I don’t really have anything specific to write about, as I haven’t been up to much recently, but I want to get into the habit of writing more so here I am. Lucky you eh?

I haven’t left the house for days – actually I think Christmas morning was the last time I went out. I’ve just been at home trying to revise but not really getting much done.

The one person I feel like I can call a friend at home is in France this year for part of her degree and was only home for about 3 days so I didn’t get to see her. I texted her to see if she wanted to meet up after Christmas but she told me she was flying back straight after Christmas. At least I made the effort of contacting her instead of waiting for her to get in touch with me *pats self on back*. And she did seem genuinely disappointed that we wouldn’t get to see each other; she even said I should come and visit her in France. I almost managed to convince myself she only said this to be polite, but I managed to stop those thoughts before they got out of hand.

I have a feeling I’m going to be spending New Years Eve alone. My parents are going to some friends just up the road from us, and my sister is going clubbing with one of her friends. I’m not invited to the former as its just an adult thing and I really don’t fancy going clubbing. I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. On the one hand I’m already making up stories to tell my friends when they ask me what I did on New Years Eve so I don’t have to tell them I spent it at home by myself. On the other, it can’t be that weird spending New Years Eve alone, can it? I’m sure plenty of people do it ...

Social anxiety is ruining my relationship. Yesterday I got a text from my boyfriend saying something along the lines of "I think we need to talk about you and me", and he phoned me up last night. He basically told me that he's been miserable because I never go round to see him anymore, he always has to come to mine, and he feels that I'm not making an effort with him. After a lot of tears on my part and prompting from him, I managed to tell him that the thought of going to his and having to see and talk to his friends is just too terrifying for me right now. To be honest I don't think I explained it that well; I'm not the best at talking about my feelings face to face let alone over the phone, but at least he understands a bit better now why I've been so avoidant. I think he just thought I was being lazy and couldn't be bothered to make the effort to see him. And honestly I think I managed to convince myself that that was the reason I've been acting like I have; I'd rather of thing of myself as lazy and selfish than having this huge anxiety problem. How messed up is that?

Christmas Update

I’ve been meaning to post here for a few weeks but I keep putting it off, and coming up with excuses not to. Tomorrow I’ll have been back at home for two weeks already. I havn't really been up to much apart from christmas shopping and not nearly enough revision for my January exams,

About a week ago my family went to dinner with our neighbours; its a yearly tradition that we all meet and go to pizza express around Christmas time. My younger sister is on a gap year at the moment and is working with three others her age who were also at the dinner. So the majority of the time, the conversation was limited to the four of them talking about work, which I couldn’t really contribute to. Though even when something came up that I could have talked about I still didn’t speak up much. The only time I really spoke was when asked about my dietary habits - I’ve been vegan now for about 9 months, so I was quizzed about that for a few minutes after ordering my cheese free pizza. I hadn’t been around that many people for a while and found the whole thing pretty overwhelming.

Fast forward a few days ... on Christmas Eve my parents held a drinks party with about 20 guests. My sister was working so I was on my own pretty much; normally I would lean on her in those types of situations. It started off badly; as soon as the first guests rang the doorbell I started panicking; I was desperately trying to listen to who it was to see if I knew them. Luckily I did so it was OK. Anyway I felt really uncomfortable for the first hour or so but then once more people started to arrive I started to feel better, probably because I could blend in with the crows more. I spent quite a long time talking to this girl who I used to be was friends with when I was a toddler but don’t really see anymore. Anyway my mum later said to me that she had been watching me and thought that I had done well talking to people J And it’s not very often that she says thing like that so I was pretty happy.

Christmas day we went to some friends for drinks at about 12, which wasn't too bad - I managed to make some chit chat. Then my aunt and uncle and two cousins came over for christmas lunch. All in all it was an OK christmas - I'd even go so far as to say it was slightly better than average.

Feeling Liberated

I went on a run with one of my housemates (let's call her E.) this morning. We were running along the canal and I was getting pretty warm, and I commented that it would be so good to just go for a swim in the canal right now. It was just a passing comment and I wasn't expecting anything to come of it, but E. was like "ahh we should so just jump into the canal". I was rather sceptical at first, seeing as it was only a few days ago that the canal was completely frozen over! We spent about 5 minutes debating whether to or not, in between fits of giggles, but in the end we actually did it! Granted it was only for a few seconds but it was such a liberating experience; I was on a high for hours afterwards. It's been so long since I've done anything like that; just acted on impulse and not worried about the consequences or what anyone thought of me. I want this to be how I live my life; carefree and spontaneous :) The only thing holding me back is social anxiety.

Anyway I just wanted to share this :)

Celebrity Collage by MyHeritage

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

End of Term

finally!

It was the last day of term today. I had coursework that was due in this afternoon so I've been stressing about that for the few days. We got given this work 6 weeks ago and as always I left it till the last minute to really get going on it. I've just been so unmotivated recently. At first I thought it was depression, and I suppose it is a bit of that but really what I've realised is that I have no interest in my degree subject any more. I cannot wait for next summer when I'll graduate and I'll never have to look at another bloody equation or learn about perturbation theory, Fermi distributions or free electron models ever again!

When I first came to this realisation I was distraught; I thought that the last 2 years of my life had been completely pointless, and I was convinced that if I ventured away from science it would be a waste of my intelligence. However I’ve since come to the conclusion that doing something I’m not passionate about just for the sake of wanting to appear clever and please others, would really be a waste of my intelligence.

It’s scary now that I’ve come to this realisation; I’ve always just assumed I’d get my degree then maybe do a masters and PhD, then work as a researcher or something. I might have not felt truly passionate about that plan but at least I had a plan. I have no idea what I could do other than physics. My social anxiety has stopped me from trying out so many things over the years that for all I know could have been my true calling. I guess I just need to try out as many new things as possible until I find something I love. What I'm thinking at the moment is to get through the next few months of this degree, hopefully get a 2:2 (I messed up last year so that's the highest I could realistically hope for), and then take a few years out doing odd jobs and probably getting a job as a waitress or something for a few months just to get a bit of money saved up, and then bugger off round the world volunteering and things. I've been doing some research and I've found a really great organisation called WWOOF (worldwide opportunities on organic farms); you just sign up to the site and you get access to loads of different farms that take volunteers. The idea is that you work for around 5 hours a day and you get accommodation and food in return, and you don't even need experience to do it. One of my dreams is to one day grow all my own food so this would be a great learning opportunity for me and a chance to travel very cheaply!

I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about the future than I have in a long time :)