Who are you?

Who are we? No, seriously, do we actually have any control over who we are? Are our dislikes and interests distorted from reality?

If I'm honest, I think they are. Every time I put some clothes on- after much debating as to what my outfit will be - and go outside, I instantly regret the choice that I made. I look around at people wearing garments in such a fashion that they closely resemble the images targeted for that very purpose. I look down at myself and think, I don't look like them, what must they be thinking of me? I want to look as effortlessly cool as the women who walk around with messy hair and vintage shades and doc martens. I want to look different, like they do, I want to look the same.

And there we have it, the distorted view on what we must look like, what we must buy. If you want to be different, you have to be the same. This idea that the idols at the height of fashion whom everyone lusts after and longs to look alike are being so controversial and making such a statement that everyone and their mother is doing it too. But doesn't that defy the point? Aren't you supposed to look unique? Isn't your appearance supposed to look like who you are, not anyone else? There isn't any individuality or creativity in fashion anymore, it's all about what everybody else is doing. There is no choice.

Because I look at clothes and think I'm meant to be wearing that, I should buy it, but I just don't like it. Which is wrong. If I don't like something then it's not me, I should be wearing what makes me happy, what represents me. Nothing unique is ever appreciated anymore. Even the word indie has completely lost its meaning. You think you're being different, you really do, but what you're actually doing is exactly the same as everyone else. Fair enough if you genuinely enjoy what the rest of the world seems to as well, it's not your fault it happens to be popular. Even I am partial to the vintage fad that's taken over the western world. It's fine, because I'm completely obsessed with history and the past, so it only makes sense that I love periodic clothing.

Just make sure that what you want and what you like isn't just because you saw an over edited photo on tumblr that looks suspiciously similar to the rest of the images on the website. Be you, always, and never give a damn about what people might think. I make that mistake often, and it never ends well.

Exams

Exams; a traumatic ritual enforced onto unsuspecting young citizens by means of torture. There to 'test your intelligence' and squeeze barely functioning adolescent brains into weeks of revision and then pressure the poor souls to sit for an hour answering questions with no relevance to actual real life. Also situated, for pure satisfactory effect, at a time when the sun shines brightly and beats perfect sunbathing/going outside heat down onto the labouring individuals locked inside with books full of words they can't comprehend. Thousands of wasted trees scribbled on with symbols of silent torture, millions of wrists aching with the continuos action of writing, each of the foreboding persons suffering, hidden away from the carefree adults without a GCSE in sight.

Unless you are still unaware, after reading my melodramatic opening, that this post is about exams, then please leave now, you clearly can not relate. If you did feel the pang of an ever painful yet distant memory, or ached inside as you recalled that you too were also suffering then read on, I'm here-not to save the day- but to rant about how stupid, pointless, condemning and oppressing these worthless pieces of paper really are.

When these hellish examinations are finally over and you receive the much anticipated results that will supposedly dictate your future, your nerves almost exceed the height at which they had reached during the papers, which is largely ridiculous. Although the results are an enormous answer to how your adult life will begin, the rest of your life is not under their influence and nor are your choices. So this daunting stress and pressure we are presented with is mostly a load of, for lack of a better word, poop. You do not decide what you are taught or forced to have imprinted into your mind, you go to lessons, listen to what will never effect your life, leave and then have a test on what you can vaguely remember. You mostly get good results if you enjoy the lesson, which unfortunately relies on the way in which the subject is taught. This turn of fate is unfortunate because some old gits decided that being passionate about a subject is sinful thus enforced courses to rot your brains. You are incredibly blessed if you have the fortune to be situated with a good teacher because the subject that you are taught is more likely to stick. The lessons are no longer about what they contain, but about whether you can remember worthless facts and write them down.

I do understand, however, that there is a good reason behind this seemingly awful period of a teen's life. The large amount of work does have its advantages. It teaches you perseverance and self control. Making you realise that to get what you want, you have to work hard. This, as much as I'd like to deny it, is an important lesson to learn whilst growing up. It doesn't test your intelligence, it's far from it, instead it puts your work ethic to the test, just giving you a little bit of what life has to offer.

