You do you hun!

Leave a comment


“Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you.” Dr Suess

This year’s mental health awareness week theme is body image and, while this is such an important topic, I wanted to actually talk about mental health in the workplace.

I work for a PR agency that specialises in Financial Services which, let me tell you, is an industry that puts people through their paces. Its tough. They work long hours and are expected to be near their phones / laptops at all times. I know they get paid well and there are other industries that are much worse but I’m not trying to make a point about that.

This awareness week has me thinking about how little I do to look after my mental health. I am very conscious about living a healthy lifestyle, I go to the gym, play netball, eat well and all that #basic London girl stuff, but what do I do for my mental well-being. Actually, nothing stands out really. Self-care is so important so this week I booked myself a mani and pedi which obviously was great for my hands and feet, but it also gave me a bit of time to myself to completely switch off and not worry about anything. IT WAS GREAT!

I am lucky that I can afford to do this every so often and trust me I will make sure that taking time for myself becomes a habit. I have spoken previously about how I don’t like staying in by myself on the weekends and doing nothing but actually what I have come to realise is that I need to spend a couple of hours a week looking after myself.

It doesn’t matter what I do, as long as I can spend some time being switched off, from work and other things, some time doing something that is just for me, some time checking in with myself mentally then I should be on the right track to a healthy mind.

I think more workplaces need to be conscious of their employee’s wellbeing. A lot of the time I think people forget that work takes so much out of people. We all know holiday allowances aren’t that long and unfortunately there is nothing we can do about this so it’s all about using them in a way that makes the most of the time we have.

Last year I had a big holiday booked in September and another one booked in October which meant that most of my holiday was already used. This was not ideal and to be honest it’s not something I will do again because I was going mad. I like my job so it’s nothing to do with that, I just think everyone needs time off more regularly. This year I decided I was going to take more long weekends off and spend my holiday that way. Which hopefully will leave me feeling refreshed more of the year rather than running myself into the ground until the big holidays.

So far, I have had a few days here and there but I am about to start planning the rest of the year and make sure I get time off when I need it (starting to think I might need some asap).

Anyway, to finish up, just make sure you make time for yourself.

That’s all I have to say!

😊

So, that went well!

Leave a comment

My second post comes 4 months after my first. Did I expect this to happen, no. Is it entirely my own fault, yes? I haven’t prioritised this as much as I was hoping too and, in the end, it has meant a 4-month gap between two posts. I’m not going to make excuses and pretend I have been busy enough not to write anything because I haven’t.

Sometimes life gets in the way and we forget to do things that we initially set out to do. I am ok with that and am going to promise myself to TRY and do better.

In a way it’s perfect because it leads well on to what I want to write about today.

Pressure.

We all feel it in some form, but this weekend it really hit me hard and I didn’t even know it was pressure to begin with. This weekend (a bank holiday weekend) I knew I didn’t want to do too much. I wanted to save money and chill to make sure I felt refreshed for a new week at work, at the gym and in general. I went out with some friends on Friday night, which was really really lovely, and the rest of the weekend was spent cleaning the house, going to the gym and doing life admin (I HATE LIFE ADMIN).

Quite quickly I began to get serious cabin fever, I have never been one of these people who is happy to spend the whole weekend alone in the house doing nothing. To be honest it stresses me out and makes me start to question things. The cabin fever then morphed into a small amount of anxiety about not having enough friends, the friends I do have not liking me enough to do something with me at the weekend, not going out to all these cool places in London, jealousy of my housemates who were going out and about, and not having a boyfriend to rely on when I need someone to harass into doing something with me. BLA BLA BLA, even writing this I am thinking ‘get over it’. But, it’s how I felt at the time and I could have let it slightly spiral and get me down.

I called my best friend on Sunday when I was heading to the gym and I said to her something along the lines of, my friends are pissing me off. She asked what they had done and I couldn’t answer that. They hadn’t done anything; I was just feeling down and decided the logical option was to blame someone else. This morning I then text another friend saying I missed the gang and feel like we don’t hang out anymore. His response, ‘Na, I mean we don’t hang out much as a full group sadly. Think its just because everyone is busy in their own right.’ This was comforting, but also made me think I don’t have enough friends. Why is everyone else busy and I’m not. Do I rely too much on that one group of friends in London? Maybe its time to branch out.

I’m not entirely sure where this all came from and its not really something I have experienced in this form before, but it did make me think about why I felt this way and I have decided its pressure. Pressure to always seem busy, pressure to have loads of friends, pressure to have a partner, pressure to look like you live the best life in London.

I’m not sure it’s all possible.

I have always been bad for comparing myself to other people, I think this comes from being competitive but also wanting to be the centre of attention all the time. Social media obviously pays a huge part in this. I thought I never looked at social media in that way, however, I think I do get jealous of everyone being out and being on holiday all the time with loads of different people and generally looking like that are having the time of their life. I know social media is an unrealistic representation of ourselves, but it’s hard to separate real life from what you see on Instagram.

I’m not sure I have become reformed and would now be able to take myself out for dinner, or spend the whole weekend doing nothing. But what it has taught me is that, I have great friends, I have a fabulous family, I have wonderful housemates and I need to appreciate that more often and STOP thinking that I need more of everything. I also need to learn to spend time by myself. Whether that means going for a walk to grab a coffee or going to a museum or art gallery by myself, it’s something I need to do so that the next time my friends are all busy (and rightly so) I don’t get myself into this tizz. I just treat it like any other weekend and spend some time with myself!

P.S. any tips on this would be more than welcome 😊

Here goes nothing …

Leave a comment

I have been sat at my computer (in the office, great start to 2019!) trying to decide what to write as my first post on this blog. I have been wanting to start a blog for a while but have never had the gumption to actually do it until now. I have thought about what I want this blog to be about but I keep coming up blank.

There is no set plan for the blog, I do not want to be the next famous fashion or lifestyle blogger but I do have three objectives I want to achieve:

  1. Improve my writing – I have always wanted to be a better writer and as I am currently working in PR it is important that I can string a sentence together!
  2. Track my year – Now I’m not a ‘new year new me’ type person but I do have goals that I want to achieve this year and I feel that a blog, along with my diary etc, will help me track my progress and look back on my year. I’m sure there will be another post on my goals for this year at a later stage.
  3. To do something different – Again this I not a ‘new year new me’ thing but it all about challenging myself and trying something different. If It doesn’t work it doesn’t work, but I may as well try.

So, it’s probably time to introduce myself!

My name is Megan, I am 24 years old and I currently work for a PR agency that specialise in Financial Services. I live in London and probably and could be described as ‘a basic b*tch’! I live in Clapham, I cycle to work (although this is a new thing), I LOVE a bottomless brunch and most weekends you can find me at a bar with my friends… pretty typical huh?

Throughout this blogging journey I will share posts of everything from fitness and workouts to food and what I got up to on the weekend. I am sure there will be times when I don’t write something for a couple of weeks and others when I write more than one post a week. I do not want this to become a hard task so am not putting pressure on myself to treat it that way. I only want to enjoy writing about my experiences and hopefully do some different things on the way.

So here is to the start of 2019 and what I hope will be a great year for myself!

X

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton