A Long Absence = Life Update

Hey guys, so, I have some explaining to do… you may have noticed that my blog posts have been wildly irregular at the moment, that’s for many reasons. I feel like I owe it to you to explain myself.

I feel like I keep this blog pretty open and impersonal in a way, that’s not necessarily a conscious decision but rather due to the fact that the posts I write don’t often reveal very much about me. I guess it’s kind of nice to be putting something out there on the big wide web and still feel slightly anonymous.

Anyway, because my blog is kind of open and impersonal I like it when I get to give you life updates, I’m not sure if it’s anything anyone’s particularly interested in but I guess I feel like through telling you what’s happening in my life I can in some ways justify my absence, I know it doesn’t need to be justified but as humans we feel guilty for things that we don’t do and because of that we try and find ways of making ourselves feel better about it by thinking of all the reasons why it hasn’t happened.

So, let’s begin!

Firstly – and I am sure this is something everyone can relate to – I have been drowning in the amount of studying I have to do, I know there’s a saying that’s ‘up to my neck’ but I felt like that wasn’t even close to being the truth, I am so out of my depth it’s scaring me a little bit, but I’m sure everyone feels like that. It’s the most bizarre feeling because a month ago or maybe even as recent as a couple of weeks ago every morning I would wake up and literally feel sick with stress, no lie, and every day would be hard to get through because I would sit at my desk and I would just work for ten hours every single day in the hopes that I could begin to get through the insane amount of work I had to do – luckily, those intense ten hour study sessions actually paid off and I am now drowning slightly less in work and all of the stress has just disappeared, it’s like suddenly I can breathe again but I don’t understand the transition from suffocating in stress to now feeling completely calm, but it’s a great feeling other than the fact that now I’m not stressed I’m slightly less motivated. But anyway, I know most teenage bloggers are going through exam stress and are putting off their blogs in favour of studying so you all completely understand and I am in no way saying I am in a worse situation and I think those of you managing to maintain a blog through all of this stress are absolutely amazing and incredible people – honestly I think you should be given a reward for all your hard work! But I just haven’t quite worked out how to manage my time in a way that caters for both studying, blogging, other commitments etc.

What else has been going on… I’m so busy I can’t even remember. I had a wonderful trip up into London a couple of weeks back and that was really nice, I went to visit my best friend whom I hadn’t seen since November and it was really nice to catch up with her! It had been long overdue and I did double studying the week before specifically so I wouldn’t ‘miss’ any studying while I was there and it was so nice to be able to just relax for a few days and be there with my friend and just feel like a member of society again rather than the introverted nerdy student that I’ve become over the last few months, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I would rather be indoors studying for a couple of months than failing my exams. We went on a lovely picnic in Regent’s Park and took lots of photos both of the park and of us together, the sun was shining, we did a bit of writing, we got to catch up, it was one of the best days I’ve ever had with her! Oh, and then we got lost on Baker Street (apparently that street goes on FOREVER!) but it was a truly amazing trip and one I wouldn’t change for the world. Although, I did get a migraine after coming back from Regent’s Park through being in the sun for too long… and maybe having a photoshoot which featured me lying in the grass and looking up at the sky, I would not recommend and that did prevent us from watching all the films we had planned to watch but it doesn’t really matter, there’s a time and place for everything. I was going to blog on this trip to London because not only were my friend and I using it as an opportunity to see each other but we were also going to use it as an excuse to just do the things we don’t normally get the time to do because we’re too busy with life, for example, reading, blogging, writing etc. etc.

Also, my cat died, which you probably really didn’t want or need to know and has probably just made this post quite depressing but yeah, I loved him to the moon and back and he was a wonderful cat. He was beautiful and you’d always wake up in the morning and go downstairs to see him sleeping on the sofa or an armchair curled up into this cute little ball of fluff and it was the most adorable thing! But he was old and we knew it was going to happen eventually – it was unexpected that he was going to die at that moment but he had been getting visibly older and less capable, but it just kind of added to everything else and it’s not really a reason why I haven’t been blogging because despite being upset, when he died it didn’t feel like an overwhelming loss or like a huge hole had been created in my life that could never be filled, it was devastating but it wasn’t like if a family member (or even my other cat who behaves like a dog, calls for me, cuddles with me all the time and whom I adore more than anything else in the entire universe) died so I wasn’t like in floods of tears for days unable to concentrate but this is a life update as well as being a post for me to explain all the reasons why I haven’t blogged.

