Voices

So, I was thinking...

And it's never a good thing when I do either. It can end up making me angry at injustice or end up with me in tears. Often both..

Today I was thinking about voices. About how just the other day one man wanted people to hear what he had to say so much so that he created a bomb to go off in a city centre, then travelled and shot another 60 or so teenagers to their death. All just because he thought that people should listen to his opinion on immigration and politics. In his quest to make his voice heard he physically silenced 76 people. As the prime minister of Norway said, talking to the youth of Norway;

“ This attack on Utøya was also an attack on the dreams that young people had of contributing to a better world. Their dreams were brutally shattered.  

Your dreams can be a reality... You can make a difference. Do it! My challenge is simple: Get involved! Care!! ”

It is an atrocity that he was selfish enough to commit these crimes. However, this selfishness is not something that is isolated only to madmen with guns. To some extent we are all silencing others, and being silenced at the same time.


Yet another, even greater silencing is happening as all this has happened. We are busy worrying about a singer who has died or about a madman in Norway, yet in Africa millions of would-be scientists, doctors, politicians or lawyers are dying just because they don't have enough food to keep their bodies going... their voices are being silenced too. Drowned out because we don't want to hear it, because there are greater things on our minds. Governments are hesitating because they are in debt, and because they have no money to spare at the moment.

It made me angry that they cared about a bit more debt than peoples lives.


Then, as I reached to take out chocolate to cheer myself up that I bought yesterday, I thought, "Surely I don't need this chocolate."


My mind, at this point, exploded into thought:
"Surely I don't really need the chocolate, I don't really need the clothes I bought last week. Hang on!! People all over Britain will be saying the same thing when they hear about the African droughts 'It's such a shame! I wish the governments would do a little more. I'd help, but I'm struggling with money myself at the moment!!' "


...    "It made me angry that they cared about a bit more debt than peoples lives."

I'm in debt too at the moment. I'm living out of my bank overdraft, and will be counting on my first paycheck from my new job in a restaurant to get me out of the overdraft. But hang on.. I'm doing the exact same thing I'm angry at the governments for doing. I care about a little bit of money more than I care about peoples lives. All that sadness and anger I feel at peoples voices being silenced now feels very hypocritical if I'm not doing something to help too.

Therefore.. I decided today that I don't care about money or putting myself in a little more debt if it means I can feed people that will otherwise die, so I'm going to give all that I earn on my next pay date (about a month and a half's wages) to the funds that give food to Africa. It might not be much money, but it will keep a couple more voices alive and shouting, and it will mean a few more dreams realised.

“ You can make a difference. Do it!                  

                          My challenge is simple:get involved.”

Challenge Accepted.

Secretly frustrated..

It all stems from not being who I could be. I know this, so do my parents, though every attempt at trying to make me be who I should be, both on their part and on mine, seems to come to nothing. I've been thinking a lot about where this boredom with life has come from, and in my case, especially, I think it stems from having spent so much time online.

My generation has been so lucky with the innovation and recent massive expansion of the internet. It has made our lives so much easier and simpler. You now no longer have to trawl though shop after shop to look for the cheapest option, and you never have to look in multiple books to find the information you're after, you can just Google it. Any Psychology Essay you could ever want can be written using information on Yahoo Answers.

I think somehow this is a shame. Everything moves so fast now that people are impatient, and they want everything constantly, everything happens instantly, that you never need wait for anything. You never want for company or have to feel lonely because you'll always always find like-minded people online. Because of this, the generation growing up never needs to train themselves in patience, or in spending time alone with your thoughts. Reading a novel set in ancient Japan recently, I'm amazed to imagine that the protagonist spends several months on his own in the forest, waking up at midnight and meditating on thoughts, training his body and mind at the same time. I secretly wish I had the patience, self awareness and discipline that it all must bring.

Because of this lack of very important traits, I think we, certainly I, miss out on opportunities I would love to have, and love to be able to do. I don't have the discipline now, for instance, at university to make myself work. I don't have the self awareness to know what I really want to do in life. I do have dreams, some from myself, some from God about my future, but have no idea how to achieve them, no idea how to set things in motion. And I frequently just feel frustrated with myself, for not being able to do any of this.

