Bad Decisions? That's alright...

Welcome to my silly life...

It's been a minute (okay, several thousand minutes...) since I wrote here. 

So much has happened in the last year that I can barely believe it. 

I have...

- Left the job I loved for a more mature career in the financial sector
- Took a pay cut for that job that I ultimately ended up hating
- Dated a bit of a dick who I ended things with quickly (but not quite quickly enough)
- Started writing three books and I've got ideas for others
- Left the aforementioned job in the financial sector for a job that sounded incredible but actually turned out to be a scam
- Become unemployed because my mental state couldn't quite take standing outside for seven hours in the cold just in case I made a sale... 

So yeah, it's been quite a year! 

In 2018, I was amazing with my money. I budgeted, I saved, I bought a Macbook. 

I was so proud of myself. 

In 2019, the pay cut and the addition of a car into my life meant a lack of money and new worries that I really struggled with. 

In 2020, I'm hoping to get my life back on track but the lack of a job a month and a half before January is worrying me. 

It's not all bad though. 

I have an incredible boyfriend and wonderful friends who are supporting me in any way that they can at the moment. 

If I'm being entirely honest, they're the only reasons I'm getting through this. 

I mean, I say this. 

I have been officially unemployed for two days. 

That's not very long but it's enough to be driving me insane. 

The worst part is that there's so much I'm afraid/embarrassed to talk to my closest friends and family about. 

I'm embarrassed I made a really stupid decision and took a job I would end up having to leave due to how awful it was (seriously, it was advertised as an amazing opportunity to be a sales and events management trainee but it was actually just a trick which ended up being more like unpaid labour... Okay, it was exactly like that. You go into their office for 7:30am, spend the morning practicing your 'pitch' (which was really just a script to entice people to buy into whatever you were selling), leave the office in groups of three for about 11:30am, go to wherever you've been sent (I was sent to the freezing cold main street in Portobello), spend the next six hours there trying to get as many people to talk to you/buy into the thing you've been assigned to sell before heading back for 6:30pm - 7pm for a debrief. 
I didn't make a single sale (only one of our group of three did) and it was then that I realised that you only got paid if you did make a sale...

After I found that out, it was pretty hard to find the willpower to continue.

I had to walk away because I was so close to having a panic attack at the realisation that I'd just given up a job that paid me consistently every month for one that would pay me if I forced people into signing up for a direct debit for a charity I'd never heard of. 

I'd been semi led to believe that there would be some sort of base wage. 

I was wrong. 
So. Wrong. 

The next day, I went in for about an hour and then I said I had a headache and I left. 

I got in my car and started driving towards my mum's but she didn't answer so I headed to one of my best friend's flat. 

I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid. 

That night, my boyfriend came over and he was so good to me (he has continued to be so incredibly kind to me despite how sarcastic he usually is) but it wasn't enough to curb my anxiety and I couldn't face going in the next day so I texted my 'mentor' and said I was ill again. 

On Monday (yesterday), I quit. 

I told him I needed a job that would be guaranteed to pay me every month instead of one where I stood outside in the freezing cold for several hours without any guarantee I would get paid. 

He accepted it but told me he was 'sorry I saw it that way'. 

I didn't know what other way there was to see it. 

Since last Thursday (when I left with a headache...), I have been frantically applying for jobs. 

I have maybe three weeks before I'm going to seriously worry about money so I'm desperately hoping I'll find something soon.

As for why I'm embarrassed? 

I made this decision. I got myself into this mess. 

I can't blame anyone else but myself for this. 

And, if I'm being completely honest, if I let myself think about it for too long, I probably will have a mental breakdown. 

So why am I writing this all down here? 

This blog has always been where I've come to with intense feelings. 

I wrote here when my mum (nanny) died. 

I wrote here when my cat died.

I wrote here when I was happy too. 

One day, hopefully one not too far away from today, I will look back on this experience as a mistake that I overcame. 

I don't want to forget how massively I messed up or how devastated I was at the result of my actions 

You can't ignore the mistakes you made but nobody ever learned from having continued successes. 

This was a horrendously bad decision that I made but it was a failure I am going to learn from and come out on the other side wiser from it. 

I know that. 

Now, the other thing that I'm too scared to talk about with my friends... 

My boyfriend is brilliant. 

He is smart, successful and he is miles ahead of me in the game of life (that saying 'Don't compare your Chapter 3 to someone else's Chapter 13' comes into my head whenever I think this). 
He wants to be with someone who is equally successful and I'm miles away from being that person. 

Now, it's been years since I was that girl who thought she knew what love was and who didn't believe she was good enough for the boy she wasted that 'love' on. 

But my boyfriend is so unbelievably brilliant that I oftentimes find myself wondering why he's still choosing me every day. 

He's there when I'm at my lowest and he comes over to be with me when I'm struggling. 
He makes me laugh and roll my eyes (often in the same sentence...). 
He's not perfect but he makes up for his mistakes without me asking him to and he always comes through for me without thinking I'm crazy. 