Okay, another reason why I haven’t been blogging as much is because since last November I have been working on a fanfiction series – I am currently planning on it being 4 books long; which was completely unexpected but given the current state of the series 4 seems like a good number to get all the storylines completed in. Obviously I love to blog, it’s something I have a passion for but I also have a passion for fiction writing. I just love to write and I get different things out of both experiences. I like the feeling of being part of something that you get when you’re blogging, I like how on WordPress it’s like a community of people all sharing stories and opinions and interests etc. and there are just certain things I’m passionate about that I want to write about and I can’t really discretely put into a fictional story. But I also like the ability to escape that I get from writing fiction, maybe ‘escape’ isn’t quite the right word because I don’t feel like I need to ‘escape’ from my life but I guess it’s kind of a way to experience things that you don’t normally get to experience or to just create a world that can be however you want it to be; you can control the level of good and bad; the level of nice and horrible; the level of love and hatred and so on, you can put words in other people’s mouths and develop relationships and I enjoy it a crazy amount and have been getting really excited about my fanfiction series, maybe I’ll upload it onto Wattpad, maybe I won’t. I’m not sure. I’m going to finish all four books first. Anyway, I don’t really want it to sound like I’m prioritising fanfiction writing over blog writing but unfortunately it’s not exactly a choice, you see, the thing is, when I write fiction I think about it almost constantly and I am always thinking about what’s going to happen next or certain things people can say to others or a particular ‘moment’ that I want to happen, a cliff-hanger, a certain new character etc. and sometimes I get these really vivid images of a ‘scene’ I want to include and I know how I want it to read word for word and so I have to get my laptop and I have to write that scene whether I would rather be writing a blog post, watching TV or reading a book because if I don’t write that scene out there and then unfortunately the scene will be gone, and whilst, of course, I can write down a small memo saying I want to have a ‘marriage proposal scene’ or a ‘dramatic break-up scene’ or an ’emotional death scene’ I still don’t have the word for word details and – without trying to sound really full of myself because I’m really not – my first draft is usually actually the best draft, I mean everything needs a bit of editing after it’s finished but for some reason the way I write just comes out exactly the way I want it to first time, I do reword things sometimes or add things in that I didn’t think to add in the first time around and of course correct spelling errors but usually the way I’ve written it first is always the best so if I don’t get the words in my head down on my laptop then they all disappear and I can never recreate the word document on paper as good as it was in my head, if that makes sense.

I would just like to put it out there that I have been doing ‘blog’ things despite not being noticeably active on WordPress, I haven’t completely been ignoring my blog although it might seem like that. I have a number of drafts waiting to be reviewed and edited and in fact finished but the problem is, I am so busy that when I do have some free time it’s usually late at night when I’m exhausted from whatever I’ve had going on in the day, I’m half asleep and what I really want to be doing is drinking a hot chocolate and watching TV and the few times that I’ve tried to write a blog post instead in those circumstances they just don’t sound right, it sounds like I’m forcing the blog post and I’m not fully connecting to the content – probably because I’m half asleep – also, often I know the point I’m trying to make and what I want the blog post to say but I struggle to actually come to the conclusion and write it in a way that sounds good, basically I need to not be blogging when really I should be sleeping but I do plan on reviewing those blog posts over the next few evenings hopefully and finishing them, editing them and then getting them published.

Lastly, before I go I would like to quickly mention that I have been attempting to be much more active on my social media sites so you can go and follow me on them (links down below). I have specifically been paying attention to my Instagram recently firstly because I took lots of beautiful photos in Regent’s Park in London when I went to visit my friend and also because at the moment Instagram is my favourite social media site, I just love how so much can be conveyed in a photo and how loads of people are using this app and sharing photos of either pretty things they’ve found in their day-to-day lives or more professional type photos or even pictures of themselves and what they’ve been doing with their day, I just think it’s such a nice idea and personally I’ve been becoming slightly disconnected with twitter recently but I want to try and get back into it soon. Make sure you’re following me on both of the social media sites just mentioned so you can keep up-to-date with what I’ve been doing even when I’m not actively publishing new posts on WordPress.

I really hope you enjoyed this post, make sure to give it a like if you did! You can follow me if you aren’t already to see any new posts as soon as they’re published! Also, feel free to leave any comments letting me know what you’ve been busy doing and how you’re coping with all the exam work/revision you’ve got going on at the moment – I would love any tips and tricks you might have on effective study sessions!

If you want to get in touch you can do so using my e-mail – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

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200 Followers?! + Q&A Questions

Hey guys, so I know I’ve been really bad at keeping up with this blog over the last month and the only post I published last month was my January Favourites but it’s been hectic, I’ve been studying like crazy, busy with activities, there’s just been a lot going on basically.

But… I logged onto my blog today and to my surprise discovered that I now have 200 followers! Which was absolutely amazing! And now… this is where I go on to talk about how much I appreciate it, the usual really. But instead of just talking about my never-ending love of everyone who supports and engages with my blog I’m going to talk about my blog and how it came to exist and what it means to me.

