Get the London look....

I want to move out of London.

I want to get a house somewhere far away from the city where I can have dogs and cats and whatever animals I can think of.
I don't need online shopping, fancy restaurants or nightlife. I don't need the buzz or the "there is always something to do". I don't need unlimited cinema tickets, top of the notch gyms or anything that I once thought was what I want.

I want peace and quiet. I want to be the boss of my life. I want to feel great in the morning when I wake up because it is a new day and I can do whatever I want.
I do not need a lot of money. I don't need to travel the world anymore, my heart doesn't desire it.
I want to find my own paradise and live there, not just visit.

I've lived in London for over 10 years and in that time, I've felt the life get slowly sucked out of me.
Don't get me wrong, London is a great city and it has so many opportunities to create a blooming career. You can get anything money can buy from here and the best thing is that the quality often is very good too due to massive competition.
However, the key thing is that you really have to have money here. If you don't have it... Well you are either out or you have to make some major compromises with your life... And I belong to the second group.

When I tell people (well except my Swiss friends who are oblivious to how rich they are) how much I earn, they usually tend to think I'm very well off, but I'm not.
I'm still renting a shared house (that I can barely afford) and I have to keep track of every pound I spend so I don't get in trouble. 

Sure, I have food in my table everyday and I can have a couple holidays in a year, but that's pretty normal, right?

But money is not the issue here. No matter how little or how much I have, I always get by. My issue is with the life I am living. I work in a profession I didn't want, I fell into it and have been doing it ever since I've lived in London because I have to. I have to have the money to live here... So I end up sacrificing the most important thing in my life to just get by.

I really don't want to be 80 and look back at my life and say "I just get by"...

I don't care if I don't have money, I only want to be happy and live where my heart feels at ease. I don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life but I know what I don't want to do and that is a start.

I also know that living in a big city will eat your soul... I mean, it has been eating mine for way too long.

So... I'll start planning.
My first step is to get financially above the surface. Which actually shouldn't take very long, few months. I've just been putting it off.
Second step is to go away... I'm planning to go to Thailand for 6 months.
I need to brush off London. In fact not just brush off but totally spring clean the pollution away from my system.
Once my mind is clear, I can start deciding where I want to live and what I need to do to get there.

I'm going to try to stick to the job I have for another year... (Another year!!) And then, I'm off.
Why a year?
Well, even if I don't live in London, I will need money to live my life. And setting up a new life will definitely take some money too, regardless what it is.

If I can do it sooner, I will.
But for now the plan is September 2017, London will become a moment in the history of my life.

Start sucking!

I went swimming yesterday.

I really like swimming and every time I go I am reminded by it – which makes me think that I need to do it more.

It is probably the only exercise I truly enjoy. I am a really bad swimmer though… I can’t go very fast, I can float though.

So I think I will make it my new plan to go swimming once or twice a week. Even if it is just going to the sauna.

I also like swimming because it is one of those things that you don’t have to worry about how you look like. Not that I normally do anyway but when you go to the gym or even jogging, there are always people who judge you – in swimming pool … well besides some older guys who keep checking you out… you can really be yourself (well at least that’s how it works for me, I know some people can get very shy in a swimming costume).

I have done some stupid things lately, but something good is coming out of it too.

I feel that I have been kicked out of my cocoon again which is brilliant. I have a bad habit of getting lazy when I am around lazy people and when I cut that routine I really start to enjoy things a lot more.

Like, I think it is awesome to do things that make you feel a bit intimidated.

Things that you have never done before and you know you are going to suck at to begin with. I see it this way, if I suck at something, it is better than not sucking and not doing anything at all because if I suck long enough I will eventually stop sucking. And even if I suck now, I still do 100% better than people who never even give it a try. This goes to everything really (So let’s start sucking people!)

So on that note I will write about my plans on getting a scooter.

I signed up today for a CBT course – it basically gives you a certificate that you can drive a scooter with L plates on the roads for two years. I will probably do the full license at some point but for now a little scooter is exactly what I want.

It will cut my commute time AND cost a lot, let alone give me some space from stuffing myself in a busy tube every morning. No idea why I never thought about this before.

SO on Saturday morning at 6 am I will be leaving the house to go to Tottenham to have my day crash course to get my certificate… and then hopefully on Sunday I can get me a scooter (if I can find a decent one somewhere). Only thing I wonder is that why on earth does the course start so damn early…

I am not going to start my commuting immediately, I think I will first stick to the roads around my house. When I get a bit more confident, I am going to see how far in central London I dare to go. I wonder if you can have a GPS on a scooter… (yes you can, I just checked).

