Dear May: I'm loosing my mind

Dear May. 

I haven't written here in ages because all my life has been taken from me. I do have a lot of time on my hands but most of it is taken by crazy thoughts. Don't worry, I won't go crazy (yet) but my life hasn't been on it's best behaviour lately.

Life at home is fine. It feels like a prison most of the time but I learn to somehow deal with it until I go to sleep. Once I sleep all my problems go away and I wake up with a brand new day ahead of me. I feel like I'm closed in these four purple and green walls, watching Orange Is The New Black and feeling like a prisoner myself. Limerick became very boring to me. I have nowhere to go, no one to go there with and no memories to remember later. All I remember is what I had for dinner and how many chocolates I have eaten that day (FYI- way too many). 

I feel like I have lost the connection I once had with my friends. As stupid as that sounds I just stopped writing to anyone in case I annoy them. They now have their friend groups, their interests, their school, their jobs so where do I go into the mix? Nowhere. I became the girl that you say "hello" to when you pass her on the street and nothing else. And to be honest it feels pretty shit. What bothers me the most is when I tell people that I have nobody they look at me like I'm lying, or use the phrase "you have me sure". Do I though? When was the last time we talked? Hung out together? Like a year ago? Well then I don't "have" you at all. Maybe if I say I have nobody it's a cry for help? A silent "please help me I'm alone". But I just must be overreacting. You know better, right? 

A while ago I went to Cork for a spontaneous trip. I saw two people I hung out with while I lived there and I never was happier. They didn't know me as "Joanna the weird, lonely girl" but as me who just came back to Cork for a day waiting to have fun. And I haven't felt so happy in a long while. I remembered how much I missed Cork. These busy streets, those street performers and that tescos where I used to buy groceries in. After the day had passed I waited for my bus and said "I'm quitting my job. I'm not coming back to Limerick today". But obviously life is not a fairy-tale right?

My job. A series of up's and down's. It's my third job but I must admit it I like it. Even though sometimes there is chaos as people often like to throw things on the floor or put stuff in the wrong places, I still kind of like it. I was on the floor, doing my thing, serving customers, laughing with my co-workers and just being happy in general. However unfortunately I have been moved to another section of the store. Don't get me wrong, I love the girls that work with me, I don't find it hard but I did feel more confident in my work when I was on the floor. In my current section I feel clumsy, slow and pressured by myself.. and I sometimes can't handle it. Should I tell someone that I don't feel good in that section? That I would be much more effective on the floor? Yes, I should. Will I? Probably not. I could never fight for myself because I was worried what other people will think. I still am. That's why I won't fight for myself now again. 

That's all I have for today I think. Sorry for all this wave of emotions but I had to get it out somewhere.

See you lovelies xx

Dear November: The one where love is blind.

Dear November.

I'm trying to spend my days more active now. Not because I'm trying to get healthy or fit or to just not stay at home all day but because I need to get over a big part of my life that left recently. 

Love is the most beautiful thing in the world. For me anyway. It comes, it goes. For me it unfortunately went too quickly. It's funny how "getting over someone" is a thing. We make these plans for ourselves to not cry at night and hoping over time it will all go away. But it never does, does it? Love is forever, it never goes away. The intensity of it just flows away but there's always going to be this little spark when you see him or her just walking down the street or posting a new picture on instagram. No matter how long it has been after a breakup, you'll find yourself just remembering the good times or the bad, even for two seconds.

Break-up aftermaths are filled with anger,sadness and tears and sentences like "Oh he was shit anyway", "He did this and that wrong" blah blah blah. However after a while the anger wears off and you start to remember the good times. Even though you're hurt inside you are able to crack a smile. It's all just a roller-coaster of emotions. Eventually it stops and you get off the ride.

Personally I feel better during the day. I go out, forget about it all and get on with my life. Evenings on the other hand are very hard. I'm the kind of person that thinks about everything during the evening. Usually it ends up in me crying because loneliness is slowly but surely getting to me. At least I have friends who are willing to occupy me with conversations. They are able to make me crack a smile during my evening of tears.

