Reasons To Smile

REASONS TO SMILE

Sometimes it's late on a Thursday night, and you should probably be going to bed, or the more likely scenario, getting ready to start Season 2 of Girls. But I don't know. Caution gets thrown to the wind and carries logic right out the window, and suddenly 11pm on a Thursday seems like the absolute best time to snuggle up in bed, in your nice warm pjs, and start writing a blog post. Recently I've been making a lot of questionable decisions, including putting my cheese in the pasta cupboard without realising, and my packet of dry pasta in the fridge, coming home to cut my fringe in between lectures and uploading 10 Instagram posts in the space of two hours (evidently I live a very wild life), so I feel like this particular decision isn't actually that illogical, in comparison. 

Anyway, as always, I've been finding that life just keeps on getting in the way of everything. It's like that famous John Lennon quote 'Life is what happens whilst you're busy making other plans'. It feels like there's so many things I need to do and plan, but the present is demanding all my attention. Or I have these exciting little things planned, and life is what's happening whilst I'm waiting for those occasions to roll around. There's people I genuinely want to meet up with and make plans to see, but as always, you have the best intentions yet before you know it, days, weeks, months have passed by, and you still haven't put your plans into motion. You save it for another day, another time, and quickly the weeks bleed into one another and before you know it, it's Christmas all over again. I don't recall life moving this quickly when I was younger. It feels like with every passing year someone presses the fast forward button even more, yet I don't know what I'm supposed to be racing towards, or why the sudden hurry. It feels like every day is some kind of puzzle piece that's forming part of an elusive bigger picture. These days are great, and I'm happy, sure, but there's still a slight lack of significance that taints them all. It makes me anticipate those days of significance which come to puncture that pattern, shake it up, inject a rush of adrenaline, and always wondering when they'll arise again.

Don't get me wrong, I love the steady re-assuring hum of every day life, with its routines and predictability and unassuming contentment, just as much as I love adventure, exploring, learning, growing. It's just strange, because that constant, reliable motion of day to day life is currently juxtaposed against this peculiar feeling of being constantly busy, constantly thinking, constantly doing, constantly living, yet not having it be enough. Life is steady, life is plodding along as per usual, life is a never ending whirlwind of activity, yet simultaneously, it's like someone strapped a rocket to it and lit the fuse to send it hurtling at 100 miles an hour into this strange abyss called the future. It's a mixture of all these conflicting things. It feels like I have all the time in the world, and yet I can't seem to find a single second to spare. It feels like I'm so busy doing something yet I recall it all as being nothing. It feels like I'm living the present and the future in parallel, one foot here, one foot there, and I can't seem to decide where my head's at, because living on that peculiar divide is a pretty confusing place to be. You're never really settled or present. I use the present to escape the future. I use the future to escape the present. It would be nice if I could just pick one and have that be enough.

Anyhow, to help me somewhat, in that monumental task, I thought it'd be nice to compile a little list of reasons I have to smile and be happy, as a way of marking the here and now, me right now, me in the present, where I'm at and how I got here, where I'm going. Get my head in the right place, instead of way up in the clouds. You've got to start somewhere after all. So I hope you like reading my reasons, and that this post made some kind of sense (my eyelids are drooping as I write), and that whatever you're doing (hopefully that would be sleeping at this time, my sensible dear readers), wherever you are, you have your own reasons to smile too, even if like me, your life is trying to do a bit of a Usain Bolt on you and you would really rather it wouldn't.

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MY REASONS TO SMILE

001. By some sheer miracle from the lord above, mis padres and I are going to see Bruce bloody Springsteen at Manchester Etihad Stadium in May. I know right, hasn't sunk in for me either.

002. The free Innocent Smoothis they were handing out at uni for three days straight. I still have one in my my fridge #winning.

003. Eating home made apple and blackberry crumble with me bezzie m8.

004. Board games night, wooo.

005. Seeing The 1975 in less than 2 weeks and The Last Shadow Puppets in exactly one month's time. I guess dreams really do come true.

006. Spending the day with my ma and my sis, after not seeing them in aaaaggggeeeess. Also finally catching up my grandparents, after I randomly received a text from my grandad for the first time in 5 years.

007. Getting to see Roy Cropper & Peter Barlow from Corrie in real life in The Endgame. Another dream come true.

008. Managed to cut my fringe symmetrically.

009. Discovering Girls and binge watching it for the lolz.

010. Going to my first open mic night next Monday (just to watch, I'm afraid.)

011. I'm enjoying my course & things are clicking into place, which is quite nice.

012. Making plans for the summer. All rather exciting.

013. Seeing my friend's living the dream and doing all these amazing, wonderful things. 

014. I always, always say this, but having the friends I do is always a reason to smile.

015. Those little unexpected turn of events that you never see coming, never thought would happen, and seem to change everything.

016. Realising how far you've come in life.

017. Gradually, and I mean gradually, getting better at playing Korfball.

018. Finally having the chance to one up and out smart my ma, and give her the true thanks and appreciation that she deserves for being 100% amazing 24/7.

019. I'm reading a really great book called Lost & Found.

020. Enjoying my last few months of being a teenager, and therefore exerting my right to be a bit mardy, enjoy my youth and moments of immaturity, make mistakes and learn from them, take responsibility with a pinch of salt, admit I don't know everything, get to know myself even better, experiment and explore and have fun, and most importantly, call my mum when I don't know how to make sausage casserole or clean the bathtub.