Family <3

Families comes in all shapes and sizes, big ones, small ones, we all have family, whether we like them or not. Some people we consider to be family might not even be blood related, but for some this makes these chosen people all that more special.

Princess Diana once said –

Family is the most important thing in the world.

And I fully believe that is it. I am a family orientated girl and believe that I wouldn’t be the person I am today without my family. They have given me support and love when I have needed it the most to carry on. God that sounds dramatic, but I mean through my degree.

When the going gets tough the first thing I do is run to my Mam, my Auntie or my sisters. I can’t help it. If they can’t help I pick up the blower and ring the big JC – Granda John, he just always knows the right thing to say and being the head of the family, he bloody well should!

I know that not all families are close and its funny because my boyfriend thinks its completely weird how close me and my family are. My Mam, Auntie, little sisters and I are constantly chatting away about something in our group chat. Even if its just my sisters mithering my mam about what she’s going to cook for tea, or when she’s going to pick them up from their friends house, being connected this way makes me feel all that more involved in their lives. I wouldn’t have it any other way, I miss the chaos and madness of living at home sometimes. I think moving away defo makes you appreciate everything so much more, all them little things that youse use to do together, even just going food shopping.

I’ve been feeling slightly home sick recently, I don’t know whether it s because I’m currently at a stressful point in my life trying to achieve the best I can in terms of producing the best final pieces of coursework or Easter that’s brought it on. Although we are not a religious family, we do still have our own weird sort of Easter traditions. Coming from West Cumbria, every Easter the full town competes in a game called Uppies VS Downies – basically if you come from the upper part of town you are classed an uppy, and if you are from the bottom end of town you are called of course, you guessed it, an downey. It’s a bit like rugby, the ball is kicked and launched from the centre of town and then both teams aim to get the ball to the finishing points which are located a couple of miles away from the centre. Here is a video of Uppies and Downies in action –

It’s  a crazy game, no rules, just communities coming together with plenty of passion and drive. We never part take but we do go down to show our support and spectate. I really missed doing this this Easter. We would tend to go down in the car in our pyjamas to see where our uppies where up to 🙂

Another tradition of ours, is that of the EGG DUMP. The egg dump is a challenge where your eggs are dried and painted in a certain way before being boiled (you can also decorate them in anyway you like). We would then draw names out of a hat then COMPETE. Flip heads and tails, whoever calls tails has to hold there egg while the second competitor tries to smash it with their egg. Big JC even has trophies for competing and winning these competitions!

Hahaha, I know that all this sounds completely barmy but it’s these crazy quirky things that have brought us as a family closer and together and I feel like I’ve missed out this Easter 😦

So this weekend I’m going home to spend some quality time with my sisters and Granda – my Mam is away on holiday with her boyfriend but gets back this Sunday so I will be able to see her for a day before I come back to Manchester. YEY.

Anyways this was just a little post to encourage everyone to appreciate what they have got, appreciate and cherish every moment.

And here is a little song my Great Grandma use to sing to us –

Home Run….

A home run – a hit that allows the batter to go around all the bases and score the run.

This is me right now in my final year at university, this for me is the final stretch of my undergraduate degree. I’m not going to lie and pretend that it’s all been a breeze because university is hard. It’s meant to be, its meant to challenge you and test you and push you to your very limits. Without that, how would you learn and grow?

Weirdly, I don’t feel that I have been as stressed out about my final year as I thought I would be. I have actually managed my time and myself quite efficiently and considering that I work Monday to Friday part time as well, I think am doing okay.

Looking back at my university life over the past four years and there is nothing that I would change, you have to be silly, you have to make stupid mistakes and decisions, and you have to allow yourself them ups and them downs to allow yourself personal growth.

One thing that I didn’t realise when starting university was just how insecure I was. I was insecure in myself, my abilities and even in my friendship group at the time (who I now no longer speak to any of them!) Why was I so insecure?

I feel that it was down to the fact I was surrounded by negativity, negative people with negative opinions that ultimately lead to me thinking negative thoughts. Anyone that knows me properly knows that this is not me, I am loud, confident young adult. Happy in myself, my abilities and generally happy in life and I put that all down to my learning experiences at University.

