The many things that I like to do

Now, I have always liked to do many, many things. And quite frankly it does my OH’s head in. He has had the same hobby since, well childhood, whereas if you have followed this blog you will have seen SOME of the different things that I have tried out. In that sense we are very different and I know that it unsettles him, but for me, it is how I am.

During the course of my Masters we are always being introduced to new ideas, jobs within the arts and other things. Now, quite often I think ‘oooh, I want to do that’, when I have already decided that I am setting up my own business.

I described it to someone as the idea of of OOOOH SHINY, SHINY!! I feel like I have been plagued with it. My tutor at uni told me I should find a way to think of this positiviley, rather than negatively. On my way home I thought about this a lot and then I remembered that I had just picked this book  up from the library the day before.

What do I do when I want to do everything

This is What do I do when I want to do everything? by Barbara Sher. Now, I know it looks like a crappy self help book, but I reserved it for a reason, even though I can’t remember where I saw it first. It is GOOD!!! I read it very quickly and was full of excitement about the whole thing. I loved it so much. It talks about the concept of a Scanner and how we are not flighty, uncommitted or anything else, it is just a different way of working.

It reminded me why I have set up my own business, so that I am able to run my days as I chose and do lots of different things.

It gave me loads of great tools, which just made sense to me, to the extent that I started straight away making different tools and organising ways for me to keep my ideas.

Scanner tools

More than anything though, it has not made me feel like a freak for working the way that I do, but rather this is just how I am.

It was great! If you find yourself wanting to do lots of different things pick up this book from your shop or library, I guarantee you will not regret it.

Neglect & Action Jen

Oh dear, my poor blog. I have rather neglected it again. Poor thing. So I have given it a bit of a remake and I have written some crafting posts which I will send out over the next little while.

One thing which I have noticed is that this blog is starting to get a little overwhelmed with the amount of posts on exercise. And so  I have decided to set up another blog entirely related to my training, races and thoughts around those things. That way this blog can get back to what it is supposed to be about. Or at least it is when I am not neglecting it. If you would like to follow my exercise stuff then feel free over at Action Jen, it will be good to see some friendly faces.

I do have an excuse – setting up my business, doing my MA, administration for a theatre company and a large amount of volunteer work as well. But still, I really should write more as I get a great deal of pleasure out of it.

So, no promises as to how often I will write, we all know that that does not work well for me, but still, some more writing will happen here!

Women in marathons

Well, I signed up for a marathon this week – the Brighton marathon, which is happening next April, so a year to train!  I will be doing it for either Cancer Research or Mind, depending on which one I am allocated to, both are important to me.

I am very excited and very scared, all at the same time!

However I was surprised to see this article today – first from Spikes and Heels and then more detail at the BBC.

The city of Boston is staging its annual marathon. Kathrine Switzer became the first woman to officially run the race 45 years ago, despite stewards trying to physically force the 20-year-old off the road. Here she recalls how a female runner caused such a fuss.

Anything long like 800m, or even longer, God forbid, was considered dangerous, de-sexing and de-feminising for a woman

Anyone else completely and utterly shocked by this? It is only forty five years ago, just 12 years before I was born. I am totally surprised. They actually tried to attack her. I got really rather emotional reading this story, but maybe that’s just me – watching the London Marathon makes me cry and when I finish a race I find it rather hard not to burst into tears.

Now of course we have amazing women runners like Rosie Swale-Pope, Paula Radcliffe, Jane Tomlinson,  and all the Ultra running women of this article.  Not to mention the Triathlete (one day…one day for me!) Liz Blatchford.

So, a big thank you to Katherine Switzer, I cannot imagine not being allowed to run.

Inspirational Plan B

I am greatly inspired by Plan B at the moment, a British hip-hop rapper.

I don’t want to talk much about what he is saying, because he says it so much better than I ever could. However, I will say that I love him ‘each one teach one’ message and I have emailed him to offer my services. I haven’t said much on here about starting my new business, but part of what I want to offer is working with 14-18 year old boys (in particular) who have been kicked out of school, using story telling, drama, literacy and business techniques to get them to focus on a positive future for themselves.

I have been told by a group of 14 year old boys that they want to become drug dealers as this is the only way that they will get any respect in their lives. Where I live I go into the town centre and I hear parents calling their kids (who are in a buggy) “you fucking c*nt”, “you idiot”, “you are useless/waste of space” etc. etc. It is heart breaking. Are those kids going to grow up to do well in their GCSEs, get a good job? No. They are going to feel useless, feel like they are a failure and will not attempt anything for fear of failure. The chances are they will start to lash out at those around them and before you know it we have riots. Oh wait. We already had them.

