Thought of the Day: Library Sitting

I’m in the library and its home time. I know this because my body is telling me so; I’m starving hungry, my neck aches, and the Riverdance soundtrack just isn’t doing it for me anymore. I’ve spent all day in a chair, but I need a sit down. I need the soothing sanctuary of my sofa. I keep thinking about my favourite spot like some sort of infatuated teenager. Ah, young love.

Have I got a lot done? I guess so. I submitted an application for a job I really really want, confirmed my work experience for tomorrow AND drew a fabulously creepy face in my notebook. Daily targets achieved. So why am I still sat here like some sort of immobile hunchback with pencil all over her hands? Why do I feel like I’ve not earned my right to leave?

The girl opposite me came in after me and SHE’S packing up to go. Sure, she has done a lot of reading today and she probably didn’t have a half an hour Plants-vs-Zombies-followed-by-reading-all-the gossip-in-the-Daily-Mail break. But hey, some of my best critical thinking comes from when I read about celebrities, what can I say.

The thing is, I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to eat dinner and sit on the sofa with friends reruns on in the background. I don’t want to chill out and unwind and prepare for tomorrow. I mean, I really really do. I’m practically having a dream sequence at the idea. But I can’t. I’m not done with today.

I guess what no one tells you when you quit your job is, you don’t really get any more free time. Oh you get vacant time, yes of course. Time that is not occupied with prior engagements, sure, fine. But free, ah noo. Not quite.

Previously, I would come home from work each day and try and cram in all my experience begging, applications and blog ideas in to those four and a half hours until bed. Some days I’d be up all night inspired, other days it would be get in, book/TV, bed, or drinks with friends. It’d always be on my mind that I had to get some writing done, but if I didn't, it wasn't the end of the world. I’d been at work all day. I was putting metaphorical bread on the metaphorical table. Some down time was my natural reward.

But now… the whole day is mine. My life right now, technically speaking, is a never-ending blank canvas. And yet somehow I feel like I've never had so little time to relax.

It’s like the irritating buzz of ideas in my brain now never stops. I can always do more. There is no bedtime, there is no stop point to how many hours I can use in a day. The time constraints on what I want to achieve have been lifted; and with them, hordes of new projects have come flooding in, clambering for my attention. I don’t want to waste a minute. I have taken to only allowing myself to watch TV if I'm stopping for food at the same time. Some days I even find myself subconsciously skipping lunch because the sitting down makes me feel so guilty. I tell myself I should be plugging away nonstop on my laptop instead. No career yet? No breaks for you then Glen Coco.

I'm just going to say it; I blame movies. Legally Blonde, I'm looking at you. That montage sequence of Elle Woods studying for her exams exists just to torment me. If Elle’s missing frat parties to do practice papers, I ought to be too. If she can run on a treadmill and read law books, hell, I'm just lazy if I don’t even try. Elle never stops. They don’t show the bit where she falls asleep in front of Geordie Shore with a bargain bucket dripping grease in her lap. She’s a one woman mission to success and I'm struggling to keep up. The ‘Hard Work Montage’ is a big fat liar.  

I suppose as well, I don’t want to get caught out. I live in fear of lying down for a moment and someone bursting in yelling ‘AHA! I KNEW YOU WEREN'T WORKING HARD!’ If the Elle montage is what it’s like to really want something, then anything less just isn’t good enough. I always think of Olympic rower Ben Hunt-Davis talking about opening ceremony for the Sydney 2000 Games. The team had one question they applied to everything; ‘Will it make the boat go faster?’ If the answer was no; it wasn't happening. The team missed the ceremony and went on to win the Gold for the first time since 1912.

It IS amazing to be that single-minded. It’s brilliant to work your hardest. Some days I'm so excited to get writing, it's almost impossible for me to think of anything else. I guess the part I'm just struggling with now is when to switch off. Not just taking a break, but giving myself one too. Cutting myself some slack. Committing to the down time as much as the uphill battle. Besides, I'm not sure I can starve myself long enough to have food for a whole episode of Doctor Who.  