Here are a few things that I feel l that I need to share in regards to what I have learnt-

1. From 16 to 23 you will meet a lot of temporary people – at university you meet a lot of people, you just have to be wary of the reasons someone is actually befriending you. Do not invest your time in someone who doesn’t invest it in you. You will soon realise who actually cares about you and who doesn’t.
2. When the going gets tough reach out – be this to your friends, family, lecturers, cat, dog, goldfish, anyone! A problem shared really is a problem halved, two heads are better at coming up with a solution to a problem than one. Without sharing how are people meant to help? Give others that opportunity.
3. Find some part-time work – be this voluntary or paid. Honestly, having some structure in your life is what is needed when you are a student, as I think that sometimes you can run away with the whole student lifestyle and get a bit lost. Going uni, going out, being rough, going uni, going out, being rough. No hunnies, this is not real life, what happens when you leave uni, it will be a right culture shock! I find that having a part time job whilst at university has helped me to remain in touch with the human race and in touch with reality. Not only that is has given me some structure, helped me grow and gain confidence, expanded my skill set and communication skills but also made me feel like a valued member of society. Earning your own money in itself is just a good feeling. You just have to get the balance right between work, studies and play.
4. Don’t do it for anyone else, do it for yourself – I spent a lot of time before university and at the beginning of uni doing things because other people have influenced me into which in turn made me seriously unhappy. I made decisions based on what others thought and not actually on what I wanted. In fact I was nearly incapable of making a decision about my own life for myself. Sometimes in life you have to be selfish and you have to do this for yourself. You are the driver of your own life and you have to take control. University is your time to shine and your time to do it for you. So go ahead and be selfish. This is your time.
5. Be confident in your own abilities – I spent a lot of time doubting my abilities and even when I received positive feedback I would constantly doubt myself still. My Mam always says to me, ‘there is no such word as can’t’ – she’s right, If you approach life with that can do attitude you will surprise yourself. Never ever underestimate yourself. Try and you will succeed, everything is a learning curve.
6. Give yourself a break – this is an important one.  During my final year I keep having moments were I just feel so bad that I am doing something other than my uni work. But how are you meant to refresh, recuperate and reload all your thoughts and ideas without taking a break from it all? We are not robots we are humans and sometimes we need to give ourselves a well deserved break. Take a day even a couple of days off from your studies, go visit friends, family, go to the gym, or simply just relax with Netflix, a good box set and your duvet (know ones judging). Trust me one this one.
7. It is what it is….what more do I need to say.

#ThisGirlCan

I don’t know if it’s because we have been focusing on campaign’s in one of my lectures, but I seem to notice campaigns everywhere lately and I can’t seem to stop wanting to write about them.

One that really caught my eye yesterday was the ‘This Girl Can‘ campaign. It is a national campaign,

developed by Sport England and a wide range of partnership organisations. It’s a celebration of active women up and down the country who are doing their thing no matter how well they do it, how they look or even how red their face gets.

Sports England on their website state that more men that women are playing sport than women in all age ranges, and this is something that they want to change; they want to close this gender gap.

Personally I think this campaign is great. I tend to go to the gym about 3 times maybe 4 times on a good week, but it is only in the past two year that I realised the importance of exercise…that sounds stupid saying it like that, but what I mean is…it taught me a lot of things. It learnt me that exercising is great if you need to let out some aggression, let off some steam, or even just as a way of relaxing, through meditation and yoga. I do believe that there is a sport for everyone. I have tried many things, and through trying different things and taking myself out of my comfort zone, I have found a new love for yoga, pilates and kettlebells and I also feel I have grown as a person because of this. I never thought I’d see the day I would be saying I actually enjoyed kettlebells, but that burn gives you a buzz like no other.

Me myself, and I are not the athletic type and god forbid had you seen my moves at my Zumba class, I have no idea how the instructor manages to keep a straight face, with two left feet and no coordination I don’t really have any hope. But my point is, it’s all about the fun factor. Who cares what you look like? I know that when I am trying my hardest to follow the moves the last thing I am doing is looking around to see what other people are doing! The benefits of exercising are just too good to argue with. The NHS state –

People who do regular activity have a lower risk of many chronic diseases, such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and some cancers.

Research shows that physical activity can also boost self-esteem, mood, sleep quality and energy, as well as reducing your risk of stress,depression, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

Who could argue with that?

On the campaigns website they say that, ‘fear of judgement is stopping many of us from taking part in exercise’, which is saddening. I do something silly nearly everyday and guess what I don’t care! I was once sick in a body pump class at the gym…if that’s not enough to put you off, I don’t know what is. But I got over it, and guess what? I went back. This is the attitude that we as women need to have. We live in a world were we care too much about what other people think and we shouldn’t; we can’t be the best we can be and improve ourselves and our health if we absorb other people’s small minded judgements.