Do I regret that relationship? Not at all. It was the best I ever had. Yes we had ups and downs and there were some personal traits that we didn't like about each other but that's just how life works. It ended yes, but I'm thankful for every second of it no matter how bad I feel right now as it's all still quite fresh for me. I'm trying to be optimistic and move on. 

If you are wondering how to get over a break-up the answer is simply: you don't. (Also chocolate helps.)

Sorry this was a bit of a downer but see you on the next one lovelies xx 

Dear October: I'm Thankful.

Dear October. 

It's raining outside. I haven't seen rain for a long while. Even though it makes me feel really tired and unable to do anything productive (not that I do anything productive in the first place) I still love it to bits when I'm home. Looking at many droplets on my window gives me this feeling of relaxation and protection. I like to then make myself a cup of tea, or a hot chocolate if I'm feeling fancy and let the day pass by like nothing else is happening in the world around me. 

Times like these make me feel really grateful for everything good happening around me and all the people that help me go through anything I go through, no matter if good or bad. I am not the best person in the world. Recently I had a realization that I'm an asshole. Don't ask me for the reasons why because I won't tell them. The point is that I really want to change. Small steps or big, I will get there eventually. At least I have something to live for. Live to make me a better me. There are so many people that take care of me no matter if it's little things or small. For example, Brendan. He is the best boyfriend I could ever ask for. He is there, he understands and he accepts which are a few of his many amazing qualities. I love him to pieces and right now I can't even try to imagine what my life would be without him. He knows how to cheer me up even if I'm being annoying. I love you. Never change. 

Best friends are vital. They  are the people you go cry to or get drunk with to then shout your thoughts to their face. Zaneta, you will always be my best friend. No matter how many times you made me laugh so much that I cried or made me so annoyed at you because of your stubbornness, I will still think of you as my best friend. We all go through shit, sometimes at the same time and sometimes in different times but we're still there for each other no matter how bad we feel. We have the best laughs and everyone should be jealous of how much fun we have even if we send snapchats to ourselves when we're in the same room. I love you and I will always be here for you if you need me.

Mom and dad. You're the best people in the world. No matter how much I will complain about you making me do dishes or writing something for you, I still love you both. I can talk to you about anything and it's great. You trust me and I trust you. I couldn't ever ask for better parents because I already have the best parents in the whole wide world. You kick my ass if I become amazingly lazy about my life and try to kick me on a better path. You have done that many times and will probably have to do again and again. I appreciate your patience.

There are also a few people that do the smallest things that I'm thankful for and they make my life so much easier, even for a few minutes. 

Thanks to the nice bus driver that stopped when he saw me running for the bus.

Thanks to the guy that made small talk with me while I was at work. I suck at small talk and you did it for me.

Thanks to the guy who came up to me and my friend when we were discussing tigers and told us about a cartoon with a tiger he watches even now that hes like 60.

Thanks to Jacob who is a great friend and who helps me with all my problems even though he knows Im an asshole.

Thanks to my boss who gave me a great job that I quite like. 

Thanks to people who see I struggle with giving them change or anything else but still reassure me it's okay and that they have time.

Today, I'm thankful. 

I love you all. See you in the next one lovelies.

My trip to Manchester.

Heya. Long time no see. 

I'm going to jump straight to the point and not explain why I haven't written here for a long time.

A while ago my boyfriend invited me to have a trip to Manchester with him and see Manchester United play in the Old Trafford Stadium. Even though I am not a massive football fan, I still thought it was a really cool thing to have done in your life so obviously I said yes. Well, to that and the shopping, obviously. 