I mean, Rowers need sleep too, right? Weirdly enough I always imagined them watching the opening ceremony at home, all sat in a canoe like Chandler and Joey a la season 4. That’s probably the real reason that story has stayed with me so well.  

Ah, I've just received my third ‘you’re still in the library???’ WhatsApp. Multiple punctuation says it’s time to go. That and the fact I'm now alone in my row. There is only so many times a girl can listen to Reel around the Sun after all. It’s time for me to depart and hit the comfy seats hard-core.

Netflix, I’m coming for you.

Hi, my name is Lucy and I like dressing up like a man.

It was back in November that my friends I were sitting in Starbucks, discussing our outfits for an upcoming fancy dress bar crawl. The theme, it had been decided was to be Film and Television characters and we were all pretty excited, swapping ideas with one another for what to go as. And it was there, upstairs in the comfy seats over a Frappuccino with extra cream, that one of my friends turned to me and laughingly said, 'well so long as you come as a girl this time Luce.'

This comment made us all burst out laughing. Why? Because as long as I have done fancy dress, I have nearly ALWAYS dressed up as a man.

I don't even know where to start. Should I begin with my thirteen year old obsession with dressing up as a male pirate, so accurately, that a German checkout woman once referred to me as my mother's son? I mean the bandanna, the pirate belt and boys shoes at first glance could be forgiven for giving that impression I suppose. Although my mum telling me what had been said because she 'thought that was what I wanted to look like' wasn't exactly reassuring.

Or does it begin in my later teens, at fifteen, whereby I was invited to a Circus themed party and decided to go as a Ring Man, complete with facial, chest and arm hair. Upon hearing just hours before the party that the theme had changed to 'anything', I lost the props and decided to just go as 'a man' instead. Not quite what my dad had in mind when he asked the next day if there had been 'any nice boys' in attendance.

Or maybe, just maybe, its because at the age of twenty two, a few of my last fancy dresses have included Frankenstein, Edward Scissorhands, Axl Rose, and Kurt Cobain. In our latest group Halloween photo one of my friends reported that her mum had pointed at me and asked, 'who's that man?'

Either way, I suppose my friends might have had a point.

So what is it? What is the attraction in being male for a night? Can you cross dress without really thinking about it? Am I an accidental cross dresser?

In many ways, its not a big deal. Androgyny is nothing new. It has featured in high fashion now for years. its creative. Its exciting. With regard to fancy dress, its the exact thing you should be doing- be who you are not normally. Explore what your day job prevents you from doing. Girls have been dressing up as boys since Bowie ruled the charts, boys becoming girls since Geri Halliwell thought a Union Jack tea towel might look nice in 1997.

I had never previously questioned who I chose to be and why, but now the thought intrigued me. I asked myself what it was about those characters that made me want to be them.

With Edward Scissorhands, I was obsessed with the film and put it down to that. But there was more to it; I wanted to specifically wear that outfit of the tailored trousers and the white shirt, the braces, the wild unkempt black hair. Similarly with Frankenstein, it was the allure of that suit jacket, the lines of his face that I knew would be so enjoyable for me to master with make up. There were female versions of both out there, but they weren't nearly as fun. They were too sexy, too simple, too different from the real character I wanted to emulate.

And then I realized. Sometimes I have just wanted to be a boy.

I wanted to be a boy because at the end of the day, sometimes gender roles suck. Expectations suck. Labels suck. Although we are slowly becoming an ever more accepting society, there are still pressures on men and women to meet an ideal representation of their sex. Girls just how tired are you of make up adverts telling you what mascara will make your eyelashes the longest? How often do you read an article about a woman who's outfit is not up to par? Guys how hot IS that suit you wear to work all summer? Have you ever considered campaigning for the right to wear a dress?

