the thing that happened...

A couple of months ago this blog started to get a lot more personal, and once or twice I have mentioned, how something happened that made me look at everything that was going on, and question it, over and over again.

I think it might be time to talk about the thing that happened...

The Life Project...

I know. I'm very confused. Nearly every other blog post references the fact that I am confused. And that I am in my twenties. And that maybe because I am in my twenties it is ok to be confused.

But evidently, I'm not really ok.

Well not with being confused anyway. And as good as it is for blog post material it is beginning to get in the way of life, even if it does provide me with endless excuses for another glass of wine, I think even my most wise and wonderful of friends might be ready for me to change the record.

So I have decided to do something about it, and make my life a project. 

Over the next three months I am going to complete tasks, challenges and lifestyle programmes in the hope that they will improve my well being.

Well being  being defined as a positive change in my out look, health or life in general.

The rules to this are fairly fluid, the main thing is to take back control of something, and I don't want to set myself up to fail by outlining impossible guidelines.

Ok, drum roll please.... The first big challenge in The Lifestyle Project is...

30 Days Gluten Free!

I like a good dietary challenge, it's all about will power isn't it? Once, can you believe it, I actually gave up tea!

So I a completing this challenge with my lovely healthy food guru friend Hannah (yup, oopsimavegan.com) and here is the outline:

Hannah and Stephie's Gluten Free Challenge

• One Month of Gluten-free eating. The key to success being there are NO OTHER dietry obligation. One clean focus - no gluten.
• Any slip-ups or mistakes or even intentional "cheats" - must be confessed. Punishment or jokes, if decided necessary, may be decided upon by the other party.
• At the end of the month there will be a celebration dinner involving BREAD and PASTA.
• Food diaries are optional, but perhaps a fun idea! Also to keep track of how our bodies feel - do we feel less bloated? More energy?
• Key foods to avoid: bread, pasta, cakes, pastries, beer.

So I shall update the life project every Thursday, I will also be undertaking smaller exercises, like submitting article pitches to magazines and what have you, all so that hopefully being pro-active will make me feel more ok. Or at least more ok about not always being Ok! And I am also trying to rope other frieds in to their own Life Project so hopefully I can report back on them too! x

Shhhhh, listen...click.

I would not describe myself as a confident person.

I am very self aware. I know what I can be good at, I know when I'm being moody, I know when I'm not any good. But even with that self awareness, self doubt creeps in on a fairly regular basis.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about loosing my excitement for doing the thing I love, and with that my confidence.

I imagine my confidence to be an ill fitting peg in hole in my brain. It had always just bin jammed in willy nilly, and wobbled a little. To those who know me it will come as no surprise that I may have one or two screws loose.

Can you hear that rattling?

Well when I had THAT experience, and I hit my threshold for just what I could take, that peg became well and truly dislodged. It fell out of place completely.  Tentatively I have been trying different screw drivers and hammers trying to get it back in place.

Clink, roll, shit, where's that bloody peg gone?

I'm not going to lie, before heading to Buxton Fringe Festival this past weekend I was terrified, the heart burn was back in the morning and there was a rather distressing dream involving a train, a derailment and a lot of drowning goats.

I hadn't heard from the venue, I hadn't had any ticket inquiries, I didn't have a clue what I was going to do.

Luckily on the Sunday I had the fabulous Hannah Ellis with me (I've told you about her, she is wise and writes over at oopsimavegan.com) to keep me sane and grounded and push me to go and just leaflet.

Then there was the relief of getting to the venue and everyone being lovely and helpful and supportive. And to find that 7 tickets had already been prebooked.

Not only that but the sun was shining and Buxton is beautiful.

There it is!

Slowly I found my feet and leaflet patter, then the performance came around and it all went well. A full house, and though I returned home with a feeling that my reviewer hadn't enjoyed it, I felt relieved, one down one to go.

The Monday came around and I braced myself for a much harder day on all fronts. And boy did I have to brace myself as I entered the Pavilion to find my review.

