Legalise Cannabis

This is something that is currently being debated in Ireland and a lot of my friends have been inviting me to protests about it. Frankly I don't want to be involved, I'm not against cannabis, I'm well aware that safe cannabis has dozens of useful and even helpful properties and that for many people it can have a positive effect on their lives. Unfortunately I am certain that the vast majority of people interested in legalising cannabis just like the idea of not getting in trouble for smoking weed.
I get that people enjoy it, that it can be fun. But drinking can be fun too and there's a reason there's an age limit, cocaine probably can be fun too but we don't want everyone taking that either. Like alcohol, while not the most harmful substance to the human body, weed can be problematic in the wrong hands, the wrong amounts, the wrong circumstances.
Someone close to me got into weed when he was 15 and ended up fucking up his exams and getting expelled from school and a mate of his died in circumstances with weed. I have another mate who smokes weed nearly every day to help him relax after work, or de-stress from being with his family.
Despite being someone who sometimes wishes I could just take something to make me relax, or to help me be happy, I don't believe that any substance, especially a legal one, is going to help those feelings. Because they don't fix the problem, they just help you forget about it.
If I thought that people were protesting for something genuine, something that would be positive for society, I would be out there marching too. But frankly, when my friends, or guys I'm dating, are high or stoned, they really aren't as fun, or nice, or interesting to be around as they normally are. I guess I like things real, even if the real is less pleasant to deal with sometimes. At the end of the day, I feel like weed isn't a life experience I should have, life is something I want to experience, and weed changes the real world, the real way you see thing and feel things.
When I meet one person my age who wants to legalise cannabis for a real reason, a good reason I'll think about marching. Til then, I'll stick to my guns!

Triviality

I spend hours becoming stressed about things that should be trivial. What to have for dinner, whether or not to go out, when to have a shower.
Sometimes just looking at myself can make me stressed because I feel like I have a thousand things I have to do and fix and improve. I think way too much about food, photos, clothes and text messaging. It sounds completely shallow, and even self-obsessed.
Even thinking about it a little while trying to write has me all pent up and stressed and nervous. Like my chest is constricted and there's a weight on my shoulders. In my house there are frequently arguments over trivial things, such as TV or the last potato waffle or whether or not someone is allowed to use something belonging to someone else. The problem is that even the most trivial of things have a connection to more deeply rooted needs, feelings, thoughts, they can spark and idea or emotion that is all consuming. I hate the way you appear like some sort of bratty petulant child in reaction to something that should mean nothing, and really does mean nothing, but just set off a tornado of bad thoughts which cause you to turn everything into a nightmare.
I was just bothered by something trivial, I was at a party recently and took a lot of photos. I was in a few with a friend I used to be very close to and I notice that on facebook he has hidden any of just the two of us from his profile. Now if I think rationally and logically he may not have liked them, or thought there were too many similar ones, or not wanted to look like we were together because it was just the pair of us. But ma brain catastrophises, spiralling into a dozen negative reasons and becoming sad and angry and anxious and generally upset about all the things I think it could be!
A few deep breaths later and I'm calm but it will niggle at the back of my mind til the end of the day. It irks me even more that this has upset me than the actual reasons behind the upset. Maybe it smacks too much of change, or failure, or rejection to my mind when it's actually not that complex.
I wish I could switch off these parts of my brain that do this. Instead I analyse them. And I write.

Gifts

Yesterday I received a really perfect gift. There is something about gift giving that makes you feel special and loved, but nothing more so than a gift that perfectly suits you, that shows how well your friend knows you and makes you love and appreciate them all the more.
My friend brought me a copy of one of my favourite novels in Spanish. I love reading in other languages and I was so delighted I almost wanted to cry!
Being a girl you often get a lot of crappy default presents. People seem to think that toiletries or jewellery are the things that girls want. I do love an accessory but  I almost never receive jewellery that is the kind of thing I would buy myself. As for toiletries, I only ever had baths when I'm sick and if I get another Lush bath bomb that smells overwhelmingly of sherbet I may throw it at someone.
Gifts are sweet but gifts for the sake of giving someone something mean almost less than no gift at all. If it's the thought that counts and you put zero thought into the present then what on earth is the point?
I am very lucky to have some lovely friends who know me and think of me and remind me just how well they get me.