So, I was always quite fond of the idea of having a blog. It wasn’t so much building up a following and interacting with others, whilst I love reading comments and posting them on other people’s blogs it was never a motivating factor in getting a blog, but ever since a young age I was always writing (I remember writing a Doctor Who story when I was younger, I guess you might call it a fanfiction now but it was just a story I wrote using the characters of Doctor Who and then my Mum typed it up onto a document for me.), I love/d writing fiction and from the age of 6 always wanted to write a novel. I have kept a journal since I was about 9-years-old, I was always writing these little documents which in my head were ‘blog posts’ I just didn’t have a blog to actually publish them, the reason I was writing these is because; I guess my brain just needs to write things down, it just wants to write and I feel like a blog is a completely unique form of writing, you write about things that you don’t normally get the opportunity to write about, for example, one of my favourite things to write on my blog is favourites posts, a blog is the only place where I properly get to share things that I’ve been loving in that way. I think it’s just such a great opportunity to have, or another example could be the home-education Q&A I did quite early on in my blog, that was a unique opportunity to answer lots of the questions home-educated people get asked. Also, political posts and humanity posts, both things that I have very strong opinions on and don’t get the opportunity to write about in the same way when writing fiction and it’s all well and good writing about it in my journal but it doesn’t give you the same satisfaction because it’s more like having a rant to yourself or, as my best friend would say, venting. It’s not sharing your opinions with the world in the hopes that somehow it will create change.

So, once I got older I started asking my Mum, or begging rather, to let me have a blog. It was so important to me and I had NO IDEA what I was going to do if she said yes, I must have been about 11 or something, I didn’t know anything about website design and probably didn’t even understand where to start. All I knew was that I wanted a platform to get my thoughts heard, to interact with people who understood where I was coming from and could relate to me in a way that I didn’t really get in the real world. A community that I could really feel a part of in a way I never had before. But, unfortunately for me my Mum didn’t want me to have a blog at such a young age (which, looking back was probably the right decision because I had no idea where to start or how to properly run a blog, I most likely would be terrified. And yes, whilst my blog needs a lot of editing and the design isn’t all that great – something I plan on dealing with in the summer – it’s a blog that I absolutely love having and that truly feels like mine. I understand how to work it and I feel like I can handle anything that the blogosphere might throw at me because I’m not young, under-educated and vulnerable anymore.) another motivating factor that my Mum had for not letting me have a blog was that I didn’t have a specific genre or topic I was going to be writing about. But that’s not the kind of blog I wanted to have, and I couldn’t explain that to her properly when I was younger but I just wanted a kind of lifestyle blog that was completely unique to me and that I could write whatever I felt like writing, whatever spoke to me in the moment or whatever I was passionate about, because let’s face it my interests and passions are going to change over the lifetime of this blog. But, I turned 15 and decided that I was going to start a blog with or without her permission. Yes, it was a ‘secret’ blog for awhile, but it wasn’t like a malicious secret blog, I wasn’t starting it because I was a rebel and wanted to defy my Mum’s wishes or views or anything. It was more that as I got older I suddenly felt that I didn’t need permission anymore and eventually I told my Mum about it and she was completely cool with it, so it’s all good.

So, now I have a blog. That’s my story I guess. The reason lifeofaninspiredteen exists. I’m not sure I can tell you the story of my blog name, although I wish there was something really meaningful behind it or something. I remember finally deciding, ‘what the hell, I’m going to get a blog’ and then there was the process of thinking of a name. I think the way I came up with the name was, I knew it was going to be about my life and so I really wanted to have it obvious that it was just a kind of general blog about me and my thoughts, interests, etc. so that’s where the ‘life of’ came into it and then I had to think of the end part of my name and keeping my anonymity. So, then I had to decide a catchy way of describing who I was and my personality. My best friend is always calling me inspired and inspiring, because I find a lot of things interesting and find a way to inspire myself using basically anything as a stimulus. I just love being inspired, whether it’s to study, to travel the world, to do an activity, whatever it is I love to be inspired. And… I’m a teen and so I juggled being inspired around with ‘life of’ for a little bit and then ended up with my blog name – lifeofaninspiredteen. And that’s it. After saying I couldn’t tell you the story of my blog name, I told you the story of my blog name.

