It’s OK to fall out of love with Christmas…

December 21, 2018January 17, 2020 Jean8 Comments

This year will be my second Christmas without my dad. On November the 8th, 2017, my dad passed away from oesophageal cancer at the age of fifty-nine. Last year his death was so raw that my mum and I floundered when it came to Christmas. Friends offered to spend their days with us, cousins invited us to their homes instead, and we ended up participating in an eclectic selection of old Christmas traditions, whilst abandoning others and spent the day with family friends. Every single minute was excruciating.

Ever since I was born I have spent Christmas with my mum and dad. We would host Christmas every year at our home with my grandparents and occasionally a few other family members spending the day with us. When my grandparents on my mum’s side passed away our numbers dwindled to four: myself, my mum, my dad, and his mum (my gran). Despite the absence of much love family members who were no longer with us my ‘Christmas spirit’ never dwindled. I’ve always been one of those annoying Christmas enthusiasts who revelled in the public and personal traditions that came with the season. I counted down the sleeps before the big day even into my twenties. At the end of the day, however, it was always about spending time with the most important people in my life.

Time Management Made Simple

July 24, 2017September 28, 2017 Jean3 Comments

Semi Sheer

No matter the life you lead it probably requires some sort of time management. Sometimes it feels as though the world around us thinks we all have time-turners stashed in our back pockets when loading our plates with daily tasks. Whether it is simply balancing your workload for school or university or juggling multiple work loads from your actual paying work to your creative pursuits, I hope I can help you with your time management with a few simple tips that have always worked for me.

Falsify Your Deadlines? (Creating Personal Deadlines)

This is my number one tip for time management and that is simply because it has always helped me. I don’t know about you but time makes me anxious (inconvenient given how it’s always there). Because of this, I like to take a little control when it comes to my deadlines. If I have a big project due on a certain date, assuming I’ve been given more than a week’s notice, then I will always put the deadline in a few days earlier in my diary than it is really due. At university this was usually a week ahead of an essay deadline but there is obviously room to tweet this tip to the piece of work you are dealing with. I would then, without hesitation, work to my new, self-imposed deadline. This significantly decreased my personal anxiety at having a deadline. Despite my treating the new deadline as seriously as if this was really the day an essay was due in, almost always completing my work for that day, simply knowing that if I missed that deadline I wouldn’t affect my overall grade put me at ease. It is also effective if you have multiple projects like essays due in on the same day or very close together. Set new, evenly spaced deadlines for each project, one of which may be the original deadline. It helps to take the pressure of that one date and to focus your mind on each item individually.

They Be Trolling

March 19, 2016August 7, 2016 JeanLeave a comment

harry-potter-troll4 (1)

The picture above is a still from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

This post follows up on a sentiment I expressed in my ‘How will men be able to respect you?‘ post as well as responding to something Tessa Violet said in her ‘How I Deal With Internet Hate‘ video. The sentiment I am referring to is that ‘you are responsible for your own actions’.

Something I see and hear constantly online is that simply existing online, whether your posting pictures of your nail designs on Instagram or filming your trips abroad and uploading them to YouTube, is that you have to expect hate. In fact by uploading what you are uploading you may as well be asking for it.