New Job!

Sorry for not posting for a month, I've been mega busy...

One of the reasons for that is that I'm preparing to return to uni very soon, and I have to give a talk to my whole department a week after I get back =S, then I'm probably going to a conference a week later and giving a different talk there!

The other reason that I've been busy is that I applied for a new job, then I attended an interview day with group exercises and an interview panel. I'm immensely happy to say that I've got the job!

I'll be working for Birmingham Museums Trust in 2 of their historic properties!

Sarehole Mill

(image source and info about Sarehole Mill here)

Aston Hall

(image source and info about Aston Hall here)

The position is Visitor Service Assistant, which means I'll be doing a wide range of things including tours, 'gallery duty' (where you have to stand in one part of the museum to answer questions, assist people and make sure no one is trying to steal things!), working with school groups, working on reception and the shop and helping in the cafe. I'm working 11.45-4.30 6 days a week, my day off is Monday. I'm going to keep my other job with Moseley History Group too, so I'll be working 10.30-12.30 on a Monday. This means I'll be working a total of 27.5 hours a week, plus the 20 hours I'm supposed to put into my PhD. I think it'll be tough simply because I don't have a day off (unless I book holiday), but this job is an excellent opportunity for me to get experience of working in a museum and it's only until November, so maybe I can get something with less hours after that!

I was worried that this blog would get neglected but because I'm going to be so busy, but then I realised that I'm going to be working somewhere where it's safer/easier to wear pretty clothes and they have no dress code! I'm going to be able to wear nice things more often, which will definitely encourage me to blog more =]

Also I'm hoping that since by necessity i'll have to have a routine for getting my uni work done, so i'll have more of a clear idea of what free time I can work on DIY projects in, so hopefully I'll have more things I've made to show you all too!

Right now I'm very excited about the future! I hope you will all bear with me a little while I get settled in though; I start my new job on April 13th, so expect erratic updating until May!

Of self-doubt and looking for the courage to reach out for my dreams

Here's a wonderful Sylvia Plath quote from The Bell Jar:

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
This explains very well how I feel about life right now. All of my figs contain the same lifestyle (with a home and books and nice clothes and enough to eat) and relationship (with Ash), but the way of supporting myself financially in each is different. I'm scared to reach out for the fig I want though, just in case it's a figment (pun very much intended) of my imagination, and my fingers pass through as though it was as insubstantial as smoke. The fig I had intended to pick fell to the ground long before I was tall enough to reach it.
My new dream is a reaction to finding out that the 'safe' academic job I had envisagedprobably got axed in university cut-backs somewhere around the time I started my degree (hence the fallen fig), because I began my degree in 2008, just as the recession hit. This new dream might be an entirely unrealistic one, but it's impossible to tell, because no-one has tried it yet. I'd be a pioneer and that's scary. It would take a great deal of commitment, faith and hard-work.

I want to finish my PhD. I want to make a living for myself as a freelance historian and cemetery researcher. I want to market myself via a blog and social media and all the other wonders of the interneet, and raise awareness about the plight of historic cemeteries. I want to raise funds for restoration projects I could be employed in. I want to get involved with cemetery trusts/friends groups and preservation societies. I want to do genealogy research and local history projects. I want to take a Master's course in Human Osteology and work on rescue archaeology projects like crypt clearances. I want to do archival research or digitisation of cemetery records. I want to curate museum exhibits or exhibitions about funerary practice.
I WANT TO DO ALL OF THESE THINGS. Or at least as many are humanly possible! Can someone find me 3 extra hours in the day? Or the secret to immortality?

In some ways I've already taken the first steps on this road and that should give me more faith in myself, but there are days when I can't ever believe that I will finish my PhD, let alone get a job in a related field! Most days the idea of doing free-lance work of any kind fills me with so much dread that I just want to go back to bed and hide! What if I end up sponging off Ash and my parents for another 5 years because I can't support myself?

But I have to try, don't I?

It's that or give up on my PhD right now, before I waste another penny and go and get a full time soul-crushing office job...

