The great adventure

Yesterday, Tuesday 28th May, was my last ever day as an undergraduate. I woke to an email from my lovely Nan to wish me all her love on my last day as an undergraduate student. The day was a busy one actually - I completed an online child safeguarding course and I went to University to submit the paper documents for the last assignment. I returned some of my books and had a supervision meeting for the mentoring I do. I then went to Harrogate to spend some time with my mother. I arrived at my Mum's house to a cup of tea and freshly baked cake - I say 'freshly baked' because it was literally right out of the oven and it was still warm. Only a mother can do this in the way that she did. Oat, raisin and ginger cake. I know I'm most definitely not one for over-indulging mid-afternoon. Perhaps  I relax a little in the evening after a glass of wine or two when suddenly the nutritional and calorific content of 'treats' seems somewhat insignificant but this brief hour at home with my mother and tea and cake was really just perfect.

Matt and I then went on a mini road trip which finished in the pub and we watched the sunset. I was given another opportunity yesterday... One that I really hope my efforts were good enough to ensure a positive outcome because it almost seems like too much of a good opportunity to pass on. But I guess all life ultimately is for any of us is the great unknown. The great adventure. We are great travellers. We just learn to live and somehow we summon enough courage to take risks and to enjoy the ride. Do we create the ride ourselves or is it already marked out half way? I like to think that we create it entirely ourselves, and to some extent yes - we really do. But when we rely on someone else to book us for that job or to employ us or to see enough 'potential' in whatever it is that they look for, there's only so much control we have. There is only so much we can do until that decision is lifted from our hands.

If I am booking a modelling job, I cannot change my height or my freckles or the shape of my face. My hair colour and the shape of my body remain the same - they are me. Therefore the client either likes what I bring and books me, or they opt for some other girl who does offer the thing they are searching for. If I am looking at other jobs or placements or Masters or training programmes, there is equally only so much I can offer. The other half of the deal is up to 'them'... Do they trust me? Can they take a risk with me? Am I the 'right' one? These are the things that we can never really fully determine or shape for ourselves. We do determine our own life - we are self-governing autonomous beings, whether we believe that or fully live as we are, that's up to us. But within the life choices we make, we inevitably rely on others to meet us at some place in the middle.

To write about yesterday's adventures -  last night's sunset and the beautiful views, it seems almost like the description of another lifetime as I'm sat in my house and it's considerably grey, cold and rainy outside. Today I am catching up on emails and life. It feels like an important day, even though evidently I'm not doing very much as it's 2.15pm and I am drinking coffee in 'home' clothes having not even left the confines of my own house.

A bank holiday and a completed degree

If any day ever felt like a Sunday, it's today. It's not Sunday, it is in fact just gone midnight on a Monday evening. However, we have been graced with a bank holiday weekend and so the majority of England has been enjoying what's been a three day weekend of sunshine. This is a generalization, I know. Weekends and bank holidays for me are always odd - I see my friends reaching Friday night and celebrating a weekend because it's finally some time off, away from weekday commitments. This is not really what I do. Weekends in my world are for the most part just like any other day of the week. I don't work in a 9-5 job, nor do I plan on doing so any time soon so I am just as likely to have a Wednesday and Thursday off as I am a Saturday or Sunday. Not that this is a bad thing, it just is what it is.

However, today does feel like a Sunday because I have many things planned for tomorrow that are usually 'important Monday things'. Most of this extended weekend has been spent in my house writing essays, which are now completed (yes! my degree is completed!). But being a person of the sun, after recovering from the all-night party which was the summer ball and actually being on target with this final assignment hurdle, I made a few ventures outside. I am so very fortunate to have this all on my doorstep. It pays off to take a few moments once in a while. Time is always of the essence, but it oddly becomes easier to manage once we take a step back.

For Ruth and Bryony

On Thursday evening I was seated in the second row of the audience alongside my mum, my sister Frankie and Matt. We were there to support Ruth and to watch my sister debut in her very first fashion show. Firstly, it was very refreshing to be on the 'other side' of the madness for once. Not to be modelling but to be relaxed and watching the show.