If you had the perfect balance of learning how to work and being passionate about the different subjects the world has to offer. There is so much out there that we could be educated on, learn to love the universe and its many surprises, but they're held back and we are left unknowing whether we enjoy the things we are taught. Life is not all about the work, it's about the things we work for, the things that come from work and that, more than anything else, a passion for education is a most valuable trait.

Bullies

As I sit in my kitchen in front of my computer screen tapping away at the keys hoping for something bearably coherent to magically appear, I realise that these words that I write may not be to the liking of every individual. Some of those individuals will even feel the need to express the disliking of my opinions and observations but fortunately, I have yet to await that occurrence. I don't have an issue with others expressing their views about something they disagree with, I do it myself all the time. The thing that really  gets me agitated, however, are those who just criticise for unknown reasons without stopping to think about how the poor receiver may take to the harsh words or maybe to ponder on how they could give constructive advice. Instead of just brutally flinging ruthless hate at them left, right and centre and going under the pitied name of 'trolls' they should take time to stop their raging fingers from burning the keyboard with anger and take into consideration not only what they inflict on others, but the reputation they bring on themselves. Of course, this is totally only ever going to happen in an ideal world where everyone is nice to each other and unicorns roam the land pooping out rainbows. I understand I'm never going to strike gold with ridding the world of hate singlehandedly with a blog that very little read, but I can at least hope to raise awareness to some of these devious, thoughtless trolls and give them something to finally take in and analyse for once in their lifetime. Or maybe I'm just feeding their greed by talking about them, adding to their undeserved fame. Either way, it's something I want to talk about and am going to continue doing so.

They do not only exist in the myst of the internet nor are they a new phenomenon, but have been trolling the world for as long as time itself. They exist in society as bitchy school girls, horrible bosses, nasty old men troubled by time, unsociable critics who have nothing better to do than to tear apart the livelihood and works of innocent citizens. Story short, they're everywhere and they will never cease to prevail unless everyone else stops doing anything, anywhere ever. The name for them when not on the virtual world of the internet is bullies. Simple, nasty, infamous bullies who are so insecure that they feel the need to attack anyone happier or better off than them.

But Mollie, I hear you say, why are you writing about bullies if they're never fully going to go away? Alas, I am beginning to wonder why I'm even bothering as well, it's not like they're going to read this blog anyway. It's not as if with the mysterious power of words I can magic the bullies away, but what I will do is cease to feed them. We continue as a society to back away from those who think they have power, let them get on with it, and when we do fight back we give them exactly what they want, a reaction. Many mistake I have made by replying furiously to snide comments on Youtube, not stopping to think that I am actually spoon feeding them what they wished to receive. The action we really need to take is to sit back and ignore them. Not quiver under their control, or fight back thinking we're doing the world good, just watch them slowly disappear as everyone loses interest and they become invisible. This is hard, and I know it, to not want to defend against yourself as they bombard us with despising criticism but it's the only way to safely dispose of these hideous characters without adding to the blazing fire of abhor.

I now sit safely behind the delicately thin screen of my computer (no longer in the kitchen but on the sofa) that disguises itself as a protection to the truckloads of hate constantly a concerning danger making a promise to myself. Never to feed the troll again.

750 Words

Recently discovered, or been enlightened about a fantastic website aimed at everyone, for writing 750 words everyday. After you've written the 750 words about whatever you choose, the website then takes you to your statistics, showing you things like your writing speed, how long you took to write it, what you were concerned about during writing it and other nice little touches like that. It's a really well designed website, made by a really nice guy who clearly has the right idea, and is perfectly simple to use yet wonderfully interesting and clever at the same time. A great idea for everyone of any age and profession to use it for whatever reason may occur. You can even keep it as a diary if that's what you wish, and if you usually find it difficult to keep a journal this website is great at driving you to jot down something everyday.
 A friendly and fun to use tool, I highly recommend it for anyone.

www.750words.com 

It's Okay to be Gay.

