Month: December 2017

December in review

The last monthly review of the year! Not sure I’ll keep these going next year but time will tell.

Lived

Highlights

Ahhh December, and your parties and nights out; the work night out was the usual nonsense, the party at a friends with a huge spread of excellent (homemade) party foods was fun, the gym night out was a great cocktail filled laugh, and I started a new tradition with some colleagues (aka Team Awesome) by going to the Panto at the Pavilion which was utterly bonkers brilliant!

The run up to Christmas was nicely busy too, some good times, and apparently I’m now popular enough to get invited to too many places at the same time, which saw my Christmas Eve and Boxing Day both featuring double invites… check me out!

Christmas Day was wonderful as always, a very relaxed day mostly focused on little Lucy, and my ‘second’ Christmas Day (with the ‘family’ I chose) was a wonderful food and drink filled day of laughter (as it always is).

I feel very VERY lucky and very blessed at the moment.

Stepcount: WHO CARES IT’S CHRISTMAS!

Read

Nothing finished, too busy galavanting! (As my wee granny would’ve said)

Watched

The Last Jedi
A must see for any Star Wars fan and whilst I’ll post no spoilers, I did leave the cinema a little underwhelmed. Not massively, it’s still a gloriously large scale sci-fi romp but it didn’t entirely feel part of the same universe? Hard to put my finger on but I bumped on a few scenes in the movie and still not quite sure why. It’s a good movie, but not a great one.

Also watched:
It’s a Wonderful Life.
Saw this at the small local Grosvenor cinema, a bottle of wine, comfy seats and the usual happy tears streaming down my face. Doesn’t matter how many times I watch it. Officially Christmas now!

Listened

Nothing new, too busy to stop and think so have just been revisiting favourite bands/albums from the past couple of years. Smatterings of The Go! Team, GoGo Penguin, and a few classical piano playlists have been tiding me over before the Christmas songs descended.

Gig: Honeyblood

Have yourself a Honeybloody Christmas!

Featuring sets by Emme Woods, Man of Moon, and The Spook School (I only got there in time to catch the latter), there was a great atmosphere prior to Honeyblood coming on stage.

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Having seen them twice, once supporting Foo Fighters at Murrayfield, and once at the teeny tiny Hug & Pint, I had a sense of what to expect.

Expectation be damned!

Honeyblood have been touring for the past few months, and it shows. Up-tempo versions of some of their tracks ripped along, the tracks from the now one-year-old second album sounded vibrant, and before we knew it they’d rattled their way through their setlist and encore.

As it was a Christmas show, there was a pause mid-show for a dance off – cue a lot of pogo-ing, hands raised twirling – the winners of which got up on stage to play a round of pass the parcel, and as a final song a rather kick-ass version of Merry Christmas that Slade would’ve been proud of!

Special mention to the drummer Cat, she’s recently been playing with Mogwai and from that first gig at the Hug & Pint to the other night at the ABC, she’s turned into an absolute monster of a drummer.

All in all a pretty good gig to round off my year.

The day of boxing

It’s over.

Another year and you’ve survived Christmas Day. Well done!

For some Christmas can be an ordeal, a day to be gotten through. For others it’s a day to savour and enjoy. Whatever type of Christmas Day you had, it’s over now.

Boxing Day is a day for leftovers if you have them (trifle for breakfast!) and lazing around in front of the TV. Maybe you’ll go for a walk, maybe you’ll visit some friends, or maybe you’ll simply relax and enjoy the fact that the ‘big day’ has passed once more. I’ll be doing all of the above; trifle for breakfast, then a walk to a friends house.

However you spend these festive days, I hope you are well and can find some happiness and peace.

And whilst I remember, thank you for visiting this odd little blog, for reading and commenting, and sharing your thoughts on the nonsense I post here.

But for now, bugger off, enjoy yourself, and be good to you and yours.

Five pounds

What would you do with a fiver?

That’s the question recently posed by Awesome Foundation Glasgow, as they handed out bright pink envelopes on Buchanan Street. They hoped the fivers would be put to good use; donated to charity, maybe used to purchase food bank items, or used to buy a hot meal for someone who needed one.