Life would simultaneously be a lot simpler and a lot harder if we didn't have internet. It would be so different, yet so refreshing if people looked to spend time in the simpler things in life like going for a walk in the evening and taking photos, or climbing a hill just to look and the view and think, instead of just drowning boredom in things like YouTube or Facebook.

I wish there were some way to change the teenage years I had so I can iron out the faults I now seem to have, imbedded in my personality. It's an impossible idea to do that of course, but I do hope there's some way of changing myself.

Maybe then I'd be less frustrated.

Girl-times

Today I got reminded how good a girly coffee can be. I say coffee in italics because of course, Beth had a hot chocolate and I had a chocolate milkshake. But it just reminded me how great it is to spend some quality time chatting about nothing and everything. We went to a coffee shop called The Grind House, in Edinburgh. Which is my second favourite drinks place in all of Edinburgh, after of course, The Chocolate Tree, which specialises in hot chocolate. The Grind house however does great food, and great drinks. Great service too. When I paid for Beth and my drinks, it turned out I was 50p short, and she was totally happy enough to just let me off with it. I did find another £1 in a pocket, but of course, as always, it's the thought that counts.


Beth and I spent a lovely hour or so talking about "people watching" when you sit looking at people walking past, and wondering what their life is like and her sore finger, which apparently has some poison in it. She is sure she's about to get septicemia and die within 24 hours,and if it turns purple, she's to call the hospital. But apart from that, I'm sure she's grand. I did tell her to let me know if she died. It might put a bit of a damper on things when I tried to move in with her next year.

Talking of moving out, she and I have also started looking at other flats, and she made me call up a bloke today to ask about one. He gave me the number of the girl who lived there at the moment, and we'll go round sometime this week to look at it. I'm slightly worried that there is no living room, but I don't think Beth is so worried. It's in the perfect location, and very very cheap. I guess we'll go and have a look around, then decide. We've decided to live together along with a really lovely girl called Angela next year. I think it'd be awesome if we could find another person, but Beth isn't so worried. I'm sure the three of us will get along awesome anyway though.

I'd love it if everyone reading this would pray for my Dad. He's pretty freakin awesome, and going through chemotherapy at the moment, with another 6 or 7 weeks of it left to go. He has bladder cancer, and it'd be great if you could pray that this is eradicated during chemotherapy, and that he isn't tired while he goes though this.

xoxo

ARGH

It's so cold in my room..

I don't even know why. It's not like I live in one of the really old flats in Edinburgh like I will next year (in which I'll REALLY freeze) But it's cold nonetheless. I guess it doesn't help that I'll I've done this evening was eat (maybe too much :s ) chocolate cake and read. Sitting still when you're cold never helps.

I totally have to stop eating this cake though. Half of it is my friends, and he isn't here to eat it too. Maybe in hindsight, I should have waited till he was back then eaten it together. But I wanted something chocolaty, and am not allowed to open the emergency chocolate stash, seeing how it's not an emergency.

My week so far has been pretty excellent though. The last time I talked about my life I was about to start a new job, and 2 shifts and three weeks later it's going pretty excellently. My shift has changed to a Saturday morning, rather than Sunday morning shift. Which I am SO glad about, and which about 25 of my friends "Liked" on face book. Working with kids is always so fun, and I've always loved swimming, so the two just really totally go hand in hand. There's one woman there who I met my first week, and talked to briefly at my second shift too, and she works so hard for the company we both work for. It's so easy to tell. And while my passion is for singing, hers seems to be for teaching kids to love being in the water. It's so inspiring to watch her with the kids.

I also have a friend called Ryan staying up for this week. Sleeping in our kitchen. We've gone all over, he's met way too many of my friends, and had to spend all day with me. It's been great though. We had a Chinese takeaway for his birthday, and we've been to the cinema with my family, and gone to numerous scary church events. He's had to come to all my lectures, and today he's gone to Aberdeen to visit our mutual friend up there. I'm sure he's enjoying the break from me. It had been awesome fun having him around though, and revisiting all the places in Edinburgh I haven't been to for years now. Tomorrow we climb Arthur's seat, hopefully with loads of other people too, and will take loads of pictures from the top, and on the way up. It'll be great.

