Travel ’19

Hey guys

So, apparently I can write things that are more than just life updates.. apparently this year is the year of trips.. starting in June so I’m going to be stone broke for the second half of the year!

I am currently studying for exams that I have to do for work (which always inspires me to write) but I decided a break was needed to write about all my exciting plans!

Exciting plan 1: I have a couple of concerts planned for the summer.. well I have planned to go to them, not actually planned them. I am going to see P!nk in June with my aunt in Dublin. I am beyond excited! I have wanted to see her forever and myself and my aunt managed to get tickets to the Golden Circle which is kinda like the mosh pit from what I can understand! Myself and my aunt are also going to see Westlife in Dublin in June with my Mum and my little sister (she’s 18 but still my little sister). I have also always wanted to go see Westlife, my mum and my aunt always used to go see them in Dublin so it will be really nice to go with my sister.

Exciting plan 2: This plan was thought of and flights were booked within the space of a week. It was one of my best friends birthday’s yesterday and she has been having a tough run of things recently so myself and one of our other friends, booked a trip to Liverpool for the three of us for 2 nights at the start of August. I am going to tell my friend whose birthday it was tomorrow and we’re not going to tell her that friend number 3 is coming too until we are in the airport! I am so excited about this! My friend is always there for me so it’ll be so much fun to do something like this for her. We also have absolutely nothing else booked or organised so if you have any suggestions of places to stay/ things to do while in Liverpool, please let me know!

Exciting plan 3: So apparently I’m not going to be able to afford to eat for the month of August because I am also jetting off to Split in Croatia for a week with one of my main G’s at the end of August! I haven’t been to Croatia in 11 years when I went with my Mum and my aunt (yes, the same two who I am going bopping out to Westlife with). We are planning on taking it easy and just enjoying the time that we spend there. We will do the islands, especially Hvar and are thinking of renting a car and driving to Dubrovnik and spending a night there too. Again, any advice would be much appreciated!

Exciting plan 4: NEW YORK BABY! For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to go to NYC and this December the dream is coming true! I have days booked off work in the first week of December so we plan on going then. We don’t have flights booked just yet but I am so beyond excited to go! We want to do EVERYTHING. For the third time, any advice is much appreciated.

Writing this post has reminded me so much of how much I enjoy writing and getting everything out. Hopefully after these exams, I’ll get back to writing more often, I have plenty of plans this time round to get out anyway!

As always, thanks for reading

Love always ❤

Kathy

 

Here’s to another update

A few weeks ago I met with a friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in a long time and she asked me how life was going. I told her “I love my job, I love where I live and if I could  just get *insert ex’s name here* to get his shit together, life would be just where I want it to be.” Well, the universe has a great sense of humor because when I arrived home from work the following day, my housemate told me that the house was being put on the market. During the week this week, I came home to a for sale sign outside my door. At least I’m not waiting for my ex to get his shit together anymore.

House update:

Currently looking for something in the same area that I currently live in. Myself and my best friends boyfriend (he’s like a brother to me) are planning on getting a place together. It’s not all that easy finding somewhere but we are looking anyway and trying to remain positive that it will all work out..

Work update:

I quit my job in October, and got a new one. I am now working for a bank and I absolutely love it. I went from working in an office by myself to being in a branch with a multitude of coworkers a dealing with a lot of customers. It is a total change of pace and I am constantly exhausted by it but it is much more me. I am also going to have to go back to studying as I need to complete some bank exams which is kinda stressing me out as I was a shite student but I’m hoping it will all go better this time.

Love update:

I am still very single (and very fed up of all the Valentines Day advertising currently going on). I am now over my ex, 7 months later. I tried moving on with someone else and ended up having a panic attack so that one obviously went well. A few weeks later, I met a friend of a friend and we seemed to click. He was the first guy I’d kissed sober since the breakup and it seemed to be promising.. That being said, I haven’t heard from him in over a week so I’m not going to hold my breath.. Why are boys stupid heads?!

Travel update:

Myself and one of my best friends have decided that 2019 is going to be our year for traveling. We have booked a week in Split in Croatia in September and we are planning a trip to New York in December.. Who knows, this blog might actually go back to having some travel content, EARTH SHATTERING. I also want to plan a solo travel trip. I watched Eat, Pray, Love for the first time last night and really enjoyed it. It made me want to pack in everything and go travel.. I can’t really afford to pack i  everything but I can do a weekend here and there. I’m thinking Italy, or France.. Suggestions?