I really can’t wait because this will make my life so much easier. I mean, yes in London you can get to most places with public transportation but it can be a bit longwinded and uncomfortable. Like for example, for me to get to Enfield cinema from where I live, I first have to take a bus to Turnpike lane and then another bus to the cinema, this whole trip takes like an hour. With a scooter, this would take less than 20 mins.

Same with my work, it takes me exactly an hour to go to work every morning. With a scooter this trip (according to google maps) takes 25 mins (add parking time though).

The good thing is that you don’t pay congestion charge and very often you can find a free parking.

Let’s hope in couple of months I am still alive :P I did read that the most fatalities in traffic come from motorcyclists…

On emotional side…

I feel like I am on a bit of a rollercoaster at the moment.

I have days when I am super happy and inspired (like today) when I feel that there is nothing in the world that could stop me from achieving everything I ever wanted. Then there are those days where I dwell in my own self pity and desperately try to find a distraction. ANYTHING.

I had one of those days on Saturday. I wanted to go out but I had no where to go or no one to hang out with. It was pure torture. I felt that I needed to somehow distract my mind but I couldn’t find anything to put my mind into. Those are the days I miss my Swiss girls the most, I wish I could import them here.

BUT, lets enjoy the days when we are happy and not dwell too much in the negative, after all we are here only once (as far we know) so there is absolutely zero reasons why you should hold on to the bad stuff.

And yes – it is raining again on my lunch break… grr.

You are your own worst critic!

So today I am going to write about how I constantly have a conversation with myself about ME and my own self worth.

I really seem to have two people in my head.

There is the awesome one (Person A) who always tell me that nothing is impossible, I am bright, I am funny, I am sexy and anyone would be super lucky to be with me.

I like this person, she is very positive about everything and she gets shit done.

Then there is the annoying one (Person B), the one that calls me boring, that I have nothing to give, that I am lazy and fat. My hair is ugly no matter what I do to it, my boobs are always too big and my ass is too wide. This is like the relative who sees you once a year and always remember to point out that you have gained weight or that you should have a new hair cut…

Luckily the latter one only appears sometimes and in general I only need to tell it to “shut the F up” and it does – the awesome one (Person A) in general is in charge and that is a good thing!

The time when the Person B. appears however is the times when she really should stay away. Times when you have been rejected, times when you feel unsure about things that are happening around you etc.

For example I went to a job interview yesterday. I was bursting with confidence and while I was walking down the street to the office where my interview was I saw a reflection of myself from the window and I saw that my hair had gotten messed up in the wind. Immediately the Person B said “omg your hair looks so awful, you are awful, crawl back under the rock you came from”. Luckily I was able to brush this terrible remark away instantly because the rest of me looked pretty perfect and my hair got untangled with a brush in seconds, but I really wish I could get rid of this nagging Person B for good – no one should have “friends” like that.

I know I already wrote before about self-confidence but I want to go back to this subject because I know this is so important to so many people out there.

Everyone loves confident people. When someone is genuinely confident it doesn’t matter if they are short or tall, fat or slender, smooth or acne, bald or hairy… etc.

I know this from my own experience.

I am a bit overweight but I am also very curvy. When I dress up to a nice dress that fits me well (key words there FIT ME WELL, always get clothes YOUR SIZE!), do my hair and basically groom myself pretty I turn heads on the street – YES I DO you stupid person B (she was again saying that I don’t!). But it is not just the dress or my well done make up and hair. It is the way this all makes ME carry myself. When I look in the mirror and like what I see, I walk with a pounce, I smile at people and I throw my hair from one side to the other (Oooh yeah I do!). This makes people smile back at me and this increases my confidence which directly reflects to me feeling even more confident (and therefore more desirable).

You don’t have to be a size zero super model to be pretty, ANYONE can be pretty and sexy but in general these slender people are considered sexier and I could bet money on it that it is because overweight people in general have low self esteem and therefore don’t come across very confident.

It is a fact (yes it is!) that guys like a bit of curves on a girl. Yes, obviously there are those David Beckhams who love their Victorias tall and slender but I would bet all my money and fortune that the majority of the men actually prefer a bit of a curve over a bag of bones.

When I think about guys, I would not like to date a guy who was extremely skinny. However the media hasn’t portrayed skinny guys to be desirable anyway so my mind is not brainwashed to think this way. To me personally, even 10 years ago when I was a fit (and skinny) 20 something I wouldn’t have cared if the guy had a bit of fat around him. I was never really into the whole 6-pack thing. Usually guys who had the perfect body were so obsessed by it that it made me lose interest immediately.

