Resolutely wavering

Well. After perusing my bloggy stats I found that 43 people read my last post. Thanks! 

Although, of course, I don’t know if you were reading it and thinking “JESUS SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP” or “YOU CAN’T WRITE” or “THIS IS INCREDIBLY DULL”. But, as I've decided not to over-complicate things this year I will just take it on face value and conclude that this blog IS worth writing.

For the third time in my blogging history I will say the following… You don’t have to read any of this.

Okay. Onward.

This week we gained a new housemate. A lovely creature who goes by the name of Chris Mallett. I've observed his behavior and made some sketches. So far I have learned that he is a sociable beast with a passion for running and ironing shirts. His mating dance (aimed at best friend/housemate Rachel) consists of smiling and flashing brightly coloured feathers in her general direction. So far she seems quite impressed.

Our New Year’s Eve was good. We had a miniature pub crawl. Rach and Chris were not drinking so at one point I was propping up the bar in the Exeter Arms asking the barman about their many varieties of rum.

Me: “What’s Kraken?”

Bartender: “Rum”

Me: “Great. Can I try some?”

Bartender: “Yes”

I repeated this process until I was quite drunk (for free) and had a lovely night. At the end of the Eve Rachel, Chris and I stood upon a bench to watch the fireworks over Derby. I said to my friends: “Which one word would you like to describe 2013 once it’s over?” The response: “Better, badgers and romance.”

I was in bed by 12.30 but didn't really mind.

Also on 31/12/12 Rachel and I smoked our final cigarettes (to be entirely honest mine was smoked in the early hours of 1/1/13 but never mind all that.)

We've both purchased electronic cigarettes and on this, our third day of not smoking, have reached a kind of irritable delirium. Earlier, Rachel looked in my face, laughing wildly and said: “I hate my life hahahaha.” It’s actually quite a pleasant state of affairs. I feel incredibly cheery. Please note the lack of SHOUTING as seen in my last post.

I like being able to “smoke” in a variety of interesting places (bathroom, newsroom, cupboard) safe in the knowledge that it won’t kill me. A colleague told me I smell better (what on earth did I smell like before?) and I can concentrate for longer. But all this aside I do feel about 12% less cool.

Last night I booked tickets to Peru to see my beautiful and wondrous step-sister in April. I’m so excited. When I think about it my feet dance about completely of their own volition. I won’t write any more about this because it will just turn into a STRING OF CAPITAL LETTERS AGHHH IT’S GOING TO BE SO GREAT.

See? I’ll stop that now. But yay!

So 2013 so far has been most excellent. My other new year’s resolutions include:

• Do something slightly immoral every day (with a view to writing a novel about it later) this one is not going that well at all! I’m naturally quite a moral person so I struggle coming up with ideas.
• As I've mentioned before: don’t over-complicate things. I don’t think I’ll ever be good at this.
• Get fit/be thin. It’s the 3rd of January, give me a break.
• Read more… I've always been a bookworm but I want to level up to SUPER-BOOKWORM. So far I've read 0.25 books. What I’d really like to do is read all the unread books in my bookshelf. There’s about 30 of them and they make me feel guilty whenever I look at them. One of them is “The Oxford Companion to the Mind” which is only there to make me look cool. I won’t read this. I’ll never read it.  

So those resolutions are looking a little less successful but let us not forget number five.

• BLOG MORE – I’m doing it, I’m doing it. Leave me alone.     

The perils of being a single woman

DISCLAIMER: If you have met your soul mate on the internet – don’t read this.

So. Yes. The whole “weekly blog updates” were a ridiculous idea that I just couldn’t stick to. This will only be my third post in a whole year! But perhaps one of my many resolutions for 2013 will be to update it a little more regularly!

Other new year’s resolutions will include: be thin, don’t be a smoker and stop over-complicating things. In many ways I’m in a similar position to when I started this blog last year, but at the same time am living a totally different life.

I’m now a journalist (hence the shorter paragraphs!) and living with Rachel. Both of these things are quite excellent. The job is hard. I can’t deny that it’s been the biggest challenge of my life but, then, most days I leave the newsroom feeling happy, not every day of course… But there’s a lot to be said for having a job you enjoy. It makes up a large chunk of your life. Why waste your time doing something you hate?

