I'm Not The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Before I start this post (as if I have actually planned anything to write, ha), I just want to thank you all for your lovely feedback.

 I'm well aware I'm not the first person on the planet to have ever received praise, but that's what it feels like, sort of. The difference between someone complimenting me on a (heavily edited) photo of my face on Instagram and being told that someone 'loves' my blog is monumental. This blog is the closest representation of myself that isn't, well, me (great observational skills there) and I pour a lot of energy (+ pointless web searches) into it. I am so impressed that a few of you actually manage to filter through the random facts, ridiculously long introductions and pointless bracketed side-notes to the actual meaning behind my words (not that there is much) and still enjoy it.

So, I think, in roughly 121 words, that is a thank you.

*has anyone else noticed how many commas I use in my sentences?

Now all that disgusting emotional stuff is over, let's get back to the real reason you're here. To watch me (or rather read) as I embarrass myself.

---cue few days intermission as I genuinely have nothing to write about today (27th)---

So, I'm back (29th) and I thought I actually had notes to write around. I wrote these notes after finishing the introduction and now, reading them over, they either make zero sense or make me wonder how I could ever think the note 'moving' would be helpful. Why couldn't 27th-August-Lily have written more a) comprehensible or b) detailed notes for 29th-August-stressing-because-she-needs-to-write-something-Lily? I mean, I can't be expected to remember any of this trivial stuff for two whole days.

I can't believe I am having a rant at myself.

I'm going to use these notes as starting points and see where it goes. I'm wary about this as the last time I decided to 'see where it goes', we ended up with the lengthy explanation of how I overcame my 'need to be different' and it was all very emotional and raw and I cried and you cried and we cried together.

At least I hope I wasn't the only one who cried.

Kidding, kidding (genuinely, there were real tears)...

Anyway, moving. Let's start with that note. I am officially (I think (I'm never very aware of everything going on around me)) moving on Sunday. Well technically all my stuff (and my family) are leaving on Saturday but I decided to stick around an extra day to a) say goodbye to some friends and b) put off moving for one more day. It still feels kind of odd that I'm actually leaving. I think I've been expecting someone to jump out from behind the camera and shout "Gotcha!" but that isn't going to happen, not that I would want it to as it sounds positively breaking-and-entering-esque, and I need to face up to the fact that I'm leaving, maybe forever.

Okay, if you're not crying now then you need to purchase a heart. Or some onions, either will do.

I was going to go on some spiel about leaving my friends and my fears of not going to the college I want to go to but you don't need to hear all that.*

*I'm fairly sure you've heard it all before, but if not check out this post - Semi-blog-consciousness*

*I had to double check this post and on further investigation, it barely scrapes the surface on all my feelings towards this subject of moving and, in true Lily fashion, leaves much to the imagination.

In other news, I've made a promise to myself to get back into playing my guitar and song-writing. It's not like I've got bored or anything but between being away most of the summer and watching endless episodes of Gossip Girl, I haven't had much of a chance. Writing songs used to be my only method of channeling emotions (mostly 10 year old jealousy) before starting this blog, and going through some of those songs makes me so nostalgic of when I was 7, and each song was about being a super-spy or someone called 'babe'. I also keep a diary and that, in a way, makes it easier for me to understand kids and people younger than me. Not because I have suddenly gained loads of life experience (or some weird Pied Piper of Hamelin flute) but because it shows me that when you're that age, little things really matter. Things like falling out with a friend over a paper mache butterfly and losing your favourite pencil.*

 *That pencil had my name and pink butterflies on it. Don't laugh.

In the films, people always find their diaries (in a scary-looking dusty box in their dark attic) and they hold some amazing secret about their parents or reveal hidden parts of themselves they had locked away and thrown away the key to. But in reality, these diaries (and the hundreds of songs scrawled onto Tracy Beaker writing paper) just make you cringe and remind you of all the stupid things you used to do. Not that I've changed. I nearly cried when my pink Sharpie ran out and would 100% still love to be a super-spy.

I feel like I'm about to go off on some awful monologue about something irrelevant so I'm going to stop this post here.

Gotcha!

No, unfortunately for you I wasn't joking and this post is ending. Right now.

What Filling Do You Want, Babe?

I'm not going to talk about results so if that's what you're here for then leave. Now.

(Please don't leave, I need friends.)

That said, I hope those of you who got results are pleased with them, and if you're not, you're eating bad ASDA Smart Price chocolate (we all know that's what Jesus would eat).

This brings me onto the actual purpose of this blog, which is me causing you to slowly and painfully wither away while I talk about myself, as if that hasn't happened already. For those of you who manage to survive, you can look forward to a fairly tedious list of things I like and dislike. People, ketchup brands, pasta shapes, music, flowers, feminism and TV programmes. Lucky you.

