Blog Gaps

I was reading through some of my old blog posts earlier and I realised that the information on this blog has been a bit disjointed – I mean, at one point I was talking about having a drinking problem and being depressed then the next thing to appear online was a few months later telling you about all wonderful kids clubs I’d been helping out with. You’d be forgiven for thinking “what on earth has happened in the past 3 months to transform an alcoholic into a children’s worker?” (OK, I’m exaggerating but only a little). Anyway, in light of this, I have put together this post is - to help fill in the gaps…

Firstly, can I point out (from the perspective of hindsight)  – I didn’t really have a drinking problem, not in the classical sense anyway – I have never been physically addicted to alcohol, what I meant when I said “I have a drinking problem” was that I wasn’t drinking responsibly. I was drinking a bit too much a bit too often to make myself feel happier but it was just making me miserable with guilt. All in all it was more of a discipline problem than a drinking problem but, at the time, I think I made it sound a lot worse than what it was. Indeed, it felt a lot worse than what it was because depression has a funny way of making everything seem worse.

Secondly I wish to point out that my depression has never affected my work with kids and/or youth. If anything, I’m using the bad experience for good – it helps me to empathise with those that are hurting.

So, now that that’s out of the way, let’s go back to the beginning to try and summarise what has happened in my life since I started documenting it.

(For context: I recommitted my life to Christ in early 2007, I started uni in September 2007 and started blogging at the tail end of 2008 – in my 2^nd year of uni.)

2009 – On the hole, a good year for me - At the start of it I finally seemed to be getting somewhere with God. My faith was growing and I became a small group leader in my Christian Union.

Also at this time it became more and more apparent to me, as the months went by, that I chose the wrong degree subjects but I didn’t know what to change to so I eventually decided to drop one of my subjects (Forensic Science) and to re-start my 2^nd year of uni in September 2009 doing just single honours Criminology.

Meanwhile, I had become a Sunday School teacher and had helped out at my uni church’s Holiday Bible Club. I went off to UCCF Forum and encountered God like I never had before – it has been one of the happiest times in my life.

By November 2009, the depression that had plagued me throughout my high school years came back but that’s not to say it didn’t pay me brief visits in between times.

Not long before I went home for Christmas I decided I was quitting my degree but planned to remain living in Lincoln.

Whilst at home I (A.) decided that writing was something I wanted to pursue further, possibly even as a career (and B.) Found out about the kids work that went on a Spring Harvest and applied – it was something I REALLY wanted to do but didn’t really expect to get chosen for as I applied really late in the application process. Both of these things have been so influential in where I am now and what I hope to do in the future.

So, I went back to Lincoln only a few days into 2010 – the year that would be my toughest yet. Depression came and went for the first few months, and then there was a really happy ‘season’ around the time of Spring Harvest. The depression proceeding Spring Harvest was worse than the one preceding it. The ‘post Spring Harvest depression’ didn’t really lift until around October that year.

In September 2010 I moved back to Northern Ireland after a couple months of homelessness (sleeping on friend’s sofas – not the streets). I was a complete mess and had no clue what I was going to do with my life.

Then nothing really happened for a few months until I got inspired around New Years, as I tend to do. I started 2011full of hope even though I wasn’t really sure what I was hoping for…

I took a short yet wonderful trip to Edinburgh in March, did a Creative Writing Course then a Bible College Short Course then a short course in ‘An Introduction to Journalism’ and by the time I’d finished all that it was almost summer.

The summer I spent travelling up and down England helping out at various events and although it didn’t all go to plan and I was so busy that I barely slept for 3 months, I enjoyed it all so much!

From my summer adventures I shot straight into working for a Church in Oxford for a year which is where I am now… man, it’s been one heck of a journey! 

Looking back at 2011’s Goals

I never really sat myself any new year’s resolutions or goals last year other than to write more and to make more YouTube videos/get more involved with the online video community.

The creative writing may have taken a back seat but the video making was most definitely successful, having filmed/created over 50 videos with more still in production - that's over double the previous 3 years combined!

I also got to attend my first YouTube gathering which was an awesome experience that I hope to repeat in 2012.

This time next year, I’d love to be a YouTube partner.

Below are some of my favourite videos from throughout the year – filmed, edited, created by me.

The Eagle Wing Festival (in under a minute)

Steph visits Northern Ireland Parts 1 and 2

July 2011

Speedy Cat

Twinkle Twinkle Little Fish (my first attempt at Stop Motion Animation)

Lincoln Christmas Market – A Snapshot

Home for Christmas

Click here to view my channel :)

Things I Learnt in 2011

I’m constantly learning about both the world and myself. I guess that’s not unusual. What is perhaps a little unusual is that I try to use the knowledge I’ve gained to help me grow as a person. (No, I didn’t mean that to sound quite as pretentious as it did...)

Anyways, I feel I learnt two main things this year:

The first, I learned over the summer (which I spent, among other things, travelling around a lot of England, working at various events, and having very little sleep). It was this: I can do a lot more than I think I can (or, that is to say, than I thought I could – past tense).