What mattered (and still does) if the guy was healthy, confident and genuinely interested in me.

I mention healthy because I do think that it is important that you take care of yourself. You can be overweight (lets face it, today’s world really doesn’t help us with the whole weight issue, especially if you work long days sitting on your arse!) but you should try to eat healthy and add some exercise to your day, even if it only means walking 20 mins from train to home.  I don’t want to date a guy who is going to die next week of heart disease (basically!).

SO, now coming back to the whole issue of me battling with my own self worth and ultimately self image. When I take into account everything I just wrote about my own preferences, it really makes me wonder where did this nagging Person B appeared in my head.

I know my mother was always (I remember this since I was 5) telling my sister that she was too fat. I never had this issue because I was always very slender but I grew up with this image in my head that being fat was the worst thing in the world. When I turned 13 I started buying my own fashion magazines and got obsessed with super slim people. Everyone was always slimmer than me and I hated my body. Now I would like to also point out that I was actually underweight all through my teenage years, if I had lost any more weight I would have disappeared.

I sometimes look back at pictures of myself and always think how stupid I was to think I was fat.

SO unless you take up two seats in a train, you are not fat! If you take two seats in a train, go sign up to a fat clinic, they can actually help you lose weight (fact!).

But yeah, this was not about being fat or ugly, it was about me trying to quiet the negative person B in my head.  I realize this side of me is all my insecurities and fears of rejection piling up to try to protect me from being let down, but you can’t live your life in fear that things that you do won’t work out. You have to believe that they will and more often then they will because you have your own support to see things through.

Myself

I bought myself watercolors.

I haven’t painted with watercolors since I was 16 so I also bought a book called “watercolor painting for beginners”.

I used to be a great artist when I was younger… it is one thing I can truly say I was good at. I am still good at drawing and I have a lot of interesting ideas, so this makes me think that I would make a great artist.

I also really LIKE drawing and painting. The idea that I have so much clean paper, paints and pens home waiting for me is filling me with excitement, I simply can’t wait to see what I can create.

Lately I have been really good for myself. I have realized how important I am so I am giving more time for myself.

I am having my hair done tomorrow and I am trying to get my nails done today.

I bought a cross trainer about a month ago but only recently I have started to use it. I am also doing weights to make myself a bit stronger… I am tired of always struggling with bags and anything that is even slightly heavy. And stretch – I have started to stretch, which really is so important. I want to be more flexible and in general feel more agile. I hate how clumsy I have become.

I also should lose some weight, I don’t like that my tummy has become so big that it is actually in the way when I do my shoes etc. I HAVE TO get rid of it but it doesn’t make things easy that there are biscuits etc always in the office, it is very difficult to avoid them. I am really hoping my new exercising regime will burn those extra calories though.

I also have started to make sure that when I leave the house I feel happy with the way I look. I have started to always have earrings and necklace of some kind, I have bought myself some new jewelry for this reason.

I also bought some body shaping underwear yesterday. They are actually very comfortable! They will keep my bits in control while I work on getting rid of the extra layers.

It is actually funny how I had forgotten the importance of feeling good about myself. I used to think it was vain and people (and myself) should accept me as I am. Which of course is true to a certain point but … I am a woman. Women tend to live in a bit of a different world than men. We dye our hair, we do our make up, we wear jewelry and this all creates a combination of a beautiful human being. Of course there are those people who wake up looking like million dollars, but most of us aren’t like that. I have accepted the fact that I have two eyes that aren’t the same shape, I have bags under my eyes even if I am not tired (something to do with the veins being too close to surface apparently), I have uneven color tone on my skin, I am a bit overweight and so on… So for me to actually feel good about myself I need to put in a bit of effort.

But back to the watercolors, I am actually going to see how well I can still paint. If I do well, I will start uploading them here.

Always take care of yourself, it really is worth it

I could be pretty? Nonsense!

Something random happened to me yesterday.

I mean, it probably is everyday life for some but for me it was once in a lifetime thing.

It was coming 6pm and I was walking home from the bus stop. I was wearing my pink summer dress even though it had been a rainy and miserable day. My hair was frizzy from the moist air and since I had been at work all day my face probably showed some signs of tiredness and make up not being what it is at 8am when you leave the house.

Basically what I am trying to say is that I didn’t look anything special. I looked like the average, slightly overweight 30 something woman getting ready to just get home and crash to bed for the rest of the night.

So as I was walking down the road, minding my own business a guy with a motorbike pulls next to me and basically jumps in front of me and asks if he can ask me something. Naturally I was like “sure” because I thought he was lost and I usually can provide assistance since it was my home neighborhood. Instead he goes “can I take you out for a drink?”.