We left Limerick on the 15th in a very, and I mean very, shaky bus with a really confused bus driver. I don't think he knew where he was going at all. I usually sleep on buses but because this one felt like a roller-coaster, I couldn't sleep at all. The bus ride was supposed to be 3 hours long but because of our very confused bus driver it turned out to be 4 hours which made me really scared that we'll miss our flight. Spoiler alert- we didn't miss it. We stood in the queue and I noticed that in the corner of our online check in paper it said that we have the priority boarding. I was confused as we didn't pay for priority. I asked Brendan to ask the desk lady do we actually have it and she said yes so off we went to the priority queue- which was nice by the way. I love priority boarding. 

The flight was super quick. Quicker than I expected. We got to the airport and quickly rushed for some food as we were both hungry. We found a spar and I bought some crisps and a doughnut. 

As we didn't really know our way around Manchester, we had no idea where to find a bus and what times are the buses leaving and all that jazz so we decided to take a taxi. Shouldn't be too bad right? Google maps said it's gonna be 20 minutes from the airport by car so we expected to pay around 20 quid. We were suuuuper wrong. Brendan asked the taxi driver how much would it cost and he said around 40 pounds. We were super shocked and didn't want to take the taxi but because it was late and dark, we had no other choice. So Brendan ended up paying 42 pounds. We both weren't happy about this.

We got to our room which was surprisingly very nice in my opinion. We had a big bed, a flat screen TV, a kettle and a nice spacious bathroom. I was very satisfied with it. The staff was friendly as well so we had no problems with out accomodation.

The next day was the match day. I was super excited for it. We went to have breakfast in a restaurant just beside us. It was very nice. I really liked the atmosphere of the restaurant so we ate breakfast there the other days too.
We got a taxi to the Old Trafford with a very talkative taxi driver who didn't let Brendan speak whenever he wanted to. He was very cool though and he said that the black taxis always charge more than other brands of taxis. It was too late anyway. 
We got to the stadium and it was massive (for me anyway). We went to the Manchester United shop so Brendan could buy himself a t-shirt. I wanted to buy myself sweatpants but they weren't there.. So off we went to the stadium. We had good seats. I could see everything perfectly and I was generally amazed by the whole stadium and the experience. The match wasn't too great. Man United weren't doing their best but I enjoyed the match anyway. Later on we got some Pizza Hut and went shopping. 

The next day Brendan didn't enjoy that much. We wen't shopping for a full day and I went around all the shops I could. Brendan doesn't really like shopping but he was nice enough to survive it for me. I went to Primark, obviously, and got myself a nice cardigan and also a necklace. I also stepped into Lush and got myself a Tea Tree face spray which later on made me get more spots and I wasn't happy about that. I also stepped into Hard Rock cafe as I wanted a long island ice tea and got myself a t-shirt there. I always wanted to get one but I didn't want to buy it in the Dublin one as I live in Ireland. But thankfully I got a chance to buy one in Manchester. I also stepped into Paperchase which was one of the favourite shops I went into. It had notebooks and a ton of other stationery things and I was in heaven. To my surprise, I didn't actually buy a notebook. I bought a satchel bag in a beautiful turquoise colour. I adore it. 

That day we decided to have another nice dinner so we went to Nandos as I always wanted to try it. I was quite dissapointed. There was a lot of hype around Nandos and how amazing it is and that everyone has to try it but in my opinion Nandos is overrated. Don't get me wrong, I like me some chicken but there wasn't much to choose from and the sauces weren't as great as I expected them to. I enjoyed it, but not to my full potential. 

The third day we went shopping again but my goal for this day was to find Macaroons. I always watched youtubers from England say how amazing they are so now that I was in England I could find them and try them. It was quite hard to find them. After a while of searching Brendan found a cafe that sells them and I was happy. Most of them weren't really my cup of tea but two of them were delicious.The red one and the yellow one. Yum. 

Nothing else really happened between that and leaving to Ireland. We just got dinner in our breakfast place and went back to our room to pack. 

Overall it was such a great weekend and I'm so grateful to Brendan for taking me there and just being nice about everything. He's just the best and I love him so much. 

Here are some other pictures I took while I was there. 

Have a good day lovelies and see you in the next one xx

Chew The Future 2014.