Rachel is a great housemate. It’s lovely being able to talk girly things with her late into the night. We are counselor and confidante to each other.

But this blog has mainly been used as a platform for me to get things off my chest so here goes! I’m single again. Through a mere practicality. The other day Rachel convinced me to do online dating. I was very reluctant, especially because I don’t really want a boyfriend at the moment… I mean obviously I wouldn't turn Ryan Gosling down, but who would? Many straight men wouldn't.

So I signed on up to a site which I was told was quite ‘good’… not sure how you define a good dating website? Fewer perverts? A more handsome selection of menfolk? Anyway I did it. The worst part for me was filling out the ‘self-summary’ part. I know that a lot of people would struggle with this. I felt so egotistical (not that I was writing ‘OH I’M SO GREAT’) it was just awful.

Now, this is the part that annoyed me. Even BEFORE I had written A SINGLE THING about myself, what I did, my personality etc. Men started messaging me.

Now, I know that this is how these things work. You go on first impressions. But I was getting pretty full-on messages within minutes of setting up my profile.

In a day I got 26 messages. I should have been flattered but instead the feminist in me reared its head and said NO THIS IS NOT FOR ME. All the people on these sites do is look at your face and email you. They don’t even look to see if you have even the slightest things in common.

I don’t know exactly what it was that bothered me. But for one thing, I’m really polite, I didn't think I could ignore the messages of the men I wasn't interested in. But then I got stressed because I couldn't keep emailing all of them… then I would have been accused of stringing them along.

Also, there wasn't anyone that I thought was ‘for me’ anyway. The one or two pretty men were way out of my league and it was all just a bit stressful. So I deleted my account after less than 24 hours.

THE WORST PART though, came when one of the really full-on people GOOGLED ME AND FOUND ME ON TWITTER! Then sent me a tweet saying I was his “perfect match.”

NO. NO I AM NOT. BECAUSE I SAY SO. DOES MY OPINION OF YOU COUNT AT ALL? NO?

Excuse all the capitals here, as you can tell I was a bit pissed off about it.

Internet dating has worked wonders for many of my friends and family members. But it simply is not for me. I see it as a vast, horny, superficial cattle market. I don’t have the patience for it.

Also, as I said, I’m not dying to be in a relationship. I guess my motivation for joining was really so Rach and I could have a giggle about it.

BUT IT WASN’T FUNNY IT WAS JUST SAD.

I suppose I’m an old Romantic. I’m of the belief that love should happen organically. And yes, this attitude may leave me single for the rest of my days, but I’d rather that than be pounced on by 26 men I have no interest in.

A new sphere

I must apologise for the length of this post. It's been a long time! But I need to start keeping a more regular blog and I shall aim to do a weekly update from now on. So! I become a journalist tomorrow. Officially. They’re even giving me money to do it. That sounds obvious but I know so many journalism graduates out there working their hands to the bone (from doing so much shorthand) completely for free. My dad looked at me as if I were a loon when I was doing lots of work experience at the Derby Telegraph. “You’re working for free?! What is this madness?!” He would scream, face red and forehead vein pulsating with rage. And I would reply “Yes, for that’s just how it works in journalism.” But I think now I realise that it’s not the only industry where this is commonplace. To get that ever longed-for first graduate job you need the experience… but where do you get the experience if no-one will hire you? You work for nothing. There’s no other way.

Internships are so rare these days (especially in the newspaper industry) and when they do come around they’re often unpaid. I am so incredibly lucky to have a job, but if my local paper had been the Evening Standard there would have been no way I could have afforded to do any work ex there. I had some booked at the Manchester Evening News and they told me it would be beneficial if I had a car. I don’t really know how they expected me to be able to fund a car with zero income and a maxed-out overdraft.

