Tag Archives: yoga

Jan 14 2013

A New Year’s Revelation

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It’s the start of a new year. There are lots of people jogging (everywhere, all the time), because it’s that time of year where we punish ourselves for our vices and decide that by this time next year, we will most definitely be a much better person.

I tell myself to be a much better person at the beginning of every week, never mind the beginning of every year. And every time I decide to go forth and become an infinitely better person, the whole thing quickly falls apart and I soon end up feeling much worse than I did to begin with.

This year, I’ve decided not to set myself up for failure and I haven’t made any  New Year’s resolutions. There are two reasons I always totally flunk at New Year’s resolutions:

1. I expect to see changes in myself almost immediately after deciding that I’m going to change.

Life changes 1 

2. My resolutions tend to be a bit vague and immeasurable like “Be healthy” or “Be less shit at everything”.

New year's resolutions

A while ago I wrote this post about how much I wanted to be someone totally different – someone who wakes up at dawn to do yoga, someone who is creative, productive and successful, someone who has deep philosophical conversations, someone who… (the list goes on). I have to be honest with myself: I AM NEVER going to be someone who wakes up bright and early, and does Yoga while reading… I dunno, Plato or whatever. What’s more, I’m actually okay with the fact I will never be this person.

Change shouldn’t about shoe-horning myself into a personality that doesn’t fit. My ideal version of myself – the clever, healthy, active creative with a mind that’s totally Zen – is not me. It’s never going to be me. If I became this person – the “perfect Me” – and I met perfect Me at a party, I would most probably want to punch perfect Me in the face. When I really think about it, perfect Me isn’t someone I would want to spend a lot of time with. I wouldn’t know what to talk to perfect Me about. In fact, perfect Me is probably someone I would bitch about behind their back. I would roll my eyes whenever perfect Me was talking. Perfect me probably wears Lycra and goes jogging. Perfect Me is probably a fussy eater… And that’s pretty much a deal breaker.

The more I thought about it, the more the perfect Me became less perfect and more smug and annoying. I realised that I don’t really like perfect Me at all. And if I don’t like the perfect version of myself, then why tell myself to become that person in the first place?

I started to wonder what was really so terrible about my imperfect life to make me feel like I had to become this Lycra-wearing object of perfection.

I decided to review what I’d achieved in 2012. While I realise that I didn’t make any particularly massive leaps forward with my life, in review, I think I achieved a fair amount. I completed the taught seminars on my MA, where I also made loads of new friends, I re-connected with old friends, I started writing for a couple of websites, I started writing a new novel and I (admittedly, in a totally random and seemingly impulsive manner) bought a dog.

And while none of my 2012 accomplishments have earned me an impressive salary, or landed me a publishing deal, or got me into some Lycra trousers, I’m safe in the knowledge that, in the very least, I’m heading in the right direction.

In the end, I decided to stop tormenting myself with thoughts of having a massive life overhaul and of becoming a person I don’t really want to be. And while there’s still a lot of room for change in my life, ultimately, I’m doing okay. Most people are doing okay. And that’s okay.

So while I’m still fully committed to trying new things and continuing with my 30 Before 30 list, I’m also not pretending that by the end of 2013, I will be a fit and healthy, intellectual, best-selling novelist with zero financial worries and a buzzing social life. All I want to get out of this year is to learn to be more appreciative of the things I have got and to just keep chipping away, slowly but surely, at the things I really want.

So here’s to 2013 – what I hope will be a slightly better year than 2012.

Nov 27 2012

30 Things to do before I’m 30

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This blog post has been in the works for quite a while (about 4 months). I’ve come close to posting it so many times and at the last moment, talked myself out of it again. Last week some friends on Twitter were talking about the 101 in 1001 lists thingy and I decided that it was time to post this. It’s still taken me another week to overcome inertia, so I’m posting it now before I give myself the opportunity to back out again. Apologies for any typos, I’m just sick of reading this over and over and then deciding not to post it. This is a long one btw, so grab a cup of tea and pull up a chair… Jo.

You may or may not have noticed that I’ve been a little internet-absent recently. Normally when this happens I come back with some blog post or other plagued with apologies and excuses. This time it’s different (and no, it’s not because I had to go to rehab following my Snickers addiction).

A few months ago I realised that I am now, officially, in my late twenties. I am 28 and a half (ish) years old. That means that in a year and half (ish) I’m going to be 30. I know that’s not an overly distressing thing in itself, but it prompted me to think about my twenties and wonder what, if anything, I have been doing with my life so far.

I started to think about the things I have done, but mostly, I thought about all the things I haven’t and I wondered why that might be.

Let’s go back to when I was about 6 or 7 years old. At this point in my life all of my friends had birthday parties at a place called The Big Buddy Bear Club which was a massive play area (ball pools, slides, tunnels, rope ladders etc.). The Big Buddy Bear Club was the place to have birthday parties. It was excessively good fun, for most kids.

I’m sure that given the amount of times I actually went to The Big Buddy Bear Club I probably had fun at least once, but all I remember is that I once got stuck in a tunnel and I found it very scary and upsetting.