Almost done, now we’re onto the cheesy part. I never ever thought I would get to 200 followers, especially not after less than a year. I don’t want to be all depressing and be like ‘I’m not that interesting. I don’t understand why anyone would want to read what I write.’ because I don’t bring myself down like that and I don’t want to criticise the readers of my blog because they obviously do find what I write interesting which is great and I love that. But, I think the reason I’m surprised I reached 200 followers is because I was never writing for anyone else, it wasn’t a concern whether I was going to be interesting to anyone else it was that I was doing something I was passionate about and I was doing it for myself. Obviously I knew that what I was publishing was public and people could read it and were going to read it but I never viewed it as something I was doing to gain followers or have loads of views or anything. So, when lots of people were reading what I was writing and following me it was a bit of a surprise but not because I didn’t think people were going to read it but simply because I never really thought of it happening. Every single follower I get really excites me but I decided that I shouldn’t write an appreciation post after every new follower so I only write a post when I hit ‘landmark’ followers. But, I remember getting excited about my 5th follower, my 2oth follower, the 45th follower etc. it never ceases to amaze me how many people find their way to my blog and leave lovely comments, it basically never ceases to amaze me how nice all the bloggers on wordpress are. Or all the ones I’ve had the pleasure of encountering.

Okay, lastly, I’ve decided that to celebrate 200 followers I’m going to do a Q&A, there isn’t a specific subject so just leave any questions you have for my below, whether it’s about my blog, my education, my routines, my life, my diet, literally anything that you’ve ever wondered about me leave them in the comments below and I will write up the answers and publish them in a post soon – but, disclaimer I won’t answer all questions, if I feel uncomfortable answering any or feel like they might put my anonymity at risk then I won’t answer them.

This concludes the end of my post – please like it if you enjoyed it, leave any comments below as I love to read them all! Also, if you aren’t following me already make sure to do that to keep up with my new posts!

If you would like to get in touch, my e-mail is – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

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Rubbish At This Blog Thing

Hey guys, so I thought I would write a quick post updating you on everything that’s been going on, it will kind of be a summary because there are some things I want to go into more detail later on in the month. I can’t believe it’s almost December – we have one month and nine days left of 2016! How is that even possible?!

You may have noticed that I’m still not very good at this whole blogging thing, which is really annoying as it started off really well – I was so proud of myself for writing posts everyday, but that was back in May and it was around the time that all my exams finished and I had a bit of time off but now I’m studying for my next lot of exams and everything has just become quite hectic. I’m also in another drama production which is taking up my time, but again, I haven’t forgotten about this blog – I think about it on a daily basis there is just so little free time that I get and when I do get that free time I have to think about what it is that I want to do with my free time whether it be read, write, draw, tidy or watch TV. It’s very hard because I know that if I opened my blog up in a tab and actually started to write then it would be done and I would really enjoy it, but it’s getting the motivation to open up a tab and write something. Also, as I’m sure some of you probably know this month has been National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and as someone who has always had a huge passion for writing I decided to write a novel (I completed it last year as well), granted I completed it on November the 18th by writing 50,000 words but the novel still has a long way to go and so much more to happen.

However, although this month has been National Novel Writing Month and therefore has affected my ability to come on here and write because when I’m in the mood to write I tend to write that instead of writing a blog post, next month is BLOGMAS! Yes, you read that right, this year – as it’s my first year as a blogger – I’m going to be doing Blogmas as I think it’s a really great idea! Yesterday I was planning out my blog posts for the month of December – I know some people tend to treat it like an advent calendar and only write 25 posts but I’m going to be writing 31 posts during the month of December because not only do you have Christmas to celebrate but you also have the new year and I think both are really important and special celebrations. There will also be a post on January the 1st and maybe 2nd both themed around the new year – 2017! So keep an eye out! If you want to do a collab for my Blogmas series please feel free to send me an e-mail – aninspiredteen@gmail.com ; I know I’ve been rubbish at replying to those that did send me e-mails but I promise I will do that as soon as I’ve finished this post.

I know I’ve become really unreliable as a blogger and I’m always saying I’m going to become more organised or I’m going to post this at a certain time etc. but I always really do mean it but then something else comes up and I get distracted or too busy and it becomes hard to write. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy blogging and I’m not passionate about it or grateful to everyone that follows, likes and comments on my blog because I really am and you have no idea how much it means to me when I do get the time to log onto my blog and I see that you’re all still following me – it’s really nice to know that people still care about this blog as much as I do even though I don’t get the time to write as often as I used to. But I promise after I’ve written this and responded to e-mails that I am going to create myself a blog plan and I’m going to schedule time to sit down and write a blog post whether I’m in the mood to write one or not because I know that when I sit down and actually start writing one I’ll be in the mood to write one, if that makes sense?

I’m going to leave this post here because I feel like I’ve gone on a lot during this post and it’s very wordy. Make sure to keep an eye out for both my October favourites and my November favourites – both of which will be posted in the next nine days (as well as some other posts) before I dedicate my blog to Christmas and celebration throughout December. I really hope you’ll take part in my Blogmas series by commenting and liking my posts – also, make sure to let me know if you’re taking part in Blogmas so I can check out your blog throught December!

If you wish to contact me my e-mail is – aninspiredteen@gmail.com , don’t be shy to drop me an e-mail.

