Knilly Frickers

I’m on annual leave today, I’m not actually away on holiday anywhere, just taking a few days to chill and relax.  My original plan was to make use of Netflix, binge watch something, do some online shopping seeing as it’s pay day………today had other plans for me.   The internet was down, the television was down and my xbox game collection consists of games that are far more appealing to my 12-year-old nephew than myself – so I decided to read one of the mountain of books lying on my bedroom floor. In a moment of amusement given my lack of technological stimulation, I picked up Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. This book was recommended to me by my colleague Chelsea, she had read one of my blogs last year about my inability to say no to things I don’t want to do (you can read that here if you wish) and recommended to me that I read this book. I’d be lying if I said that I’ll go through the rest of my life suddenly starting to throw out no’s all ...

I’m far from being the perfect human being, I’m deeply flawed, make silly choices sometimes and I’m often annoying but I like to think that for the most part I’m an okay person.    I have some traits that I like and hate about myself in equal measure. One is my ability to let things go and another is my reluctance to make a fuss. I like that I can let very little bother me but it also means that I let others away with things that I shouldn’t. My reluctance to make a fuss kind of goes hand in hand with this.  This week I let both of those take over. I visited a restaurant - I won’t mention which one - where the person serving me clearly found something amusing about my appearance. I am all kinds of quirky but for me I was dressed very tame, this wasn’t a 'what is she wearing’ or ‘she looks odd’, this was just straight up finding  amusement  at the way I look.  I felt very uncomfortable as whilst I couldn’t hear what was being said it was blatantly obvious I ...

Hello! It's me! I've been wondering if after all these days you'd like to read.  Sorry, Adele is playing on the radio and I got a bit carried away!  I've been thinking this week about how summer is starting to wind down, I say summer, the rain trickling down the window in front of me as if to mock my notions of a Scottish summer isn't much fun!  I know summer as I know it is coming to an end because all of my extra curricular activities are beginning to reappear in my week, my music rehearsals are already back in the diary, the children's club I volunteer with is back on next week, my park group are meeting again soon and soon all those free and lazy nights and weekends will disappear.   I don't actually mind that though, I like having those things to keep me busy and help my brain to focus on other things other wise I'd come home from work, I'd eat and I'd sleep. It's healthy for me to have other things to stimulate my mind.  The season of s...

It's exam result day in Scotland, where school and higher education students alike are either anxiously awaiting their result, celebrating or wondering what to do if they didn't get the result they needed, wanted or expected.  I've been there, longer ago than I'd like (this whole ageing thing is a bit rubbish), I was never as good as my  school friends at exams or school really, I didn't struggle but I didn't excel either so my results came along and they weren't terrible but I'd compare them to my friends results and feel like crap.   For the majority of my time at school, I just assumed I was stupid and I'd never really find my path, not like my friends who had it all mapped out and were on their way to skipping down their respective yellow brick roads to their respective wizards in search of careers.  That wasn't for me. Or so I thought.  I found a college course nearby, applied, got in and suddenly a light bulb went on in my head, this is wha...

It's been about a week since I did any blogging, I've been trying to shift this pesky summer cold, I'm not quite 100% but I have just a lovely barking seal cough remaining.  I decided today was the day to get back in the swing of things.  This morning past quite quickly, which seems a silly thing to say because time is a measured thing that doesn't usually change.  I quite often find self thinking that time has gone slowly or quickly when what's really happening is I'm paying too much attention to the time and not enough attention to what I'm doing. When that happens I usually need to have a bit of a word with myself to assess why I'm paying too much attention to the minutes ticking away and not on getting things done.  The second the first of August came by this year, I did my usual how on earth is is August this year is disappearing thing.  Coupled with the fact I started my new passion planner this week, I had a bit of an internal panic about how quic...

This is an apology to one of my science teachers at high school, I've changed his name, not for any real reason other than to be mysterious  Dear Mr Tuna, (for context I've just eaten tuna and that's what my brain decided cling to)  I owe you an apology.   I just thought you were a Grumpasaurus who felt you were teaching a class of idiots and giving them a lecture because you hated us.  All of the above may well be true but I think I get it now.  We'd often get a bit of a telling off for collectively getting things wrong or failing to understand why we were wrong. Sounds standard for school, but occasionally we'd get a bit of a rant going beyond the here and now, you'd start talking about our potential futures and how we'd have to change our approach to succeed or how we may get conned by electricians or plumbers in the future if we didn't think more for ourselves.  I used to think you were making a mountain out a molehill but I think I get it now.  Yo...

It's been a whole week since I did any rambling of the written kind. I've had a really horrible cold over the last week that still hasn't quite faded yet and my head just felt like a huge foggy abyss - not the best mindset for a blog post!  It's been a strange sort of week where I've been functional but felt like I wasn't quite present.  I've never had an out of body experience but I think this week I may have experienced a few out of mind experiences, if that makes any sort of sense!!  There's been times this week when I've completed tasks or activities and while I know I've done them, experienced it and remember it clearly, it feels like my body was doing things on auto pilot, keeping me going while I mentally checked out.  There are plenty of times when I'm not ill and I mentally check out and do things on autopilot, which probably isn't very healthy.  Sometimes I can go along with a normal pattern of routine without really thinking ab...