Some scars

So today I have something a little personal I want to talk about. Scars.
I have many scars, childhood accidents, an operations, a recent scrape from my bike; I have few that I am self-conscious about. I am most nervous about the ones on my chest. I have bad acne scarring all across my shoulders and chest and because I have sallow skin they are noticeable little white circles. People have commented on and asked about them and that's the only reason I know they are noticeable not just to me.
When I was fifteen, the friend of a boy I was dating commented on 'those weird marks on my boobs' and a years later a friend of mine asked why my shoulders were sprinkled with white marks. As someone who comes off as very confident this is one things I struggle with. Every time I wear strappy or low cut tops I worry that people are looking at my scars and wondering why I would show off a body like that.
I have friends who are similarly self conscious of only certain marks and scars. One with scars up her spine from a scoliosis operation, another with marks on her arms from self harm, another with a scar on her lip from a childhood bike accident.
We spend a great deal of time being proud of our unique traits, skills and defining features but also a significant amount of time hiding things we think people won't understand or might comment cruelly on, despite having no way of changing these things.
I have no insecurities about the moles on my face or the parkour wound on my shin or even the lump in my foot where I have a metal screw. These are all part of me, of my story, of my life. Somehow, a part of me doesn't see my chest scars that way. They seem to me something that shouldn't be there, marks that should have faded, that should no longer define me, that have no significance to my story other than a few negative comments after their appearance.
I guess so many times I've been able to be open about mental scars, or to tell a story of some gnarly scar I obtained doing something cool or stupid, or showing off some unusual birthmark or quirky trait. But there are some things that are not special, not shareable and not interesting but can mark us in ways we didn't realise. I suppose my scars are a reminder to me of all the things that shouldn't have an influence, like mean comments from strangers, or bad days from the past, or lost items or forgotten places. They are a permanent reminder of nothing but their own effects, normally nothing good.

Kids these days

Apologies for my recent silence readers. I thought summer would afford me so much free time that I would be writing constantly but since I started working I am invariably there or sleeping off the exhaustion incurred there!
Today I am thinking about teenagers. On my first day starting at the camp I was thinking of My Chemical Romance's song Teenagers. Because teenagers really do scare the living shit out of me. I'm too young for them to respect me and too old for them to want to be friends with me.
I have one group of Spanish students, thirty-seven of them, out of which there are maybe seven to ten nice ones and the rest are rude, ignorant and just plain disinterested in life. Some of them actually stand in the road and don't seem to understand the frustration of the drivers, or me for that matter. Even the students from the other groups are driven mad by them (which is comforting). Unfortunately it feels as though there is no way to get through to kids who just don't want to do anything. They don't want to see historical sites, they don't want to do fun activities, they don't want to go home...if only I could give them nap time or chatting in Spanish time I'm sure they'd be thrilled.
What on earth does one do with teenagers? Granted there will always be some kids, great kids, who make the most of everything and who try to encourage others (I have reached the stage where I actually worship these children as my work saviour) but there are others who just slink off to smoke and do nothing.
I was a go for it teen (sometimes I'm a do nothing kid now) and I can't understand how these kids can come all the way over to another country and want to speak only their only language with people they already know and refuse to appreciate anything about the country they're in (except possibly the large Abercrombie).
I feel like I should be blaming the technology age of instant gratification but that doesn't account for the lack of respect for leaders, elders, others or even traffic lights. I'm worried that maybe some of them are just a little stupid rather than be completely obnoxious. Though I could be being a little generous.