I don’t think I have any more news to update you on but it felt so nice to write again (my keyboard is now all greasy because I had a pizza while writing..)

As always, thanks for reading,

Love, Kathy ❤

 

3 months on.. What now?

Hi Guys,

Last time I wrote,I was a bit heartbroken. This time around I still am. I’m attempting to successfully adult and damn it’s hard.

I said I’d write, writing usually helps me sort out my thoughts, if anyone wants to give me advice on how to sort oft my life, it’d be much appreciated!

My first issue of sorts is my job. I am finishing up at the end of December and I don’t know where to go from there. I have started looking into other jobs but I don’t know what I want to do. I amn’t willing to give up my weekends off and the one job that I have applied for would require me to work weekends and possible 12 hour shifts.

My second issue is my house. As you will know if you have read previous posts, I moved house back in February and I moved into the house I live in now. I love this house. It is in such an ideal location and suits me and my life really well. The only problem: It is being sold. My landlords are putting the house up for sale so I will have to move when the house is sold and at the moment, rent is very high and decent places to live are few and far between.

My heart is my third problem. Well my heartbrokeness  to be more exact. In my last post I wrote about being hurt, heartbroken and wanting to heal. I am still hurt, heartbroken but I’m not healing. I knew when we broke up that it would take me a long time to get over this guy. I didn’t expect to still feel this shitty after 3 months though. I feel like I’m missing a limb. I go to work, I see my friends, I eat, I sleep, I keep on living but all the time I feel like there is this man shaped hole in my life. My friends have told me to give it time, that I will get there and I will be fine. I want to believe them but I have been in love with him for longer than we were together. He is still my first thought in the morning and last thought at night. Every time I walk into my driveway, I look over my shoulder to see if his car is where it was usually parked. My heart skips a beat every time I see a car that could possibly be his.

The combination of these things has me wondering, do I stay in Cork or to I run away to the other side of the world? I have been thinking of applying for a working holiday visa and going to Australia for a year, or two. I was talking to a friend of mine about it and when I told her I felt like something was drawing me there, she joked and tole me there might be a man there for me. Who knows.

My life is a bit up in a heap at the moment. I know I miss my man more than anything, I know my house is going to be sold and I know I need to start making decisions. Where is the reset button on adulthood?

Talk soon

Thanks for reading,

Love always

Kathy xx

New year, old me?

Hey guys,

OK, so am I the only one who thinks all this new year, new me is bullshit? Controversial opinion over here, I know. 2017 was one of the hardest years of my life, and I thought the year before that was bad.. I learn a hell of a lot from my bad years. I learnt I am a stronger person than I thought I was.

This year, I want to be the best version of myself. I want to travel, I want to have experiences with my friends, I want to have to speak French and Spanish. I want to eat different foods. I don’t want to retreat to being the shell that I became.

When I was 16, I got on a plane to Brussels to go working in a kitchen where I didn’t know anyone, I didn’t fully understand the language and I didn’t really know what I was doing but I got on a bus in Cork and got off a plane in Belgium and it made me a better person (I enjoyed it so much I went back the following year again). I lost that drive for a while but this year I have so many plans.,

If have been following me for a while, you may have read me saying that I am back to being my old self. I am in some ways and in other ways, I have grown up. I have started looking at things like travelling like the old me did and that makes me really happy.

When I moved into my own house, I started the whole eating healthy and exercising regularly craic. I feel so much better after starting to cut out crap.  While living at home, I was eating due to boredom and now I’m slightly considering training for a marathon. I used to run a lot to de-stress and now I just want to push myself to do something out of the box.

I went to see The Greatest Showman last weekend and there is a song in it This is Me that has become my new anthem.. Just to let you know.

OK, not my best post (what can I say,m I write best after 10 pm and its only 7.30)

Thanks for reading,

Love always,

Kathy ❤

Bad anxiety weeks and birth control.

Hey Guys,

Ok, so December has just been a blur, I can’t believe that in two days it is going to be 2018. I started 2017 thinking that I was going to make it my year and spend the first 6 months in a really bad place. Then I spent 3 of the best months I have had in a long time living with my Grandparents and working a job I really liked.  Once I finished with that I had some time back at home where I felt lost, I didn’t know what I was going to do and felt hopeless as I wasn’t getting any of the jobs I applied for. Then it all seemed to go my way, I got given a chance and it set me up. I moved out of home and I’ve started to live the life I feel fits right for me.