Deep breath... BUT it was another good'un! Chuffed, spring in step I headed out to leaflet. I was on my own Monday and it was definitely quieter. I couldn't rest on my laurels and in the back of my mind I found it hard to believe I could generate an audience for 6pm on a Monday evening. So by 4pm I was beginning to feel nervous once more, headed to my venue to set everything up totally convinced it would all be coming back down at 6.05pm.

So convinced that nobody would turn up at 5.50pm I was sat making sure things were tidy and easy to pack when 15 people turned up!

I was shocked but most of all I was over the moon, I could feel myself grinning. I was so happy I was going to get to perform. And when I did, I just enjoyed it. And so did they.

After the show I held my first ever 'chat with the artist' I didn't shake once, like I usually do when public speaking, I was just honest. Talking about the work I love to do.

And after all of that? They asked for autographs.

Shhhh, listen...click...

That peg is finally back in it's correct place, and this time (for now) it is definitely a better fit x

Come, admire my plumahge...

In the wild, animals and birds display their plumahge (pronounced ploo-marge I made that word up) to attract a mate. It is as simple as that.

It is also normally the males that put on a show.

I can’t help but think that the simplicity of this mating ritual has its fair share of perks. Basically a guy shows all his goods and you can decide there and then ‘nah, sorry mate that’s not for me..’ or ‘yeah, go on then...’

However, there are certain instances where human mating rituals aren't all that more advanced.

Enter the primitive perv, here’s plumahge-ing at you babe...

Now, I walk home from Zumba on a regular basis. It is about a thirty minute walk, and it involves two main roads and the city center.   Let me paint the picture for you. The most comfortable jogging bottoms I could find rolled up to my knees, a black vest top with a sports bra underneath, all modestly covered with a grey hoodie I stole from my sisters wardrobe, and most importantly of all... I am dripping in sweat.

In this thirty minute sweat-strut I get checked out more than the rest of the week put together. I also never knew what it meant to be ‘hollered at’ until I started this walk.

Perhaps the reasons for this are simple science, a healthy glow and an interest in fitness is bound to be attractive to members of the opposite sex, after all, supposedly deep down we’re all searching for the other half of a perfect baby making machine.

What is truly baffling to me is the way these ‘suitors’ decide to indicate their attraction in an equally as primitive manner. Normally by staring me right in the face and letting out a sound I can only describe as ‘ooooooosssshhh’ that or some sort of line they have picked up from the latest gangster rap.

Now, excuse me while I fetch a ladder to climb up on to my high feminist horse.

THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. It’s intimidating, it’s inappropriate and also... ineffective.

Ok, may have fallen off my horse on that last one, however, there are many other feminists out there who can argue the other points far stronger than I can,and I fully support and applaud them for that.  Unfortunately my mind jumps straight to ‘Really, you think that is going to work?’

Sorry men of Manchester but you seriously need to work on your plumahge!

Now, on my latest sweat strut, I was pondering on this and was just checking my reflection for wayward sweat patches, thinking to myself, really, why don’t they just try words and a smile when...

‘Excuse me... girl in the grey jumper!’

I stopped, checked the ground thinking I must have dropped something when the young gentleman who had requested my attention went on to say...

‘Sorry but you keep looking at your reflection as your walking along, you don’t need to, you look good’

Completely dead pan. I was speechless.

I sort of went ‘HA, errrr, thanks?’ and walked off as quick as possible.

What the hell do I make of that?  Part of me is really angry at him. I didn't ask for his opinion and now I’m even more tempted to look at my reflection but can’t cos you've actually made me more self-conscious about that than I was about the sweat patches. So yeah, thanks for that, but part of me thinks, well thanks, it was meant as a compliment, he obviously picked up on me being self conscious and maybe just thought he could save the world from yet another insecure girl.

He also didn't expect anything to come from it. He carried on his conversation with his friend and let me sweat-scutter off.

