Cleaning is one of the most satisfying activities on earth.

I am the first to put my hands up and say that in general, I dislike cleaning. Hoovering is exhausting, dusting feels like it will continue ad infinitum, and putting away laundry and washing up is the bane of my life.

But on occasion (such as today) I commit myself to cleaning, and once I’ve resigned myself to putting my heart into it, it’s the most rewarding way to spend the day. I’ve hoovered, cleaned the hob, and washed the car today, alongside bits and bobs of other things. Cleaning the car was the high point, because I still live in a very studenty area, and until I started it didn’t occur to me that they are probably really not used to people doing such suburban things as cleaning their cars (at least, that’s what their faces suggested).

I think being in a clean environment gives me a sense of peace – which is odd given my propensity for collecting and then hoarding tat. That’s just life I suppose.

Yesterday, I wrote about equality, and how to fix the world we need to stop being afraid of those who are different from us.

Today, I remember why it isn’t as easy as that argument. I’ve remembered how easy it is for me to say “forget the past, move on from it, don’t be held back by how you’ve been defined before”.

It’s easy for me because I’m white, and free, and well off, and educated to a high level. We are the people who are always asking everyone to get over it, or forget what happened in the past because it’s holding us back. We are the people who need to remember what a huge thing we are asking of the rest of the world.

The argument in itself isn’t wrong. We should be defined by our differences, but not judged for them. We should embrace our individuality and recognise the right to individuality which every other person has.

But we also need to respect that part of that individuality might be borne of oppression, rejection, and hardship.

Sorry for forgetting that guys.

In today’s world it’s fairly easy to believe that the notion of equality is dead.

Firstly, it’s nowhere to be found. Despite the Utopian rhetoric of Communist leaders I think we can all agree that it’s not going particularly great for a lot of people in those parts of the world. Across the developing world there are still ongoing battles to allow all kinds of minority groups all kinds of rights, be it right to religion, language, education, or the most basic of human rights.

In the developed west we love to kid ourselves that it’s different, ignoring the fact that there are still innumerable issues with xenophobia and racism, continued imbalance against women, poor care for the elderly and infirm, and horrific issues of mistreatment in schools and prisons almost equally.

Historically there have been visionaries across the ages who have seen something better for humanity. The people who have pushed for change have aspired to a time where our differences don’t divide us or define us.

…or have they?

Ask many activists now and the message is quite strongly that our differences do define us. It’s more offensive to suggest you’re “colourblind” than to keep quiet and harbour mildly racist tendencies. Women are slammed daily for their disengagement with feminism since it’s either “a gift from our predecessors” or “degrading to those women across the world who still don’t have rights”. Let’s not even get into the debate of who gets to sit where in gender politics when we add in trans* and non-binary individuals.

The reality is that we are still in the infancy of understanding others. Our differences absolutely define us, and always have, and across human history we’ve had a combined yearning to protect that which we consider “ours” and to embrace those who aren’t “like us”.

The flaw with that progression is simple. We have stopped properly understanding what it is that constitutes a threat. Rather than protecting ourselves from wild animals or the elements (as presumably our ancestors did back in the days of caves and skins), we’ve begun to protect ourselves from things which we assume to be a threat. One time, one person with a different colour of skin was unfamiliar with a local custom, and in a flash we paint all people with that skin colour as savages and barbarians.

History is important. I’m not arguing for a forgetfulness of the past at all. But we need to start re-evaluating the basis for our relationships with some and our fears of others. To really reach a place of equality, at some point we have to redefine the way we approach those interactions and to judge each individual not on their differences or similarities to us, but on their merit.

It is a terrible aspect of humanity that we are so scared of everything, even ourselves.

I don’t think it’s fair to describe me as lazy, per se.

I’m just one of those people who is quite adept at being busy doing nothing (as the famous song goes). I think many people who frequent the internet are the same, because there’s something totally joyous about going down the rabbit-hole of the internet – except for the point where you pop out an hour later and realise you’ve missed dinner.

I have to be quite disciplined, I’ve found, in terms of making to-do lists and then sticking to them. Bullet journalling helps me a lot with that at home, and at any one time I’ve got at least 3 to-do lists on the go at work. But nevertheless, I still find myself wandering off into the spiral of

[Case in point right here. I started writing this 40 minutes ago and then ended up on Twitter and now I’ve remembered what I was actually doing]

SO

I find myself wandering off into that spiral of something mildly interesting which leads to something else amusing, and before I know it it’s 7pm and I still haven’t left work yet because I’m trying to finish the perfect document template (my life is Rock n Roll).