I always thought I was rather useless – that I couldn’t do much but, with a little discipline, I’ve discovered that I can be rather useful indeed.

The second thing I learnt is: The value of Discipline, especially self-discipline.

Up until now I’ve been fairly undisciplined in my life but, as I mentioned in a previous post, I have been striving to change this and I think progress has been made.

I define discipline as what I’ve been doing the last few months: Doing what’s right even though I don’t want to. And not being lazy.

(Also, in the last week or so, I learnt what the Oxford comma is and also that my family – particularly my parents – are completely incapable of playing charades/staying silent. Their attempts were indeed fairly hilarious as I’m sure you can imagine.)

I urge everyone to watch this:

If you’re Alone this Christmas...

I know this time of year can feel especially lonely for some people and so I wanted to leave a brief message here saying: 

Whoever you are & wherever you are, you are worth something and God loves you. You need never be alone if you turn to him.

Be blessed, folks! xx 

I know, I know, it’s been a while…

Since I lasted posted on here (way back on July 2^nd) I had my dear friend Stephy visit me in Norn Iron, I caught a flight to Bristol, travelled down to Poole (via Bath) for a job interview, travelled to Northampton for a job interview, travelled to Lincoln where I met up with old friends, went to a wedding, a baptism and a graduation. From there I went back home for a week before flying to East Midlands to be part of the Powerpack Team at Faith Camp (Peterborough).

I made it to the Saturday of Summer in the City (in between weeks 1 and 2 of the Children’s Ministry Experience in Headington, Oxford) then visited Stephy at her home in London before travelling back up to Lincoln for Grapevine.

That was my summer. What followed was 10 days at home before I moved to Oxford for an academic year. I am doing an internship with a church here. My job title is “Ministry Support Worker” and it involves me helping out with various regular activities & less regular events.

During the week I help out at Mums & Tots, Over 50’s Club, After School Club and Youth Group. On a Sunday I help with Sunday School, Sunday Youth, Crèche & Data Projection. I have also just agreed to help out with a second Youth Project and a second Mother & Toddler group.

As you can see, my main focus is Children’s & Youth Ministry. I am currently completing a one year course in Youth Ministry with CYM. This involves travelling to Reading every month or so.

I also plan to study with The Open University come January.

I babysit twice a week to earn money.

Last month I was a Powerpack leader at a Church Weekend in Salford, Manchester. This weekend I am attending a conference in Bristol. The weekend after that I will be at Headington Baptist Church’s weekend away. In December I am visiting Lincoln for a weekend at the start & visiting home for 10 days at the end.

My diary is filling up for 2012.

So, yeah, life is busy!

If you want to physically see my adventures, subscribe to me on YouTube!

Illness Ignorance

Most people ignore me when I’m in pain or say I feel sick because I tend to exaggerate and repeat myself but, although it is true that I do like to be dramatic for fun (sometimes!), that doesn’t make my pain any less real.

Consider the tale of ‘the boy who cried wolf’ – how would an unfortunate boy be treated by friends and family if he were actually attacked by several wolves, several times? He would need more help and attention than most and yet he’d receive the least amount of care and attention because people would refuse to believe anybody could genuinely have so many problems.

Sometimes, despite how improbable it is, one person can have way more than their fair share of “bad luck” and no one should have the right to destroy that persons credibility just on the basis of how improbable their “luck” is - because if the person is truly as unfortunate as they claim, you not believing them is only going to add insult to injury (quite literally).

Now I’m not saying that I’m the sickest person in the world (not by a long shot) but I consider myself to be fairly unfortunate with my unusually large and varied collection of chronic illnesses (and you may not consider it to be a large collection but, it is when you compare it to how many on-going illnesses a “regular” person has).

I don’t think that the fact that I’m sometimes a drama queen should mean that no-one ever takes me or my conditions seriously. Why should I pretend to be someone else – someone quiet, reserved – just to have someone care when I’m ill?  

I can’t count the amount of times I’ve fallen over, cried out in pain, just returned from throwing up, told someone I have a bad headache, had little or no sleep and A, Been told it’s my own fault. B, Been completely ignored or C. Been laughed at. (Side-note: I’m not sure which of these responses is worse…)

Do you really think I make up my symptoms just to entertain myself? Do you know how much of an insult it is to be told I’m “faking it”? Do you know what it’s like to have sharp stabbing pains throughout your body while your friend essentially calls you a liar?

It doesn’t take long to get bloody sick of it (pardon the pun…) and I can totally see why some people find it easier to completely deny to both themselves and others when they’re hurt and need help; because, in my experience, if you ask for help too many times people begin to resent you.

This isn’t how life should be! I want to be able to discuss my symptoms/illnesses without fear of condemnation! I don’t want pity, I want people to understand and be a little less ignorant.

Why is it, that even when I *finally* have a diagnosis from a trained health professional, people still take no notice? As if I’ve just told them I’m a tiny pink elephant with huge sapphire ears!

 I AM NOT CLAIMING TO BE ELVIS so WHY are you looking at me as if I’ve completely lost the plot? I *only* told you I find it impossible to sleep at night – why is that so far-fetched a concept to you? Does insomnia not exist where you come from?

