I just wanna sleep.

I have started full-time employment and during the day, nights and weekends all I wanna do is sleep and curl into a warm bed and close my eyes for long period of time.

I feel very much on auto-pilot.  I hope this gets easier!

I'm old enough now to pretend.

Activities in life.

Recently I have bought Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop distance for the 3DS.  AT first I absolutely loved it (major nostalgia goggles on) and felt very 13 and full of emotion.  The more the game continues  the less I am emotionally attached to it.  This may mean I am finally coming to terms that some things are still great even if you don't wanna cry over them because they are so beautiful.  A thought which had never previously occurred to me.

I have been offered what some people refer to as a 'proper' job in BT.  With a decent wage packet, I can now get a little closer to owning my own car, and living with my friends.  This thought does bring me a lot closer to my end of year goals... but it's really scary.  I am still getting paperwork done such as police checks etc.  References seem to be my main problem at the minute but I hope this will get sorted.

I was at the Ellie Goulding gig and the Great Gatsby ballet, both of which were lovely but honestly, a little disappointing.  I think maybe sometimes I just put my hopes a little too high.  The thing I have came to realise about ballets is that no two are ever the same!  My favourite so far remains to be A Streetcar named Desire even though I was never a big fan of the play.  The ballet left me completely speechless.  I love how dance can illustrate life, rape, sex and depression.  After having a few things lined up events wise I now find myself a lot broke and a little sad that I have no tickets waiting to be used so I will have to find something!

Brian and I FINALLY booked our Japan trip which is especially exciting.  This is probably my biggest thing to look forward to.  We leave on 6th June for London, then on 7th we leave for Narita Airport in Japan, stopping over in Amsterdam on the way.  We return on the 22nd of June.  I am so excited, I will have to post our Itinerary once we get it sorted.  SO far we are visiting the Pokemon centre, going to an onsen theme park and heading to a monkey place where you can feed the monkeys.  We also plan to get JR passes to travel around Japan for a week solid which means we are spending the first 4 and last 3 days in Tokyo.

In preparation for this I am coming down pretty hard on the Japanese revision so I can navigate around as well as speak the native language while we are there.  Step 2 of Japanese is actually proving a lot more interesting than Step One which was mostly just talking.  Learning Hiragana and Katana gives me a bit more of a grasp of the entire culture.  I love it, but it's so hard for me to learn the vocab as it's usually something very long with 8 syllables in it...'Oyasuminasai'

I am very much trying to be more positive, which is hard when you are also trying to lose weight!  I try to reward myself with things I cannot eat! Such as watch a programme I love, or have a big bubble bath but sometimes all I wanna do is eat nutella and icecream together in my boyfriend's boxers.

Speaking of best boys.  My bestfriend is staying with me this weekend.  He has never seen HBO's GIRLS, so we plan to watch the two series back to back.  Probably drinking wine and attaching one of our friends next to each of the characters.

Being sad, and being honest.

Recently I have been feeling very restricted.  I feel like I cannot burst out of the metaphorical cage I am in; even though I see everybody else out of theirs.  I feel like I trying to run with a rubber cable strapped around my shoulders and I just..., well I just can't.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am sad.  I do not mean that in a sad poetry way or even a sad song way.  I feel that what I do feel is something that can only be cured my moving on much further than I feel I can; physically or otherwise.

Probably the least liberating fact amongst all of this is that I have absolutely nothing that should make me feel justifiably unhappy.  It is something which plants, and swells and sometimes shows on the outside.  It makes you weak and it makes you forget the wonder and beauty around you.

Sometimes I get the feeling that letting the sadness grow is somewhat inevitable.  Starting to neglect what always stood top in your priorities becomes completely normal and almost acceptable.  For example; ignoring all text messages, not even *thinking* to answer a phone call and dreading hearing footsteps outside your room door just in case the door handle moves.

And the more I thought about all of this, the more I felt like crying.  You read back on what you have wrote - or what you have said to others and you want to run back and help yourself - stop yourself.  But of course of you couldn't do it in the first place, how on earth would you be able to advise yourself against it.

My thoughts are jumbled and practically everything hits me where it shouldn't.

Then you wake up some day, you laugh and you love and you feel loved in return.  You don't think about the sadness because you don't feel it, not even traces of it.

Which makes it particularly difficult when you once again run head-first into the wall of sadness.  In self-deprecating defeat you watch as the invisible world laughs at you for ever thinking you were okay.  Which makes the fall all the more worse.

And the cycle continues, as does life going out without you.

New Year, no new starts.