I think that it is great that the campaign has included women of all shapes and sizes to promote the campaign, as we are surrounded by images of ‘thinsporation’ and ‘fitsoporation’ that depict active women as mostly thin women. I am not for any moment saying that these women are not what they appear to be, but what I am saying is that not all active women are stick thin, and it is good to see such a national campaign acknowledge this.

An article by the Independent says that,

The new posters accompanying the video for the This Girl Can campaign feature slogans like “I swim because I love my body, not because I hate it,” finally expressing what fitspiration, and so many of our conversations around women’s exercise, have been missing.

I couldn’t put it better.

I am totally on board this campaign to encourage more women to get on the sports band wagon. There is a sport out there suited for everyone, and just because we are women or might not fit the stereotypical gym goer criteria doesn’t mean we can’t have a passion for sport.

I think this campaign bares many similarities to the #LikeAGirl campaign; which was launched by Always, to empower women and tackle gender discrimination through the insult, ‘like a girl’. Similarly, both are aimed at empowering women and breaking down stereotypes. Both have used video advertisements which send out powerful messages. Both have also used social media to spread their campaign messages, and so far seem to be quite successful with their approaches. I don’t think I ever really realised the negativity behind the phrase until I actually seen the video, which did actually hit home and make me think. I think this campaign is great. In both cases it seems that the problems come from societies perceptions of women, and the first step in breaking down these perceptions, is raising awareness through these campaigns and redefining how the world see’s women. Because we are women we shouldn’t be limited to what we do. You should feel empowered because you are a woman! Feel empowered and go relight your passion with sport. Do it for you, for know one else.

Here is the #ThisGirlCan video

And here is the #LikeAGirl video

Ladies, feel inspired!

I Just Don’t Get It….

This week in my communication lecture we were told a story that really stuck a chord with me, it was about a user of Twitter who sent out a series of tweets stating that he was going to end his life. A modern-day suicide note.

Before he tweeted this he tweeted he felt that he didn’t have anyone to turn to which to me I found really upsetting. He was a well-known person with many connections, but still he felt alone. It made me appreciate the fact I have a select few people I can turn to in times where I feel I need someone to talk to, but also made me question many things, such as how many other people are out there feeling the same way as he did? And how many people use social media as a way of gaining that support?

I understand that sometimes people find it hard to talk…my little sister is one of them, and forever I am telling her that a problem shared is a problem halved. But different people use different strategies and hers is also through the use of Twitter, to express her emotions and vent.

I did some further reading and found that “Britain is the loneliest capital in Europe” (The Independent, 2014: Online) . This shocked me at first but when I began to think about it, I began to think about the bigger picture and how things like the mobile phone, have become big parts of our daily lives. I read in the Daily Mail (2013: Online) that the average persons checks their mobile phone around 110 times a day. That to me is astonishing! Why? What is the need? Why do we feel so close to our phones? What are we waiting for?

Nowadays you look around we are surrounded by people buried with their head down engrossed in their mobile phones. We are a generation where people spend more time on-line building ‘relationships’ through cyberspace, than actually being bothered to make the effort and find out about who lives next door. Studying social care I think that this is scary.

The Independent (2013: Online) found the following statistics –

34 million hours are spent on Facebook each day, with a further 28 million hours on Twitter.

And almost a third (30%) of the UK’s 33 million Facebook users are on the network for at least an hour a day, with 13% spending at least two hours on Facebook each day.

More than a quarter (26%) of UK women on Facebook check their pages at least 10 times a day, compared to less than one in five (18%) of men.

Of the UK’s estimated 26 million Twitter users, almost a third (31%) spend more than an hour a day on the network, while 14% – more than 3.6 million people – say their daily usage exceeds two hours.

Personally I think that if we invested more time in our real life friendships and relationships, rather than wasting our time on-line with superficial fake friends and acquaintances, then maybe the levels of loneliness won’t be so high.

Have you ever watched Jeremy Kyle, now forgive me for using it as an example, but  how many times do you watch an episode of this and find that Facebook has been the main cause of the argument and relationship breakdown? Yet, so many still waste time on it.

Don’t get me wrong, I do believe that some forms of social media can be helpful, such as the case I mentioned at the beginning. But 9 times out of 10, I would put down the way our generation is so unconnected down to digital technologies and social media.

The video below is an advert illustrating how mobile phones are ruining relationships….

