It's the Middle of nowhere.

Hello World,

We all dream of a place, a place very few sounds. Except for the ones we hold dear to us. The sound of the wind rustling through the leaves, the sound of birds chirping in the morning sun. The sound of a car driving by or even the sound of a book page being turned. 
We dream of a place, of a sight that we hold dear to us. A beach with blue skies and sunshine. A woodland, with all the furry animals, a large field. 

Have we ever dreamed of a time, where time just stops and we are all in our element of relaxed and calmness. 

Claire.

Autumn/Winter Wishlist

Hello World,

Today is the Pagan holiday, Mabon. It is also known as the Autumn Equinox. I have always loved the Autumn and Winter months. Hot drinks, cosy nights, colder weather, those crisp morning and of course the holidays. 
In this post, I want to share with you my goals and wishlist of things I want to do this Autumn. 

Rock the scarf:

 I have a pretty extensive scarf collection. Last year however, I stuck to the same old scarves, so this year I am going to be challenging myself to wear as many different scarves. These were the ones I particular enjoyed wearing last year.

Pick a Pumpkin: Halloween is one of my favourite time of the year and yes, I love to carve my own pumpkin. This year I want to go to a pumpkin patch and pick my own pumpkin to carve! I actually thought this was something we couldn't do in England. So I looked it on Google maps and found a couple close to me!

Celebrate Halloween: The past couple of years, Halloween has been on a working night and I haven't put as much of an effort into it, that I would have liked. This year however, I am going to celebrate it. I'm going to put some effort into whatever I decide to go this year!

Read the perfect Autumn/Winter book:

One year I read The Snow Child and last year I read Practical Magic, both books was perfect for the Autumn and Winter. So this year I would like to at least squeeze as many books into my time of Autumn and Winter.


Run: I love running, but I struggle to make the time to do it. I would of course love to attempt to pick it up and work towards it during the colder months. 

Build and bake a gingerbread house: I want to work and build on my baking skills and create a gingerbread house this winter! 

Enjoy Christmas: I enjoy Christmas shopping and I enjoy shopping for people, for presents. I want to make an effort and build on that shopping enjoyment to fill my holiday with joy. 

I'll let you know how I work out with Blog post.

Claire

Habits,

Hello World!

We all have habits. And it is always the bad ones we concentrate on. That is generally because those are the habits we are forever trying to get rid off or alternate. I for one have been concentrating on the bad habits and have been beating myself up over it. I'm not going to go into detail about the recent habits I have picked up about myself, because I want to concentrate on the positives.

Last week was possibly the worst week for me, everything that has been building up had finally caught up with me and made me in the most foulest of moods. Particularly my habits. Over the course of year, new habits had grown and became quite controlling of me and I particularly hated myself for becoming addicted to the habits. 
The worst of the habit was procrastinating; whenever I needed to do something, or I had free time to do a something productive like a hobby. I would procrastinate with something else.
I found this way of living so unhealthy and it made me feel like I had no control of my life. Recently I found myself procrastinating from actually reading a book!
I LOVE reading and when I found had time to myself and I thought, "I have time read." You would actually find me doing something completely different. I was procrastinating from doing something I would enjoy!? WTF, Right?

This week, I have decided reclaim some more control in my life. I wish I could tell you some things about how to kick the habit, but I am still learning all about it myself. 
I have read somewhere that it can take up to six weeks to break a habit you are trying to break. 
So if you are like me, who is desperate to break a habit. Persevere! Be consistent with yourself, but most importantly don't beat yourself up when  you have a set back.
I've found that the worst time for me on habits is when I create a too big of a list for myself. So I have decided to shorten the list and set myself doable goals. Such as; going to the gym after work, read only so amount of pages, blog about something extremely passionate and do your research!

Mentality; You need to remember that you are worth something. A lot of the habits I hated, came by was when I felt worthless or nothing. It's hard and you can't be happy all time! Sometimes telling yourself to smile or that you are worthy of a life can be extremely hard. So when I found myself in that mode, I want to try something new, I want to start meditating or sitting down and doing some colouring when I feel my mind is racing with self hatred. Something to numb the mind and reboot itself really. You can't control yourself, when you don't have the mind for it.

Feel free to leave any advice about how you broke a bad habit. I would love to hear about them.


Claire.

Office Girl Review #12

Hello World!

So, recently I finished another book. This book was completely different to what I normally read. It was a romance, a romance between a male and a woman in the 90's, living in a city and a couple of Artists: Office Girl.

It was a spur of the moment when I picked this book up in the shop because, I am not a romance genre reader. I would like to be, I really would like to read a nice romantic and just be in love with the novel. It's hard to read a romance book, when you are the least romantic person in the world. Strike that, I pretty sure there is someone out there who could be the least romantic person. But the whole idea of flowers on the doorstep and chocolates really doesn't appeal to me.  
Office Girl however is quite the least romantic romance novels ever. Which when I first read the back, I thought "yes, this book could actually be ideal for me," and it was at the beginning.