Hey there!

So I recently came back from a youth exchange called "Chew The Future" which was based in Italy. I got the amazing opportunity to go there with most of my mates and meet people from other countries but also to get to know Italy a bit better. It was all based around environment which I didn't know that much about really but was willing to learn. After about 13 hours of travelling, trying to get to Caldirola, Jacob, Aishling, Niomi, Mikey, Andy and I got into a quite big ski resort in the middle of the night.

I was absolutely terrified of meeting new people and participating in all the activities that were ahead of me. Yes, I did sign up for it but I am not the biggest participator out there and the thought of mingling with strangers scared me a lot. However I got to my room, (I got into the same room with Ashling!) saw 6 other girls sleeping there, and went to my bed straight away. I was super hungry and badly needed to pee, but I was very tired and lazy after the many hours of travel. Just as I was about to sleep Aishling came up to me and said if she can sleep in my bed tonight as she cant do it. I asked her what's wrong and she said that she went to the bathroom and there was no toilet. There was only a hole in the ground. I couldn't believe what I just heard. A HOLE IN THE GROUND I HAVE TO PISS IN? I got kind of angry as I like my toilets, but Aishling said she can sleep alone and I proceeded to sleep after that. 

The morning wasn't great. I got up at 6 with a very sore tummy, needing to pee badly and with only 3 hours sleep. I proceeded to go to the bathroom and I saw the hole in the ground toilet. I managed my way around it but I wasn't pleased at all. However thankfully we found normal toilets later on that day and I never had to piss in a hole again. Phew! I proceeded then to go to breakfast which wasn't something I imagined it to be. I'll admit..I didn't like the food there at all. Yes Italy should have the best food but in the ski resort it was just awful. I barely ate but I was alright. 

The day basically consisted of icebreakers and cool games.

I admit, I wasn't the most pleasant person for the first 3 days. I complained a lot about not wanting to do anything, and that I was tired and that I want to be back home, not really appreciating the  amazing opportunity I was given. One day our leader came to our room and talked to me and Aishling about participation and that we shouldn't be complaining all the time. We cried but we got it all out. From the next day on, we nailed participation and didn't complain as much. 

We also went on a hike! It was so tiring but we got to the halfway point in which we could chill while the brave ones went on the tipy top. It was the first time I encountered a pug there and it was amaaazing :) Pugs are adorable. I got a bit of a tan there and also when I was going back to the ski resort down the hill I managed to slip and get mud on my lovely, bright, yellow shorts. Oh me.

After games, t-shirt making and all that jazz in the ski resort we packed our bags again and off we went to Tortona where the second part of our exchange was. We were situated in a monastery for a b&b however we spent most of our time in the youth centre which had an amazing stage must I say. Our rooms were glorious. No more 8 girls per room but now only 2 girls per room. Glorious. I got an amazing roommate who's name was Liuka and she didn't snore! A snoring roommate was my biggest nightmare but she didn't and I was super happy. The first day of the stay in Tortona we may have talked until like 3am. May have. 

Tortona is a beautiful city. If you ever get a chance to go, I recommend it. The youth centre was wonderful. It had 2 buildings and a massive stage in the middle. The right building was the kitchen and the eating room and the left building was where the vending machines were, wifi also was there (which meant I could finally contact my boyfriend!) and it was just basically a chill room. I liked that place a lot and I wish I could go back there. 

We had a lot of games there, we also had a guy who works in Tanzania who prepared us a traditional meal from Tanzania. It was disgusting. I liked the veg though even though I hate veg. I was hungry for the whole evening then but sure I survived. I think that my favourite game in the whole programme was eco-orienteering. We got a partner, a map and a few points we had to find and answer questions at each of them. I got a cool partner. His name was David and he made me move quite fast but he was a good person to talk to.

Food wise in the youth centre, it didn't shock me either. I didn't like it as much as I did on my previous holidays in Italy with my parents but again, thats all I had and I survived. I ate a shit load of orange mentos mints on that trip which tasted amazing and had great packaging too. 