That was perhaps the most unnerving of all.

Thank god normally our mating rituals involve ‘wait to text’ games and countless ‘do you think he likes me’ glasses of wine.
x

I'm weighting for something...

Whether or not you are bothered by your weight, should be a very personal problem, but isn't it funny that worrying about our weight very rarely has any thing to do with how you personally feel?

At least not in the first place. Worrying about your weight is usually triggered by somebody else.

A friend much smaller than you complaining about how fat she feels translates to well how fat must she think I am?

A dress that looks great on a friend doesn't fit you.

Your mum starts dieting, oh maybe I should start watching what I eat?

This is all in response to a post written by a friend of a friend. A girl who I have never met, who apparently is experiencing these exact same feelings. Isn't THAT odd, other people, other GIRLS also worrying about their weight?  You can read that post here.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I can solve anyone's insecurities, any more than I know the answer to what to do in a quarter life crisis but I do think that the more we read and remember that an obsession with skinniness isn't healthy and that our fat rolls are probably due to an overactive imagination rather than one too many nights out the more likely we are to stay sane.

And happy. Sane and happy.

So time to get personal once more (I know, I know this is meant to be theatre blog, but I promise all this is due to me thinking about Love Letters...)...

I have always seen myself as 'soft around the edges...' Since the age of about 14 I have been a size 12.  At age 16 size 12 felt huge, and I remember a boyfriend at the time saying to me, when I was whinging about my weight that actually I was a bit chubbier than normal girls.

I know great boyfriend right?

Safe to say that has always stuck with me.  Ever since I've thought I'm 'just that bit bigger...'

Now as I have mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, this past year I have put a fair chunk of weight on. Not just in my mind, but as a number on the scales too. So here is the puzzler... I am still a size 12.

I look back at picture of myself at uni, when I was under 10 stone, and think WHAT THE HELL WAS I SEEING! I wasn't stick thin, but I certainly wasn't 'bigger than normal.' I had a great figure, I am lucky to have a tiny waist, and have curves.

Then I looked back at pictures of myself before I moved to Manchester.  I was about half a stone heavier, and at the time that felt HUGE.  But again, I look back at the pictures, and if anything, I look better for it, like I had grown up just the right amount after uni.

I look at myself now, recently I have lost a bit of weight, but I'm still not back where I was before Manchester, and certainly not where I was at uni. Some days I feel huge. I will sit down and it is as if my belly is expanding on the spot getting bigger and bigger, eating nothing but my good mood up.

Does it matter that actually I am STILL a size 12? No.
Does it matter that I am fitter than I have ever been in my life? No.

What does matter?
That a friend has lost a lot of weight, and now regularly says she would hate to be any bigger? My Heads translation: I'd hate to be as big as you?

It shouldn't but it is enough to send any confidence I woke up with running.

The fact is that when it comes to looking at ourselves we are always seeing a reflection from some kind of nightmare fun house filled with, perhaps genuinely, crazy mirrors.

And then there is the flip side of it.

Just as I am seeing a distorted version of myself, my now very slender friend is also still seeing a distorted image. And I think that is perhaps even scarier. That we may never get a real perspective of where we are now, we are constantly looking at where we used to be, or where we want to be.

Flip it over again, and there's the compliments that all to frequently fall on deaf ears.

Last weekend I headed down to London.  Since I was last there I have lost no weight whatsoever and was just beginning to think 'yeah, I really need to get on that...' One of the first things a friend said to me?

'You've lost weight!' which was then repeated later on when I changed to go out 'You've really trimmed down' which was met by another friend 'She's always been tiny, I wouldn't say she ever had any weight to loose...'

Like I said, I don't know how to resolve my own insecurities or anyone else's, most of the time we don't believe something till we have seen it with our own eyes and even the healthiest most zen of my friends, have their days where their eyes deceive them. On those days all we can do is declare ourselves blind, and instead trust our ears, and hope that we hear things correctly.