Since moving out, things haven’t been all fine and dandy. In general I have loved it but a couple of weeks in, I had a bad anxiety week. I had a week where no matter what, I couldn’t cheer myself up. I was sluggish, I had no motivation and I cried at EVERYTHING. On the Sunday evening, my parents dropped me back into my house after being back at home for the weekend, I went up to my bedroom and BURST into tears. I had no reason to be crying and I knew that as I sat there sobbing to myself.. Another instance during the week, the guy I was seeing left to go home and as I closed the door behind him I again, burst into tears and again, it was for no reason.

Guys, don’t tune out, keep reading because I’m fairly sure I’m not the only chick who’s ended up in this situation. I started taking birth control pills in January or February last year when I was in a sort of relationship and this girl is not ready for a baby so I was looking out for myself. I hated it for the first month because I was a hormonal, nasty bitch and that isn’t who I am. I started getting on alright with it so kept taking it. It got to the stage after the summer when I didn’t need to be taking it anymore, in addition to me being absolutely dismal at taking it and forgetting days towards the end.  Anyway, when I started seeing the aforementioned guy, I decided to start taking it, I had a months supply left over.

I found it interesting that my bad anxiety week coincided with the week I went back on the pill. In woke up one morning and looked at my pills and it was like a light-bulb going off in my brain, I put my extreme emotions down to the hormone differences I had been putting into my body. Stopping suddenly had its own challenges as my body was a bot confused but all seems to be going well.. 😛 I just thought it was worth mentioning just in case anyone else has experienced something similar and is unsure of why, this is my understanding… I should point out at this point I am not a doctor nor have any medical training 😛

Ok enough of the heavy stuff, it is currently 1.15am and I need to sleep! I’ll be on again in a few days to write again (seriously can’t spell that word tonight!!)

Belated Happy Christmas to all those who celebrate it.

Thanks for reading,

Love always,

Kathy ❤

This post was also written while listing to Defying Gravity, originally from the musical Wicked but this version is by the extremely talented Lea Michele in Glee.

Mental health and self harm

Hi Guys,

Happy Black Friday, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in Ireland so black Friday it is..

This post is a more serious one for me, I have always been honest when writing here but this one is something that means a lot to me.

This evening, while eating dinner with my family, the theme of self harming came up in conversation when my brother happened to mention a girl who he recognizes from working in a shop where he buys his x-box games. He commented on the fact that her arms are covered with self harm scars and he labeled them as ‘disgusting’. My brother has dealt with his own shit so I was shocked to hear this description from him.

Immediately, I jumped to the defense of this girl, who I don’t know and probably wouldn’t know if she passed me in the street. My argument was that this girl has obviously struggled. She wouldn’t have given herself those scars for no reason and I think she should be applauded for being brave enough to expose them.  Both my parents agreed with my brother saying that her scars should be covered, that they felt like she should present herself in a professional manner and that they felt offended by the scars. The shop in which she works, isn’t somewhere people dress professionally, usually the staff wear a t-shirt and jeans, have exposed tattoos and could have multi-colored hair. It is what it is and this girl was most likely wearing her work uniform.

As some of you may or may not know, I was diagnosed with anxiety earlier this year and my doctor sent me to see a therapist as she was worried about my mental health. I spent the entire time with the therapist bawling my eyes out. My anxiety was largely college related and it took a hell of a lot out of me. I am where I am now due to taking myself out of that situation.   According to my mum, I have a sparkle back in my eye and a buzz around me. I am happy. I, like anyone will have my bad days, when all I want to do is cry but I am a whole lot better than where I was this time a year ago.

When I was at my worst, I went to bed not wanting to wake up the following morning. I pulled apart a razor blade with my bare hands in the hopes of providing myself with some relief. I used a needle and a lighter to burn myself in an attempt to feel something other than the overwhelming numbness that was my life. I told no one. My friends didn’t know what was happening inside my head, neither did my family or the guy I was seeing at the time. Most people still don’t know. When talking to my Mum about not going back to college I mentioned that I had been so miserable I was self harming but I don’t think it registered. I have scars. They may not be slits up and down my arms like the poor girl working in the shop but there are there none the less.

After being in a situation where I felt trapped, I can never judge anyone else for the decisions they make while suffering from a mental illness and it upsets me that my parents would. There has been enough judgement passed on people who suffer with their mental health and I think it is time to stop and for people who haven’t experienced that desperation to comment and say its attention seeking is insulting.

Ok so this post was heavy-duty. I’m gonna go shower and cry now.

If you have ever felt like you need to self harm, please, don’t. Reach out to someone instead. I wish I had.