Office girl is about a 23 year old woman Odile, who has moved to the city to attend an art school. Which you only know in the book because, the author Joe Memo mentions she is an art school drop out. The way Odile pays her rent is by working in an office. Which is where she meets Jack.
Jack is an art school graduate, who also suffers from mild depression and is also going through his first divorce at the ripe age of 25. He begins to work in an office and meet Odile. Together they build a friendship, over travelling the city and doing crazy artistic stunts. There the romance blossoms. Which doesn't last long, during their time together, they both have done some pretty good soul searching and Odile leaves him to live her life somewhere else. To keep moving onwards.

My verdict? I liked this book. Two common known hipsters who both attended art school and fall in love? What is not to like? It was a book, that seemed to have been written just for me. It was creative and sarcastic, the writing and the way the author had developed the characters. The story line however was a bit of a drag and I did feel that the ending was in some ways rushed?

Claire.

Dismaland!

Hello World,

If you have been living under a rock the past few weeks, you will not have heard that the great Banksy and many other artist worked together and created a bemusement park in Weston Super-Mare. In one of the old abandon swimming pool beside the sea-front holds the bemusement park, known as Dismaland.

 When you enter, you are made to go through a "fake" security system, where the staff will inspect and check you, to ensure you are holding no criminal objects and ensure you do strange things before you can enter the bemusement park. Be warned, smiling is not admitted and heavens forbid for you to laugh. This security kid told me to take my hat off, whereas my sister who I waited for quite awhile was just told to turn her hat around!?

 Everything you see in the park is suppose to look dismal and generally depressing. To me the art I find of Banksy and the other artist are portraying the truth, in a more bold and simple ways. What you see here, is what is actually happening.

 The Artist has taken the news stories and created their own scene of it, through amusements that we all enjoyed as a child. An actual caraosel that you can ride, with a butcher holding boxes saying lasenge. As you may have remembered back earlier in the year when horse meat has been founded in certain meals.
Boats you can control that are of immigrants trying to get into the UK. Generally because the outside people think this country is their best choice. Which it maybe, as we can provide them homes and medicines.

 How many feel hurt and excluded because they are not of wealth. This man has made the poor poorer and the working class, having to work ten times as hard to either keep their jobs or to even pay for bills are are increasingly on the rise. 

Sometimes it can be pretty dark. I have shown this picture around and a lot of people have been particularly disturbed by this one. I suppose many people have different interpretations of how this can be represented. 
Me personally, it reminded me of a princess trying to get away from paparazzi and ended up in a car crash.
It also seems like a reminder that dreams don't come true after one night off from slaving away. You have to work towards them. 

The staff are paid to look miserable and sad. They are willing to take photos with you, as long as you don't smile. Many will tell you that the art work you see are rubbish and they have each done amazing at holding on to character. 

So don't smile and don't laugh. I can still tell you this, if you ever get inside Dismaland you will not regret it. The boldness and the smartness of these artist and truly eye openers. You only have a couple of weeks left.

Claire

My life in Festival.

Hello World, 

I cannot believe that this time last week I would have been on route back home from Reading Festival. It has been a whole year since I last went to a Festival and about three years since I last went to Reading. 
I love festivals, I love seeing bands play live in an open environment. See, I don't like going to concerts because, I hate the big arenas and so many people being crowded into one place. I don't mind smaller gigs, but festivals I love. A friend and I can just hang out to the side, where we are close enough to see the bands live, but not so crowded where we are squashed. 

I would have loved to say that this year Festival was so much better than the last one I went to, and in so many ways it was loads better than the last one. For instance the toilets was a huge improvement this year and the security surrounding the bars had improved so much, that I didn't see a lot of teens passed out before the best acts came on. However, as it is suppose to be called the Greatest Rock Festival in England, there wasn't a lot of Rock bands. 
Being two people who love the genre of Rock music, we found ourselves at one point just wondering aimlessly as we literally couldn't stand the drum and base that most DJ's was playing. I know I am asking too much, and people prefer those type of music nowadays to people playing actual instruments. And how Festival now have to cater for every persons, and what is most popular to bring in the money. I just couldn't help to have felt bored at some times. I did bring a book with me, so I wasn't that bored. So if you readers did go to Reading and saw a girl sat in NME tent most of the time at the back reading, it was probably me. 
I will say that Metallica killed it on Saturday night and I have listened to some new bands which I immediately enjoyed. 
A few of them being Wolf Alice, Spector, Circa Waves and Kendrick Lamar. I recently brought Wolf Alice CD. 

Claire.