I was crawling through a tunnel which had a gap in it. To cross the gap, I had to crawl across a rope bridge. As I approached the rope bridge I stopped. I wasn’t keen on crossing the rope bridge – it just didn’t feel safe. My gut instinct told me to go back the way I came, but there were kids behind me and I was too shy/scared/socially awkward to ask if I could crawl past them so I closed my eyes and hurriedly crawled across the bridge before pulling into a side tunnel and bursting into tears.

Even though I didn’t fall, and the rope bridge didn’t disappear beneath me, and nothing bad happened at all, I couldn’t bring myself to continue further down the tunnel. And I couldn’t bring myself to go back across the rope bridge, either. Supposedly, facing your fears means you overcome them. For me, it merely confirmed that I definitely found crawling across a rope bridge incredibly scary and that I didn’t want to do it again.

And so I sat there in the tunnel and cried. I cried about being too scared to go forwards and too scared to go backwards. All because of a totally non-threatening rope bridge especially designed for children of my age, height and weight to crawl across.

As I sat there sobbing loads of other kids crawled by. Some would give me a quizzical look before going on their way, others didn’t notice me.  Once again, being incredibly shy, I was too scared to ask one of them to help me get out of the tunnel. So I just sat there and all I could think about was how everyone in The Big Buddy Bear Club was having masses of fun except me. And maybe some other kid who was throwing up in the ball pool or something.

Eventually, after I can’t even remember how long, some girl I didn’t know saw me crying and helped me back across the rope bridge and back to where lot’s of extremely bored-looking parents were sitting on a bench drinking coffee and waiting for the party to be over. I sat with the bored parents until the end of the party, watching all the other kids playing and having ridiculous amounts of fun. I wanted to go back, but I told myself not to. It just wasn’t worth it, what if I got stuck somewhere else? What if next time, no one found me and I’d just get left there?

This is pretty much the story of my life. I’m scared of everything. When I face something I find scary I don’t conquer my fear, I simply reinforce the fact that, yes, I really do find that thing scary.

This is, apparently, how I roll. I seem to fear things I’m perfectly capable of doing, just in case something terrible happens. And so I sit on the side, crying, too scared to go forwards and hoping that, eventually, someone much more confident than I am will find me and I can go home.

Whenever I have taken ‘risks’ (and I mean that in the broadest possible sense of the term) I feel like things work out badly, and I regret taking that risk… And then that puts me off ever taking any other sort of risk or impulsive action ever again… Ever.

So now I ring-fence myself into ‘playing it safe’ that is: avoiding all the things that scare me, not making any decisions, and hoping that maybe one day everything will just work out for the best and I’ll be happy. I stop myself from making any decisions just in case I make a bad one that might make me unhappy.

So here I am. Nearly 30 and well and truly fenced into my comfort zone. This doesn’t result in a particularly satisfying life.

When I started thinking about what I have done this past decade, I realised that I’ve moved house more times than I care to remember, eaten a lot of pizza and watched a lot of films. I also passed my driving test, but I’m too scared to actually drive a car. And I wrote a novel… with no story.

I’ve realised that a combination of life anxiety and an unrelenting fear of failure has left me in this situation. I can either shrug my shoulders to it all and say that this is just the way I am, or I could do something (even if it’s a fairly small thing) to change.

In the interests of turning 30 and knowing that I’m heading in the right direction (or at the very least, be safe in the knowledge that I did more than move house and eat pizza) I’ve decided to make a change.

I started making a list of things I wanted to do before I’m 30. It’s kind of like a bucket list – minus  the  swimming-with-dolphins cliché and having death as the deadline. There are only 30 things on my list, but some of them might take me a while to complete. Others are small things that I’ve wanted to do for while but never got around to doing them – or simply because it’s easier not to bother.

I’m sharing this with you, Internet, to force myself to actually do the things on this list instead of flaking out like I normally do.

And I figured that since I’m sharing my list with the internet, I may as well write about each of them here. I foresee most of these things going spectacularly wrong (all part of the fun/learning curve, right?), and I’m more than happy to share those experiences for your amusement (you’re welcome).

Still reading? Excellent. Without further ado, here’s the list:

30 before 30 – The List

1. Join the Anthony Nolan register.

2. Have something (anything) published and be paid for it.

3. Begin to pay off my student debt.

4. Do volunteer work.

5. Be a confident driver (i.e. not have a panic attack when facing the prospect of getting in the car).

6. Write a new novel and complete my MA.

7. Learn how to play chess.

8. Take a yoga or meditation class.

9. Eat lobster.

10. Go ice-skating/sledging.

11. Learn a bit of Spanish.

12. Host a dinner party.

13. Walk the Three Peaks.

14. Try out for a roller derby

15. Have a party with a bouncy castle.

16. Master using WordPress

17. Go to a music festival.

18. Watch the films I haven’t watched (list to follow).

19. Go out for brunch.

20. Go to a drive-in movie.

21. Visit Edinburgh.

22. Do all the touristy bits of London you’re supposed to do when you’re a tourist.

23. Do a pub crawl.

24. Knit a scarf.

25. Do all the things I was too scared to do as a child (list to follow).

26. Own a round wicker chair.

27. Be a vegetarian for a week (or maybe a month).

28. Go on a random trip without planning any of it.

29. Stay up for 24 hours.

30. Work in the field for which I received my degree.

There’s a reason for why each of these things went onto the list, but I’ll explain each when I blog about them (because otherwise, this is going to be the longest blog post ever).