I'm not going to lie, some days that seems like a very attractive option, especially when I feel like the fact I'm currently on a leave of absence is a sign of weakness and proves 'I can't hack academia', but then one of my friends reminded me that the last time I took a break from education was before I started school when I was 4, and that during my degree I didn't even take a proper holiday (I worked during all of them), and I felt a bit less guilty.

It's all a haze and whirl of emotion and self-doubt right now, but...

I've decided to try.

I'm posting this as a pre-emptive apology if my blog gets neglected over the next few months. I'll be busy trying to built a ladder up to the fig I'm dreaming of!

The new arrival

So last weekend I went to London to meet my little nephew! I didn't manage to get too many pictures, babies are hard to photograph I think. I didn't manage to get any pictures of Logan either (because 5 year olds running around with light-sabers are even harder to photograph =P)

I'm going to do the proud auntie thing and post the ones I do have here though anyway.
If you dislike babies or me being mushy look away now! Don't say I didn't warn you!

This is my dad being a proud granddad, although I still think he's too young to have 2 grand-kids! He best enjoy them though, he's not getting any more from me =P

This is my brother's mum (he's my half bro)

My sister-in-law Susy with the little one:

And finally my brother San being a totally modern dad, tablet computer in one hand so get through a hard level on Angry Birds Star Wars for Logan and baby in the other =P

Sometimes I'm sad that due to the practicalities of parenting my brother and sister-in-law never get to goth up anymore. No one could tell that Susy used to lend me her purple lipstick or that Dan has cyberdog t-shirts that are nearly as old as me from these pictures =P Mostly though I'm just glad I have 2 nephews to spoil rotten!

I don't have any pictures of me with Lucas either, partly because those are on dad's camera (if any of them came out) and partly because I only held him for a few minutes. Babies can sense your fear like horses apparently. He knew I was scared of dropping him!

As we go round the sun again

I've stolen the title of this post from a song written by the band my college boyfriend was in, because I liked the lyric so much it's stuck in my head for 5 years (I'd post the song, but none of them would thank me for it).

I hope that you all had a lovely holiday season and are enjoying the beginning of 2013. I hope this year brings much joy and happiness to all of my readers!

I'm very much looking forward to the next year which I hope will be full of exciting things like fieldwork for my PhD, volunteering with my local history group to help digitize their archives, presenting my first conference paper, attending a short course about Human Osteology (one of the modules that got cut from my masters), setting up my Etsy shop, maybe even buying a house with Ash (excitement, terror, feelings of bank account emptiness approaching =P)

Normally I don't make New Year's resolutions or make them and forget them by the end of January, so this year I'm going to make it simple for myself:

Look after yourself better.

I've not been eating properly, often skipping meals, eating too much junk, not enough fruit and veg. I need to change that. I can see it's effect, not just on my body, but also my mental health. I suffer from hypoglycemia; I get low blood sugar easily, it runs in my family. When I was young with low weight and a high metabolism this meant I had to eat every 8 hours or start to shake and get dizzy. Now my metabolism is slower and I have larger fat reserves I don't get sick so easily so I thought it was less important to eat regularly. Recently though I've noticed that when I skip meals I start to get generally unwell after a couple of days, especially that I get anxious and depressed more easily because I'm putting unnecessary stress on my body which is fighting hard to keep my sugar levels normal.

My weight is higher than my 'ideal', but right now I'm unconcerned by that; although I feel big and cumbersome I know that I'm still within a normal BMI range and objectively still quite small. I do however feel that my fitness really is too poor (I get out of breath walking uphill far too easily!) so I am going to try and do more exercise. I'd like to swim more but unless I can fit it into my daytime schedule it will have to wait until the night's are lighter (I hate walking home from the pool in the dark; it's not the best area of town). In the meantime I will try to do some simple exercise like hula hooping or sit-ups at home!

I'm going to try to do a few other things to look after myself better too like change to a sulphate free shampoo; I recently had a bad reaction to a face-wash which contained sodium laureth sulphate so I'm starting to think that the reason my hair is kind-of crappy is because my scalp doesn't like it either. I might even get wild and try to remember to take my multi-vitamins =P

I was going to post lots of pictures of the home-made gifts I gave to everyone, but realised I forgot to photograph almost all of them before hey got wrapped! None of the necklaces and only a couple of the sock animals got photographed, oopsies!