I happened to be in town that day and received one of the envelopes. I already had half a mind on what I’d do with it, and it’s been great to see the updates on social media on what others did with theirs. I decided to embrace the ‘fiver’ aspect rather than the monetary amount itself, and thought I’d buy tea and a hot roll for some of the many homeless people I see every morning as I walk to work. One person a day, Monday to Friday.

The homeless situation in Glasgow, like most other cities, is noticeably on the rise these past few years. I give change when I have it, but if I don’t I still try and make eye contact, still try and acknowledge that this is a fellow human being in front of me. I read an article earlier this year that touched on that, that the interaction can be more valuable than the amount, and can make a real difference to break the sense of isolation that many homeless people feel.

With that in mind I tried to spend a few minutes chatting to each guy (all of them were men) each morning. A couple were younger than me, a couple were older, one was foreign and didn’t have much English, one was from London and had heard that Glasgow was a friendly place.

And each morning as I walked away, heading to a warm office, the privilege of my life struck me, alongwith the horrifying realisation of how easily that could happen, to anyone, to me. A few changes of circumstance is all it would take.

The first morning I chatted to a guy called Darren, it wasn’t for more than a few minutes, but as I headed off he thanked me for talking the time to stop and talk to him. “That’s what ah miss most, you know, just chattin tae someone fur a bit”.

There is every chance I’ll see these guys again in the coming weeks and if I do I’ll stop and say hello. I might buy them a cup of tea, or give them a couple of quid, but the real takeaway from my week wasn’t about money.

Turns out that you don’t need five pounds to make a difference, just five minutes, and we can all spare that.

Slowing Down

Despite eschewing New Year Resolutions for the past few years I happily set myself the challenge of reading 24 novels this year (tracked in Goodreads). When I was younger I used to read a lot more than I do now but these days, with so many more things fighting for my attention, my ability to carve out a few hours to sit and read can seem like a real challenge. So, I figured, I could game myself into setting aside some time to read.

Even though I’d been attending a semi-regular book club (it’s my attendance that is semi-regular, not the book club), I realised that I was struggling to read enough and that was enough to let some old habits and behaviours creep in. The sign, for me, is that low level anxiety/fear that makes my stomach churn and kicked in when I realised that I wouldn’t manage to read 24 books by the end of the year and so will have ‘failed’, and one thing that my counselling confirmed is that fear of failure is pretty much the stick I use to beat myself with (relentlessly and brutally).

I can happily confirm that I will not manage to complete the challenge this year but as I set out this year I knew it wasn’t really about completing it, it was more to find a way to push myself to slow down and step away from, … well, … everything else and focus on just one moment, one thing at a time.

However, recognising that I was feeling not good about my progress against the reading challenge, I’m stepping back to remind myself of the original reason I wanted to read more books in the first place, it’s the same reason that I enjoy long walks, the same reason that made me start meditating; I need to slow down.

“You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way.” – Walter Hagen

For most of my adult life I’ve set goals for myself, pushed myself to do things, learn things, try things, and I’ve never found it easy to sit still and at peace for any period of time. Even watching movies my brain is still whirring away, analysing lighting choices, word choices, acting choices. It’s why if I’m looking to relax I’ll either watch a big silly blockbuster I’ve already seen – because I can completely switch off and let it wash over me – or an episode of Friends because I’ve seen them all so many times I don’t even need to think about them.

Finding ways to slow down used to be a real challenge and growing up I grabbed onto lots of little examples of how I thought I ‘should be’. We are told that goals are good things. What is your goal in life? What do you want to be when you grow up? You study to pass exams, you compete to win trophies, your have a career path, goal after goal after goal after goal.

Goals are good! Goals give us something to aim for, a reason to keep going, a target to hit. Goals fit with the general mantra of work hard and life will be good.

At least that’s what we are told.

These days I’m not so sure. I do think goals CAN be good, but only in select circumstances, and I’ve been guilty of using them all the time (for emotionally driven reasons, rather than any sense of benefit of achieving said goals).

Everyday life has changed in the past 20 years, and the rise of the ever connected, super productive, smart computers that we have to hand almost 24/7 and it’s no wonder that social media is a drain on our time and the urge to ‘keep up’ is only furthered by the stream of everyone else is doing everything, and living their glamourous, fun-packed lives. Keep up, go faster, Keep Up, do more, KEEP UP!

