Tuesday 21 February 2012

Is My Life more than 140 Characters

So Lent is upon us, many of my friends are giving up crisps, sweets and alcohol, there also things they haven't given up which they probably should have, but that is not my place to say. So I thought to myself, what can I give up for Lent? Many Christians celebrate lent by giving up certain luxuries and by practising self discipline, they use the spare time created to fill their lives with more productive things. So I thought to myself what is there in my life that is taking up a lot of my time that I could other wise be using productively. The answer of course was Twitter.

I am going to give up Twitter for Lent

This is going to be one of the hardest things in my life! That is rather pathetic to say, but I really think it will be. But I am going to spend the time I would have otherwise used to be on Twitter to fill it with uni work and other things that are productive. I know my time spent on Facebook and Tumblr will increase to compensate not being on Twitter but I do believe my overall time spent online will decrease.

My life is more than 140 characters... it is time to start living my life to my full potential and start working towards to future that I want to have.

Wednesday 8 February 2012

The Nathan Dickson Rule


Call up the man you like and ask him on a date. Did he say yes? Great, he probably likes you. What if he makes up an excuse for why he can’t go out? This is the time to employ the Nathan Dickson Rule.
Imagine that instead of you, Nathan Dickson had asked this same man out. Would he use the same excuse with him? If Nathan Dickson asked him on a date, would he still say he had to study or was going to the movies with friends that night? Nope. He would have dropped pretty much anything and everything to be able to accept a date with Nathan.
Now you’re not Dickson obviously. But if a man is interested in you, he will drop his other plans to be available to go out with you.
Of course there are exceptions; the man may have a legitimate reason he cannot make the date. Perhaps he has to work or go to a funeral. But, and here is the real clincher, he will suggest a different time for the date. He will say something along the lines of “I can’t do it Saturday night, do you want to hang out next weekend?”
If he makes up an excuse and he does not suggest an alternative plan, you have been shut out. He is not interested. Do not ask him out again. Doing so will only result in awkwardness and you feeling like a tool.
But don’t worry; he probably isn’t as cool as you thought he was since he doesn’t appreciate your charms. Start pursuing another man who will.

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Living on Your Own

With the job that I have at university I get a rent free flat instead of getting paid, which for a student is fantastic. It is a huge weight off my mind and less worry about how much money is coming out of my account every month. The one downside is that I live in this flat alone.

My job is an 'Accommodation Liaison Student', basically I am there as a sort of welfare and discipline student for first year students. I do 2-3 nights a week and get every 4th week off, so the workload isn't too bad. There are four first year accommodations on my University campus and there are 4 ALS's in every building. So me and three others work in my building, each of us having our own flat. As a group of 16 we all get on reasonably well and am very god friends with a few of them, I also have my friends who I know from my first year of uni and then new friends I have made this year. So I am never alone, I always have friends to go and hang out with, but, living on my own can get awfully lonely.

As I said I do have friends who I go out and hang out with so I am not alone, I am just lonely. All my life I have lived with someone; up until I was 18 I lived with my Mum my Dad and my sister and then when I was in my first year of university I shared kitchen and bathroom spaces with 17 other people, but now there is just me. It is weird waking up to an empty flat and coming home at night to an empty flat and something to this day I still find hard to cope with.

I go out and see my friends when we are all free, but sometimes I have uni work or they have uni work and having friends who have similar work patterns to you it is hard to find a day when a few of us are free to just chill or go out and have a drink. Before Christmas I don't think I tried as hard as I probably should have done to see everyone when I could have but that was my own fault really. So when I go back to uni I am going to try and follow these tips on how to live on my own successfully.

Top Tips on How to Live on Your Own


  1. Food
    Shopping for food was something it took me a while to get used to, as I was used to buying food that I could share with other people that I was living with and at the start of the year I was throwing away a lot of food. But what I found is that if I specifically buy more food than needed, I can make my meals and freeze them for use another night. If it suits you then have the same meal every day for a week and if you don't want to do that have the same 4/5 meals over the space of a few weeks and spread them all in. Buying in bulk can help to cut the costs and doing this will help to cut down on your weekly shopping bill.
  2. Keep Yourself Busy
    Always try to have something planned for everyday. If you have a plan of what you want to do that day you can just get about doing it. Even if your plan is to have a lazy day in your PJ's and do nothing that is what you planned to do that day and you don't feel like you are wasting your day. Try to plan days or nights out with people in advance so if you do unexpectantly have nothing to do one day you have something to look forward to that night. Or if you do find you have nothing to do do not be afraid to call up and see if anyone else is free to have a casual drink or watch a movie.
  3. Don't Watch TV During the Day
    One of the things I hated most about living on my own is when you wake up, or come home from seeing friends I was always alone in my flat with nothing to do. But if you can get your favourite television series 'on demand' wait until those nights you come home with nothing to do and watch them then. If you are sticking to Tip 2 and you are keeping yourself busy then you will be grateful to have something to do late at night when everyone has gone home and you are in your flat alone or you have just woken up and are waiting to go to class or work.
  4. Take Yourself off Somewhere New
    If you want to spend the day relaxing by reading a book or if you have some work to do for your class or exams to revise for, leave your flat and do it elsewhere. Go to the library to study or down to the pub and have a drink and read but just try to get out of your flat. Living alone can get frustrating with having nothing but those same four walls to look at, but getting a change of scenery can be a great help, more than you realise. Being somewhere different can keep you away from feeling like you are trapped and alone and can actually relax you.
  5. Yes All That Mess is Yours
    I never realised how messy I could actually be until I lived on my own. Living with other people you can often rely on someone else to wash up that breakfast bowl you forgot about or replace the toilet roll that is nearly running out. Living on your own you have to do everything yourself, do not leave it all until the last minute. Take a day every week, for me it is a Friday, and make that your cleaning day. Go about the flat, dust it, hoover it, tidy it all up, do your laundry and make sure you are not running out of toilet roll and toothpaste. This day is also a good day to do a small weekly shop of anything you are running out of and will save a huge bill when you do your 'Big Shop'