AGAIN, I feel the need to state: I don’t want pity when I express how ill I am or how ill I feel. It would, however, be nice (even once in a while) if people were to take me seriously and maybe be a bit more gentle and/or understanding.  

OK, rant over. But, be warned, I shall be severely tempted to batter the next person to tell me my suffering is “all in my head” with a medical dictionary!

And, for the record, my medical conditions:

Depression (with Bi-Polar tendencies), Insomnia, Chronic Sinusitis, P.C.O.S., Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and a knee that likes to dislocate at the most inopportune moments.

F.A.Q. –

Q: Are you sure you’re not just a hypochondriac?

A: If I were, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed with each (or in fact any) of the illnesses listed above!

Q: If you have all those things why haven’t they been treated?

A: Does the term “incurable” mean anything to you?!

Q: Why are you so upset about people not taking your illnesses seriously? It’s not a big deal.

A: *bangs head against brick wall* 

X-Men First Class

I’ll start off by saying: I *LOVED* this movie & I think it’s the best of the series so far, by far.

As always, my good friend Joel beat me to it and has his review posted HERE. I completely agree with him that Hugh Jackman’s brief cameo was the funniest part however we do disagree on a few other points…

He says that this movie makes up for the disappointment that was Wolverine  and I’ve heard a couple of other people say something similar but, although it wasn’t as good as ‘First Class’, I really enjoyed Wolverine and wouldn’t count it a disappointment at all.

Joel also thinks Michael Fassbender (Magneto) was the star of the show whereas I would say James McAvoy wins that title hands down – aside from being incredibly handsome & charming he’s so believable in his role that I couldn’t imagine anyone else playing Professor X so well.

I’m not sure what it is/was but I didn’t like the child actor (Bill Milner) used to portray Magneto at his youngest.

I thought the story flowed really well and the plot was top notch, however,  I’m not sure how much of this was already dictated by the comics & just adapted or whether it hadn’t been covered before & therefore had to be written specially for this film (I don’t know because I haven’t read the comics – yet).

My general rule of thumb for judging a film is whether I would want to watch it again & how soon I’d be willing to do so and by this standard it has done VERY well indeed – it’s one of the select few films that I’d be tempted to come out at the end of the viewing only to buy another ticket at the box office immediately for the next showing.  Therefore, overall, it gets a 9 out of 10 and I fully intend to buy it on DVD.

My current list of movies I’m excited about, but haven’t watched yet, includes:

The Kings Speech, 300, Fast & The Furious 5, Slumdog Millionaire and (randomly) Moulin Rouge. 

FRESH AIR!

I feel most alive when I’m out, physically experiencing life. Surrounded by nature or taking in a new place. I want to do this more.

The thing is, I have barely any desire to be in this country and even less desire to be in my parent’s house… but I just get so down about being so far away from most of my friends and about being in a town with so little to do that I don’t even want to leave my room, let alone my house!

It was getting so bad that even my health deteriorated. So I had to do something, just get out – everyday. It isn’t always easy - I’d still rather stay in bed and hide from life a lot of the time but when I actually put the effort in and get out of the house I never regret it.

Cheers to breaking bad habits! 

The Queen’s Visit…

So, the Queen left Ireland today after a very historically & politically relevant 4 day visit and it’s all gone better than expected but I have a bone to pick with the news coverage of the whole situation. For the most part, the TV footage I watched was full of contradictions and as such, I was not impressed. I saw a couple of short reports and 1 longer documentary and in each of them there was little or no mention of the protest/riots the visit had caused – it had been all glossed over and although I understand why they did this I think it was wrong. News is supposed to be what happened not about pick ‘n’ mix facts that only tell half a story.

Then there was Sin Féin. One minute reporters were saying that Sin Féin’s support for the visit was key to the whole thing going ahead, the next minute they said there were members/supporters of Sin Féin involved in the riots (obviously meaning they didn’t support the visit at all) then they showed party leader Gerry Adams saying they had raised concerns about the visit but they had been satisfied with the response to their concerns and were happy it all went ahead. Which is it?

I’m ashamed to say, I found myself shouting at the TV when I saw the head of the UDA had been invited to events organised for Queen. Why, why, WHY on earth would anyone invite a terrorist to an event let alone the leader of the entire terrorist group! Obviously he posed no threat to the Queen as the UDA fight in support of unity with the monarchy (or at least, that’s what they claim to represent) but he should not have been invited on principal – he’s a criminal for pity’s sake! It’s like Britney Spears inviting a mass murderer to her birthday party because he enjoys her songs – absolute madness!

On another, heavily related, note… too often I see protests turning into riots. It’s almost inevitable and I think both the protestors and the police often have equal blame in this i.e. both sides could handle the situation better. It really sickens and terrifies me to watch it happening on the news. So much so that I completely refuse to go to a protest or demonstration at all – regardless of what cause it’s for or how strongly I feel about it. Emotionally I just can’t handle that level of violence. Not to mention the amount of people (crowds make me extremely nervous, but that’s a different story!).