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen (some things never change ;))

My Absence + The Future Of This Blog

Hey guys, so I know I have been so absent over the last couple of months – just seen that I only posted three times in September (so much for being a daily blogger!) and I am so sorry! When I started this blog back in May it was all very new and exciting to me and I saw that I was getting loads of great feedback almost immediately and I loved it and it was really motivating me to write, it was also around about the time that my exams ended (kind of) and so I had a bit of time to just sit back and relax and really enjoy this new time I had available when I wasn’t studying but then I had loads of drama things come up (which is a really great thing) and I’ve also started studying for next year’s GCSEs because I know that I need to work harder for these exams because the subjects are harder. So basically, my life has been really hectic over these last few months and there’s been birthday celebrations going on and a whole load of other things. I guess, when I say hectic, it hasn’t been too bad or difficult to manage but I just haven’t had time to properly sit down and work out a schedule yet but I’m going to do that before the end of the week.

It feels really weird to be studying for GCSEs almost like a normal student even though I’m home-educated, and whilst I don’t like to define my education as ‘not normal’ because I feel like it’s a good thing and is better suited to some people (like me), I also do feel like I don’t lead the ‘normal’ life that most people my age lead and I haven’t done throughout my life either, and whilst I don’t think I’m any different to the people that go to school it does feel like there’s a certain connection with people that I can’t share. At least not until I go to sixth form. But at the same time, having started studying for my GCSEs I now feel like I can talk about my subjects and how stresseful I’m finding them or how I’m liking this subject etc. and have it be considered relevant. Anyway, that was a completely pointless tangent that I just went off on for no reason.

So, the main point of this post was to talk about the future of this blog, I feel like when I started out as a daily blogger I was a bit too ambitious and not really thinking about the things that were going to be happening in the very close future, so having revised my previous plan I have now decided that maybe 2-3 posts a week would be better because not only does it lessen the pressure of having to write posts, 2-3 posts isn’t that difficult to schedule all in one day – it doesn’t take me all that long to write posts – and it would also mean that you were still getting new and regular posts from my blog (I hope that’s a good thing!). I think what happened and what caused the absence for a couple of months was that I started my blog and was very soon putting loads of pressure on myself to write a blog post everyday and sometimes it got to 11PM and I still hadn’t written anything and so I was desperately rushing to write a post before midnight and I just think that it was so unnecessary to put that amount of stress on myself, especially when I really love blogging. I absolutely adore it. It is a huge passion of mine. So after putting that much pressure on my life instead of just posting less regular I just stopped posting all together to get the stressful thing out of my life. So, expect to see 2-3 posts a week. The reason I say 2-3 is because I definitely plan to write 2 posts a week but I’m not definitely saying they’ll be 3, they will be if I have the time but obviously I can never guarantee how much time I’m going to have.

Another thing related to the future of this blog is December, I have decided that for December (no matter how short I am on time) I am going to write a post everyday for the whole month – just because I really love Christmas and the celebration of the new year. I haven’t got anything specifically planned yet post-wise but I am going to be doing lots of planning from now until the 1st of December so if you have any Christmassy posts that you would like to read please leave them in the comments down below and I will add them to the list of Christmassy posts to write throughout December – I am incredibly excited! Obviously I have to call my December series ‘Blogmas’ because otherwise it just wouldn’t be the same. I hope you guys are all as excited as I am! If any of you would like to be part of my Blogmas Series either by guest posting or doing a collaboration please just drop me an e-mail – aninspiredteen@gmail.com – as I would love everyone to get involved.

Talking about the future of my blog has just got me really excited! Because the thing is, although I’ve been absent I have been thinking about my blog and making plans, it’s just unfortunately all you guys can see is that I haven’t been writing anything – there are so many plans going on behind the scenes and I am so excited to write all of the posts that I have saved in a notebook and there is just so much that is going to be happening on this blog over the next few months and for the coming years so I really hope you will all stay and watch this space for all those exciting things to happen!

A couple of last minute things, if you have e-mailed me and I haven’t got back to you I am really sorry! I will be checking my e-mails and responding over the next few days. Also, if I have talked about guest posting or doing a collaboration I am definitely still going to do it – it’s just getting back on top of everything, sorry for being so rubbish!

The last thing, and I promise this is the last thing, is social media – I was thinking of starting a Instagram (especially for Blogmas) and I was wondering what you guys thought? Also, if any of you have an Instagram please leave your username below so I can get some ideas of what other people post, blog related. The other social media thing is my twitter account (@aninspiredteen), I don’t really know the content that people want me to post on there so I tend not to really tweet, so again if you could leave your twitter username down below so I can see what other people are tweeting and if you could give any tips or advice as to what you would look for on a bloggers twitter I would really appreciate it!

Thank you all so much for reading this post and for still being here after so long! You have no idea how much I appreciate it!

