Going "No Poo"

Ciao,

This blog is a bit of a weird one as the title suggests. I have been umming and ahhing for months about going "No Poo".  For those of you wondering, "No Poo" is a term used for people who have decided to stop using shampoo. Disgusted? I thought you might be. Let me explain my decision to trial "No Poo". 

Ever since I hit puberty I have had to wash my hair every other day due to it becoming oily. It has reached the point that I can only wear my hair down on the day it is freshly washed, the following day I wake up to oily roots which I have to drown in dry shampoo. I do not feel comfortable wearing my hair down like this as it gets progressively more oily throughout the day so I operate on a hair down day one, hair tied up day two. When I had long hair this wasn't a massive issue, I could do lots of different things with my hair, but since having my hair just above shoulder length this became increasingly difficult and quite frankly boring. I now have only 4 hairstyles, down straight, down curly, bun or pony tail. 

So I started to research ways to make my hair less oily and stumbled upon "No Poo". Essentially using shampoo strips your hair of its natural oils and so your scalp goes into overdrive and produces more oil. So inevitably you wash your hair and voila your hair produces even more oil. It is an endless cycle until you commit to having to wash, blow dry and style your hair every single day! By giving up shampoo I am giving my scalp the chance to regulate itself and it's oil production. 

There are different methods of "No Poo",  some people opt for natural things to wash your hair in such as apple cider vinegar whereas others like me go cold turkey. I have just started water washing my hair. I last washed my hair with shampoo 6 days ago. I didn't actually decide on that day to start "No Poo" but due to my own laziness I didn't wash my hair all week, choosing to use talcum powder as a dry shampoo instead. Yesterday I needed to wash my hair but instead decided to water wash it, I then asked my sister to french plait it and left it. My hair felt sort of waxy and I knew I hadn't done everything I should have before water washing my hair so I did a bit more research and followed the normal routine for "No Poo". I scritched and preened my hair before brushing it with a boar bristle brush which helps to distribute the oils down your hair shaft. I then washed my hair with warm water, rubbing at it the same way you would with shampoo. 

So far I am quite pleased with the result. My hair is still slightly waxy and I probably wouldn't wear it down but it isn't an oil slick and it doesn't look like it hasn't been 'washed' in 6 days. Of course I am still in what is known as the oily transition phase but I am looking forward to seeing if I can adapt to this new way of washing my hair. More than anything I am hoping that I get on with it and can finally have hair that doesn't get oily for at least a week! 

We will see how this goes...

Ciao for now...

Long time no see...

Ciao,

Long time no see. Its been 6 months since I last wrote a blog post and my life is very different to the last time we spoke. Since March I have finished my degree, graduated, started work at a school as a Cover Supervisor, had 6 weeks off work, worked 3 of those weeks for the NCS and returned back to work at the school. As you can see I have well and truly embraced life after uni and have entered the adult world of work pretty seamlessly.

I am loving my job at the moment, it can be extremely stressful, especially in the mornings but it has helped me to realise that I definitely want to become a teacher. My boss would like me to start my teacher training next September but I would very much like to go on a year abroad and improve my French before becoming a French teacher. I have a few pretty big decisions to make in the next few months in regards to my next career move. Exciting times lay ahead.

I'm hoping to blog more, I think I really need to document things as life is just whizzing by. Before we know it we'll have trees in our living room and be living in as many layers as we can pile on...

Ciao for now...

Monthly Aims: March 2015

Ciao,

Okay so March snuck up out of nowhere and I realised last night that I hadn't done my monthly aims for March yet! It's okay it's only day three of March! Most importantly I am now only a week away from my birthday, this time next week I will be the glorious age of 23. The age I will be when I graduate, when I finally enter the world of work properly and hopefully the age I will be when I can finally fit into a size 12! Heres hoping! ;)

So February went very quickly and I don't think I achieved anything I wanted in the whole month. I ended it being ill which meant missing a week of university...DOH! I know I haven't met either of my aims in February, I haven't been to the gym at all and I haven't been doing as much language work as I should be. But onwards and upwards. This month should be much better, there are several things I am looking forward to in this month. I am going out this Saturday with 8 of my friends from school which should be a lot of fun and then a meal with my family on my actual birthday. I'm hoping this will distract me from the fact that it is my first birthday without my darling Dad. Also a few of my closest friends also have birthdays this month, woo for the March babies. I'm hoping to do something nice with my Mum and siblings for Mothering Sunday. I have a wedding down in Devon at the end of the month which is super exciting, I'll probably write a blog post on it. Finally the most exciting thing is that I will have my last lectures at the end of this month and be off of uni for a month only coming back to hand in 2 essays and take 5 exams. YES YES YES! I am almost there. 18 days of teaching to go...not that I'm counting or anything! 