If you have ever self harmed, know that you are a strong and amazing person and your scars and marks make you a better person who has faced the worst times and come out the other side even stronger.

If you have ever judged someone for marring their skin, I hope this post will make you think.

Thanks for reading,

Love always,

Kathy ❤

Growing up and adulting

Hey guys,

Been a while.. I am actually blown away with the amount of attention my blog has gotten in recent weeks. I haven’t been writing but my views are us so thank you to everyone who stops here for a read 🙂

So my life has been insane for the last few weeks. As some of you might know, I have been looking for a job. I had reached a point where I just really needed something so I decided that it was time to apply for any job to keep me going until the job I wanted came along. Which brings me to one Thursday a couple of weeks ago when I decided to go into Cork city and paper the city with my CV’s. As soon as I got home from this, I got a call from a recruitment agency asking if they could talk to me about a customer service role within a call center. It wasn’t the job I wanted but it was still something that sounded somewhat interesting. Following that phone call, I had an interview the following week. A little while later, I got another phone call from a clothes shop asking if I could come in the following day for another interview. Of course I was delighted at the prospect of having two potential jobs. As I was going out the door that Thursday, I got a call from a Hotel in Killarney asking me to come into them for yet another interview. As you can imagine, at this stage I was a bit stressed about all the interviews. Fast forward a few days and following a couple of disappointing interviews, I had the one for the call center, half an hour after that I was offered a job asking me to start the following day. I immediately accepted and was over the moon! When I got home that evening, I received a phone call from the manager of a company who I had handed my CV into for a totally different role. She was impressed by my CV and asked me to come in the following evening for an interview.

So to try straighten out the timeline and the days, on Wednesday, I had the interview for the call center, got the job and received a phone call for the other position. The job I had been rung about was me summed up. On Thursday, I had my first day of training in the call center and after work went straight to the other place for my interview. On Friday, I got a phonecall during my lunch asking me if I wanted the job I had interviewed for the evening before. I accepted it and now work there.

The company I work for are suppliers of hair and beauty products to salons and individuals all throughout the country. I am more or less a PA and I love my job!!! In addition to getting my new job, I also have a new house!! Finally growing up! This weekend is my moving weekend, which explains why I am sitting in bed at 14.20 writing this blog.. I am moving into a shared house in Cork City, literally 5 mins away from my job.

I am so terrified to move out and so excited at the same time. I get on well with my family most of the time but there are members of my family I get on better with from a distance.. This is something I need to do for me. I’m not expecting it to be easy and I know I will probably have a meltdown when my Mum drops me off but this is me, growing up and starting to live my own life! I can’t wait to start shopping for my new house.. Someone is going to need to keep me out of Home Sense 🙂

Anyway, I know this might not be the most interesting post.. I have a cold and am feeling kinda miserable..  Now that I’m going to have more routine back in my life, I hope to write more and to be more interesting 😛

Thanks for reading,

Love,

Kathy ❤

Staying active is key

OK, so apparently I’m really good at writing posts a month apart. I haven’t written sooner  because there has been nothing exciting happening in my life for the last month. Brief update, I finished my contract for the summer on the 18th of August and have been looking for jobs since. People keep asking me hoe the job hunt is going, my answer, it’s killing me slowly.. I have never been the most patient of people and  I like to be doing something, otherwise I get cabin fever..  So in my attempt to combat this, I have started to be active.

So I don’t want to mislead you with the title of this post, I am absolutely no expert when it comes to exercise.. But I’m gonna pretend I know what I’m talking about.. OK?!? 😛 So since moving back home, I don’t leave the house all too much because there is actually very little to do around here. One thing I have starter though, is rowing. I don’t know if I mentioned this in my last post, probably not but I’m not gonna check till after I’m done writing 🙂 I started rowing when I was 16 and not to sound up my own ass, I was good at it. I ended up stopping because life did what it does and got in the way. I am far from a jock and tend to be really bad at team sports, especially ones that involve balls.. I even managed to give myself a black-eye playing badminton. For a few years I went through phases of going to the gym and running but to be 100% honest (because that is exactly what this blog is about) I haven’t been in as good shape since I was 16 and this girl wants that figure back!