Please feel free to leave any comments you have down below and make sure to like this post! Also, if you’re new around here and enjoyed this post you can follow me for more posts – I promise they will be more regular from now on! If you have an enquiries please feel free to e-mail me – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

It’s Been Too Long

Hey guys, it has been so long since I have posted something for you guys and I can only apologise! I have been so insanely busy and I know everyone else has too! The truth is I’ve just had a lot of things going on and loads of opportunities that I haven’t really been able to say no to (but in a good way). It used to be the case that I found the summer really boring and often could never find anything to do and never met up with friends even though I planned to and it was always really hot and back then I was too young to take a moment and make it great so I just wasted my summer away indoors moaning about how it was too hot and how I wanted ice cream and squash. To be honest with you, I am actually really proud of how this summer has turned out. I will review my summer bucket list in September and write a post about how I did when it came to ticking things off. I haven’t actually read back on my summer bucket list since writing it so hopefully there isn’t something that I’ve mentally forgotten to actually do. I guess we’ll find out. I also have to do an August Favourites post but because I’ve been so busy I feel like there won’t be quite as many things on there that I want to talk about.

So, let me spend a little time talking about my summer and what I have been up to recently. So at the start of the month I was rehearsing for a play I was in, and rehearsals were really tiring and taking up quite a lot of my time – I didn’t have a big part or anything but I still had to be there during the rehearsals that lasted for about 5 hours everyday. I kept finding that once I got home literally all I wanted to do was go to bed and watch Netflix or read my book.

A couple of weeks into August I started doing work experience at my local theatre and this involved turning up at 10:30 and then helping with a production they were putting on with 5-10 year-olds which meant it was very exhausting and very loud a lot of the time. After my work experience finished at 3:30 I then got a small break and afterwards went and rehearsed for my play from 4:3o – 8:30, got home had dinner and went to bed. This was pretty much my life Monday to Friday. Then Saturday I actually had my performance and was in the theatre from 10AM until the end of the performance at about 9PM, obviously you can imagine that I just wanted to sleep after that too. During that week I also had an audition for my drama group’s yearly musical. So it was a hectic week but I’m not complaining because it was great experience and I absolutely loved it. I wouldn’t change that week even if I had the choice. But there was always this slightly lingering stress that I didn’t get the opportunity to blog as I really do love it and feel so privileaged that I live in a society where I can actually start a blog for free and have the ability to talk about literally any topic without the fear of criticism etc.

After my performance on that Saturday I had a week before I started rehearsals for the musical. I basically did nothing for a couple of days and then it was my brother’s 18th birthday and we had people round and I made two birthday cakes and they took quite a long time as I made a double-layered oreo cake with oreo buttercream icing (I will post the recipe and pictures on here at a later date.) and I had never made that cake before so it took a while and I wanted it to look absolutely perfect so spent ages doing the icing and making it look right. After my brother’s 18th birthday weekend I had drama rehearsals everyday from 10:30-3:30 and it was very intensive and involved loads of dancing and singing and in the heat we’ve been having in the UK recently it just added to how exhausting it was especially as the windows aren’t very useful as they open directly onto another building and we weren’t really allowed the fans on during rehearsals because they’re too loud and nothing can be heard over them. I always came back from rehearsals and committed my time to lying on the sofa in an exhausted heap. I know lots of this is sounding like I actually had the opportunity to blog but it’s very hard to be motivated and think of good posts to write when it’s really hot and you can hardly keep your eyes open – I’m sure most of you understand this.

I feel like my time away from blogging has been a really positive one because when I started I never expected much to come of it but very quickly my followers started to build and I was committing to writing a post a day and I was getting great feedback but then the more followers you get the more pressure there is to not only write as often as you’ve promised but to also write to the same standard all the time and publish a post at the same time everyday and it can become quite daunting. I am in no way complaining about my follower number or the amount of amazing feedback I’m getting, I just really feel like I needed that time away from blogging to properly take in everything that has happened on my blog in only two short months and to be able sort out a few other things in my life. And now I’m back, I’m not planning on making huge changes to my blog or anything but I can now come to it with a new sense of motivation and desire to succeed with it and I can hopefully kind of push the stress and pressure out of my mind and I am also going to start scheduling posts as much as I can whenever I get the opportunity so I post more often – so watch this space!

And lastly I would just like thank all of you who have continued to follow me, even during my absence, you have no idea how much that means to me or how great it is to be part of such a wonderful and supportive community. I promise that I will post more regularly from now on – hopefully.

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

Life Update #1

Hey guys, so this post is probably going to be really short as it’s late and I need my sleep as I promised myself that this year I would work towards a happier, healthier me… blah, blah, blah you’ve heard all these kinds of things before.