Gay marriage. That seems to be the topic everyone's talking about. The right to marry a man or a woman no matter what sex you may be. It seems pretty simple, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong indeed. Some, for a reason that I do not understand, have managed to find issues with this very simple, very natural way of life. They want to prevent same sex marriage because "marriage is God's gift and should be between a man and a woman". This is of course relying on the untrue fact that everyone in the modern day is Christian or conservative, wanting to keep "traditions". They're not. People have moved on, it's over, everyone's equal. Or not, even though the majority of the population probably don't care whether someone is gay, female or black anymore because we've all realised how stupid we were being, there is still a group of people spread out into different countries who are not willing to accept the fact we're all human beings.

In my personal opinion, being gay is both a choice as well as a natural desire. Gay rights have allowed those who prefer the same gender to choose whether they ignore it, if they really want to, or to pursue their instinct and love whomever they long for. I think we all have it in us to be homosexual, because it's basic human desire to be intimate with one another. It's basic animal desire, actually, it is one of the nicer attributes of life. Love and sex isn't just about reproducing, it's about the need to be touched and to be intimate with each other. We're not solitary animals, we're sociable, we would be locked inside our own heads if it weren't for everyone else. It's just that some people feel more attracted to certain genders, like their own, than they do the opposing sex. I don't believe it's a 'thing' that's decided the day you were conceived, it's the way your subconscious decided you preferred to desire.

What really shocked me recently, however, is what a teacher told their religious studies class, in my class, about what "changing the meaning of marriage" would do. At the time, I was confused as to whether they were telling a fact that certain groups of individuals would then fall into a dangerous category or whether is was just prejudice. They told the class that if gay people would be allowed to marry and not just have a civil partnership, thus changing the belief that marriage is between a man and woman, then issues such as pedophilia and incest would "fall under the radar". The way that the teacher said it meant it was difficult for me to judge whether they were stating someone else's opinion or their own but after discussing it with my parents and looking back, it became clear they were using a very prejudice opinion to sound like a credible fact. During the class I did find myself thinking, and expressing that I'm pretty sure you can't put homosexuals and pedophiles under the same classification I was, worryingly, beginning to believe that this was an actual issue. I was under influence because of my ignorance of the matter. That's never happened to me before.

I now realise that the judgement the teacher had made, made very little sense. Changing the traditional definition of marriage no longer shared by every individual to a more open minded one will not suddenly change the law. Disregarding old fashioned Christian views will not allow older men to marry young children. Incest is already something that happens without being noticed and a change in a word's meaning will not spontaneously make the law allow family to marry family. The whole statement is absurd and a gigantic leap in conclusion that was quite scarily made to seem liable to an entire class of ignorant youth. When the pupils would argue points against the judgement the teacher would simply reply with "but you're opening a whole can of worms" or something along those lines as if it were an issue that actually existed.

This not only caused me to experience a possibly non deliberate form of indoctrination but quite extreme prejudice as well. I've already exercised my belief of not believing everything you're taught but  now I have properly witnessed an untrue fact being taught as if it were real. I think, in a way, it's good to be made aware of these possibilities and to stay individual and independent with whatever someone tells you, question it, question whether you want to believe it. More importantly stay away from discrimination and fight for rights such as gay marriage because then you're a little bit closer to a more equal world.

READ. NOW.

I love reading, I just don't do enough of it. I could blame it on the fact that my laptop and the mysterious, wonderful world of the internet distracts me but it mostly comes down to the fact that I can't be bothered. And that, in itself, is awful. It does depend on what book I'm reading at the time, whether it's so good I never want it to end or whether it's a book I picked out in a hurry and criticise it the whole time I'm reading, which ever one dictates on how long and when I'm prepared to read it. The most likely time is just before I go to sleep, which is also the most likely time I'll keep myself awake exploring the internet, Youtube is the worst culprit. It teases you with it's recommendations with enticing thumbnails and wacky titles that are just too good and intriguing to ignore. I can stay up for hours at a time on my laptop doing nothing significant or remotely educational/important as time whizzes by like someone turned up the speed of minutes. It's not good for me and I need to stop it.