I was not prepared for that. I did not know what the guy looked like since he was wearing his helmet still, I am living with a great guy (and we actually have our 3 year anniversary TODAY) and in general I don’t go out with strange guys anymore, maybe if I was 18 I would have said yes (I definitely would have said yes!) but not anymore. SO, I said no, I am actually seeing someone (well done me!). The guy looked at me and said “oh but you don’t even know who you are talking to” and takes off his helmet and the weird hoodie thingy you wear when you ride a motorbike and my god he should not have done that… this guy was really good looking. He was tanned, fit, stubble, cute eyes… He probably saw my pupils widen and said that he would just like to give me a call and in the moment of weird confusion I gave him my phone number (STUPID!). He drove off waving his hand and I was left walking home completely stumped.

So I told all my friends and even my boyfriend what had happened because well why not? I had not done anything wrong and I was not planning to actually see this guy again. But the thing that really made me think was how lowly I think of myself.

My 1^st thought was that it was a joke, someone had dared him to do that. My 2^nd thought was that he was a freeloader finding vulnerable 30 something women who are desperate to find a man (trust me, there are lots 30 something women who just want ANY man and have kids) and only 3^rd came that maybe he actually had really poor taste in women and for some reason thought I was pretty enough to stop and talk to me. Even now writing that down makes me think that surely that was not the case, I am nothing special.

Like don’t get me wrong… I am awesome. I am a really funny and caring person. I watch ice hockey and play computer games so that officially puts me into the “awesome girlfriend’ category. If my personality was shining from my face, then surely I would understand all the guys always pulling over and asking me out, but that’s not the case – all they see is my thunder thighs and hair that needs color and cutting and has done so for the past 6 months.

So this got me thinking… who would you stop on the street for and ask out? Well providing any of us would actually have such confidence. Is it just the looks or is there something else that makes you think that the person is worth getting to know? I do think that sometimes I see good looking people that are just not that interesting and I would not have anything in common with them, and then sometimes I see people who truly look interesting and not necessary even the stereotypically good looking that we see in the magazines. My low self-esteem doesn’t seem to think I look either good or interesting though, so I don’t know what is up with that and how that could be improved.

All my friends told me that I am being silly and that I should not put myself down thinking so lowly of myself. They said that I definitely have it in me to turn heads on the street and that I was very attractive woman. I just don’t see it. I can’t see past my fat tummy, lazy eye and my double chin. In a way that makes me shallow just like someone who is obsessed with these things make them shallow (so even more of a reason why no one should pay attention to me).

Conclusion: It did make me feel special that someone would actually stop on the street and ask me out. The little corner in me that accepts compliments as they are still fights its small patch of ground trying to tell the rest of me that everyone is awesome in their own way and everyone is hot in someone’s eyes regardless of the shape and size. Why the rest of me can’t accept it is a total new continent to explore but for now I will smile and be happy for the rest of the day because I look great in someone’s eyes – even if those eyes aren’t mine. 

2014

So today I am going to write about things that are happening in the world and in my world.

Reason for this sudden inspiration was me (again) reading my old diary and the lack of general information that was going on, the stuff that you find interesting in the years to come.

I don’t want to just write about feelings, I want to write down actual memories which will give me “oh I remember that” moments in the future.

So let’s start with the world.

Israel and Hamas are killing each other. I could have written the same sentence 10 years ago, so nothing new there. There has been some ceasefires but who knows when and how it all will end.

Things are getting bad in Irak again because some militant groups are trying to take over the country – or that is at least what the news tell us.

One of my favorite actors of all time, Robin Williams has died. He committed a suicide couple of days ago (very sad and I will miss his movies). It is actually kind of bizarre that one of his movies (night at the museum 3) has yet to come to the movie theaters (I think it is due in Oct).

Game of Thrones had its 4^th season and is on break now. We are all waiting with anticipation whether the next book will come out before 5^th season begins (probably not). The show, me and James are currently following, is Under the dome (by Stephen King and Stephen Spielberg, it’s ok)

A bit closer to home next.

Katja and Tommi (my sister and brother in law) have been married now for a year. My sister took Tommi on a surprise trip to Copenhagen to celebrate their 1^st year anniversary.

We have lived back in London for a bit over a month now and we both actually miss Switzerland dearly and can’t wait to go back there. In fact we are going on a holiday to Schaffhausen for a long weekend in two weeks. My best friends Clara and Julie both live in Switzerland (which reminds me that I have to buy them some presents).