This all being said, all of the wandering thoughts and general procrastination are a big part of me. Yes, you have to learn how to control it, and yes, sometimes it’s not the most useful of tools in my box, but it does mean I rarely get bored or stop being motivated towards SOMETHING (maybe not the useful thing, but something), and that’s probably a good thing. Here’s to a bit of healthy procrastination.

Every day is an adventure. Some of them aren’t massive, but there’s something adventurous about every new day on Earth, really.

Today’s adventure for me has been reclaiming my bedroom from a mouse. Said mouse made it’s invasion on Saturday morning, at about 3am, and since then it’s felt like I’ve been living in the bizarre world of Mousehunt (which is an excellent film by the way) – I’ve been hearing things which aren’t there, and turning the world upside down trying to find the mouse without harming it.

I got a nice surprise yesterday morning you see, when I lifted my pillow to find mouse underneath. It’s made me somewhat twitchy, I’d say. He was cute, but not a bed-buddy.

Another adventure of the day has been learning quite how much Boyfriend lets drop under the bed. After the Mr Mouse incident it seemed wise to just flip it over and make sure mouse hadn’t made a nest underneath. Mouse had not, but Boyfriend on the other hand has amassed almost £12.00 under there.

It’s a tiny adventure, in the grand scheme of things, but that doesn’t stop it being and adventure all the same.

To begin with, let me be the first to admit that blogging has not been high on the 2016 agenda. This is my only post in December, following only one in November. Must try harder.

2016 has been a pretty immense year, as all of the various news outlets and social media will agree. Plenty has gone wrong, or “not-my-version-of-right-thank-you-very-much”, and I think that beside the news, I’ve managed to let that impact on my commentary on here quite significantly – because I enjoy a good rant – but anyway.

I initially thought that a really “bloggy” thing to do would be to write a list of 2016 things which were good about this year, but seriously, that is a lot of things. Two thousand and sixteen things. It’s basically too many things. So I’m going to write a list of my top 20 things this year, and then embolden number 16. You can decide if that’s meaningful or not.

1 – Eating amazing food at the Man Behind the Curtain.
2 – Making candles
3 – Not having hypermobility or ADHD
4 – Two weddings of two very close friends
5 – Getting a new(ish) job
6 – Writing 6 months worth of a bullet journal
7 – Turning 26
8 – Finishing my Masters and getting a distinction
9 – Meeting Boyfriend’s adorable niece
10 – Spending a lot of time painting my nails
11 – Making cakes for the work baking league
12 – Having my cousin and lil bro come to stay, and being the awkward grownups at a gig
13 – Drinking lots of coffee and having lots of chats
14 – Finding new secret nice bits of Leeds
15 – Spending a night in a penthouse suite
16 – Making plans of all kinds
17 – Watching some exceptional theatre
18 – Rediscovering reading
19 – Being a trustee of the excellent Northern Opera Group
20 – Eating ice cream with friends

All in all, a lovely year. Not to mention this, which I’ve been meaning to share for a while. I drew a little sketch of Boyfriend and me, and he made it into a fabulous little canvas, which is hanging above our bed. So I guess that makes me an artist now.

Happy New Year

So it’s been a while since I was this bad at blogging. But since the entire world is acting like Armageddon is upon us, I think I can probably be forgiven.

I’ve been absent because I’ve been busy, and tired, and doing-other-things (like visiting a massive fan or two in Liverpool, I cannot recommend the Mersey Tunnel tour highly enough, no, I am absolutely not kidding)

I’ve also been struggling to decide what I should write about. There’s so much going on in the world, but it’s almost all bad, and I’m honestly a little bit tired of ranting about driving, and weather, and politics. It has felt like there is nothing nice to talk about, and really that’s all I want to think about right now. So I’ve started making an advent calendar, and baked a lot of cakes, and spent a lot of time playing Skyrim, listening to Critical Role, and buying lots of new boots.

I think my desire to vanish into games or TV probably speaks volumes for the world outside. It’s grey and rainy, all the good food is unhealthy, all the good people are passing away, and someone let the fascists back in charge. Oh, and my boiler has died. One of my greatest blessings however, in true “count-your-blessings” style, is that I have things to help me worry less about the above. Distractions like work, and friends,  and theatre.

Now I cannot promise that any of the above;
a) means I will write any more
b) makes any real sense

But it’s good to acknowledge the good things even when the world seems particularly gloomy, and I couldn’t think of a better place to do that than here.