Here are the pictures I did remember:

The  cat was for Anya; I like making cats, although they take such a long time, because I made the pattern myself - I didn't think any of the sock cats I saw online looked cat-like enough!

The owl with the top hat was for Ed who just got engaged earlier this year, at an owl sanctuary! I made Flick, his fiance, that I've known since school, an owl with a veil to go with it! Cute huh? I wish I had a photo of them both together.

Trying times and looking to the future

I'm sorry that I've been away for so long, I've been going through some major changes  in my life and blogging wasn't the top of my priority list. Also certain posts on this blog remind me of things I want to forget right now.

I know that this isn't a personal blog, but I think I need to give you all at least a brief explanation for my absence and why certain images/text on this blog will be edited.

I just realised that in the last couple of months I have been lying to myself, with an increasing rate of failure. My relationship was poorly chosen and badly timed. I wanted Joe to be someone he wasn't and could never be, and the longer we spent together the more obvious it was that our dreams were not compatible. I was still in love with someone else; my ex boyfriend, the person my dreams for the future were tangled up with.

I'm ashamed of myself for making such bad choices and for hurting people in the process but I'm also very lucky; I have a second chance; my ex is recovering from his depression slowly and letting me into his life again. We are going to fight very hard to see past all the pain the last few months has caused us both and more forward.

I'm going to take a little more time away from my blog. I'll be back on the 1st October with many outfits for my winter theme of Magique Victorienne and other random posts about DIY, decor and cemeteries.

kittens!

I was going to post yesterday with something cool but I got distracted by the adorable kittens I'm looking after for my friend while she is on holiday.

They don't like me typing because it makes the light glint off my ring so they come chew my fingers with their tiny sharp teeth.

I'm typing this post in small sections when they fall asleep!

In fact photographing them is pretty difficult too! It's hard to take a picture when a kitten is playing with the strap on the camera!

Any time I get up one of them steals my warm seat too, making it hard to get to the laptop!

But they are so damn cute and so endlessly entertaining that I don't mind =]

I hope you are all having a good weekend and I will try to do some real blogging tomorrow night!

Life, Love, Hair and Hats

Heya, first let me apologise for not updating for a while- I've been extremely busy and all over the place physically and emotionally.

Hats:
I meant to upload these pictures over a week ago, because I want opinions.
I love top hats:

But I also resently brought this hat; its basically a slightly modern style bowler hat, from H&M. What do you guys think? Does it suit me? Please ignore how odd my feet look in this picture.

Some happy news:

I've cut my hair. I'm donating it to Little Princess Trust to make wigs for children with cancer.

Before:

After:

Please excuse the lack of makeup- I was worried that having 22cm of my hair cut off might cause me to weep...
So my hair is now shorter than it's been since I was 3 and I've dyed it dark auburn (pictures to follow when I get the dye off my neck...)

The Bad news:

I don't want to dwell on my personal shit, because that's not what this blog should be about, but I thought I should mention it anyway.

My boyfriend of 2 years broke up with me yesterday. It's a bit of a shock because we've been so happy, but just lately he's not been himself. A friend thinks he may be suffering from clinical depression. Whatever the cause, he doesn't want to spend time with people any more, and thinks it's unfair on me to have to wait around for him to be sociable again. He won't get help, he's content to live in his room and be a hermit outside of work. He's convinced that's the real him and he has to force himself to be sociable at all. I love him, he loves me. I always thought that would be enough, but it doesn't seem to be for him anymore. I can't help but feel it's my fault, that I've done something wrong (again; this isn't the first relationship I've had that disintegrated after 2 years due to mental health issues; maybe I send men insane? At least the last one let me help him through stuff for 18 months, this time my help is not wanted AT ALL)

I'm just mentioning this in case the heart-break, crying, feeling numb etc get it the way of me posting, or all my posts are mopey for the forseeable future.

At least it's sunny today, and I'm spending the evening with good friends.