So my aims this month are:

1. To attend my last 18 days of lectures.

2. To keep my chin up.

Simples. 

Ciao for now...

Late night thoughts.

Ciao, 

I am writing this post on my phone in my bed with all the lights off and my sister snoring in her bed next to me. I was really sleepy as I am a bit poorly at the moment with a viral throat infection, but I got in bed, my head hit the pillow and boom, I'm wide awake with a gazillion thoughts zooming around my brain. Why does that happen? Why does our brain want to do all it's big life thinking late at night when all your body wants to do is sleep? I guess it's something we all experience, I experience it a lot at the moment. Maybe because my life feels like it's at a cross roads, maybe because my mood is up and down like a yo yo or maybe just because late at night is when our brains think best, without all the noise and distraction of daytime. 

I was lying here thinking that losing someone you love is a bizarre experience and that it's not something I think I'll ever be truly accustomed to. I mean I know my Dad died. I watched it happen. I was there. But I have moments where I genuinely don't believe it happened, that really I dreamed or imagined it. In those moments I believe with all my heart that my Dad is in bed, in the room next door to mine, with my Mum, where he should be. Or at work counting the minutes until he can come home. In those moments I don't believe he's not here because how can he not be? How can the person who is partly responsible for my existence just no longer exist himself? It's so hard to fathom and I don't think I'll ever be satisfied with any answer to that age old question of why? 

I think it helps to put these thoughts into words, actual sentences which mean something. Well at least a little, maybe I'll sleep now. 

Ciao for now...

Little grey clouds.

Ciao,

Today my blog post comes from a place of necessity, I need to get these thoughts out of my brain and onto paper as a form of therapy. I need to express my frustrations and talk about how much I am struggling with my life at this moment in time in the hope that my clarity will return.  

For the past few years my life has felt very out of my control, I really began to struggle with life in general in my second year of university. I broke up with my boyfriend just before my second year began and this plunged me into a very dark hole. I didn't really enjoy university in my first year and being heartbroken in my second year did nothing to help this. Even planning a year abroad didn't ignite a passion for my degree and I spent so much of my second year at university sleeping and binge watching comedy programmes. Little did I know my third year at university would be even harder than I could imagine and in ways I never dreamed in my worst nightmare. My Dad's illness and eventual passing away were without a doubt the hardest thing I've ever experienced and probably will ever experience again. I've changed substantially as a person as a result of my struggles over the past few years and this is having a massive effect on my life now. 

I was lucky to never endure any hardship over my childhood and teenage years. I am very aware that sadly many people have to grow up through adversity and painful situations. I will always be grateful that my first 20 years on this earth were blissfully untroubled. I am also aware that I by no means have an awful life but  I have learnt that this doesn't mean that it is unacceptable for me to be unhappy and that it is not selfish for me to struggle with the place I currently find my life. There are many aspects of my life that I am unhappy with, some are in my control and others are not and I am still learning to accept the things I cannot change. 

I have never been a pessimistic person but over the past 6 months, since returning to university I have been increasingly negative. I have so many days, like today, where I don't get out of bed, I don't attend my lectures and I don't even care. I struggle to get up everyday and go and sit in lectures which I don't enjoy, in an environment that makes me feel inadequate and chips away at my confidence slowly. I have days where I feel like I can do the work, I will pass my degree and that it is all possible. Equally I have days where all I want to do is walk away from it and do something which makes me happy again. I only have weeks left until I am finished and will never have to attend a lecture ever again. I should be sad at the thought of this but I am excited that finally I will be free of something which has felt like a burden for the past four years of my life. University has definitely not been the experience I expected, I am walking away from it with a best friend who has supported me more than anyone I know and with better knowledge of myself as a person, for which I am grateful. Everything else you supposedly gain from university, I don't feel I have and if I could go back and make a different decision I would. I cannot wait to be free of my obligation to uni, I will be proud to have completed it despite my circumstances but I honestly can't wait for it to be over. 