Anyway, I thought I would just give you a short post explaining a little bit about what’s been going on in my life lately and why I haven’t been posting as much as I normally do or as much as I would like to. As I’ve said before, I do have tons of ideas kept in a notebook that keeps getting updated everyday but it’s just finding the time to actually write the posts. I don’t really want to become one of those bloggers who has the potential to write some really amazing posts and actually writes posts that could be amazing but are actually just decent because they couldn’t or didn’t commit enough time to it. Now I’m not saying that people are lazy as I know how busy life gets, I’m just saying for me personally, as a blogger, I would rather wait until I had the time to write an incredible post than try and make time in my day for it only to have it turn out half the quality. But I am hoping to start a bit of a Blogging Tips series this month where I will talk more about my thoughts on good blogging skills/tips etc. in an attempt not to sound big-headed as I in no way am (and I hope I don’t come across that way!).

Last month (July) was actually a pretty exciting month! I had some great time with a few friends both in person and over the phone. I seem to have become much less socially awkward around people I don’t know all that well this summer and have been spending quite a lot of time getting to know people which has made me really proud of myself.

I started rehearsals for my youth theatre’s summer play and that’s going really well! I learnt all of my lines this morning and I am just really enjoying being in the show. The play isn’t the best one we’ve ever done and I don’t really understand it all that much but it’s still fun and it gives me an opportunity to socialise during the summer which I didn’t used to get all that much and I really hate being socially isolated in the summer. I used to hate the summer exactly because of this fact and since joining my youth theatre I look forward to it continuously after summer ends and before it starts again. It’s going to be a great show! I can’t wait until I get to see a full run through. This year I don’t have all that many lines and not as many as I usually get (again, not trying to sound big-headed) but I actually really enjoy the parts I have and I think I’ve been learning a lot more about acting from having smaller parts, as crazy as it seems. I guess it’s because I only have a very limited amount of time to actually enjoy being on stage doing what I love, so I put a bit more effort into it.

Another exciting thing that is going to be happening in my life very soon is that I’m going to be making my own short film, which is something I’ve never done before and I have absolutely zero experience in it but it’s for course work and is something I really want to do. It’s going to be a lot of hard work and effort especially given that there are lots of other units within the course which are going to be difficult, but hopefully it will all be worth it and I’ll have an amazing film and a qualification at the end of it! Very exciting!

Tomorrow I’m going to be posting my July Favourites post so keep an eye out for that! Also, let me know in the comments if you would like to see more Life Update posts!

Make sure to like and follow!

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

 

 

New Phone!

Hey guys, so I am actually writing this on my brand new phone – pretty cool right? I don’t usually write posts on a phone and I’m not about to make a habit out of it but I thought I would write this post on here just because I can 🙂 

I’ve had a phone since I was about nine years old. My first phone was a really tiny pink phone that couldn’t do anything other than texting and phone calls, then I got a Samsung that was one of those push up phones with a keypad behind the screen if you know what I mean, after that phone I’ve always had a BlackBerry and to be honest for the period of time that I had them – five years maybe? I’ve been completely obsessed with and in love with them because I just love them so much, however we all know Blackberries have basically been bust for a good couple of years now and their features are some what limited – by limited I mean they basically do absolutely nothing that current day teens actually want, I can hardly get Twitter to work let alone anything else! So after a long hard think I finally decided to get a new phone; I got a new Samsung Galaxy J1 and I’ve oly had it for a few hours and already I am in love with it, I know most of you probably have iPhones so to you this phone probably seems really rubbish but to me this is like a whole new telephone world! I’ve never had a touch screen phone or a phone that could have all the apps I now have on my phone so it’s incredibly exciting for me!

I also managed to get this phone completely free with my contract and I’m so happy I decided to make the switch after all these years! I already know I’m not going to regret my decision! 

Anyway, this was really just a post to talk about my new phone and to test out the new keyboard on it as I haven’t had much opportunity and what better way than to write a blog post for you guys?

If you enjoyed this blog post please give it a like and if you aren’t already go and follow me – I promise I usually post more interesting things than this! 

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂 

Life Got In The Way

Hey guys, sorry, this is only going to be a short post and not a proper one at all. Today life just got in the way a little bit, I spent quite a bit of the day on the phone to my friend as we hadn’t spoken in ages and I spent some of the day in the town centre doing some bits and pieces.

Overall today has been a good day, I also managed to do some music practice; something I fail to do every day on a weekly basis… (don’t tell my teacher!). It’s now really late and I’m quite tired – although I now fear that it is too hot to actually go to sleep… damn the British weather.

Tomorrow I might go for a run and I will definitely be tidying my room, I also have to do some research for this project I’m currently doing which should hopefully be quite fun (I don’t care what you think of me, it will be fun!).