New Year often bring resolutions dictating that we will join gyms and eat grilled chicken salads for dinner.  About 97% of the public do not make it past the first week of the year without breaking this.  I don't agree with the 'New Year, new start' rubbish but I do believe in one thing - life goals.  When it comes to a perfect time I can think of no better than at the start of the year, gives you time to both plan and accomplish these goals.

I like to write mine down, and hopefully I will revisit these next year and be proud of the number of which I did achieve.

1. Travel out of NI at least twice - Once to Japan.
   
   This is something the last few years I have wanted to do and I really think this is the perfect time to do it.  I have started planning our Japan trip in 13th June, for just over 2 weeks and I am very excited (and nervous) about taking such a huge trip.  The other place I would like to visit this year possibly is France because I have never been and I want to see it so much.
2. Get a car.
3. Get a full time job I don't hate.
4. Finish Japanese Step 1 and Step 2.
5. Be more honest about my feelings.
6. Be more positive (even when things are hard)
7. Figure out where my career is going; masters/course/work experience etc, and put that plan into action.
8. Finish a novel. (Doesn't have to be edited)
9. Grow out my nail (properly including thumbnails!)

I would really like to revisit this in 2014 hopefully having achieved some of these thing or at least made steps towards most of them.

Thanks for reading.

The problem with books is...

I was walking with one of my best friends the other day and as he gave me a long speech about how ever since uni he has got into reading, I couldn't help think of how it had been the exact opposite for me.

Despite my favoured attitude these days being defeated and quiet I decided to actively try and do something about this.  Actively trying these days is difficult but Oh-so-necessary in order to both change your life and live it.

I guess another reason is because Perks was released in the cinema.  And although it wasn't great, it reminded me how it feels to read a book and feel like it's more a part of your world than some of the major things that are in it.

Love Always,
Janine.

Bitterness, and trying to make it to the other side.

You can't rely on the world to give or owe you anything.  Anything it has given you; smarts, looks, a wealthy family was all out of your own control.  I find when I get to a point in my life where everything I do seems to fail, I sit back and wait for the world to give me something.  Even though I don't know what that something is.

Recently a few things have happened to me - very minor things- which has made me feel very ungrateful for what I do have in my life.  However, as a consequence of this I feel like the more I try, the more I fail and the more I fail the more I refuse to try to change my life.  I get into the defeatist thoughts of "I know it will fail because of the following factors...'  To be honest I am pretty certain that all these thoughts are true.

I was with a friend who attempted to pick up my spirits by telling me of all these people he knew that have changed their lives.  They have done this by taking risks in order to go off and be doctors or stay true to their massive passions, creative or otherwise.  I sat and I listened and to be honest I didn't even want to say anything in return because I was so full of anger and bitterness.  Mostly because it must be such a lovely reality to be able to finish the following sentence; 'I have always wanted to be a ____'

Unfortunately we all don't have the ability to finish the end of that sentence.  I could have, at various points in my life finished it with nurse, podiatrist, writer, publisher/editor, but as you go through your life trying to achieve these,  the reality of getting into those positions fade away for various reasons.  Some within and some out of your control.  Without the focus of either what you want to or what you can achieve you seem a bit lost and a bit embarrassed when you get into the familiar situation of 'Well what would you LIKE to do?'

We are brought up being told we can do anything, be anything.  But we never think that just plainly isn't true. We can follow our dreams (if we have one) or we can go from job to job thinking it's pretty sh*t and everybody we seem to meet have these big ideals of when they become a musician/manager/CEO.  Obviously those people don't understand that the rest of us want a 9 - 5 job so we can have a car and a house and be able to go to Nandos with our best friends or go to Streamvale farm with our boyfriends.

I don't have a dream job any more.  I have hobbies which are unprofitable, I have friends and a boyfriend who are more successful than I am.  Maybe one day that will change - maybe it won't.  Throughout working/job hunting simultaneously I have realised that nothing gets you down like feeling you're wasting your life in a job you hate.  And nothing gets you down further than having people around waiting for you to have a massive epiphany about how your going to change the world by working in a certain profession.

Things look bleak, I know that.  Realistically they will probably get worse, and you will probably feel worse about them.

Statistically at one point or another, sooner or later - if you keep trying something has got to get better.  So if I can, I am going to try to stop feeling so guilty and angry that I have no idea what I want to do with my life.  If you are reading this and feel the same I hope there is some comfort in the fact that you are not alone.

I am now going to write a list about what I love about my life.
As I am sure I am currently overlooking it.