I did learn a few things about the enviroment and how to reduce my carbon footprint a bit which seems really cool to me as long as I can change something.

The last day of the exchange we had a massive party in the youth centre with great music, a barbecue and everyone looking fancy and just being generally lovely. I danced a lot and had a lot of fun with so many people from different countries. There were a lot of selfies involved. Everyone loved selfies on that trip and even if they never said a word of english to me, they knew the word "selfie" which was rather hilarious. We stayed up until like 3.30 am as the Turkish and Finnish people were leaving at that time. I told myself I won't cry and I stopped myself three times but when I saw a few of the guys crying I just burst into tears and couldn't stop. At that moment I realized that it's all over and that we will probably never see each other again and we became such amazing friends. I was going to miss them all. I do now and I always will. 

Even though I complained at the start I grew to love the exchange, the people, the leaders, the staff and the games. Giulia and Fabio (the creators of this exchange) were amazing people and I thank them for such a great opportunity. I made a lot of friends and a lot of amazing memories. 

Thank you for everything and I love you all. 

My Everyday Makeup Tutorial

I made a tutorial video showing my everyday makeup tutorial and I hope you enjoy :) xx

The life of mine at this nice time.

Right. It has been too long. Tea is made and I'm ready to come back to the world of blogs and creative juices. I don't know why but every time that I write a blog post I have to have tea by my side, even if I don't drink it. Weird.

Because it has been so long I thought I would update you guys on what has been happening in my life and such. So stick around if you're interested. Cheers.

(Oops I got distracted by twitter, sorry.)

College wise, I made my decision. I am leaving college and moving back with my parents. Going to go into the adult world and look for a job and start supporting myself. Ew, that doesn't sound so nice but it has to be done I guess. There were mixed opinions in my friend group about not going to college anymore but I took them all into consideration and made my decision. Right now I am on my easter break and just have to come back to Cork for exams and then that's it. The end of living alone, cooking for myself (that I'm super happy about. Mummy's dinners yum!) and being away from my friends and family. I missed you nerds. In a way I am happy that I'm leaving college. I am not very good at studying and doing assignments because I simply just don't like them. That might sound silly but I prefer learning by practice and not reading or whatever. So yeah. I have done two years of college and realized it's not for me. Life goes on.

During my easter holidays I didn't do that much apart from lazying around and procrastinating from studying for my exams. However I decided that because I am moving back to my parents house I need to move on from my 16-year old Joanna emo stage and re-decorate my room on a more 19 year old Joanna level. Gosh I'm old. My dad is a painter so that came to my advantage so now I have a purple and lime green room and it was all free as our landlord supplied the paint, woo! I bought some bits and pieces in cheap shops so I can have some nice decorations like fairy lights, frames or string and clips to hang pictures on. It looks so nice and I can't wait until it will be fully finished. Decorating my room is one of my hobbies in a way as I love decorating. It makes me super happy and actually makes my creative juices flowing which is always a bonus! Diy is the best thing ever.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of going to Galway with my boyfriend. We wanted to travel somewhere as we both like to and we picked Galway as we both like the city. The trip wasn't bad but I felt sleepy. I always feel sleepy any time I get to a vehicle with the intention to travel somewhere. The moment I get into the vehicle I suddenly get so sleepy. It's super weird. We got to Galway pretty early as I wanted the whole day to go around it and stuff. We went around shops and I obviously bought myself something. We then found a food festival which smelled amazing and I bought a cupcake which then later on made me feel sick.. Damn you cupcake. After that we just chilled and got food and decided to go to the cinema to see The Amazing Spiderman 2 (which was pretty class btw) and then we went back and got the bus back to Limerick. Overall it was a very nice day. I think I will definitely do it again.

That's really all the things I have been up to until now and I finally came back to my blog which makes me super happy. I will try to write more frequently but no promises.

Have nice day lovelies x