Golf

Today was my first day of work at a summer camp. I had to go golfing with some teenage boys. I'm a sporty type but golf is one of a handful of sports I really have no great interest in. It's the exercise equivalent of following a stone you've been kicking down the street (with arm swinging thrown in here and there). I am not in any way belittling the skill I know to be involved in golf-it's really challenging in terms of gauging distance, accuracy and even just hitting that tiny little ball with the skinny stick! As a hockey player, I thought there would be a bit of similarity in the whole swinging-a-stick-at-a-ball genre but I could barely manage to make contact my first few swings at the driving range! It seems to take forever to get in any way decent at it, and it doesn't seem like a fun sport to be bad at! I mean soccer with your mates will be still be fun if you;re rubbish and most people are happy enough to shoot some hoops whether they've ever played before!

Golf just seems like a sport that is not just for the fun of it. There are dresscodes for starters -dresscodes that, as a self-proclaimed fashionista, I am not a fan of. The outfits definitely contribute to golf's image of not being a 'young' sport. You won't see any jeans or Nike's or patterned leggings around the golf course and you won't see many young people in sweater-vests and sensible trousers. 

Most young people want to have fun with sports, they play for the social aspect, for the competitive aspect because it's exhilarating. Most people take a while to reach the 'exhilirating' stage of golf. You really have to be at least decent at it to get any of this out of it. It's not hugely social as you can't have crews walking the greens and it requires the kind of concentration and time-taking that you aren't often afforded with friends! For me, I don't think golf is a sport I will ever get into. Too much walking, too much standing, too much thinking and far, far too little adrenaline. Hockey may have a similar premise but I'd gladly take a hefty-legged girl steaming towards me with a concrete ball than a long stroll over a lonely green with a ball that won't go where I want it to!

Writing vs. Talking

I have discovered that I write much better if I have a topic to discuss. I can happily write about just about anything but some days I can't think of anything! (suggestions welcome alternativekitten10@gmail.com).
It is the same as when talking to people; it's easy to join in on a conversation- even if you don't know much about the direct topic-but when you're put on the spot you're brain does this fun thing where it goes completely blank!
It's also much harder to write than speak sometimes because it requires concentration-your hands need to keep up wit your thoughts which can be difficult-especially when trying to word something just-so. There are usually more distractions when writing, in a conversation-the conversation is the focus of you and of those around you. When writing, unless you are in a library on somewhere alone, life continues, often noisily, around you.
For me, writing is a soothing, relaxing activity most of the time (bar term essays or other work on a deadline) provided I'm not suffering from writers block. However, my mother finds the sound of a pen scribbling or keyboard clicking as irritating as most people find car alarms or high-pitched d4 girls talking about boys on the train. My brothers also have this fantastic ability to make annoying noises or do mad activities as soon as I look busy or like I might be concentrating.
It seems to be a rule of life-if you have nothing to do, those around you will be busy, if you commit to something, a dozen opportunities will appear and suddenly everyone wants to talk to you. Sitting at my laptop seems to have a similar effect to heading for the door-suddenly my family are reminded of a dozen important things they have to show me, ask me or discuss with me.
There are only rare occasions where I think writing is easier than talking and it's normally when you really want to structure things. Conversations take twists and turns and tangents while writing (if you plan it) stays more or less on a similar note. You rarely start writing on one topic and then end up on a topic so far removed for the original you can't remember how you got there!
The most important time, I feel, to write rather than talk is when you are extremely emotional, it's much easier to be rational and articulate in writing in these situations. Sometimes, if I have an important talk I need to have with someone, friend, relative or relationship, I will write down all my feelings and thoughts when I'm feeling them so I know what I really want to say, and, more importantly, avoid saying.
There can be no life free from talking or from writing-the two complement and contrast one another and are both crucial, you need to be able to communicate both ways-especially in the technology age. A wild personality in person can be ruined by a dull text-persona while it is equally, if not more, disappointing to discover that the person, who is so engaging via the phone or Internet, can't keep a conversation going in person.
I don't expect everyone to be able to write, but to be able to converse via a written medium is a pretty important ability to have! And anyone who can keep up in a conversation with me is pretty good conversationalist in my book.