Oh listen THAT was a compliment or perhaps more importantly...
THAT wasn't a dig or a reflection on you, that was a friend having their own bad day.

And if that isn't enough to cheer us up then lets all just take a moment to appreciate that somebody in the world thought things were getting a bit out of hand and decided to make a barbie doll with REAL average measurements.

Now pass me a cake, cos if Barbie can now function in the real world, I can too!
x

15 ways to peel a banana that will change your life...

I have trouble sleeping, for various reasons, one of them is that I'm in my twenties but more on that soon.  When I have trouble sleeping, like I am guessing the majority of people who have had the misfortune of owning a smart phone, I end up trailing the internet for useless things to read. Particuarly on Buzzfeed.

Most of the posts on there are things like '20 Racoons who look like they were from that tv series from the 90's' or '101 goldfish having a worse day than you'  However, this post here, which was actually sent to me by a friend, is pure TRUTH.

Scary kind of truth. The kind of truth the internet was probably originally built for.

That's right, 10 signs you are having a Quarter Life Crisis, I was not prepared for you.

I am in my early twenties, as are the majority of my friends (go figure). However, a friend in her 30's said she couldn't remember what it was like to be my age, my reply?

It is worse than being a teenager.

Every week a new friend falls into their quarter life crisis. Every week I get a phone call from a different friend, who essentially, woke up that morning, looked at the day ahead and went 'What the HELL is this???'

I think the difficulty can be pinned down to the overwhelming feeling that we should have SOMETHING worked out by now. But not a single one of us does, and not only that but everytime we think we are about to grasp an idea of what we want to do with our life, who we want to grow up to be, it presents more questions than answers.

How are you going to go about that?
Shouldn't you have done a different degree for that?
You've never mentioned this before?
What will your parents think?
What about that flat you want?
Why are you even going traveling?

I've been told more than once by a Friend of mine, lets call him Y, that I am very lucky because I know what I want to do with my life. Yeah, I said, I am, but knowing what I want to do with my life, has presented a whole range of other unknowns. Will I ever be able to afford a flat of my own? Wouldn't it be nice to only work 9-5?  Is it easier to want the simple things in life, job, car, holiday once a year?

Where as Y is trapped between knowing that he loves his work life balance, having a nice flat and all that, but also doesn't really like his job, and finds it difficult to imagine a job that he would like. And what if, he finds a job that he likes, but it starts eating into his leisure time? For Y, there is a clean definition between work and life, for me obviously, there isn't. The reason I know what I want to do with my life is because I can't imagine my life without it.

But when I meet with friends that have a more 'normal' route mapped out? I am VERY jealous, I don't have the same milestones as they do, and so when I compare myself to them (which we all do) I ultimately feel like I am failing.

So maybe I do have something figured out, what I want to do, and maybe that is half the battle but the other half of the battle, is how do I get there? And how do I tie up all those other loose strings along the way?

Today is Friday, 7 days ago it was Friday, and in 7 days time, it will be Friday again. Does time really go that quickly? it never seemed to do at uni? And how come my to do list and my list of seemingly life challenging questions grows twice as fast?

I don't know the answers to any of the above questions. Being in my twenties is keeping me up at night.

Luckily though buzzfeed is here to distract me from my panic attacks.

Ooooo look, 15 ways to peel a banana, that are bound to change my life.
x

LOST: Excitement and a Mobile Phone

 For the full back ground knowledge on this next post read this and this. 

For the past two months I have been struggling with two events and their consequences. I have  been trying to ignore it, I couldn't put my finger on what the feeling was, and I presumed it would go away. But I'm pretty sure that the only way I can find what it is that I've lost is to really talk this through...

The first thing that happened was, a personal thing, something which made me rethink basically EVERYTHING in my life. I felt I had lost control on every string which tied me together. It was ages since I had performed, I hadn't applied for any new festivals, filled out any proposals, I was just waiting in limbo. At the same time, I became very aware of how much weight I have put on, that I had been single for a year, that my social life centered around a handful of people, places and things.

