Motivation

Just an impromptu post about thoughts that have occurred to me.

As I previously stated, I intended to start a new lifestyle in which I exercise, diet, everything. I'm going to be healthy, a junkie who is addicted to a well balanced life. Eating is now incredible. I find myself having such a beautiful array of foods, of bright colours with such variations and intricacies in their taste that I'm often bewildered as to how I could live so long without realising how fantastic healthy things are. I no longer snack on chocolate and crisps: I treat myself to a home-made blueberry muffin or cranberry cookie occasionally. I haven't given up baking. But dried fruit- who knew it would prove to be such a sufficient filler for those unhealthy regards to a previous behaviour. I am overall happy with my eating, sleeping and working habits. The fact that I've found the time to write such a piece as I am now is astounding, before I'd never have found the energy to pour out my notations into a paragraph.

My only struggle is still working out. I did 40 minutes of jogging yesterday, totalling around 9500 metres, the equivalent to about 6 miles apparently. I was pleased with myself for achieving such a quality of exercise, for managing to stick to my running for a period of time as such without giving up. In fact, I shall be running again within the next hour. If I manage to convince myself to get changed and do so. I find that part hard, getting the juice build up so that I can burst into a good hour of running. I feel it's the only thing I will do, since I don't see the point in doing so much that you begin to loathe moving. I'm not doing it with the intent to destroy my muscles, I just want to prove to myself that it's possible, even for me.

I tell myself that the end product will be worth it.

01/29/2012-- I hear voices

Perhaps this isn't the best way to start a blog, to launch into it in a fashion dissimilar to how you would any other mannerism, such as riding a bike or starting a new job. It's not going to start slow and steady, I refuse to begin on an introductory post that shows nothing for myself and my future posts. In fact, I'm merely going to pursue this entry like my future ones will be.

Reviews- week ending 29th January 2012

Life: A New Diet

I've felt like I've been slacking with my life recently, especially when it comes to food. I'm aware that I have very low self esteem, but have never actually taken the opportunity to change this for some reason. Perhaps for lack of motivation. But since my discovery of a love of the fashion industry, I thought it was maybe time to start looking the part. So my new diet is a surefire way to achieve this. In fact, it's a new lifestyle altogether. First, I now refrain from eating most items containing carbs. I admit, that because it's Sunday I treated myself to a cupcake and a salmon bagel. However, once I've started to really get into the habit of this new diet I'm sure that things like that won't be so necessary and I'll forget about my previous love of the devilish treats I used to plague my body with.
Part of me has always wanted to follow certain routines, but only recently have I started picking them up. I think that despite my utter lack of previous enthusiasm for fashion and typical Western culture, I've really started to accept it into my life. For instance, now I wear in-trend clothes rather than my regular slacking outfit of a graphic t-shirt and skinny jeans, accompanied by some cardigan or hoody. Now I have variation, a far cry from my old habits.
Maybe this is what has driven me to change. My vegetarian life style has aided me immensely as I've started to stick to mere meals of salmon and spinach, porridge or some oatcakes with mackerel spread, along with dry and fresh fruit snacks. I even took a plunge to face my fears, by buying pistachio nuts and actually managing to eat some. I found myself enjoying them.
Of course, a life like this isn't complete without exercise. And the most rigorous plans recommend 6 miles of jogging or walking each day. Now, for those people who don't enjoy the fresh air -myself included- there is always another option. It may sound bizarre, but Wii Fit has become my form of exercise. I can do around 2 hours of running on their 'Free Jogging' with ease, splitting it into 2 one hour portions that are spaced so one is in the morning and one is just before I sleep. In fact, these new implements in my life have become some of the ultimate staples in aiding my sleep, which is now healthily becoming an 8 hour slumber from around 11pm until 7am.

Perhaps this new routine is what provokes me to write more, also giving me the motivation to push boundaries with my college courses and accept more routes than just photography. In fact, just today I applied for a retail course (which I just managed to discover was in fact the wrong course, since I'm too young for the one I applied for. Oops)
All in all, this has been a fairly productive week. Maybe this will carry on.

Book: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

A book I was hesitant to pick up, since I'd seen the movie and found that upon previous experiences with reading a book after seeing its movie adaptation, I'd been unable. I appreciate this novel, although I still have a fair amount of it left to read since picking it up on Thursday (293 pages in to a 542 page novel). I didn't get instantly hooked on it, as I thought I would. I feel that because I already knew that I found Lisbeth Salander's portion of the story more compelling, I'd been more inclined to read those parts and had found it a much heftier task to get through many sections dominated by Blomkvist. This was unfortunate, since his story took up a considerately larger part of the first half.

The book was slower than I'd anticipated to start, but as it picked up and I found myself absorbed by the illusive mystery of Harriet Vanger, I began to enjoy this book and was reluctant to put it down when the time came to meet a friend. In fact, I then proceeded to download the novel onto my phone so I could enjoy it while I was out and about, rather than carry around the relatively large book (I have yet to purchase a Kindle, on my list of things I need to do). It has really become an addiction in my life, though the constant ache of needing my dose of the Swedish duo is probably much more ideal than that of drugs. Until I've finished it, I don't quite feel comfortable giving a full review. But supposing I enjoy the outcome, I would definitely recommend this. There is also a very large chance that my next book review will be of 'The Girl Who Played with Fire', the sequel.