In other news...

I was totally going to make some more brownies and go shopping today for cosmopolitan cocktail mix, but have totally forgotten now. May try to do it early tomorrow afternoon...

I was walking home from a friends house this afternoon, was walking past the sick kids hospital, and a massive shiny rainbow appeared. I totally wish I had taken a picture, but unfortunately the battery in it ran out earlier in the week, and I hadn't gotten round to recharging it. I got so reminded of Genesis 9, verse16 where it says

“Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

And I was thinking how that verse is so hope-filled. The start of new life on earth again and god's promise for a bright future, and how that's what those poor people in there need. They need to know there's a hope, and a bright future. I remember Katie being in there a couple years ago, and she almost died in there, but miraculously got saved. Unfortunately other people in there aren't so lucky, and I have a friend who's mum really dislikes driving past the hospital because of that reason.

I have a lot of things to be thankful for.. not least because of my family and the friends I have, but also the fact that I have a place in uni and a future, whereas some people don't. Their future is in hospitals and being worried all the time. But if any of those people are reading this, I'd tell them to totally go and read Jeremiah 29, verse 11

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

New Perspectives and Steps

Aptly titled, I thought.

I write this while sitting on top of Arthur's Seat. A hill in the middle of this amazing city that is Edinburgh. I've had an interesting few days; fell out with two of my very good friends and I've come to the realisation of a few things about my personality. About me being a jealous person.


What set this all off was that those two good friends started dating, and that I used to like one of them. That was the most obvious form of jealousy. Secondly I was jealous of them both because they used to spend all the time they now spent with each other, talking to me, and because I'm the kind of person that craves attention, I was jealous that I now wasn't getting it. And to make matters worse, because I was jealous of that, I started to distance myself from the two of them, making me lonely.


It's not the best plan ever..


The next plan of action was to figure out why I felt so jealous, and after reading through this friends blog entry I realised that the problem wasn't just to do with me but with my relationship with God. As a Christian, we're meant to rely on god for our identity (how we look at ourselves) I shouldn't be worried about what other people think of me, and I should just be concerned with how God views me, which is as an amazing creation worthy of his time and effort.


I'd kind of lost this view from spending less time with him, and by not reading what he said in the Bible. A friend of mine way back in September challenged me to read a Psalm a day, and since the start of December, I haven't been doing that, which massively affected how I viewed myself and the world. She and I spoke again yesterday about this problem of not putting our identity in God, and it turned out she was doing the same. So we came up with a few ways to sort this problem..

• Find, and make a note of, things I do that make my joy in God grow. For me that's things like praying with a friend, and singing worship songs at the top of my voice, and listening to great talks. And once making a note of these things, try to put more of them into your life; so instead of bleeping waking me up in the morning, stick on a worship CD. Meeting up with some friends regularly and praying, and whenever I'm online, putting on a talk that I've missed, or ones from other churches.

• Going back and reading the Psalms that I missed, Psalms are brilliant, because it's basically worship songs written down. So I will start again, reading one a day starting with the one I stopped at, preferably at the start of the day, so it can start me off feeling awesome about god.

 I got to Arthur's Seat earlier today, and as I started to climb it looked like I would miss the sunset, as I got further up it would set further, so by the time I reached the top, it would be gone, and the way you climb it makes you totally unaware if it has set already or not, because you climb up to the summat on the wrong side of the hill. But when I reached the top, and saw it blazing away, I was pretty awestruck, and just sat there for a while thinking about relationships, both with friends and with God, and how we should be so thankful for it all. 

Needless to say, I came back down from the hill totally exhausted, but also totally excited..

Trolls....

No.. I'm not talking about the cute ones that live under bridges and scare the billy goats. I'm talking about the annoying ones you get online.