I'm not saying I'm not good enough for him because that's not fair on me and all the work I've done in the last couple of years to improve my opinion on myself. 

I'm just worried. I don't think I've ever been this scared of messing something up. 

Anyway... 

That's just my life at the moment. 

Honest, raw and completely a mess. 

But I'll fix it. 

I have to. 

Love, 
Jess
xoxo

The Fake Boyfriend

We all know how it goes.
Generally, if you're a girl, you're going to get hit on on a night out.

Sometimes, that's wanted attention.
Sometimes, it isn't.

For me, the attention I got the other night was not wanted.
My girlfriend was out to 'pull' but I wasn't and I was trying very hard to be a good 'wingwoman'. It worked but, unfortunately, some of the guys she was with had friends who grabbed me and tried to dance with me.

Now, I love dancing. When it comes to that, I'm as game as Ellen and I don't need a partner to get crazy like Taylor Swift does at award shows. ('I'm dancing on my own. Make the moves up as I go')
But I don't love it when guys grab me and dance with me when I make it clear I'm not interested.
So I did what any rationally thinking 20 year old does to make it clear to the guy and told them I had a boyfriend.
That should be enough, right?
If a guy I started dancing with told me he had a girlfriend, I'd nod and say 'sorry' and dance in the opposite direction.
These guys? Nope. They didn't care. One of them told me I was 'gorgeous' so I thanked him but he was still dancing close against me so I repeated the 'boyfriend' thing and he just laughed and said 'let yourself go'. I did not want to do that so I gave my friend the warning glance and we danced away to a different part of the club.
When our guy friends got back, I almost pounced on them; I was that relieved.
One of them was also 'on the pull' so I asked the one non-single guy if he'd do me a favour and pretend to be my boyfriend. He laughed and asked which guy was a creep so I simply said 'all of them'.
One guy was nice though. He started dancing near me and I told him I had a boyfriend and hugged my friend and he shook his hand!
Like, actually shook his hand!
I'm not gonna lie. That made me feel kinda good inside and my friend said it was a good gesture.

Anyway, this is actually an issue.
You see, this may be a casual story about a night out but the problem with it is that I shouldn't have had to think of an excuse in the first place. If I don't want to dance with someone, that should be enough of a reason. I shouldn't have to say the word 'boyfriend' fifty times until I can get away from them for it to be realized that I'm not interested.

I'm not saying I was really angry about it but it's frustrating that girls and women have to make up an excuse while guys just don't dance with the girl.

Maybe it was just that club. Maybe it was the fact that it was a Tuesday.
I don't know.
But it shouldn't be an issue in 2016. Have we not come further than that?

At the end of the day, it didn't ruin my night and I still had fun with my friends.

It's just food for thought, you know?

Jessica
xoxo

When Heartless People Have A Voice

Today, I was scrolling along Facebook when a post from one of my family members caught my eye.
She was ranting about refugees and, after reading it and the comments, I felt like I wanted to be sick.
How can people be so cruel?

"Amazing how it's right for the council to bring in 16 refugees family give them new houses plus cars and £64 a day and people in dundee living on poverty is thus a piss take or what I work my Fecking arse off can hardly afford my Fecking bus fare to work seek of this"

Everywhere in the world. people are struggling.
Many refugees are left with no choice but to leave their countries without any personal longings - risking death on the way to whatever country they can get to because their home is more dangerous than anything we can hit them with.


I'm sure we've all seen the images.
Children covered in dirt and adults so gaunt you can almost see through them.
And that's just images.
What about the videos, the films of children getting gassed or the bodies laying on dirt...

How could people be so heartless?

I'm aware that a great deal of my family in Dundee don't like people like me. Or maybe it's just me. I can feel it every time I see them. The kids are fine and I adore my younger cousin who I meet up with regularly. But the adults? I would never wish them any harm and I don't want to bad-mouth them but I've never been good with understanding how any one person could have no empathy whatsoever.
That post broke my heart along with erasing any respect I had for her.
She's a mother yet she shows no empathy or emotion but anger towards parents who are trying to do the same thing? Sure, there are people living in poverty in Dundee but their lives aren't nearly as threatened as those who risk death themselves to save their children from a painful death in their home countries.

This was my response to her vile status and the disgusting comments of agreement:

"These refugees are in desperate need of help. Their countries are not safe and they need to move to the UK and other places. 

According to ISIS, Syrian Muslim refugees (as an example) are traitors to the radical Islamic cause. “It is correct for Muslims to leave the lands of the infidel for the lands of Islam, but not vice versa,” one ISIS video said in September. Here are several other examples of similar condemnation from this year. Nearly 90 percent of displaced Syrians in Turkey have no sympathy for ISIS at all, even though ISIS is fighting the person, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who most refugees see as their main enemy. Kurdish and Christian refugees see ISIS as their main foe. Turning away Syrian refugees plays into ISIS’s hands. 