There is nothing wrong with meeting those gender stereotypes at all. What perhaps could be classed as wrong is changing who you are to fit the mould or following blindly against your own wants and desires. I can name several times over just the past year when I longed to wear a suit to an event but instead chose a dress due to worries about what might be thought of me- as well as thinking that my boyfriend and I might look stupid in photos together. Times when I wore make up because otherwise I would be 'ugly'. Times when I fretted over whether or not I could be considered attractive in anything other than typical going-out-girl get up.

I guess, if men and women are to ever be equal, there needs to be a change in the way we see gender. No more pink is for girls, blue for a boy; the colours are both for everyone to enjoy to the degree that they want to. Fashion, football, strength, beauty, science, history, art? All up for grabs and it should be the same for the way you look.

Sex is factual, scientific, and defines who we each are. Gender is fluid and can be chosen by us according to what we identify ourselves with and why. So be who you want to be and don't look back. Sometimes I want to be Sweeney Todd. Sometimes I want to be Madonna. One time I even had a fish themed party, and THAT night, I wanted to be a fish. It should be that easy.

Sometimes, I want to go out and wear whatever the hell I want on my body. Sometimes I want to not have to look my best in the highly competitive world of girl grooming. Sometimes, I want to express my personality, my interests and be creative through dressing in a way that isn't necessarily classed as 'female'.

And sometimes, Edward Scissorhands is just about the only thing I want to be when eating fried chicken on a Friday night.

Hi There 2015

Hello internet.

I'm just more than a bit fashionably late in saying my greetings to 2015.. but looking at the history of this blog that should come as no surprise. For several years now I have had high aspirations for this page, and for several years I have avoided facing them, choosing instead to let them live only in my head. 

In many ways, my attitude to blogging was just like every other aspect of my life. I could not choose my subject. I deemed my interests to varied, mismatched and confusing to make sense in one format, and so I sought to compartmentalize them- should I have more than one blog maybe? How many headings would I need? How is this going to work?
And with all attempts to carve up ones personality, it could not be done. And so here I am, in 2015, with a very blank blog.

But this year, it will be different. And the reason it will be different is because it has only ever been ME standing in my way. In the last 22 years, 9 months and 25 days of my life (I am going to say that as much as possible- I do not want to be 23!) I have always been too SCARED to express myself, or too SCARED to face the world as it is, as an adult, as a human being who is right at the beginning of everything. 2014 was probably one of the hardest years I've had; it had it's spectacular highs but it was also filled with more than its fair share of loss, confusion, and pain. As a result, I ended the year feeling like I had no idea who I even was anymore.

Sure, the changing of the numbers on top of a calender are not going to change me as a person, or undo some of the complications last year brought that are still ongoing. But something about being at the top of the year really gets to me. Being at the top and looking down the hill. I guess the main change is that I feel BRAVE. In knowing that the only thing standing in the way of what I want to accomplish is ME- I have all the power, should I choose to accept it. It's my choice what happens next.

It was only last week, that I was miserably thinking about what I should sacrifice in order to become a person with a 'Point'- in my head I constantly wonder what my purpose is, my life calling, what should I choose? When it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't. If I really wanted to pursue all those activities and ventures, then why was I not willing to accommodate them? If I cant afford to lose A, B or C, then it is up to ME to make it work.

And really, we are all people. we are all combinations of the hundreds and thousands of conversations we've had, the thoughts we've dwelled on, the things we've seen and experienced, what we've chosen to share and what we've kept to ourselves. And to pin that all down into one job or one life goal or even one blog is impossible. The world outside constantly wants to label us and put us in boxes, so why do it to ourselves?

So this is me, starting a blog. This is me, at the beginning of 2015, ready for adventure. I want to use this year to chase my ambitions, indulge and in some cases discover my passions, and, as my year seven form tutor once described my hectic school life, 'stick my fingers in as many pies as possible'.
And of course, to write about it as much as I can on here.

This feels pretty weird to publish something to the internet about my feeeeelings. But it's a start. Introduction, complete.
                                                             Happy New Year