But anyway, I need not worry about these things anymore. And this evening my mind is filled with quite a scrumptious nervy excitement about tomorrow. I have a little pile of things in the corner of my room (pictured pointlessly below!) which are intended for my new desk. They include a new multi-coloured diary, drawing pins which are shaped like bees, my Law and Public Affairs text books and a mug. The all-important office mug. Which shouldn’t be too garish but should show your personality to some extent I think. Some of the reporters have quirky mugs, some have mugs from places they’ve been and some have an ever-changing string of different mugs. Mine is a relatively retro flowery sort of mug. Not too large so I don’t overdose on caffeine on my first day.

It’s scary. You start off writing as a job and although you can write on quite a basic level you look at some of your features or attempted opinion columns and think ‘what the heck is this?’. I have great taste in books, I’m constantly reading something, and as a result you expect your writing to be excellent. But it’s not. It’s terrible. But as some dude once said, you have to just keep writing. Keep putting out stuff you’re not mega-proud of and hope that it eventually evolves into something good.

But saying all of that writing is quite a small part of being a reporter. The main bit (and the most exciting bit) is the finding of the stories. The best story I ever got (I judge this from the fact it was the front-page drop) was just someone who rang in about her daughter’s dog and Christmas presents having been stolen. The father of this girl was a Derby County player so ta-dah! Front page drop. But it was exciting! Because I was writing it under a very tight deadline. We had to sort out pictures for the story really late in the day and it was just fun. I feel very sorry for the poor sub-editor who had to go through my work though, as it probably read really badly. But anyway, I just hope that I’m a good journalist. I hope I can just absorb everything. I think I'm just paranoid because I've heard it said that good journalists aren't made, they're born, and I've been worried since I entered this world that I wasn't  'born' a journalist. I get paranoid about ridiculous things!

The main thing I’m worried about though, and this is a personal thing which has been said to me and followed me my entire life:

“You’re too nice” 

I hear it all the time. I think this is because I’m REALLY polite. I’m way too polite. I know that. I apologise if I even slightly bump into people and I am very over-thankful if someone makes me a cup of tea or lends me a pen. And just generally I’m very, very polite. That’s just something that has been imprinted on me from an early age. I can’t help it. I don’t think I can change it. But I can almost guarantee that it’ll make people think I won’t be a very good journalist and it’s bugging me to death!

I can hardly go into the newsroom tomorrow and charge around like the Incredible Hulk just to make a point. And there’s no reason people should think that just because I’m nice I’m also not driven and not motivated because that’s a load of balls. But I know people judge you automatically and potentially I’m going in to the Derby Telegraph tomorrow already being thought of as “too nice”. I hope not. And I hope I can prove that nice does not = being a wet blanket. Underneath this blonde, over-polite, vaguely hippyish exterior is a relatively thick-skinned woman with a longing to see her name on the front page (some day… soon I hope!)

But basically. Tomorrow my life changes completely. I go from being the eternal student to starting what I hope to be a very long, fruitful, enjoyable and fascinating career path. I know things can get very hard. I'm under no illusions that I know it all or that I'm not going to struggle at times but I just feel so lucky to be in the position I'm in. And luck or not I can honestly say, for once and without an overly-apologetic closing statement, I'm proud of myself. The end!

You won't like me when I'm angry...

I’m writing this mainly as a means of shameless procrastination so forgive me if I don’t actually say much, and I may well just rant and rant until the keys fly off my keyboard in a furious flurry of plastic. But we’ll see I suppose.

I’ve been feeling very, very gloomy recently. I’m not trying in vain to garner sympathy here, I know I won’t get any (see, see how cynical I have become of late) but this is my blog and I can moan if I bloody well want to. I think probably this is due to a whole cacophony of ‘stuff’. I’m trying to quit smoking, which is a good thing, a very good thing, but naturally it is making me want to kill anyone who happens to cough too loudly on my morning bus journey. Also I am dieting; 3 square meals a day after the toast-fest of undergraduate student life has made me porky. And I don’t like it. I’ll never be a waif, I know this, it pains me to admit it, but I may as well try.