I mean, I can’t say that I haven’t been guilty for overusing my phone but I just think that we need to do something about this, and change the way we are behaving before we end up so engrossed in cyber culture we lose grip of the real world. We seem to be the cause of our own isolation and at this rate we will be the cause of our own extinction if this sort of behaviour carries on……haha.

So next time you pick up your mobile phone THINK!

I am well aware that I have used this post to mainly nag about the use of mobile phones but it wasn’t originally tended for that, but sometimes you just have to roll with the flow and let it out!

References

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2449632/How-check-phone-The-average-person-does-110-times-DAY-6-seconds-evening.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/britons-spend-62m-hours-a-day-on-social-media–thats-an-average-one-hour-for-every-adult-and-child-8567437.html 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/weird-news/forgot-phone-goes-viral-eight-2224887

Online Activism At It’s Best

So, I was just sat scrolling down my Facebook, procrastinating when really I should be focusing on my fast approaching deadlines, when a something caught my eye and made me think.

It was an e-petition for the ‘Green Party to be included in the BBC political debate’. So after kind of being won around by the Greens lately, mainly due to the fact they see the importance of investing in young people, youth services and communities, I thought yes I am defo going to sign then.

The great thing is, nowadays you can actually now have an impact without even having to leave your sofa. With an option of sharing the petition yourself through the use of other social media platforms, i.e. Facebook and Twitter, you are doing more than just signing the petition but adding to the spread of it. As mentioned in a previous post the author Clay Shirky, mentioned that through doing this, I will have added to the complexity, through creating more connections and more networks, that will hopefully spread the word further.

An article written by the Guardian, states,

….the BBC “will continue to keep any new evidence of increased support for the Green party under close review” – Guardian:Online:2014

I’m just hoping that the BBC are taking notice of this activity and are aware of the online support that the Green Party are receiving, currently 13,560 people have signed this out of the 15,000 signatures they are asking for, we can do this!

This led me to question, I wonder how effective these online petitions actually are, and if any had actually made any impacts…

An article by The Independent (2012) which stated that signing e-petitions has become one of Britain’s favorite forms of political participation. The author then goes on to discuss why he thinks internet petitions especially of this form have become so popular,

It is that internet-driven norms of networking, flexibility, spontaneity and ad hoc organizing have started to diffuse into our political culture and these norms are generating new expectations about what counts as effective and worthwhile political action. These new online norms also increasingly mesh with changing practices in the world of older media, particularly television.

And I completely see his point, but also I think that not just in terms of political e-petitions but just online petitions in general, over the past few years nearly everyone has access to the internet, and most people will access the web daily; that coupled with the ease of accessing these petitions, and sharing them so easily will both have added to the increase, because lets face it, the internet isn’t really making it effort for us to do this.

But after further researching, I found that for a e-petition to be considered for debate by the Commons, it has to reach 100,000 signatures and petitions that reach 10,000 signatures would elicit a written response from the government (BBC: Online: 2013). They also go on to state that not many petitions actually reach the 100,000 signatures needed with many becoming, what they describe as, ‘digital dust’.

I was shocked when I read this because to me this isn’t as many signatures that I thought, and to me, 100,000 is doable, especially when the cause is something that affect us all, such as political petitions. Millions of people access the web daily, so I wonder what is preventing them from reaching these targets? Maybe they need to promote themselves in other ways?

Although some may not be reaching there targets, digital petitions are on the rise. This shows me that there has been a cultural change within society, maybe even an evolution….the shift in things being done manually to digital, e.g. people going to a town hall to sign a petition vs e-petitions.

I wonder what effect this is going to have, if any? I wonder if it’s representative of the population as a whole’s views, or, if it is the views of the young, tech, savvy generation that regularly use the internet and are aware of these online petitions?

Who knows? I’ve sat and rambled on for long enough now, so I’m gonna wrap this up now with some references and then go and enjoy a large glass of wine…if it Saturday night after all!!!

BBC, 2013. First Day ‘is Crucial For The Success of E-petitions. [Online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23441223

The Guardian, 2014. BBC Refuses To Include Green Party Televised Leader Debates. [Online] Available at:   http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/29/bbc-refuses-include-green-party-televised-leader-debates-general-election

The Independent, 2012. How Digital Petitions Are Replacing Traditional Parties As The Engine Of Modern, Popular Democracy. [Online] Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/how-digital-petitions-are-replacing-traditional-parties-as-the-engine-of-modern-popular-democracy-8329266.html