Music Crush #23

A second Music Crush in one week, what a treat!

I couldn't let this song wait another week so I thought I'd just make two Music Crushes this week because it's been a long time since I posted before this week anyway, so think of this as a 'thank-you for still reading!' Music Crush.

Charlie Simpson

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Little Hands

As always, although this is a second Music Crush in one week so I'm cheating a little anyway, I struggled with picking which song I liked best from Simpson's new album (named after the song I finally chose, Little Hands) but I had to go with this one because it was the first I listened to from this album and loved it instantly, so hopefully it will infect you in the same way it did me. 

If you've read the other Music Crush I posted this week (HERE) then you'll maybe notice that I'm obsessed with slower songs at the moment, but most of this album is pretty slow so if that's not your kind of thing then this might not be either, but I'd give it a go because Charlie Simpson has just got one of those voices that seems to soothe. I could listen to him sing all day - I could (and do) easily listen to this song over and over again.

I've loved Charlie Simpson for a long time (even in the original Busted days) but I think he went to a whole new level when he brought out his first solo album, Young Pilgrim (once upon a time I did a Music Crush on a song from that album HERE too ;) ), so as soon as I heard he was releasing another album it was obvious that I was going to love it. There's just something about that deep voice that seems to lull me to a new little place.

It's just such a beautiful song and you definitely should listen to it; it's not just a song either, it really does tell a story too, maybe that's part of the reason I love it so much. Go have a listen and see what you think.

Unfortunately, I struggled to find a full version on YouTube that was decent quality too but you might be able to find one, or the whole album is on Spotify (for free if you just want a quick listen) and Apple Music, so go and have a little hunt and enjoy.

Katie x

'So what are your plans now?'

When you're in your final year of university, hell, not even your final year - as soon as you say you're going to university - everyone expects you to have a plan. To know what you're going to do with your life. But let's be honest here, there are very few people that have a plan for after university and, until very recently I was one of those people too.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when you go to a friends house and their parents start asking questions about your future, or you go to a family event and all of these people, some of whom you don't even know, ask you 'What are your plans?', 'What are you going to do when you finish university?', 'Have you got a job yet?'. This annoys the poop out of me. I always have the same answer too: 'I haven't decided'. Yet they still continue to ask me 'What do you want to do?'. By this point a million people have probably already asked me this question and I'm more than miffed, gritting my teeth, I reply once again with 'I. Don't. Know'. 

If you're one of those people that asks these questions and you're reading this: We hate it. Don't ask them. If you do ask and we say 'I don't know', leave it at that. We either really don't know or we really don't want to talk about it.

I consider myself very lucky because I've just managed to get a job in my home town, but there are certain people in my life (no names are being mentioned but they're who you expect to have opinions about everything you do) who don't agree with the job I've got because it has nothing to do with my degree.

What I think people need to consider when leaving university, planning what you're going to do next doesn't necessarily have to involve your degree. Personally, after three years of dedicating my life to studying everything about English Literature, I need a break now. I need to do something that doesn't involve me sitting and analysing a million and one books and what the hidden meaning behind every word is. I'm not saying that the job I have is something I'm going to do forever, but I'm not saying it's not either. I'm passionate about English but I'm passionate about this job too.

As for the Creative Writing side of my degree, to me I'm doing that right now by writing this blog post. Creative writing is something I can do whether I have a job in that area or not. I will always love writing stories but I can do that on my days off and in my spare time, as well as blogging. 

At the moment, my plan is to do this job for a year and then reevaluate. If I'm really loving it then chances are I'll carry on doing it because why stop doing something you love? If I'm not sure it's the job for me then at least it's been an experience and I can move on and try something different.

Just remember that we're still young. We have plenty of time to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives, but we're better to experiment now and try different things because if we go straight into a full time career that we plan on doing for the rest of our lives then we can't really leave that job. We're stuck there and if we want to try something different we can't or we run the risk of losing the job we worked so hard for in the first place. 

So the next time you're at a family event and you've got all of those random family members that you're not sure you've even met before asking all the awkward questions, just tell them 'I don't know and that's okay, so please don't ask me again'. <ake sure you have that sickly sweet smile on as well, the one that looks really polite but really says 'f**k off'.

Katie x

Music Crush #22

It's been a hell of a long time since I wrote a Music Crush but man have I missed it! There was no indecision this week, I knew what my main love was straight away. There will be two Music Crushes this week though: one, because it's been so long and, two, because there was a small bit of indecision, but only a little bit.

X Ambassadors

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Unsteady (Erich Lee Gravity Remix)

I cannot even put into words how much I freakin' love this song. 

We'll just get over the Me Before You part first - I went to see it, bawled like a baby, couldn't stop thinking about it, hunted down the soundtrack, fell in love with this song, couldn't stop thinking about it even more.