Plan B is talking these kids language, and is also able to communicate very well with middle England. Here is his latest video, him talking to Radio1xtra and finally at a TEDx in England.

Enjoy and I hope it motivates you to do something. And yes, I have emailed him to offer to work with him company.

Wow, where did that six weeks go?

It really has been six weeks since I posted, erm….sorry about that.

I have been really busy, setting up a new business, working on my fitness, doing my masters, working, making sure I don’t neglect my husband and friends and everything else that life entails.

But all in all, life is good, if a little hectic. I will try to post a little more often, as I enjoy the headspace that blogging gives me.

This weekend I did the Henley Horseplay Notorious Night Race, which was awesome, although exceptionally exhausting. I raced on Saturday evening, it is now Tuesday and I am still very stiff and sore! My calves are far too tight, they scream every time I stand up!

Here I am before hand – clean and excited! In case you are wondering about the rosette (and the headscarf which you can see in the other pictures) it is becuase it was the horseplay race! Lots of people made a real effort in the dressing up, so I felt like a bit of a cheat.

Mmmm energy drink

coming out of the scramble net

This was the hardest thing I think I have ever done, we quickly had to run through water, very near the start and I have never run through water before, let alone run more than 10K with wet shoes. There were jumps and vertical hills through the woods and trees. At night! When I got to the end and had to go over a waist high jump, through water and then got to a scramble net I shouted ‘you have GOT to be joking!’ Quite frankly they were lucky there wasn’t a ‘fucking’ in there, but I was aware there were small children waiting for their parents. But I wasn’t sure that if I went down onto my knees to get through the net that I was going to be able to get back up again.

The very last thing was this

this is actually quite high to get up!

and I was at the end of my tether by that, point, I heaved myself up and then ran through the finish line.

grinning like a lunatic

As you can see by the end of the race I was soaking wet and filthy dirty, but grinning like a lunatic with sheer pride and happiness. I am not a fast runner and I have never done anything as challenging as this before, but I was delighted to have completed it. My time was 2hr 6min, which I don’t think is too bad, especially as in some parts there were bottlenecks and I had to walk up some of the hills, I was even contemplating using my hands as they were not far off the ground. There was some hills that I couldn’t run down because it was too steep and I have never run anything like that before. I did think about dropping to the ground and going down it ‘sausage roll’ style, but didn’t think I would be too popular if I wiped people out on my way down.

The fastest person did it at around 50 mins, by which point I had just about reached the drinks station at the halfway point. I cannot even contemplate running at that speed.  But that would have meant they would have completed it before it got properly dark, so actually they were cheating, as declared by me

I have to thank my wonderful other half who drove me there, waited in the dark for me to emerge from the woods and then helped clean my feet when I had a blister/cut and I wanted to disinfect it (there was a serious bog at one point on the course). He hates feet, so this was a real labour of love!

Overwhelmed

Is pretty much how I am feeling at the moment and somewhat wondering if I am suffering from SAD. I have an ear infection at the moment (although pretty much over it now), so I have been pretty much getting ill, ill, or getting over being ill since November. It is getting a tad tedious to say the least.

Although I have realised this is possibly because I am trying to do far too much and not physically relaxing at all. So I have decided to give myself a break, I don’t have to post witty, insightful posts here twice a week, no-one is making me. I don’t have to complete all of the reading challenges that I stupidly set myself when I have some hardcore reading to do. Doing a Masters is bloody hard work actually and there is TONS of reading, let alone working on top of it and then challenging myself to read more!

I am not good at physically relaxing, and so on the suggestion of a friend I am thinking of going back to yoga to help my poor, stressed body to relax. But I am not doing that until the Mindfulness course has finished. One thing at a time.

I am also not going to train for a triathlon, or start outdoor swimming/racing this year. Nor am I going to enter all of the races that I had marked into my diary. But I am going to do the silly notorious nights one and then the Royal Parks half marathon at the beginning of October.

Yesterday was Valentine’s day, and the OH was away on business, so I ordered a pizza, ate an entire garlic pizza bread by myself and watched two no brain requried films in the dark, just by candle light.

Why don’t I do that more? Just lie in candle light, so much nicer than electric lights.

I have also started to get into audiobooks, they are wonderful, reading without the actual reading part. Which quite frankly is too much for me at the moment, I picked up a book I was looking forward to the other day and I just could not read it, I had read too much about entrepreneuralism to even read another word. So I will listen to an audiobook by candle light.

