Live What You Love

Have you ever been so deep in thought that you almost missed your stop?

It happened to me for the first time earlier this week on my way home from the Livity office. (I can only apologise to the woman sat next to me at the time for the actual, physical jolt of realisation that occurred on my part, and what was potentially the ensuing heart-attack on hers.)

For the first time in a very long time I am excited to get up and get to the office in the morning, and I find myself riding the residual buzz of excitement and inspiration all the way home at night, right up until I'm overcome by sleep. I'd forgotten, or perhaps never even known what it feels like to be so completely engaged, and as the sudden influx of posts would suggest, my creativity has been poked with a great big stick and roused from hibernation.

This is living; truly.

Everything suddenly makes sense, and in the most clichéd, cringe-inducing fashion I now know what it means to be high on life; nigh-on intoxicated by living what I love, and achieving and learning so much more because of it.

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Livity Advantage: Week 1

Wow. Well. What can I say? It’s been quite the week and there are 7 more still to go. It’s all been a bit of a whirlwind, and I’m not even being clichéd when I say my feet have barely touched the ground. (Well, maybe a bit) I’m incredibly lucky to have been chosen as part of the final 15 for Livity Advantage who now make up our very own agency that will be dealing with real-life briefs and clients over the 8-week period, all the while learning the hows, whats, whens, wheres and whys of Digital Media from some of the best in the industry based around a series of Google-pioneered toolkits. Got that? Good. Bear with.

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Disadvantage as Advantage

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Every cloud has a silver lining.

Use your disadvantage to your advantage.

That last statement came from Jon Akwue, global client managing director at Engine, just this afternoon. I’m currently part of an incredible programme called Livity Advantage, run through Livity UK and led by Google, and through their amazing 8-week Digital Expert course I, along with 14 others have had, and will have, the chance to meet with, talk to, and learn from outstanding industry experts and forerunners such as Jon, and it was our meeting with him earlier that got me thinking, non-stop, all the way home.

The notion of disadvantage is a broad one, and perhaps a sensitive one, but the idea that you can use what makes you different, makes you you, (your ‘Unique Selling Point’) even if it’s perhaps been in the first instance less than positive, is an incredibly powerful one. Jon’s point really drove home that in almost every sense of the word I’m actually advantaged, in so much as I’m not disadvantaged. I’m incredibly lucky in most respects, in that I’m white, lower middle class, and come from an incredibly supportive family who were also able to live near a decent school. I’m not the standard model when someone says the word disadvantaged, because in most respects I’m not.

Here’s where it gets tricky, or perhaps interesting, never mind the fact that it’s been going round and round my head for about 5 hours. My ‘disadvantage’ is exclusively mine to disclose. With the best will in the world, ethnicity, just for example, or some disabilities, is not necessarily something you have a choice about disclosing when walking in to a room. But is that a good thing, or not? It struck me today just how right Jon Akwue was with his statement, and how much people who’ve seen both sides of the coin have to offer in that respect, but also, just how much my frankly incomparable ‘disadvantage’ is a silent burden, as at face value, I am, well, advantaged.

I went to University, I stayed for 4 years, but I didn’t get a degree. On paper, I wasted 4 years of my life and have very little to show for the massive amount of debt I’m in because of those years. In reality, I had some of the best experiences of my life, but also lived through the worst, darkest days of my existence. As a consequence I learnt so much about myself, and about the world around me and how things impact each other that I am now in fact a stronger, no, better person because of what I experienced, and have a completely different angle on life and the way I work and tackle things because of it.

My newly-acquired angle is the USP I bring to the table, but the problem I face is that of deciding, or perhaps knowing when and sometimes even if, to disclose. I have the benefit, or perhaps advantage of being able to disclose my ‘disadvantage’ at will, but then there are all the pre-conceived notions that accompany what I’ve been through which often take a lot more than a conversation at interview to dispel, while it is what I’ve been through (loosely) that is the reason I am right for the job and could bring so much to the role. Tricky, no?

I know what I have to offer, but my next challenge is proving it to the people I want to work with, in spite of what’s in the past.

If at first you don’t succeed and all that.

Challenge accepted.

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Black Dog Obedience Training

Depression. Even the word is heavy. It presses down on you, on your life. It impedes movement both physical and metaphorical, and smothers you to the point of almost suffocation.

I could wax lyrical about the poetic darkness of depression, and the viscous, black hold it can have over people, but on World Mental Health Day of all days, and at the point in life I currently find myself it feels pertinent to make the simplest but truest of statements:

It gets better.

Not now, not tomorrow, maybe not straight away, and not necessarily forever, but there are places and people who can lift the load, and tighten the leash, and you will stand up straight and breathe deeply again: I promise.

There have been times in the past few years where even just reading that statement would have elicited vicious, unbelieving laughter, so please; bear with me. There will also be those of you who have never experienced mental health issues who may wonder why it’s even worth giving such a widely and (dangerously) naively assumed notion the time of day.

To you, I say that it gets better, not because depression is some "temporary indulgence of the weak," but because it has to. In the most basic of senses, when a person hits rock bottom the only way they have is up, and even what may seem, or sometimes even feel, to both them and others like the smallest of advances should not be diminished. Clichés become so due to an element of universal truth, and the adage that we are our own worst enemies is most certainly true. Who else has such absolute power over you? Who else knows all your shameful, hateful secrets and exactly what it is about those secrets that scares and haunts you? Who else knows exactly what to say to ruin your day? When fighting with yourself, with what’s inside you, there isn’t the luxury of being able to put distance between you and the problem. When you are the reason you can’t bear to get out of bed in the morning, or leave the house for fear of having to interact with others, or pick up the phone because you’re scared of not knowing what to say to the person on the other end, then refuge is hard to find.