Basically, this was not the adventure I had first planned when I moved to Manchester, nor was it the reimagined Mancunian life I had hoped to return to after Christmas.

I started getting panicky, but I took a few deep breaths and began to take back control. I started dieting, looking for new opportunities, socializing more, and basically refocusing my energy.

A lot of that energy was pinned on going down to London to perform. It was a big achievement for me, it was something to get excited about, to remind myself of. Something that was going to mark the end of this weird anxious period.

Well going down to London did not go how I had planned. In the first post I wrote about this whole experience I avoided focusing on the negatives and instead looked at it as a learning curve. But if I am being honest, I'm still not quite there yet.

If I'm honest, how badly I feel London went, how stressful it was, how much it did not live up to my expectations, how much it wasn't the solution I thought it would be has stuck with me.

And while in my personal life all is swell, as a performer, I have lost something.

I've lost that excitement of going on stage. Of getting up there and doing my thing. I don't see performing as a happy place at the moment, because I don't want to expect too much, after all that is the best way to avoid disappointment isn't it?

Instead of the butterflies and adrenalin that I normally use to fuel my performance, before going out recently, I've felt anxious. I've been focusing on emergency routes, fall back plans. Predicting how things could go wrong.

Now that might sound like a very sensible thing to do on the one hand, and of course it is. But not when that is getting in the way of excitement.

As a performer I run on energy, it is what makes my work make sense. I normally have a nervous energy that is charming, and infectious, recently I've had that type of nervous energy that makes people uncomfortable.

Or at least that is how I feel my performances have been recently. Of course, I am my own biggest critic, and others have reassured me that I have nothing to be embarrassed about.

So this is my conclusion. I have lost my excitement, I don't run on adrenalin, I don't reach a high. I just feel flat, even if to an audience my performance doesn't.

I'm now turning my metaphorical house upside down looking for it, I'm looking  under and through old reviews, I'm moving boxes of old pictures, filing away bad experiences, and it is coming back. Now that I know what I'm looking for the search is basically over.

Even admitting this all outloud, I can feel butterflies, or at least hear them, I'm obviously getting closer.

Unfortunately the same can not be said for my mobile phone.
x

I couldn't have said it better myself...

My lovely and very wise friend Hannah blogs over at oopsimavegan.com and though I am not a vegan, she is an absolute wealth of information on generally living a GOOD healthy life.

And well in this post, I couldn't have said it better myself, take a look!

http://www.oopsimavegan.com/1/post/2013/05/lessons-i-continue-to-learn.html

Things we don't know we are capable of...

When I was 16, I had a blog, I know didn't we all?

I thought I experienced life differently to other 16 year olds, and had some deep understanding that should be shared with the world... I know didn't we all?

I once put up a post that was all about this confusion and deep meaningful thoughts I was having, and some one posted in the comments section, 'are you on medication?'

I guess now they would be called a troll and that right now millions of 16 year olds are going through that exact same crisis.

The only comfort they can have is that one day you'll grow out of it.  Well I don't mean to rob them of that, but I'm not sure we do grow out of it.  I think who you are when you're a teenager stays with you forever, it becomes your driving force, to be better than those bullies, or to make up for that stupid thing you did.

And I think every now and then you revert to that confused 16 year old and do something that you thought you had grown out of.  Do something that you don't understand why, something that makes you cringe to your core, and its something unnerving, something that makes you unsure of the person you are today.

I've had that happen to me recently, more recently than I would like to say, and it is scary but the other part of me thinks that this happens to teach you a lesson you missed back in the day.

I was a boringly sensible 16 year old to be truthful, and I am now a live by the book 22 year old, but let5s face it not that much has changed has it?

I still have a blog, and some one who reads this may still be tempted to ask me if I'm on medication.

I'm not, I just over think things, write about it and occasionally call it theatre.

16 year old me xx