Movie: Scents and Sensibility

This isn't a particularly new movie, in fact I haven't done my research into when it was released, but since I haven't been anywhere near a cinema recently, I've only been able to watch what's available for free on my TV. And this was conveniently one of many things on there.

I enjoyed the fact that this was a modern, fresh take on the book 'Sense and Sensibility'. In fact, I wish that more were done in the same manner. I'd probably be in fits of excitement if there was news of a director doing the same with Jane Eyre. Even so, I can settle with this for the moment.

Despite my utter adoration of the concept of this movie, perhaps I wasn't so thrilled by the final product. I haven't got so much to write about this, but it seemed to be a fair mess. It moved at a strange pace, with many things included that seemed nonsensical for such a movie. Many scenes were unnecessary, or in such an order that it was hard to keep up with the entire plot. I've never read Sense and Sensibility, since I've not been the biggest fan of classics, but I feel that after watching this I wouldn't be any more enthused to pick it up next time I was at my local Waterstones.

I have to give my credit to the actors, however. The protagonists were a couple of women, who I believe were meant to be sisters in their twenties. I didn't recognize the girls portraying them, but I have to say that their acting was pretty faultless. They blended to their roles perfectly, and I think they did a good job on conveying the essence of their characters. Even on the scenes that made me cringe, I still found myself sympathizing with both and they managed to make the story seem so real even at the most unbelievable of times that even during the climax of the movie I was most definitely able to choose my side in their feud, rather than being preoccupied by something else that had more credibility than them.

To be frank, I don't think this would ever make it into my movie collection. Perhaps, if it had been shifted around, my opinion would change. However, I have no power to change it and couldn't even if I did.

Music: All Time Low gig, Birmingham O2 Academy

This week I have the pleasure of reviewing a live band rather than an album or EP I've picked up recently. I saw the band yesterday, and for anyone who isn't clued in on their particular music styling, the Baltimore-based band are a lively young group of men who take their inspiration from the likes of Blink 182. I have to admit that I've loved this band since first hearing their album 'Nothing Personal', which still remains to be my favorite out of all their pieces of work.

I'd seen their last UK tour and found it to be an absolute hit for myself and my gig-going friend. We enjoyed the entire night, albeit with heavy negative criticism towards their first support act, 'Young Guns'. So, as expected, we had high expectations for our night provided by the American quartet. We waited in the bitter English winter climate for over an hour and a half, in an incredibly long queue, anticipating the night and its unfolding events. We'd managed to get into the venue just in time for the opening number of the first support. I have to admit, neither support acts were particularly bad. I'm seriously considering buying their records, but I feel that the venue itself and the horrible contrast of incredible cold to minimal ventilation of the academy put an entire dampener on the night, since it made us all feel fairly stuffy and sick by the time we came to dancing along to the band we'd come to see.

Now, onto the main event. The whole, sweaty crowd screaming their heads off when our beloved boys stepped -or bounded- onto the stage. The opening number, Timebomb, getting us all out of breath within seconds of going crazy and singing at the tops of our lungs. An incredible setlist, performed by a magnificent band. My favorite being Weightless, as always. I was dismayed when Alex Gaskarth (a true Briton!) didn't perform Therapy on his acoustic guitar, but my best friend was ecstatic, the gap being filled by an earlier hit, Remembering Sunday. Their spread of songs was fairly even, though you could definitely tell the main focus was on the most recent album, Dirty Work. Which could only be expected.

Even with it looking perfect on paper, something seemed to be missing. And for a while, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Was it the atmosphere, the erratic way in which our friends seemed to disappear then pop up out of nowhere, making our night hectic? Was it being wedged between a sweaty 20, possibly 30-something year old man who really seemed very out of place at a gig aged at teenagers and young adults and an overweight girl who kept throwing around her frizzy hair? That was all typical for us at gigs by the point, we'd been through it enough. And then I realised, it was the simple fact that the newest album really didn't match up to Nothing Personal. It had a completely new angle to it, as All Time Low were a band that progressed very rapidly. I didn't have the same degree of love for any of the earlier albums either.

Which leads me to the question, have All Time Low hit the high point in their career? Would it spiral downhill now? I hope not, though I can't escape the irrevocable fact that it just seems to nag on my brain. This gig simply wasn't the same because it wasn't the same music we'd heard in the previous gig. The album didn't bring with it the same kind of energy.

With this in mind, maybe my night didn't turn out as wonderfully as I'd hoped. Match this with the incredible back pain I'd been suffering for a majority of the morning (blame my foolishness, not warming up before yoga), and it was probably built to be something less than I'd hoped for. But since this band remains to be one of my favorites, I still had a really amazing night.

Fin.