It gets better because having been through depression, I know that I understand myself so much better as a person and actually, that without having been to hell and back I wouldn’t be the stronger, more informed and together person I am today. When in the depths of depression I sought help through what I saw as weakness and desperation, but as I’ve progressed both through and upwards I’ve realised that there’s an incredible strength in even feeling able to reach out for help, and I know that it is the power I have gained over the illness that has enabled me to feel strong enough to recognise the signs and understand myself better while putting in place the support network that I know I can utilise if ever the same thing starts to happen again. I realise that it perhaps sounds to an outsider that I had a charmed, easy ride with my depression which, for one, I don’t think is physically possible, and is a dangerous idea that should be quickly dispelled. Make no mistake: I have fought to be where I am today. I have battled myself, negative stereotypes and stigma, and not to mention the god damn depression itself, and I have encountered stumbling blocks, setbacks and colossal great snakes that have sent me all the way back down to the start, both within my own mind and from outside influences, but though the road is long and winding, let me tell you: the view from the top makes it all worthwhile.

So yes, it does get better, but at different rates and with different definitions of success for different people.

Better is completely subjective when it comes to mental health, and there are so many groups and organisations out there waiting to help, just as soon as you’re ready to let them, so do.

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The gym is not for fat people.

I was recently told of an instance when someone I know expressed their intention to go to the gym and was met with the comment ‘But you’re not in shape.’ This, counteracted with the somewhat obvious statement that that was why they were intending to go, was then rounded off like a perfectly toned bicep with the observation that ‘Yeah, but there are some things you start at home.’

As a recent convert to the gym, and the concept of giving a damn about the state of my body, it is exactly this attitude that terrifies me.
I am not in shape; I want to get in to shape. The equipment at the gym allows me to facilitate this.
I’m not exactly at my most attractive when working out, and let’s be honest, I’m not entirely comfortable being seen in public in my jogging bottoms and baggy t-shirt (I don't claim to understand those who relish wearing skin tight lycra when undertaking physical assertion) so when I’m bright red, sweaty and out of breath having pushed myself that bit further and spent longer than I ever have on the rowing machine I don’t really want to be confronted with bronzed, slim, already-perfect looking people going hell for leather on cross trainers without so much as a bead of sweat on their foreheads, and it would seemingly stand to reason that they probably don’t want to see me either. (Although, I promise fat isn’t contagious)

The gym is designed for fitness, so if you want to get fit, you go to the gym, but in all media, film and television representations the gym is full of already fit people ‘simply’ (I know, I know) maintaining their perfect physiques, which is fine, but also pretty damn daunting for people who look like, well, me. I go to a gym within a leisure centre in the South Wales valleys that costs me a couple of quid each time I go, and I’m lucky enough to be met with a nice mix of people and fitness levels whenever I go, but I must admit to being ashamed of my body in the state it is currently in.

Perhaps it says something about me that it would never even cross my mind that an onlooker might view me positively, in that I’m actually doing something about my health, rather it strikes me that, in my head at least, the fitter gym users are of the same opinion as the aforementioned home bird, and probably use my physique as motivation to keep-up the hard work lest they become like me.

Whatever it is that makes me breathe a sigh of relief when I step in to an empty fitness suite, I’m just glad that I’ve started to overcome the inner demons that tell me I don’t belong there, and hopefully after our Summer of sporting achievement, others will start to do the same, because when it comes down to it, it’s just a room where people go to make themselves feel better, whatever that may mean to each individual, and no-one should have to feel like they should be hidden away at home; size 8 or 28.
The gym is not for fat people; it's for people.

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Sunshine, Lollipops & Satire

So it's been unseasonably sunny recently and I've managed to spend 98% of this time inside writing to various academic and also non-scholarly deadlines.
In light of this, it would be awfully nice if you could to take the time to peruse the latest issue of Exposed, paying particular attention to page 8 should you be so inclined, just so that the onset of rickets has not been in vain.

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Heart-felt

A little something I penned under the brief of: Heart.

Take Heart

I write from the heart.

I take things to heart.

I’ve experienced things that have broken my heart, but I still continue to put my heart and soul in to the things I love. 

In short: my heart has a lot to answer for.

The heart is a mystical phenomenon charged with making the most important of decisions, and leading us in to battle against even our own heads. People in difficulty are told to take heart, have a heart; look inside their hearts. That’s an awful lot of responsibility for one organ, let alone its actual, literal job of pumping blood around our bodies. I mean, I can confidently say the liver isn’t pulling its weight in the field of abstract thought processes, and as for the pancreas? Don’t even get me started.

The heart has become a poetic device; a metaphor for love, and for life. The heart assumes the form of a childhood friend; someone that has known you so long they appear to know you better than you know yourself. Of course the heart is deeply embedded in the physical human form, but it also seems to have taken on the same transcendental qualities of the soul. Like a heart itself in transplant, the heart’s abstract form is taken as being separate from our other thought processes, and blamed for inopportune emotions and feelings in our otherwise autonomous bodies.

How dare we.

Our hearts provide us with life itself, yet we continue to place excess demands upon them, and expect of them, in ways that, should they manifest literally against our own actual selves, would constitute both physical and emotional abuse. The heart is in a constant state of providing, and true to human form, all we want is more. We are all familiar with resting our weary heads, but the heart silently soldiers on, through every long, arduous day, and dark, cold night without even so much as a tea break, let alone a thank you.

So next time you become aware of the pulsing beneath your skin, of the very lifeblood that courses through your veins, take the time to appreciate where it’s coming from, and just have a little heart.

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