Currently both me and James are taking the train to work at 8:21, which considering is actually not bad as we live in London... 

My work is a bit easy. Today I only checked German and Sweden payrolls and sent them back as there were mistakes. I did this in the morning. Now I have been sitting here surfing the web the rest of the time. 

I had lunch from Itsu, coconut chicken soup, was yummy. On my way back to office I was naughty and bought donuts, I have eaten 2!

The weather has been quite cold considering it is August. It was raining this morning and it definitely is not warm enough for any dresses - shame.

I bought a cross trainer (better use it and not just use it as clothes horse). I am hoping that because it will be in the middle of our living room, it might work as a constant reminder that I should get fitter. Not because of looks but because I am really unfit (again).

I booked James and me flights to Japan!!! (We will go in April for 10 days)
James is learning to drive and hopefully in 2 months we will have a car.

AND that's about it :D

Happy life!

1995

I had a weird dream last night – nothing special really (i.e. no Twin Peaks crazy shit) but just a strange one.

Not going to go to details but basically it was thanks to me reading my diary from 1995.

I was 15 back then and my life was all about boys.

Every day I was so in love and the next day I was looking for a reason to live because I was so broken. I was desperately trying to get every single guy like me (or love me as I wrote it), it was actually a bit disturbing to read. I was a messed up teenage girl, I really was.

What also was strikingly obvious that I hardly ever wrote anything about how life in general was going. I didn’t write about my home or my family almost at all. The few occasions I mentioned something I said something about my parents always fighting and how afraid it made me. On one occasion I wrote that I was annoyed that some “guy” came with us to a trip again and I assume this was referring to the countless men that my mother was seeing (even though she was married to my dad). I know I was not allowed to write anything about my mother’s affairs because my dad once read my diary and used it against my mom in one of their fights. Obviously that then turned out to be my fault… how dare I write something private in my diary, right?

One thing that really shone from all the pages was how utterly alone I was with my feelings.

Unless they read my diary, my family knew nothing about my life. To be honest I don’t remember ever sharing any secrets with my mom or even with my sister.

I really didn’t like my sister when I was a teenager. She was my mom’s puppet. She turned 18 while still living at home and apparently (According to my diary), my mom and her used to go out occasionally for a drink together. I always felt that she was the center of the attention and I was left alone to do my own thing – no one was interested in what I was thinking or feeling.

So now looking back at it all, it was no surprise that I was trying to make every guy fall in love with me. At least then they were interested in my life, even if it was for a brief moment and for all the wrong reasons.

It was also a bit worrying that I lost my virginity to a lot older man at the age of 12 or 13 (He was probably 30!) for the same reason. If anyone knew, they would give it labels like pedophilia, rape… The guy would have been put away for a long time if I had taken him to the police. I don’t remember much about it (after all it was over 20 years ago) and no one ever knew, I never told my mother or my big sister – the people that should have been there for me.

I think that incident probably initiated the down spiral of self-destruction that I went through while growing up. I was simply a broken human being at the age of 15.

Now I am 34 and in a very good place with everything. I am balanced, I have a career and a partner that makes me laugh every single day and for the right reasons. My sister is one of my best friends and I even like my mom (regardless of her never being there for me and still being extremely self-centered).

I don’t have any kids of my own, but hopefully I will do in couple of years.

I really hope and pray that I will be in a good place with myself when they turn 15 so I can be there for them in the ups and especially downs of their life.

So I always try to find some teaching in everything I write… and today it is not very hard to find (in fact I could probably write a book about it).

This is for all the parents (new, old, future) out there and basically anyone who spends time with teenage kids. They really are just that, KIDS. A teenage girl growing up in today’s world is a horrifying experience and can leave you scarred for life. In my case I got raped by a grown man when I was only a little girl and I kept quiet about it because he told me that it was “our little secret”. Still today that puts shivers through me to just think about it and I do not want any other girl to go through that (but I know this is happening every day!).

When kids are very young they love playing games and spending time with their friends in hobbies etc. For a parent these really are the ‘easy times’ because you don’t have to worry too much about the kid hurting their soul so to speak. When they become teenagers, they get given a body of an adult and a very curious mind. They want to feel needed and wanted but can't really understand what it all means.

I personally was a very private kid (still am actually) and to get through to me, my parents would have had to climb a mountain or two. But - they really should have done it because that is what it takes to be a parent.

I am fine now. I re-built my life little by little by basically getting as far away as I could from what my life used to be and start over, but no one should have to do that - especially a child.

Lets see how my kids will turn out, I actually can't wait to have some proper mother to daughter talks with my teenage girls ;)