So here I am, fagless, chocolateless and with an imperial fuck-ton of work to do. My answer to this sorry situation? Cleaning my bedroom. Reading things on Buzzfeed. Making cups of tea that I don’t even really want. Half-heartedly reading the news (because I have to be news savvy even when I don’t feel like being news-savvy) and looking through photographs that I’ve seen three million times. Will this actually achieve anything or make me feel better? No. But it’s better than trying to form some opinion on journalistic ethics (oxymoron anyone?) for my exam on Friday. So there. I’ve justified my blatant laziness. I’m feeling a huge sense of dysphoria alright? Leave me alone.

Also I know if any of the people on my course are reading this and are also procrastinating, it’ll make them feel better too. Which is a good thing.
Really, I could just write ‘MEH’ in big letters and be done with it, so I don’t bring people down with my sorry state. But I’m afraid that is not how I roll (and I do roll rather effectively thanks to post-uni podge)…

Not all that long ago, I was stood in a crowded mill-turned-music venue with Sam watching one of our favourite bands (Everything Everything) and dancing the night away. It’s just not fair. If only I could just run away and be a freelance writer now. I’d write irreverent but sassy articles about the state of the education system or human interest pieces about people with minor brain injuries that make them see other peoples’ faces as cat faces. And people would say ‘wow, d’ya know, I’d never have thought that an article about the daily life of a bus driver could be interesting but IT IS!’ and I would sit back in my big armchair and just throw all of my money into the air and laugh as it fell back down onto my rich, contented face.

Shut up Ella.

Until very recently I only had one pair of shoes. And my glasses have broken and I can’t even afford a new pair. Poor urchin child that I am.
But money isn’t everything right? No-one who goes into journalism does it for the money… Or at least I hope they don’t. Maybe some people do. They think they’ll just wander into the Guardian’s newsroom and Alan Rusbridger will say to them ‘Hey kid, I like you’re snazzy haircut and your vague air of arrogance, do you want my job?’.

Whenever I start writing these days I always go back to journalism. It truly is a love-hate relationship. I love it but I wish it would just piss off and leave me in peace when I’m knackered or feeling particularly gloomy. A prime example of this is shorthand. It’s a marvellous skill to have and our tutor Dora is potentially the best person ever, BUT, and there’s a massive but here. It has ruined my life. No longer can I have a conversation with another human being without trying to ‘write’ down everything they say in shorthand in my head. The same applies when I’m watching a film or listening to the radio, but most annoyingly this happens when I’m reading. Reading is the one thing that can truly absorb me. Everything else makes me impatient. But now, when I’m in the depths of a good book, all I can think about is BLOODY SHORTHAND. It’s actually driving me a tiny bit mad. Oh and also I dream in shorthand too. The endless joy.

Anyway, I’m off to perform more mundane tasks before drifting into an all-too-short sleep and waking up in a potentially even more despicable mood.
Sweet dreams everyone.

Newness

First off, may I apologise, more to myself than anyone else, that I haven’t written on my blog for a stupidly long time. However I have a superb excuse - my life has gone mad. Not scary mad, with spiders and laughing clowns, but joyous mad… with sunny, frosty days and new adventures.

Also I apologise if this post makes very little sense, there are simply too many things to say and I am exhausted, to my core, but that seems to be a constant at the moment. I’m writing now because, strangely I feel mildly more eloquent when I’m tired… however this may just be a trick my brain plays on me after 10pm where I think I’m saying interesting things, when actually all I am typing is “kjhoa aofuhpiv nvlakdimksf hahaha LOL!”

So, I’ve started my journalism post-graduate diploma. It is excellent. I am stressed and tired around 80 per cent of the time, but I love it. It’s exciting being ‘out there’ finding stories and finally being on a path that I know I should be on. I feel myself actually caring about my work and the opinions of my tutors- which is very new for me! I love meeting so many new people on a daily basis- it confirms the thing that my psychology degree taught me- all people are bizarre in their own little way, and it’s a wonderful thing. It’s especially wonderful when those people see themselves as being completely normal. You’re not, and it’s great.

Everyone on the course is really nice too, I was terrified that I’d be stuck in classes full of Pierce Morgans, but everyone is wonderfully normal and grounded… well, nearly everyone! We all have a hell of a lot to learn in a very short period, and there’s a feeling that we’re all in it together. I don’t know why I expect every journalist I meet to be horribly frank and straight-talking. I blame the media… Or at least, I blame ridiculous films about journalists.