Also, can we just take a moment to stop and appreciate Emilia Clarke in that red dress. She looks stunning and somehow pulls it off effortlessly, I expected to fall in love with Sam Claflin (partially because I was already in love with him) but I didn't realise how much I'd appreciate how incredible Emilia Clarke was in this movie. Anyway, on to the song, this isn't supposed to be about the actors/actresses, I knowwww.

If you've seen Me Before You then I think you'll understand what I mean when I say everything about this song just seems to fit the movie and the story it tells perfectly.

I'm actually in love with the entire soundtrack, Not Today by Imagine Dragons is also incredible but I don't think anything can beat the way this song makes me feel. 

The beat is so dramatic and makes me feel the rising tension of the movie throughout my whole body and the words always just get me. They make me think of Will when you can see that his whole life is being turned upside down by Lou and her decision to try and make his life a happier one. It's just perfect and it never fails to move me and send me to a different world, no, a different universe every time I listen to it.

Go have a listen and, if you've seen the movie, have your insides torn out all over again:

Katie x

Time to Blog!

My final year of university is over!

I've finally finished my dissertation, all of my essays and exams. I've finished my final year of university. You have no idea how weird it feels to say that (or type it actually). It's bittersweet, that's for sure.

The past year has been more than stressful, especially the last six months, but now that it's over I miss it already. I now have that problem of praying I pass my degree and trying to find a job in a world with very few jobs actually going. So big thumbs up to me. I'm an adult. And I'm not sure I'm liking it, but I'll just keep telling myself I'm still getting accustomed to it. I still find myself looking around for the adult when something happens and then I have that awful moment of realising 'oh sh*t, that's me'.

I do have a few things I'm looking forward to now that I don't have constant work to do morning and night, like blogging *wink, wink* and reading. Oh my god, how I want to read! I haven't read a book (that wasn't for uni, and even then...) in a very, very long time. I read one book for my own pleasure at christmas and that was it. Do you realise how depressing that is? I basically haven't been happy because I haven't had good books in my life for nearly a year. And now I'm happy that I can read. Woop, woop!!! Also, I can finally start binge watching Grey's Anatomy again, because I had quite the obsession until I had to make myself stop because I was doing that thing where you think 'I'll watch one episode then I'll do some work' and seven hours later I was still watching it, it was dark outside and I had to go to bed, still having done no work. So I had to stop. Go cold turkey. Otherwise I had no chance of getting this degree. But now I can have all of the happy things in my life back! Also, season 4 of Orange is the New Black just came out on Netflix so I have to fit that in one day too, but it's all good because I've got time, time and more time on my hands.

So, I guess it's time for a life update. It's been what? Six months, since I last posted on here?

Well, as much as I would like to say a lot has happened (although a lot of lovely things have happened) there haven't been too many adventures that haven't involved being at the library at 9 in the morning and leaving at 9 at night.

We've had Christmas, which was awesome, of course - when is Christmas not? Bit strange talking about Christmas when we're only six months away from the next one, but I'm meant to be catching you up on the awesome things, so I've gotta mention it.

I also got to go on this amazing week away at the beginning of February, to this lovely place called Thanet Well in the Lake District. My mum and I stayed in this amazing lodge with a jacuzzi and, basically, I had the time of my life and got a week to relax as an early birthday present from my mama (as well as it being a birthday present from my mama to herself - I'm sure she likes to pretend she was only doing it for me, but we all know she enjoyed herself too!). I didn't do any work for the week because it was the rules. No work was to be done. And I was perfectly okay with that rule. We basically spent the entire time in the jacuzzi. I used to think why would anyone want to go in a jacuzzi in winter when it's freezing cold but, actually, it made it a million times better. I don't like the idea of going in a jacuzzi in the summer because I'm a hot, sweaty, unattractive mess as it is, the last thing I want is more heat. Whereas, in the winter it's perfect because when you're inside the water you're at the perfect temperature and you can easily lie there forever (but you can't because, ya know, it's not good for you or something). I also got the best surprise when one day all of my favourite little ones arrived for the whole day to come and play, because my very thoughtful mum knew I was a bit upset that I was home for the week and wouldn't get to see them (don't get me wrong though, I was super grateful to be able to go the lodge, so I wasn't going to complain) but when they turned up I legit nearly cried because I couldn't believe my mum had been so thoughtful to not only book and organise the lodge but to invite them for a day too!

I also got to go on a lovely spa break in the Easter holidays, because I very thoughtfully organised for my mum to go on a spa break as a Christmas present and it worked extremely well in my favour too because obviously I couldn't let her go alone... So once again, I got another relaxing little weekend break but I did have to take my work with me on that trip, but it was still incredible.

There was a lot of time spent on my dissertation, so obviously when I completed it I was more than proud, I nearly cried handing it in because I spent a year writing it and I'm proud of how it turned out. Part of me didn't want to hand it over, it was, and is, my baby but, obviously, I was being irrational and needed to hand it in. So I did. Then went for Nandos after to celebrate. Because what better thing is there to do!