Bryony was walking for one of my really good friends, Ruth and her beautiful graduate collection. It was wonderful to see Ruth in her element doing what she does best. This redheaded woman has incredible talent. I always feel so excited for everything the future has in store for her because she's possibly one of the most driven yet grounded people I know. I remember when we first met doing a modelling competition and how much our lives have completely and utterly changed and been filled with such hard work and exciting madness since that day. It was also really an evening of immense pride to see Bryony walking and looking so beautiful. It's not that she was modelling - God knows I know that the reality of fashion shows is very much different to the image we see. But it was that she is my younger sister and she really just did an incredible job.

At the finale of the show, Ruth walked on hand in hand with Bryony to take her final bow and have pictures taken. It was one of those beautiful moments that I wish I could capture forever. A make up artist friend of mine once said that the thing they love most about this job is that good friends can come together and create something uniquely beautiful. This finale was one of those beautiful moments.

'Endings'

This week is panning out to be a really intense week. (aren't they all?)
It began on Monday with an 'ending' afternoon at Uni - the last ever time we'll all be together in that setting. It hasn't really hit home yet because we still have assignments to complete and the summer ball tomorrow evening. Also, it's an odd kind of ending because I'm not really leaving. Neither me or my close friends are going anywhere. But it most certainly is the end of a chapter and a goodbye to many people. One thing that has hit home is something I've been aware of all year. That's my awareness of just how much these people belong in my heart.

I remember starting University three years ago and being stubbornly adamant that I'd turn up to lectures and leave straight afterwards. I didn't 'need' to be in York, i didn't 'need' more friends and I was there to do my degree and return back to the safety of my own separate life in my own home. I'd be OK with taking time off to be in London or Manchester to work because work was work and that was my job and that was my life. I worked on my assignments and I achieved good grades - I still do. And I still work and travel all over the country/world. But life has now become something that has so much meaning. Once I stopped fighting against the 'separate' lives I lived and accepted that each aspect of myself contributes toward my whole being, I concluded that life is not to be resisted but to be embraced . Life is not imbalanced and I don't have to feel constantly at a waging war with myself. Yes, life is madness. Life is busy at times but it works because what I do is a reflection of who I am. In fact, it wouldn't work any other way.

I am aware of running the risk of sounding too 'flowery'... I like to think that if I didn't make the decision to come to University here, I might have somehow found my way to somewhere similar. I like to imagine that I'd be doing what I'm meant to be doing. But the truth is, when I set out on this journey I didn't know where it would lead. I didn't know I'd find myself at home. I'm not sure I even knew what 'home' meant. I didn't know I'd be preparing to do a Masters and training to become a qualified counsellor. And I didn't know that some of these people would have such a huge place in my heart. But I am so fortunate enough to have spent three years with people who have been part of discovering the greater good that life has to offer.

I am reminded of these words:

'Be faithful to that which exists within yourself'
- Andre Gide

It's difficult to know what to say when 'thank you' isn't anywhere near enough.

A belated happy birthday

My beautiful sister turned fifteen at the beginning of this week. Here is a belated happy birthday wish to the most beautiful fifteen year old I know. We spent a grand total of two hours together for her birthday, in which I gave gifts and cupcakes and I couldn't stop thinking about how time flies. How for someone so young, she has managed to become a person of youth, naivety and maturity all in one being. 

Happy belated birthday Brys... 

Train travelling and the present moment

On the train early evening today and I was genuinely stunned with the world. I know I am a lover of the sun. And I know it doesn't always make sense to some... I find some odd sense of eternity in the sunlight, especially when it's setting or rising. I think it's one of the most unique and beautiful things the world has to offer. It's a constant. It sets and it rises and it's never the same again. You know when you're looking at the sun, that what you're witnessing is both constant and dependable yet exclusive and rare. It has such incomparable beauty. It's everything we wish for in this world and it's right there above us, all the time.

This is beauty. This is what we miss out on when we live with only half of ourselves truly living. To be aware of our present is to be fully alive and connected. Even if in just fleeting moments. I guess that by noticing these things, despite the madness of life and the feeling of wading through marshland at times, I must be living it at least. I'm reading a book called 'The present moment', which most likely can be held accountable for my thinking today. And my thinking has inevitably informed this blog post which I have no doubt in my mind seems rather idealistic. This thinking is not at all in tune with the stress that seems to be manifesting itself all too persistently. But perhaps this awareness is a good stress-management technique that I seem to uptake without even trying. I'm sure it's much better for my body than the wine and coffee intake which is ever increasing also.

24 hours documented in pictures