On top of feeling trapped by my university degree I am also struggling with being without three people who have been a massive part of my life. I am lucky to be surrounded by a supportive family and several amazing friends but I am without people I have relied on for many years and this is something I am struggling with. I am still grieving for my Dad who was more than just my father and whose absence affects me every single day in one way or the other. I have been through a rollercoaster relationship which has been on and off continuously for the past four and a bit years and has now come to an end. I am hundreds of miles away from one of my best friends and go months and months without seeing her. I am so used to having these three people in my life every single day and to be in a position where I am now without all three is very strange and often painful, especially while I am struggling with other aspects of my life. 

Dealing with these things is problem enough without my severe lack of confidence. I know that to most people I know I come across as very confident but I have reached a point where my confidence has been severely damaged. I have no body confidence whatsoever and am struggling to get back on track with weight loss and healthy living, I am feeling the effects of this in my mood and energy as well as my confidence. As well as a lack of body confidence I am lacking confidence in my own ability. I feel so far behind so many of my peers at university and have now reached the end of my degree and am clueless as to where I want to go next. Both things are affecting my confidence and I feel aimless and daunted by my unknown direction in life. 

Each individual issue I have is manageable, they are not life threatening and most are not permanent but when all of them are weighing down on you it is hard to see how best to move forwards. It feels like my sky is full of little grey clouds which on some days allow the sun to peak through but on others merge together into a gigantic black rain cloud which floods my life and threatens to drown me. It is sometimes almost impossible to remember that it doesn't rain everyday and that even when it does you can use an umbrella to protect yourself while you wait for the sunshine. I know my life will get better, the journey is hard and I'm sure it will have many bumps along the way, I just need to persevere and always remember that I am allowed to have days where I hate the world, as long as I get up the next day and carry on. 

Ciao for now...

Monthly Aims: February 2015

Ciao,

How on earth is it February already? January just flew by and I'm sure February will too and before I know it it will be my birthday! 

I didn't do too badly on my aims this month, succeeded in two and worked towards the third. 

1. To finally, FINALLY pass my driving test. 

2. To lose around 8 pounds. 

3. To keep my side of my bedroom tidy to please my sister! 

So i did pass my driving test this month, I've been on the road for 3 weeks now! :) I have also been better at keeping my side of the room tidy which I'm sure Cassie is pleased about. Losing weight however has been a slow start. I only started to change up my eating a week ago, I made one trip to the gym and havent been back since. However, I went for a nice long walk with my Mum and have tried to be more active. I have lost 2lbs in one week with if I'm honest, minimal effort. :) 

February Aims: 

1. To go to the gym 5 times a week.

2. To blog at least once a week.

3. To use duo-lingo everyday for both French & Italian.

Ciao for now... 

Paolo Nutini

Ciao,

On the 12th January I went to the O2 arena to watch Paolo Nutini. It was a fantastic night and he was really good live. I ended up going to this gig as my best friend at uni bought tickets with another friend and her boyfriend back in the summer, the couple then decided not to go and so I was offered a ticket. And I am so glad I bought it! 

I was lucky as the gig was originally supposed to be in October and I had not listened to any of Paolo's albums fully. I know his hits and really like him but had never got around to listening to his albums. I know for a lot of people this is not a big deal but I take my gigs very seriously and do what I call 'gig revision'. Gig revision involves listening to all albums released by an artist and learning all the words, if the setlist is available online and I don't have much time I will just learn the setlist. Personally I enjoy gigs the most when I can sing throughout the entire thing. So as I said I was lucky as the gig ended up being postponed from October to January as Paolo had tonsillitis. Boo for him, yay for me. I made a YouTube playlist of his setlist and learnt the majority of the songs before I went and had a very good time. 

As a side note on the way home my friend Libby got stuck at the ticket barriers when we got to Waterloo and the train attendant made her do her 'best disco move' in order to get through the barrier. It was hilarious. Luckily I caught it on film. I love having random memories like that. :) 

Ciao for now...