Reading is one of the most fantastic things human beings do in the entire world. It can educate you on any subject single handedly, teach you new vocabulary without you even realising, feed the imagination with wonderful and exciting stories that are never to leave your memory. You can marvel at the works of people who've crafted words into their own masterpieces and tuned the techniques like that of a paintbrush, painting the page with magnificent images that every single person in the world can make their own. Different books can mean anything to anyone. The stories are what you make them to be, the characters are given to you for you to play around with sculpt them to who you wish. The information can be taken in in whatever way you want to interpret it, whatever YOU want to learn. That's what makes it so special, like art, it is never one specific thing it is a thousand things in single sentence. It is you written on paper.

So why I don't do it every waking minute of my existence, or why some decide they dislike it, is beyond me. To be fair, the printing press is slowly bidding farewell to the world and giving its revolutionary fame to the new and fast growing web which has more and more blogs, articles and stories uploaded every single day. Which I do read, every single day just not in the same way as books. Kindles are fast becoming widespread throughout the population as books are digitally downloaded onto the almost paper thin technology. Which, in my opinion, completely defies the point of a book. Books smell of the story they carry and are weighed down with the marvellous words they hold so the longer I can put off a Kindle the better, for me. What I need to do is balance the reading I do online with the reading I do offline so that every day I ingest a good amount of words. If the amount of reading I did online was a great amount then it wouldn't matter so much how little I did with books, but it isn't and both are irritatingly low.

I am fully aware of the fact this is completely and utterly down to me. It is not down to the fact that I was not brought up that way (which is certainly not the case with a Dad who practically eats books for breakfast, lunch and dinner) or the fact I don't have time or even that my school don't encourage me enough. I am the one complaining that I just simply don't read enough, therefore, I simply have to start reading... More. I just need to search harder for books that allow me to lose myself in stories I feel withdrawal from when they end. Fall in love with characters so much they become real to me. Cry when characters die as if they had been a life long friend. And most importantly just allow those stories and people and information to inspire me in ways I never imagined.

The world doesn't read enough. I've now decided. Everyone of every age needs to read a million times more, because then, I fully believe that we, as a race, will feel much better for all the words we take in.

Pluto isn't even a planet anymore.

You know what? We live in a bloody beautiful world. It's pretty obvious, once you look, but people seem to forget that and dig themselves into holes of depressing subjects that actually have very little effect on our lives. We also forget this and seem to have some sort of disconnect from the brain which makes us think it's ok to litter. Everywhere. I mean every time I see litter in a particularly beautiful place, more than anywhere, I want to cry. Of course, there's always my mother ranting on about it until we get into the car and then ten minutes into the journey that has that effect on me but it's still wrong. There are bins for a reason. Ok?

Back to being depressed about tiny, weeny little things and making them very big things. I went on holiday this weekend to Okehampton, Dartmoor where I have now decided is my second favourite place in the world. It was beautiful, I was with good friends and lovely people, I laughed so hard it ached and I did things I wouldn't normally get the opportunity to do. It was amazing, basically. And on the way back, speeding along the motorway with my dad way over the speed limit, I felt so happy and grateful just thinking about what I'd experienced. It made me realise how lucky I was to know and meet such nice people and do exciting things. I realised that the little things which somehow managed to get me down, were so insignificant compared to how happy I could be. Yes, I still have homework to do and tidying up and school to go to, but none of those matter or seem as vexing when you have people who make you laugh.

There are wars, inequality, discrimination, poverty, starvation and injustice happening every minute of every day in the world and whilst these are very important subjects it's surprising how upsetting stories dominate the news. I am all in favour of getting impactful issues across to the public in order to raise awareness, I would shout about them to anyone who cared to listen if it came down to it, but we need not intend to make the matter worse by depressing everyone. We need to inspire people, instead. Have stories about fantastic people who give a damn about these issues and do something about it, raise awareness at the same time as lifting everyone's spirits! I genuinely believe we, especially as a nation, are notorious for complaining because that's what we see in the media all the time. No wonder everyone seems down most of the time, they've been indoctrinated with news about everything that is wrong.

Go outside and see for yourself that we're all actually pretty damn lucky to even been given a chance to live on this planet. No matter what situation you're in, you always have a reason to be happy. You're alive. Happiness is a state of mind not an object you can buy. When you feel down, smile and go for a walk in the countryside or if that isn't possible, just smile.