When I moved home after my summer of adventures, my sister decided that she wanted to start rowing so I said I’d go too for emotional support. There are times when I’m dragged kicking and screaming (not literally, I’m not 5) out of the house and there are times when I am the only one out of the three of us (We also have a Spanish student living with us who has started rowing too) who get their ass out of bed and put myself through two hours of pure torture.. I have found that the exercise has helped me. I might not be showing any signs of toning up and what-not but I know I will. I enjoy going to the gym and pushing myself and my sister. (she loves it…) On the days when I’m not rowing, there is a walk along the lake where I row that is almost 6 km long that I like to do with my mum. I have always been close to her but I think the walk gives us something to do together which is nice. Last weekend I did the walk along with my mum and best friend and my mum told us the story of her and my dads relationship, from the very start. Yeah I’d heard it before but in bits, it was really special to hear it from start to finish.

Ok, I think I have babbled on for long enough.

Will write again soon (with actual interesting content…)

Thanks for reading,

Love always, Kathy ❤

Life Update : 3 weeks on

Hi Guys,

I was so much better at updating before I moved to Kerry… But I’m back home now for the time being so here’s to more posts, with more interesting content than what has been happening in my life…

So, I am home. Back with my family after spending the most amazing summer working with the most INCREDIBLE group of people. I turned 21 a week before I finished there, turning 21 is a big thing in Ireland, I’m not so sure about the rest of the world though.. On the morning of my birthday, we had a staff meeting,  the usual stuff, I hadn’t had enough coffee yet so I was all picture no sound, when out of one of the offices came one of my managers, with a cake and 21 birthday candles. The entire place started singing me happy birthday. I genuinely nearly died of embarrassment!! It was one of the nicest things that could have happened me that day, I was away from my family and feeling a little bit lonely and that made my day. In addition to getting me a cake (with my name on it for the first time EVER), they all chipped in and bought me two beautiful Pandora charms for my bracelet that my parents bought me for my 18th. I still don’t have the words to describe how much it meant.

Birthday at work

Since I have decided not to go back to college in September to finish my degree, once I finished my contract, I am looking for a job. People keep telling me that the world is my oyster, I know it is but it can be hard to believe it sometimes. If you have followed my blog for a while, you will have gathered that my mental health can be questionable at times and waking up on Monday morning knowing I didn’t have a job to go to was incredibly tough. I am the type of person who loves to be working, I am well able to relax when I have my time off and I really do enjoy my nights out but I like work. I think it is the routine that suits me. While in Kerry, my Grandad would wake me up at 7.15 every morning, telling me it was 7.30.. I’d then get up around 7.45, get myself ready and go to work for the day. My evenings could be spent on the beach, hanging out with my grandparents, hanging out with my aunt and cousins or cuddling the dogs on the couch.. It depended on the evening. My existence for the last 3 months may seem like  a quiet one but it has suited me down to the ground.

I have applied for a number of jobs over the last few weeks and there is one in particular I really want, based in Belfast and doing something I think I’d excel at. If you believe in God, send me your prayers, if not, any good luck wishes would be much appreciated as I try to figure out where I go next.

I promise my next post will be more exciting!

Thanks for reading,

Love always,

Kathy ❤

Life update

Hey guys,

By my clock, its been exactly 30 days since I wrote. I have meant to sit down and write so many times and have realized for once, I don’t have some drama or struggle to document. I am having the best summer I have had in years, completely different to previous years and yet the most liberating. I haven’t felt so much myself in a very long time.

This time last year, I was suffering big time with my mental health, I was in a bad relationship, was going through some family stuff and was attempting to study for my repeats, all while on a family holiday in West Cork. This year, I am writing this from my bed, snapchatting videos of myself singing and dancing to one of my best friends (Yes, I’m talking about you Mairtin), despite the fact I need to get up in 7 and a half hours for work..

Getting away from my life is exactly what I needed to do to see what I want to do with it.. I still have absolutely no idea what I want to be when I grow up, or where I’ll be living in a months time, but this time, it doesn’t scare the beejsus out of me, I am terrified, but its an excited terrified.

This evening I came in from work and sat down on the couch with the dog curled up on top of me, when my Gran suggested we went out to the beach with the dogs. As soon as we got there, it started to rain. She went for a paddle in the sea while I took the two dogs up the beach. When I was walking, I realized I was walking away from the rain and towards the sun on the beach. It reminded me of the song Chasing the Sun by The Wanted. It was myself and my friend Ciara’s anthem of the summer yearsss ago and I threw it on on Spotify. This resulted in my singing and dancing my way back down the beach, looking like a crazy person and being totally in my element!!

This lighthearted person who isn’t afraid to look like an eejit is who I am and due various reasons, I lost sight of that… But  I’M BACK BABYYYY.

Thanks for reading,

Love always,

Kathy ❤