Lyrics.

Weight loss and happiness gain.

I wonder how many times you look in the mirror and think you're gorgeous. Or skinny, or unique. If you wake up feeling beautiful and sexy. Feeling wanted and satisfied. Looking down at your fluffy socks with a smile and a sense of there's nobody else you'd rather be.

Maybe not to often, but somebody whom you know well or not so well have thought that you were exactly the person they'd love to be. Isn't that strange?

Not that somebody would think we're lovely but actually want to be us. Be 'that kind of girl'. If we all idealise each other, why can't we accept ourselves as brilliant or beautiful. I really don't understand why we dislike those who say they realise they're attractive and think those who are insecure (or say they are) are more real or friendly.

Who are who you are. You can maximise or minimise that. You can copy others, but will be a copy. If you continually listen to others and follow others you'll lose who you are and what makes you so.

I'm my own biggest critic and I see women all the time I think are stunning but I try to make myself the best I can be, which makes me happier than lusting after somebody I'll never be. You're a first-class version of yourself and no matter how you strive to be somebody else you'll always be a second rate version.

Recently I've been exercising a whole lot. With yoga, dance workouts and squash. With these things bizarrely I've been given opportunities. For friendship, unity, coaching, fitness. It's so exciting to know that doing something different impacts your life in different ways.

I'm very excited for the next couple of weeks.
I really hope you are too.

Letting Yourself Down.

I'm glad I didn't start the year writing a blog about how when the clockgoes blank on New Years Eve my whole world warped and became a great place to be, mostly because it's always a great place to be.

Sometimes in life you have you look at everybody around you and realise that they are there because you chose them to be there. Your friends, chosen. Your family, you chose to spend time with them/ live them. Your job, chosen. Your university tutors, chosen. If you're unhappy in life then it's a case of bad decision and not 'bad luck'.

Whilst there are some decisions which clash, we have to get over our little petty problems and look at the joy these things or these people bring us. If you can't stomach a day in your own life then there's nobody else to blame.

I think we let ourselves down more than we'd care to admit. Rather it's not doing well in school, or still not shifting that extra weight.

Lately I've been thinking about thinking and thinking about how to make it up to myself. And by that I mean by DOING things, and stop watching others doing them. Move out, get a different job, buy that dress and ask him out (or get rid of him).

Stop letting yourself down, and don't make that a resolution but a promise to yourself that you'll try to maintain in order to make yourself happier and healthier.

Controlling the change, and succumbing to the change.

I can feel severe change coming.
And I can't control it at all.

Old friends growing up together.

Less than 2 weeks ago I met a friend of mine that I've been friends with since I was about 7 or 8. We were talking generally about university life, approaching deadlines and nights out. The conversation lasted longer than I expected and we got into talking about the amount of mutual friends slightly older/younger than us who were pregnant - people we'd grown up with playing Kerby on the footpaths.

I love those friendships. The ones where you were never best friends, but always will stop and have a good conversation maturely and with no awkwardness.

Inevitably the conversation went back to the friends in our past friendship circle. One of which I had fallen out with when I was 13, one who I fell out with as soon as I met him and one whom I'd have online conversations with now and again. When I asked about the last one I mentionned I was told that my friend met up with her recently - and she was completely stuck in the past.

When I say stuck in the past - I mean that instead of asking about uni/work/what's new, she was asking 'Oh, have you seen ____'. People that I haven't seen since I was eleven running about the street eating mini pot noodles in an orange and blue full tracksuit. I couldn't believe that those people were still on her mind. She persisted asking about people and places you've left quite firmly in the past as if they were perfectly adequate questions to be asking.

Similarly, all around me are words of reunions and old bands getting back together. Nostalgia is great, but you can't spend all your present living in the past - even if it's in a good way. And yes meet up with old friends and reminise but try and keep it current or else they are always going to be old friends and not current friends.

Remember that instead of playing kerby with your sister you're hugging her after a bad break up. Instead of posting your friends handmade letters through thier doors you're sitting in the house you share talking about your career. You don't have to give up your past but try to transform it into something that will grow.

I'm grateful.

Here in Northern Ireland we don't have thankgiving and I woke up this morning feeling very grateful for a number of things. I just wanted to put this things down for when I'm wrongly in a bad mood or sulking.

• I'm grateful for my own personal financial situation.
• I'm grteful for my families financial situation.
• I'm grateful I have such amazing friends that will always have time for me and I'm grateful for all the laughs we always have.
• I'm grateful for God and church for always giving me solace and hope.
• I'm grateful to music, and to live gigs.
• I'm grateful for parents I can always talk to and can always run to.
• I'm grateful for my body.
• I'm grateful for all the experiences I've had in (and out) of relationships.
• I'm grateful for having a wondeful boyfriend to whom I can literally talk to about everything.
• I'm grateful for a best friend that erases the past best friends in a second.
• I'm grateful for all the places I can go with my friends.
• I'm grateful for my close relationships with my family.
• I'm grateful for video games, and video game banter.
• I'm grateful for literature, and the places it transports you.
• I'm grateful that I managed to move on.
• I'm grateful for photography, and all of the seasons.
• I'm grateful for new life.
• I'm grateful for every little thing that has ever made me happy.

Don't call it a comeback...

And that is you in front of me
And you are back for even more of exactly the same
Well, are you a masochist to love a modern leper
On her last leg.