On Giving No Fucks

HAPPY NEW YEAR MY LOVES!

I hope 2017 is everything you hope it will be and more, filled with success, happiness and good health. I’m still riding high after seeing the Women’s March tweets, filled with love for all of the nasty women who marched. For everyone who walked the walk, after talking the talk. Who showed up and made it know we won’t stand for this, not in 2017. If there’s one thing that’s going to happen; a lot of noise is going to be made.

Oh god, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this, hasn’t it? I feel like a toddler precariously balanced on two feet; grabbing at tables, sofas, legs of adults. Hello. It’s been a while.

I think it’s fair to say 2016 was a big ‘un in terms of progress for this girl, as well as the world as we know it. Or did know it. Now I’m not so sure, feeling once again like a toddler feebly attempting its first steps. This progress has both moved me forward and brought me back a good few steps. I’m tentatively getting back in to the everyday grind of New Lou as I lovingly refer to her, gosh it feels good. Today I picked up a book on not giving a fuck, but my friend Tori told me to put it straight back down, because I might as well have had wrote the book. So I still give no fucks over things. Although new developments have occurred in my life which do use up a lot of my fucks for that day. An allotment of fucks. It’s a good system to have in place, do you have one? Do try it.

And I’m now finally with a desk to write at my new flat (four months later, oh god has it been so long?). My last post was on Rising Back Up after the world had the last bit of stuffing knocked out of it by 2016. At this point, I was still going back and forth over a lot of things in my life. Uni in 3rd year has kicked me down more times than once, the deadline stress has at times been, frankly, unbearable. And it’s so easy for me to put myself down over being stressed at uni, because there are people with much faster paced jobs and those doing their 4^th year dissertations (you’re very much in my prayers). I don’t think of uni as my ‘job’ even though I’m a full time student on my concession card, and really I should be dedicating as much as my time as possible getting this degree. Otherwise it’s a waste of time, something I muse on regularly. I subconsciously put the stress of uni on the back seat, when really it’s so bloody stressful at times. Especially once you factor in jobs, money, the economy, politics, President Trump being a THING, the whole disappearance of the climate change and LGBT pages from the US Governments website, the planet dying. Can you tell I’ve had a lot on my mind?

This last year has shown me how malleable everything can be, how fragile our world is. Decisions have been made over things I never thought I’d see in my lifetime and the stark living of Adulthood has me staring down the barrel end of mother of all messes. Its not how they tell you in the movies.

There is a but though.

But even through this, I’m finding solace in how easily it is for things to break down. Make things more manageable. It gives me a wider view of all of my options, my wants and desires. The stuff that is my own and not anyone else’s. It gives me freedom to know things can change tomorrow. It gives me power. The ball is in my court now. It always will be. Even if I think it never will be again.

Right now I think this semi-hiatus of blogging is disappearing. Like a muscle I haven’t moved in so long, I’m thinking of my words with an audience in mind, editing the best I can because 2017 is one I’m pulling together and will be making progress. Real, tough, unrelenting progress in whatever shape it takes. Words that have been scribbled on till roll at work and stuffed into pockets, the words tentatively typed into note form on my phone. They’re all coming slowly together and finding a place to set themselves down. I’m finding my voice again; on the stuff I really want to say. And I’m thinking of trips I want to take, friends I miss so much, clothes I will buy unashamedly and how much I’m loving the silent confidence in the way I carry myself. How it’s all coming back together once more.

I might have paced back in forth in terms of progress in 2016, but I’m intact. Whole. And I think there never will be a day that I’m rocked back to a shell. I’ve faced worse. So have you. Right now everything is yours for the taking. The life you want to live? Have it. Take it for yourself. It’s yours.

It might sound cheesy and far too simple, because it is. There’s effort behind it. A whole fuck ton of effort you’ve GOT to care about. But here’s the catch – You’re going to spend your whole life doing stuff, so putting effort in will occur over and over again. Make some damn peace with that. It’s not going to change.

You’ve just got to ask yourself - do you want it enough?

Hell yes I fucking do.

Lou x