I am 100% sure you will think me young and foolish and naive but we need to be kind and as welcoming as possible to refugees. The fault of one is not the fault of the many and it's heartbreaking to see so much hatred on this post when they are seeking help in the worst of times. 

If you were a refugee, would you not want help and support?"

And, because I know exactly what the majority of my family think of me, I did my research beforehand to get that statement in the middle.

I don't think I will ever understand why or how any person could wish hatred and cruelty on another and I know it has put a black mark on her name for me from now on because I cannot respect or condone any aggressively nasty person.
I would usually finish a post like this wishing that she will find the goodness in her heart to understand where I'm coming from but I don't think that'll happen. I doubt she'll even read my comment to be completely honest.
What I will say is that it is not naive to be kind and hopeful that others will share your compassion.
I'm going to leave this post with a link to how us Brits can help refugees.
And my prayers are with all those in Brussels who have been affected by this senseless tragedy.

Jessica
xoxo

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/5-practical-ways-you-can-help-refugees-trying-to-find-safety-in-europe-10482902.html

What Women Want

Today, I went on Facebook and an article immediately caught my eye.

To be fair, this happens a lot with me. Especially with Buzzfeed... I may have an addiction. I'm on my Buzzfeed app faster than I'm replying to texts in the morning. I love their writers, staff and general ease you feel when you read one of their articles. Much like I'm coming to fall in love with HelloGiggles.
This particular article felt like it needed to be written about. By me. In my own words.
It helps with my procrastination anyway. I was attempting to write a song...
In this article, a girl at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces found a strange note by an unidentified, male student at her college posted in her dorm on January 29th this year.
The note states: 

"OK, ladies. 

I get it.You don’t want a pleasant evening chat.You don’t want a gentleman to walk you to your car.You don’t want a friendly dude to help you carry your groceries… or hold open the door… or crush the life out of other men that would do you harm.Fine - fear the good guys… I guess we’ll have to just suffer through watching you get broken over and over by the scum you think you love.But I want you to know – it’s not easy and it hurts to see you fall.

Give the good guys a chance to help you be less afraid of the world."

The note comes across extremely creepy and I had to comment on Facebook the second I saw it.

'I think there should be a balance between both. You should be a 'nice', good person because people deserve good people and they're one in a million. The thing that the not-so-nice person who wrote this isn't understanding is that chivalry and protection is what some women want but not all. Women want different things. I roll my eyes at super coupley things like some of the posts people who have been dating for five minutes share on Facebook or putting a love lock on a bridge in Paris because you think it has any direct correlation with how long your relationship will last BUT a lot of people find that stuff adorable and love it. Not every women likes chivalry and men holding doors open for them just like not every guy likes women who don't wear much makeup - it's human nature. This man, clearly, hasn't grasped the concept of what it means to actually be a 'nice' guy.'

It's not easy to watch people you love or care about being hurt by the same kind of people but you should do something about it rather than complaining they're going after the wrong guys and should be dating you.
A lot of the other comments were angry because of the strong sense of entitlement the note is drenched in but I was more frustrated by the idea that nice guys are easy to find and that us women are deliberately falling for people who end up hurting.
Another point is that it takes more to being a good guy than holding doors open for women and walking them to their cars at night.
To be a good person, you actually have to work hard to maintain a good attitude and loving nature.
Plus, my point in that comment is that NOT ALL PEOPLE WANT A NICE GUY/GIRL.
Now, I put that, as Judge Rinder says, in big because it's important.
No matter what else the guy's saying or how creepy it comes across, he doesn't seem to understand the idea that no one wants the same thing.
I have friends who meet guys on tinder and have relationships and I have friends who would never date a guy they met online.
Much like the way no one has an identically decorated home, no one has the same type.
My type, in terms of personality, remains the same as it's always been. You know: loyal, caring, humorous, slightly chivalrous, strong (mentally and physically). Though, my recent experience with that guy I've been hung up on for months actually taught me a lot more about myself than I ever expected. I know now that I want a man who can turn me on - both sensually and intellectually - and that he needs to be able to 'take the mick' out of me because I do that to people and I find it playful.
All that being said, you could ask Sarah (made up name on the spot) what her type is and she could say she wants a serious guy who's not chivalrous at all and doesn't find bad jokes hilarious (like I do).
If you've managed to persevere reading all of that, I commend you.
Here's my final point on it; if you want to be a good guy, BE A GOOD GUY but don't expect all women to fall at your feet like you're Gerard Butler, Daniel Craig or Darren Criss (the last one's a personal favourite). The second you start expecting things from people is the second your 'trying to be a nice guy' comes across as an act rather than a genuinely nice thing.
Not all women want a good, nice guy. Not all men want a good girl.
No two people are going to have the same exact type all of the time so consider this before making anymore declarations. 

And, to all the genuinely nice guys out there, thank you for being kind and gracious and respectful. 

Three of my best friends are guys and I couldn't love them more if I tried.
Jessica
xoxo