Also I am no longer a love cynic. But I promised that I would never go on and on about those kinds of things, and I won’t. But at the moment I feel painfully cheerful all of the time. Disgusting isn’t it? I should know by now that good news doesn’t sell, but to be honest, I don’t care. I had many months of being a little bit bitter and twisted and despising jolly people. I think it’s a good thing that that’s all changed. All of a sudden. And Sam is teaching me how to sing. I sort of wish I could go and visit myself 3 months ago and say ‘relax, it’ll all be okay’.

Here is a list of things: Eingya, big wheel, monkeys, fireworks and sparklers, African drums, walking, delicatessens, breakfast, new environments, short hand, exchanging books, the piano, flash mobs and Minton tiles.

However one thing that’s annoying me is my ever-growing wisdom teeth. I’m pretty sure they’ve been growing for the past four years, yet still, they insist on squeezing their way through my already overcrowded gums, for no reason. It would be fine if they had a purpose, but I’ve managed 20 years with a normal set of teeth and have at no point thought ‘my I could really use four extra teeth right about now’. They’re not improving my chewing ability- in fact they’re a detriment to eating at the moment. And, if anything, I feel less wise now, due to the agonising pain, I really don’t have much capacity for deep thought. Not that that’s anything new.
My brother said this to me the other day when we were on a bus ‘do you think, when bus drivers get in their car at night to drive home, it feels really small?’ it did make me laugh.

Oh dear, and now I have that overbearing problem of worrying about my writing style. Now I’m training to be ‘a writer’ the quality should probably be better than this. However I have been reading a media law book all day and quite frankly I don’t care. This blog is solely for rambling and not for showing off my writing ability, or lack thereof.

Goodnight!

Lousy with flowers

My favourite book in the whole world is Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. It’s a book I could easily talk about for hours without tiring of it and it’s only a hundred or so pages long. I genuinely think I could fade away quite happily if I ever wrote something that discreetly stunning. I like to think that someday I’ll meet somebody else who has read it and I’ll probably end up dashing off into the sunset with them. But what am I talking about? That’s the kind of wonderful thing that can only happen in Cannery Row.

I’ve just finished reading the sequel of the aforementioned book (Sweet Thursday), and although it is simple and beautiful, just like the first, it lacked something. Which I guess proves that you can only capture a moment once, even a literary genius was obviously trying to catch fog when he was attempting to reconstruct everything that shone in the first book.

I love American literature. I used to have a bit of a vendetta against anything American when I was younger, in a way I still can’t quite come to terms with America as a civilisation. However there’s something so soulful about the writing that has emerged from that place and I find it irresistible. Steinbeck just says ‘even the most mundane of things can be extraordinarily beautiful, and I shall prove it’... And he does. But then there’s also that very American talent of being cold and hard-nosed and simply writing to make a point, but in a very classy/stylised way. That’s why I love Bret Easton-Ellis and Charles Bukowski (even though I’ve only ever read Post Office). There’s this wonderful irreverent cynicism that runs through their novels which I think is just as irresistible but in an entirely different way... you could probably call it catharsis.

The only thing is I’m hugely nostalgic for the past. I wish, more than anything I could jump back to a time of three-piece suits and pipe smoking and lemonade on the front porch. In a strange way I long for it. Life in this century is just far too confusing and busy and harsh. It almost makes me sad that I can never experience the 40s or the 70s as they really were. I’ve banned myself from looking through my dad’s old photos from the 70s, they’re gorgeous in all their aged-red-toned nostalgia. They make me envious. I was born in the wrong decade. I’ve even taken to lighting my cigarettes with matches because it makes me think I’m in a film from the 20s. I’ve mentioned a lot of decades there, but I wish I’d lived in all of them.