This sense of urgency to always be busy, to always have to strive for more because it’s what everyone else is doing* is something I had no sight of when I was 10 years old. Back then I didn’t know what any of my friends were doing when I wasn’t with them and it didn’t concern me one bit, I’d find out when we met to play football in the grass at the back of my parents house.

At this point, having figured out that I need to carve out more quiet time away from social media my instinct is always to go big and declare that I was going to have a sabbatical for a week, or maybe a day every week or… something. But the reality is that some form of connection can be good and ~ gosh I think I’ve said this before! ~ when it comes to things like this I know for me it’s more about finding the balance.

It’s important not to discount the upside of social media either. I know I experience compersion when I see other people happy, and even if I’m in a bit of a funk it’s good to have those little glimmers, so cutting out social media completely would be to deny those moments.

That said, dealing with the negative side of social media, the comparisons, the envy, isn’t always something I’ve been good at. Stepping away, in essence taking a time out, is something I’ve been making a conscious decision to do from time to time, even if just for a couple of hours it can be enough to stop me reacting to what I’m seeing. It also means I’ve got pockets of time to myself that I am no longer feeling the need to acknowledge the endless scrolling updates that ping on my screen.

Meditation is definitely a help here, finding even 10 mins in my day to sit quietly with my own thoughts has been a huge boon (as I’ve discussed before). I still use buddifhy on occasion but am just as comfortable with an unguided session and for those I look to Calm or the newer Oak app. Those moments are becoming increasingly important to me and I’m starting to protect my meditation time as much as I do my gym time.

Part of my 2018 will be to continue that practice, and continue to push to find a balance, but I already know that I will be looking to make better use of my time, be it attending more events, seeing friends more often, and generally living life, or just taking some time from my day to sit quietly and slow down.

* newsflash: they aren’t, we are not our social media feeds. (I know you know, just bears repeating).

BootCamp is Dead

My third (and final) BootCamp is over.

That’s 10 weeks, two sessions a week, of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

DONE.

No longer will I be getting up and going to the gym at 9am on a Saturday morning!

This was my third BootCamp in a row and I’ve been lucky enough to meet some amazing people who have inspired me along the way and kept me motivated to turn up. Safe to say that the camaraderie is what kept me going back and that is down to the atmosphere of the gym and the trainers. I WANT to go this gym, even after the very first, nervous, BootCamp session I knew I would be back.

This is not a place full of people pounding treadmills (there aren’t any) or GETTING PUMPED at Spin class (there are no bikes). And despite the fact that the gym is more focused on lifting and mobility, there are no gurning, muscle bound idiots, slamming weights around and staring at themselves in mirrors (because there aren’t any mirrors). I hadn’t fully realised just how much of an intimidating and ‘not nice’ place a lot of gyms can be, and whilst some are now countering these with women-only areas (which is great) it leaves guys like me who also have body confidence issues feeling isolated and awkward.

So whilst there is no more BootCamp, a change of format and name means I’ll be doing three sessions a week as part of the new Team Training sessions. There will be a little more focus on lifting than solely HIIT, and I cannot wait to get started. To prepare I’ve been going to an additional class which is structured a little more that way and there is something oddly satisfying at raising a proper barbell over your head! (and it had 5kg weights on it too!).

I’ve been thinking ahead to 2018, not in a resolution kinda way, more just pondering a few things to try (more on that soon) but, for once, one thing that isn’t part of that thought process is ‘exercise’ because, somewhere in my brain, it’s just part of who I am now. Even typing that sentence still feels a little weird!

And, because I am now ‘one of those’ people who go to the gym regularly, I think I’m allowed to pass on my wisdom in a slightly preachy manner (exercise is a religion after all!). So, to those of you who are ‘resolved’ to exercise more, maybe don’t plan to focus on anything other than finding a place/people that fit what you want. Finding somewhere that isn’t full of the uber-fits or the muscle bound twats clanging weights around has made such a huge difference to my desire to be at the gym, as is the knowledge that when I go I know I will be spending time with some truly lovely, supportive, powerful and uplifting people.

For the record, the gym I go to is AGFitness, they have a variety of sessions, and Personal Trainer options as well.