1. Heinz*. Any other brand is a sin against the entire human population. And tomatoes. The ring leader of this disgusting-ketchup-cult is Sainsbury's' own brand. I don't know whose job it is to control the brands of ketchup they stock but whoever it is needs a serious priority upheaval. And any of you who dare like it need to have a serious look at your lives.

(*btdubz*, it's available at poundland)

*by the way/for your information

2. Spaghetti. Any of you who are fortunate enough to know me (up close and personal yo) will be well aware of this addiction. I even asked for it for my birthday. I think I got about 6 packets overall. I could list so many foods but you already got all that in my second post so I won't go into it again (even though I could talk about it for hours).

3. Lily Allen. I literally love her a bit more (if it's possible) each time I think about her. That sounded so creepy and stalkery and maybe slightly lesbian but it is the absolute truth. Her lyrics are hilarious and actually tackle tough topics like the objectification of women and internet trolls. (I think it's so odd that we use the same name for someone who 'shows discord on the internet by starting arguments or upsetting people' as a 'supernatural being in Norse Mythology and Scandinavian Folklore'. I imagine the troll from the first harry potter film sitting behind a computer posting comments on photos of Britney Spears). Her videos are also great, most of them are really odd due to her alarming sense of humour and dress sense so I love them.

4. Feminism. 64 times out of 72, when I tell a guy (or even a gal) I'm a feminist, I can actually smell fear and see the panic behind their eyes. People are so scared of the word because of the violent/scary things people think it connotes but really it just means I don't agree with gender pay gaps and girls being expected* to make sandwiches for their boyfriends. I'm a feminist. Run.

*There's no crime in a devoted girlfriend making her boyfriend a sandwich (or any sort of food) if she's feeling generous but it is definitely not on the checklist.

5. Nashville, Made in Chelsea and The Vampire Diaries. In case you are interested in blessing your life (and TV screen) with these programmes, I'll give y'all a breakdown. Nashville is set in the city Nashville, Tennessee (in the U.S) and centres around the music industry there. It is fictional and amazing and full of beautiful country music. Made in Chelsea is a series that basically follows rich English people around. If you do happen to watch it, don't worry, it's all staged. The Vampire Diaries is.........perfect. I actually hated the first series because, having read the book, I felt the characters were undeveloped and unrealistic but once I got into it, there was no stopping me. I watched like 2 episodes a day for half a year (I started when they were already on series 4). It is pretty self-explanatory but in case you have no clue, it's about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. And another one*. And back to the first one again. Then back to the second one. Watch it. Love it.

*It's not just her that falls in love with him. You need to look after your heart if you decide to become a fan and prepare for it to be broken. So many times.

6. Little mini fake flowers. Don't get me wrong, I love real flowers too but these are low maintenance, don't take up any space and look SO CUTE. You can buy them from craft shops, I think. These are also self explanatory. I have put lillies, and different colour roses in bottles on my shelf. Three of which are Coca Cola bottles (one is glass, one says Lily and one is wearing lingerie) and one is a pink lemonade glass bottle.

7. Eliza Doolittle. I would have to say she is up there with Lily Allen on my girl crush list. No, she doesn't write as poignant or hilarious lyrics as Lily but she does write some fab songs*. She is very similar to Lily in that she has a ridiculously amazing voice, weird but wonderful dress sense and a frankness when it comes to song lyrics. She's just good with words, guys.

 *Faves are Team Player and Missing Kissing.

8.  Angelina Jolie. I have so many girl crushes, soz guyssss. I love, love, LOVE Angelina. She is a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador which means she visits countries and raises "awareness of the plight of these people". She also co-lead a campaign against sexual violence in military conflict zones. All whilst having six kids and awesome cheekbones.

Well that's it. Can I just mention, I started this post at like 11 o clock this morning so it's taken me 10 hours to write. During that time, I have watched an episode of The Great British Bake Off, googled 'trolls from norse mythology', scrolled through the Everyday Sexism site, spent at least an hour on Lily Allen's wikipedia page (and about half an hour on Angelina's), eaten some aubergine thing, read my 4 year old brother about 73 stories, listened to the albums Sheezus by Lily Allen and In Your Hands by Eliza Doolittle and stared at hundreds of photos of Ian Somerhalder.

I am the queen of procrastination.

Compartmentalisation, It's a Trap.

I bring good news, a king has been born!

She's actually, well, a she, and 16 years old, but her blog is new and full of glorious, hilarious potential. Like I said, good news.

The name of this oh-so-revered blogger is unicyclelouise.

Such a brilliant name, so witty and colloquial! Yes, yes, I'm exaggerating in this awful attempt at advertising a blog but in all seriousness, she is destined for great things.  I have complete faith that she will perform many literary-miracles, and bring many people to the blog-faith through her wise words.

Aside from the biblical metaphors, the only way I can describe unicyclelouise's blog is as having a perfect balance of useless ramblings and thought-provoking ideas.