If you don't know what a troll is, it's basically a person who goes out of their way to bring up annoying/controversial topics with the intent purpose of causing trouble (see here), and recently, there's been a lot of them on the online game I play, RuneScape. Having to deal with them comes under one of my roles as one of the moderators, and today, has been worse than ever.

I quite literally got asked today "Is it true they're [Jagex, the makers of the game] bringing content back because we're all going to die in 2012??"

... *sigh*

Of course, it wasn't quite as grammatically correct as that, I've changed it so it's possible for people to actually understand. And in my frustration, at the time, I just said "Yep, and you'd better get your snowsuit out, cos the Ice Age arrives this June too."

In hindsight, maybe the best thing I could have done was ignore him, and just carry on, but it seemed such a ridiculous thing to say, I had to say something ridiculous back.

In other news...

Since I got my flask for Christmas (the best thing ever invented, btw) I've started making half a litre of coffee before I go to bed, and leaving it on my bedside table, in easy reach for when I wake up half asleep the next morning.

Also, this morning, I had an awesome breakfast of the brownies I made last night. I've never really made them on my own before, and I kept having to ask mum, and my flatmate, Beth about why it wasn't becoming solid. Really.. it ended up being fine. And sooo tasty : D

Since coming back too, my flatmates and I have had to take down our awesome Advent Calender and instead we went and bought some really awesome posters, the best of which is on our fridge. And makes me smile every morning when I see it. :)

I'm also going to a themed party on Saturday, which has the best theme I've ever heard of. Basically it's an "alter ego" birthday party, where we're supposed to think up a different side to our character, and dress up as such. The party is on Saturday, and honestly, I can't wait to see what everyone else has thought up. Pictures and more will follow shortly, I'm sure.

Last thing, I start my new job on Sunday as a swimming teacher. I'll be working with babies and toddlers, teaching them how to swim, and I think this will be so fun. We'll see how it goes. *excited*

Hmm...

I guess every new blog and blogger has to start somewhere. I s'pose I'd better introduce myself.

My name is Claire.

I study in chemistry, in Edinburgh. It's rather a lovely city, and when I find them, I'll be sure to put some of my newly taken photos up here. I go to Kings Church Edinburgh, and although I'm now part of the student body, I've been going there since I was 10. That takes up some of my time. I'm in first year at the moment, with only a few classes a week. I live with some lovely people who are always up for sitting in the kitchen, drinking hot chocolate/tea/coffee, and having a good chat. That takes up a lot of my time. I also spend time reading fantasy novels, watching science fiction and fantasy TV shows and films, and I play an online game called RuneScape probably a bit too much. (I'm good at it. Some things are just addicting.) All in all, I think it pretty much sums up geekyness.

I have way too many siblings. Two sisters and two brothers (all younger). But generally we get on really well. My mum and dad are still married and in love. It's a nice feeling. They all live just outside Edinburgh in a town called Livingston. Dad at the moment, is about to start chemotherapy for some silly bladder cancer he picked up recently. He's an IT manager for some communications company that sells video conferencing equipment. Mum's a primary school teacher. She studied chemistry in university too, and like me, also plays RuneScape, though, admittedly is a lot better at it than I am. Becky is my oldest youngest sister. She's applying to study law and applying to take a gap year in Georgia, USA and trying to take difficult exams, and trying to be part of a drama company. She takes a lot on, and is organised. More organised than I am. More dramatic too. She likes English... Sean is a sort-of brother. He has high aspirations, applying to Cambridge university to do computer sciences. He just passed his driving test, which is more than I can say about myself. (I can't drive). Andrew is a teenager, albeit an unusual one. He likes sci-fi stuff like me. Possibly more than me, although I like fantasy more than he does. His room smells, and he's got about a hundred girls chasing after him, but he seems nice enough. Katie, the youngest in my family, though, is lovely. She and I are pretty much twins separated at birth by time. She looks like me, and her personality is the same as mine too. Maybe.. less geeky though. She likes painting nails?

I hope to post here regularly. With lots of gusto about my opinions, and updates on my online geeky life, and my real life trying-to-not-act-so-geeky life.

xoxo