you and you have still to realise this. Unfortunately, enemies can be hidden in disguise as the people you think will stand by you when things go to shit, I should know.

I’ve had plenty of those people who promise they will always be there and then the second I actually need them, they are nowhere to be found. I think that is a learning curve though, those people have made me stronger. Even though it may hurt like fuck at the time, those people have taught me how to see through people’s bullshit. Occasionally someone will slip through, someone will abuse my good nature, win my support and then desert me but that is becoming rarer and rarer the more I grow and the more I experience.

Family and friends are rooted within our hearts, within our souls and help us develop and grow and we wouldn’t be the people we are without them. You may find me constantly moaning about my family as I don’t get on with most of my family but despite this, I know that they will be there when I need it most and for that I am grateful. We need to hang onto those that matter for as long as possible because we don’t know what tomorrow will bring and we don’t want our last words with someone we care about to be an argument.

Now onto the other type of roots: career roots. Within the media industry especially, it isn’t always about what you know but rather who you know. Another thing is, word of mouth goes a long way into getting your foot in the door within the media industry.

I feel that once you establish that initial introduction with a company you wish to work with in the future that is you beginning your roots. That is you planting the seed for progression and potential experience or a job. Once you are working for that company, that is your stepping stone to move onto the next thing: think bigger. You need to do a lot of rooting within various companies as well as networking from the beginning in order to succeed, grow and develop. As long as you have the motivation, the drive and a strong passion you can succeed.

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Today I thought I would write a blog post on my thoughts on grammar. Quite simply: I HATE it. Grammar is the worst thing I have ever tried to do. I remember when I first noticed that I had an issue with grammar: when it got to my higher English at the high school and I failed every close reading test apart from the main exam.

Roll on when it came to yearbook profile writing time – yeah I struggled with my grammar then also. I remember once I finished my profile, I ran it by two teachers before submitting it because I wanted to make sure everything was okay. These two teachers proceeded to correct all my grammar on my profile to the point there were that many corrections, it was no longer technically a profile written by myself. To top that off the woman in charge decided mine was too long, edited and changed it all herself and expected it to be okay instead of asking me to change it. So it wasn’t really my profile in the end. I even couldn’t decide which picture I wanted to be put in the yearbook out of the professional ones taken that year so I told my teacher the few I liked and made her choose the best one. Anyway, I digress. Now, what was I talking about? Just kidding!

It’s no secret that I struggle with grammar. I even started to struggle with it in college. You wouldn’t expect to be tested on grammar in a media and communications course. I do have the most basic grasp of grammar but anything more than basic goes out the window with me!

Next, you won’t be surprised that in the first year of my HND media, I had a class where there were three outcomes which all tested us on grammar which I failed. I failed ALL three of the major outcome about two times. Normally when you fail an assessment, your lecturer gives you tips/extra support in order to help you improve the next time. Not this time. Instead, my lecturer just said “read the notes again” – these were the notes I didn’t understand in any way – so not much help. If it wasn’t for another few lecturers, I might not have gotten into my university course because of something so stupid.

When I went into my second year of my HND I found out that grammar would be tested on in our journalism class. I then spoke to my lecturer and informed her that I had always been bad at grammar and was worried this would bring my marks down significantly. The lovely person that she is said she wouldn’t be too strict on my grammar.

You may already know I am a GCU media student, but what you don’t know is that journalism is the MAIN sector within media that I would NEVER like to pursue. I think this is a lasting opinion and can’t see myself changing my mind on this later in life – I may be surprised though!

There are a few reasons for this (not in order): 1) I know from research that a lot of journalists actually can loose their job if they don’t get a story by the end of the same day it was set. 2) If you haven’t guessed yet, I not only hate grammar but I am really bad at grammar. 3) I wouldn’t want to be pressured into being one of those “gossip” papers that spout crap about celebrities.

I have friends who are journalists that write news articles and I totally respect them for this but I don’t feel it is something I could do. Yesterday I discovered an online grammar checker/corrector that you add to your browser as an extension which will then identify and let you correct your grammar anywhere on the web. This is called Grammarly. They have both a website and an app available as a chrome extension, windows app and for Microsoft office.

I would highly recommend installing this extension on chrome if you use chrome or the windows or Microsoft extensions ESPECIALLY if you are like me and struggle with grammar. Despite only discovering the chrome extension yesterday, it has already become a godsend to me and helps me keep my grammar on top form. You can look forward to better grammar in my blogs from now on!

If you wonder why someone who is bad at grammar writes a blog and wants to write her own book, I can’t exactly answer you on this! I just love to write despite the awful grammar, I suppose it may be because writing allows me to vent out my feelings and get things off my chest.

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