So, basically, a programme of TLC has to be implemented at the moment in order to stop me feeling overwhelmed and to just relax.

Oh, and we have also been featured in Off Beat Bride, which I find totally shocking, as this was the uber-cool website that I spent most time crying over as I just wasn’t that cool. Turns out I am and we just had a wedding which suited us, whatever cool blogs said. LOL

Boho Bride

When I was planning my wedding I would spend ages looking at various sites such as Rock n roll bride etc. And more often than not I would end up crying because I am just not that cool or funky to have such a wedding as that.

In the end I removed all wedding related blogs from my RSS feed because they just depressed the hell out of me. I did it all with lots of talks with my now husband, my mum and the support of friends and some wonderful suppliers. And I held true to my beliefs of what I wanted a wedding to be- or at least, learnt to discuss, negotiate and compromise.

Imagine my shock when my photographer asked if I would like to share my story with Boho Bride? And that she wanted to feature it on her site because it was so unusual. So here it is.

Oh the irony, I am that cool and funky. And when will I ever get over needing to meet other people’s approval!

So there you go, lots more pics and some more details of my story if you are even vaguely interested! And more on my amazing photographer’s site. If you need a photographer for anything in Essex/Cambridge I highly, highly recommend her. 

Copy stealing!

My last post, on Patrick Stewart, had attracted much more attention than usual, I have had a couple of random pingbacks, which I don’t normally get. One of them is just a link aggregator, but the other one has taken all of my copy and put it on their blog, with just a link at the bottom back to my site.

I am not happy about this, but I don’t really know what I can do, other than leave a comment at the end of their post.

Do any of you have experience of this and what happened?

Sir Patrick Stewart

I have to admit, I have long had a somewhat inappropriate crush on Patrick Stewart. Of course, he plays Jean-Luc Picard to a wonderful level, a character that I have always admired.

Sir Patrick Stewart - taken from Wikipedia

He has never shied away from Sci-Fi, playing a magnificent Professor Xavier in the X Men series, he is a serious acTOR as well, from Shakespeare to Beckett. Both of which I studied in detail at the University of Huddersfield, where the great man himself grew up and he is Chancellor.

Then today I read this article by him in the Guardian Domestic Violence blighted my home, that’s why I support Refuge. He writes so eloquently on the subject and almost moved me to tears.

The financial footing of women’s charities has been shaky for many years; now it is in real danger of slipping into the abyss. Let me be quite clear about what is at stake here. Without services such as refuges, more women and children will be trapped in violent relationships. Domestic violence rarely peters out. On the contrary, abuse tends to escalate over time. If they can’t get help – preferably at the earliest opportunity – their stories may well have the most tragic of conclusions.

I often try not to  find out too much about people that I admire, because so often one is disappointed at home much of an idiot they turn out to be. Which is why I did not know this, or that he has a Scholarship in his name at the University of Huddersfield to fund postgraduate research on domestic violence, nor that he made a film about domestic violence for Amnesty International.

So, now, my inappropriate crush has become rather overwhelmed by admiration for a man that is prepared to stand up and talk about a difficult issue and raise awareness for women’s charities.

It’s not a compliment

Ok, so when you cycled passed me shouting something I just kept my headphones on and carried on walking.When you cycled back and started talking to me as you cycled along side me I took my headphones out as I could see you talking.

‘i just wanted to say you are really attractive’, ‘thanks but I’m not interested I replied. You carried in cycling alongside me.

Yeah, thanks I’m not interested, go away

But I’m a DJ

…by this point I am walking under a bridge, with a brick wall on one side, railings on the the other and he is still cycling behind/alongside me and talking to me. I am not in a good part of London, it is dark and I cant go anywhere to escape. This is not a compliment, this is harassment, my natural instinct would be to shout at him and tell him to fuck off, but as I have got older I have got slightly more sensible.

I didn’t put my headphones back in as I wanted to hear if his tone changed as an early indicator of the situation getting worse. At that point he decided to start cycling away and shouted ‘are you married then’ I replied yes and he said ‘ok then’ and left.

Now I am that his in his head he was just paying me some attention and giving me a compliment. all women like that, right?

No, we don’t, especially at night in the dark, when we can’t cross the road to get away from you, it is not the busiest street in the world and there is no one around. This is harassment, clear and simple, you approached, I said I wasnt interested. At that point you leave, you do not cycle back or cycle alongside me continuing to make approaches. This is harassment, not a compliment.