We made sure that we got tickets to the university Varsity this year. If you don't know what the varsity is then it's basically when the two universities from the same area go head-to-head - so here it's Nottingham Trent University (woo!) against The University of Nottingham (boo!). Considering this was our final year at uni and we've failed to get tickets every year, we took no chances and got tickets to the basketball and, of course, the ice hockey as soon as they went on sale.

My birthday came around, just my 21st, nothing important, ya know. My grandparents came to visit me for the whole week in Nottingham because I had too many deadlines to go home. It was absolutely lovely to have them here, if not a little cold at times considering we were staying in a caravan but I actually couldn't have loved it more just because my grandparents were there and I got to celebrate my 21st with them.

Whilst my grandma and grandad were here we went to The Heights of Abraham in Matlock. You go up in this little cable cart to the top of the mountain. The best way to describe Matlock is like a bowl (I think there's actually a part of it that's called Matlock Bath because that's exactly what it's like). When you're at the bottom it's like you're in a huge bowl with all the sides going up around you and you're the cereal, then these cable carts can take you up to the heights (like we're the cereal on the spoon) and the views up there are out of this world. It was incredible. Slightly scary taking two dogs in the cable cart with us though, especially when one has a tendency to be hyper...

Finally, earlier this week me and two of my friends went to Gradball. It has never been nicer to let my hair down and celebrate that we've finally finished, after three, long at time/short at others, years at university. (I also did a bit of a side-post a few days ago on an annoying thing about posting pictures to social media HERE). It's finally hit home that we're finished. Done. What made it hit home even more? My student discount ended this week. That moment was sadder than the end of university. I don't think I can ever shop again knowing I'm going to have to pay full price.

So that's us up to date I think, now let's get on to more exciting blog posts (hopefully anyway!).

Katie x

Confidence is Beautiful

A few days ago my friends and I went to Gradball - we got dressed up and went out to this end of year event because we've finally finished university (YAY!). We had a great time and took tons of pictures. 

Today I decided to upload one of those to my Facebook as my profile picture; this one to be exact:

In this photo, I feel confident. I love my smile, I love the fact that I have a tan (a rare occurrence), I like my hair, my makeup, I like everything about this picture. 

What I didn't expect was to upload it to Facebook and get comments about it being 'too revealing'. Albeit most of these comments were from family but to me that didn't make it any better. 

Yes, this is not the kind of photo I would normally take or post on social media but, whether that is the case or not, what is to say that I shouldn't when I feel hella good in it? 

There was a comment that said I needed to put more clothes on, another that said it was a bit revealing and one that said I should put my boobs away. First of all, there is barely any boob on show in my opinion, just skin, and why can't I post a picture where god forbid there's some kind of skin showing in it anyway, when it's okay for a man to post a picture of himself topless? Or it's okay for another girl to post a picture of herself in a bikini? Are neither of those revealing? Because I rarely see comments on those photos telling them so.

Personally when I see pictures of other people, like the one I took, or even just pictures where someone's wearing a beautiful dress or looking very dapper in their suit, I tend to look and think 'wow, they look amazing'. Not once have I ever considered telling them they have too much skin on show.

I'm a self conscious person at the best of times, so the fact that I looked at this picture and thought that I looked confident and happy in it made me happy, but then comments telling me to 'put it away' made me question that, leaving me feeling less than happy about the photo in the end. I debated taking it down and just changing it back to my old picture (where I'm wearing a jumper so there can be no arguments about revealing too much there - although if I was to have had that picture taken standing up I was wearing a skirt, so I guess that outfit would probably be too revealing as well), but then I came to the conclusion that why should I?

Not nearly enough people in this world have enough confidence, never mind body confidence and, I'm not going to lie, it's not something I have a lot of either, but if I feel good in this picture then I shouldn't let a few comments change my mind about that.

I know that none of the comments made were meant to make me feel less confident or less happy with myself but that doesn't change the fact that they did. They made me question myself. It may not be the kind of picture I would normally post but that doesn't mean I shouldn't post it. Since when did showing off some skin become such a taboo thing in the 21st century? I've seen plenty of celebrities online and in magazines wearing outfits that are a lot more revealing than a bit of my chest so surely I cannot be seen as a bad influence to any of the young people in my family that might see this photo - surely, if anything, it should be a good thing for them to see someone looking confident and happy with themselves.

So many people of all ages, but especially younger people, have problems with their self-esteem because of celebrities and their friends at school. They need to know that it's okay to be happy with yourself. One young girl in my family has just got Facebook, she's only eleven but she pouts in nearly every photo and everybody is always telling her she doesn't need to pout to be beautiful but she always replies saying yes she does. Is that how we want such a young generation to think? That they have to be like everyone else and think they have to act a certain way to be beautiful? They don't. Everyone is beautiful when they're themselves.

Confidence is beautiful.

Katie x