I think you can tell from my rambling that I’m longing for ‘something else’. Anything else would do. I’m so grateful for having a roof over my head and a lovely family but I’m tired of life. Tired of life and I’m only 23. The thing that’s always stopping me from going on wild adventures is money. At university it really used to bother me that I was surrounded by people who had been travelling and some of them really looked down on me because I hadn’t. I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I haven’t been to Africa and built any kind of school, I just can’t afford it. Which I suppose is ironic. And I would say things to them like ‘oh, when I have some money I’m going to go to the Amazon, I’m going to cuddle some monkeys, and you cannot stop me!’. And they’d nod their heads in a patronising way, and well, I suppose they were right to patronise. I’m still here. Still penniless. Still pretty bored.

So for lack of money and in need of newness I’m venturing on a new quest. Hopefully a quest that will bring some excitement and learning back into my silly old life. I want to be a journalist. There... I’ve said it. That felt like admitting a long-kept secret. I suppose the reason I’ve only just come to terms with this is because firstly, I didn’t want my (award-winning journalist) friend Rachel to just think ‘Ella is copying me, the silly bint’, even though I’m sure she doesn’t. Secondly I wasn’t really sure I could do it. But I’ve got some work experience at my local paper this month and I suppose that will decide for me, one way or the other.

I am terrified, but in an excited way. I’m also aware that a journalist can’t afford to be insecure. I guess, like anyone, I like to be good at things... so I’m probably just terrified that I’ll be awful. Also, I have never written a news story in my life. But I like writing, I like rushing around like I’m important, I’m pretty impatient but very inquisitive. So you never know. Maybe it’ll be the thing for me. And with every day that passes I really hope I am good at it. I think some people think I won’t be able to deal with criticism or being heckled, but I’ve put up with worse things. But I’m not kidding myself that it’ll be easy, it’s kind of scary just putting yourself on the line and saying ‘I THINK I CAN WRITE!’ and perhaps I’m horribly wrong. But tomorrow I could be well and truly dead. For once I truly have nothing to lose. Apart from potentially my dignity.

Here’s a quote from Sweet Thursday:

“Of all our murky inventions, guilt is at once the most devious, the most comic, the most painful. Was it planted by the group pressure of the tribe to keep the potentially dangerous individual off-balance? Is it set in the psychotissue, watered and cultivated by ductless glands? Is guilt the unconscious device by which a man cries for attention in an unperceiving world, or can it be that the final human pleasure is pain? Whatever its origin, we scream like cats in copulation, wolf-bay the moon, whip ourselves with the exquisite thorns of contempt, and generally have a hell of a good time at it.”

Wake up

The other week my wonderful friend Jenny bought me a shiny new camera. Her reasons for such a sweet gesture were ‘I know you like going for little walks on your own and taking photos, and now you can do that as much as you like’. It was easily one of the nicest things that has happened to me in the past year, ever since I’ve been taking endless photos at every opportunity. Actually, just before my last blog post I tried to capture the grey-drizzle drenched streets I had been wandering through, but I didn’t post them because they were simply too depressing!

Living life whilst looking at the screen on the back of my camera is odd. A majority of my brain enjoys it. I almost wish I had a camera strapped to my head so that I could remember every little detail of life. Also, how will people know I’m having fun if I don’t upload photos onto Facebook to prove it ‘look at me! I have friends and occasionally go out! Hooray! Please think I’m cool!’ However the very nature of taking photos leaves you slightly removed from what is actually happening with the contrast that you consequently remember happenings more clearly. Also, my photography skills are truly lacking at the moment, but thanks to Jenny’s generosity (JENerosity!) I can practise and practise and take lovely arty photos of sunsets and that. Also it excites me that this camera might be following me on some crazy adventure one day... I can dream!

I’m very sleepy today and as such can’t truly be bothered to write much more... In short the past week (and a bit) has consisted of a kingfisher, a baby toad, an ending-less fairy tale, a change of career direction, the learning of (a bit of) shorthand, drizzle and breezy days, endless cups of tea (both sad and happy), mild disappointments and the legitimate and acceptable drinking of cider in a park. Who knew that some unemployed girl from Derby could have experienced so much more than she outwardly appears to have experienced? I apologise, I lapsed into writing in the third-person then... a symptom of Facebook overuse perhaps? ‘Ella Rhodes is... confused, as usual. lol.’. Anyway, without wanting/being able to go into any more detail, I shall say farewell.