As you can hopefully tell, it is fabulous. I was actually quite reluctant to mention her on here, simply because I know that as soon as you get a whiff of her witty banter you will flock like athletically-gifted sheep around her.

The other day she wrote a post loosely centered around results day. For anyone reading this who has been blessed to not live in England, the results day for 17 and 18 year olds is today and the one for 16 year olds is in a week. Basically, mine, unicyclelouise's and the rest of the 16 year old population results day is coming up.

We have very different approaches to this. She decided to write a vaguely-self-help-y-in-a-good-way post about it, with a dash of insight into how we, as humans (or whatever you want to be, peace) deal with pressure.

She will go far.

I, however, am refusing to acknowledge it. I have this acceptance/denial system. I say I but I'm 96.3% sure most people experience this at least 96.3 times in their life.

Anyway, my theory is that whenever there is something not in my favour (results day, blood tests, paying back money, job applications, cleaning etc.) my brain is like "Nah mate". I swear I don't do this deliberately but I just completely block it out and 95 times out of 96.3 forget about it. Now this can actually be quite helpful, there's no point worrying about something inevitable like results day or blood tests for months, but it becomes a problem when you realise you owe your parents £136 and you have almost zero chance of getting job because you opened every job alert email you got and then promptly never thought about them again, until they had all gone to someone with a lesser tendency to put things off.

I like to call it compartmentalising but in reality it's just me being hopelessly unorganized when it comes to anything relatively important.

I'm really selling myself here.

So the difference between me and the blog-messiah unicyclelouise, is that will she not end up in debt to her parents, she will not forget to actually apply for a job, and she will most certainly will not compartmentalise to such an extent that she finds herself a week away from results day with no idea how she got here.

She already has one disciple.

Horrific Onslaught Of Cliches

So recently (like the last few months) there's been an influx of new blogs, all of them pretty similar. Vaguely humorous, relatively informal and suitably relatable.

Sound familiar?

I know mine pretty much fits into all these categories, well maybe not the relatable one (don't tell me your lives are as tragic as mine) or the humorous one (unless you find my failings oddly hilarious) but definitely the informal one.

Living the dream guys.

Anywayyy, my point is that for a reader, or anyone who has multiple blogger friendies on facebook, these blogs can become pretty repetitive and annoying.

(Yes, yes, I'm a hypocrite but that won't stop me spamming you all with URLs in a desperate plea for love.)

I go so off topic in these posts.

My initial thoughts for this post were to address the steadily-spreading infection of identical-blog-virus but when I think about it, I don't expect anyone to change the way they write, or what they write about, just to stand out. That defeats the point of being different in the first place.

*I feel like this post is stemming into a completely different topic but I'm going to roll with it.

I came back from this christian-y, music-y, amazing-y summer school I have done for the last four years yesterday and while I was there, being prayed for, I was told that God called me to be different and that He was proud that I was unique.

Call it divine intervention or just friendly encouragement, it was still a big wake up call.

I had strived to be different my whole life. I even went though a phase of wearing all my clothes on top of each other and calling it carefully picked layers, a phrase I had read in a magazine, in the hope of someone noticing how different I was. I think that's where my bag-lady thing came from.

It almost became an obsession. I focused on what everyone else wasn't wearing instead of just wearing what I liked and looked good on me.

So this carried on all the way through junior and primary school (age 7-15) until a few months ago when I came to the conclusion that it was exhausting changing my hair style, fashion choices and music taste everytime I noticed someone wearing/listening to the same thing as me.

I decided to just wear what I wanted to wear (and listen to as much Camp Rock as I desired) and not care if I was wearing the same top as someone on the street or if I had done my makeup the same as all my friends (like it matters).

So, the 'wake up call' was that as soon as I stopped trying to be unique and instead let myself be who I am, (which is naturally kinda weird), that was when everybody noticed.

And not just everybody, but God.

The fact that He was proud of me, and that He could see into my heart, not just what was on the outside, made me realise how lucky I was to have come to this conclusion so early on in my life.

This post isn't to convert you or fill you head with scary God-stuff but to simply say that being different isn't wearing weird, uncomfortable clothes (that's fine if you do, go for it sista) or listening to obscure music that sounds like a whale vomiting to a funky beat, but simply what's inside your heart.

Sorry if this is a horrific onslaught of cliches, I just need to get it out of my system.

The people who are truly different are the ones who see the good in someone before the bad, the ones that choose compassion over revenge and the ones that sort out their issues rather than writing bitchy indirect tweets.

I'm not saying I'm not guilty of any of the aforementioned deeds, I used to be the queen of indirect tweeting, but that that's the sort of person I want to be.

That's the sort of different I want to be.



In case any of you are interested in entering the music industry, and/or are open to making a new best friend in the big J-man, check this organisation out yo:  http://www.ngm.org.uk/