I think that’s all for today, I’m going to go to bed now, it’s so annoying that I didn’t get to write a post today because I had one specifically planned out for today and was really looking forward to writing it, oh well, things happen. I have a lot of stuff still left to say though about life and everything in general and it makes me so happy and motivated! I thought I would start a blog and very quickly run out of ideas for things to post but no! I still have so many ideas and things that I want to do and it just makes me so excited for the future of this blog!

Sorry it was such a short post, I just couldn’t stand the idea of not writing anything today so this is what you’re stuck with, less so because of my followers and more so because you know that calendar thing you get in your stats that goes different shades of blue depending on the amount of posts you published on a particular day and it stays grey if you don’t post anything? Well I just can’t stand seeing it grey – last month I posted everyday except one day and so there was one grey square and it really annoyed me so I’m hoping that doesn’t happen this month, because after all, I am a daily blogger!

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

R.I.P World

All week, as it’s been leading up to the EU referendum my brother has been making jokes about how the 23rd of June will be the end of the world, I kept telling him not to be so silly and that it wasn’t going to be the end of the world. However, now that we’ve actually got the results in and I know that people have voted to leave above remain and David Cameron has resigned it does feel a bit like the end of the world. I don’t know what to expect from my future anymore or what to expect from the world anymore. I’m not a Conservative supporter but surely Cameron is better than Boris Johnson or Michael Gove? So at first thought I was excited that David Cameron was resigning because I hate him and he’s responsible for this referendum, he’s responsible for all of the consequences that come from it but then I realised we might end up with someone even worse than Cameron in government and a good point made by my Mum was that if we have a general election now the votes will probably lean very far in the right – I think UKIP might even be voted for a hell of a lot more in a general election. Not enough to be in government but to get quite a good amount of seats in parliament.

I read a statistic on twitter earlier on today that said that 75% of the 18-24 year-olds voted remain. I was really surprised at this but it also made me really angry because young people are going to be the most influential people to this country in the future and yet we’ve been voted against by the people who won’t properly have to deal with the consequences of their vote long-term. I believe that if 16-17 year-olds had been allowed to vote then we would have had a majority remain vote and that breaks my heart.

I’ve only had an interest and followed politics since last year’s general election, before that I was slightly too young to properly understand it or really understand the effect politics had on my life. However, since last year I have had an interest in politics and have been following the EU referendum debates and campaigns since they started and yesterday night I was sat on the sofa at 10PM with BBC One on watching everything as it played out and I’m still watching it now – admittedly I went to sleep for about four hours but that was in little snippets after I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

I don’t trust that the people who voted leave properly understand what they’ve done, I’m not saying that leave voters are dumb or don’t understand things, I honestly believe that they think they’ve made the right decision and they think they understand but unfortunately the campaigners for leave lead their campaign on a load of lies that unfortunately many people believed.

The thing that concerns me most is that no matter what way the vote went – and obviously it went leave – there was always going to be a split in our society. David Cameron, by agreeing to this referendum, has created conflict between family members, friends, colleagues, neighbours and just the fellow members of our society. If remain had won then there would have been loads of conflict between them and the people that wanted to leave, now that leave has won there is going to be loads of conflict between them and the people that voted remain because ultimately this was an absolutely HUGE decision that effects our country and our lives forever – there is no way back now, we’ve voted leave we have to leave. No matter what the consequences we’re stuck and the people that voted remain can foresee these consequences and will be scared and angry to watch these consequences come into play and by definition we will be angry with the people who voted leave. Some people will take their anger to a higher level than others and it may even cause violence and in fact we have already seen a crowd of angry people standing outside Boris Johnson’s house shouting and booing at him. We are now an independent country, yes – good for us if you voted to leave – but we are also a country that internally hate each other! And I don’t know what the future holds for both my life and for the life of this country as a result of this.

To me, the majority of the leave campaign was lead on racism and anti-refugee comments and by people who promised less immigrants and faster NHS services because the foreign people would stop slowing it down (I don’t know how they’re slowing it down but hey,) the truth is though, that actually, the reason people don’t get seen to and treated quickly in NHS hospitals is because the government decided to cut their funding and put the money somewhere else, we would have faster NHS treatment if the Conservative party prioritised money better than they do. I feel like our country will now been seen as a racist, anti-social, unfriendly country that don’t want anything to do with other countries and I guess that is true. Yes, I know that there were other things said by leave campaigners but you cannot deny that actually the majority of their argument was about foreign people. I feel like people who are foreign and currently living in our country, or black people currently living in our country will become scared and feel unwelcome and they will also become angry at us for treating them so poorly.

It was also said that a leave vote will reduce terrorism in our country but I feel that actually we may have put our country at more risk by creating all of this extra conflict between the current citizens of the country.

Please leave any comments you have about the EU referendum down below, I would love to read them and respond. If you enjoyed this post or agree with it etc. please give it a like and if you aren’t already then please click the follow button.

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