Thursday 12 January 2012

Sunday 8 January 2012

New Year Revolution

I've joined the channel 4 "Try Something New" New Year Revolution! I'm going to do a small mission every day throughout January, and this is where I'm gonna talk about it.
I started a little late, on the 4th day, but here are the things I've done so far:

The first mission I completed was to say "yes" to everything I was asked that day. I happened to have woken up feeling really dizzy and generally not good that day, so the only thing I was really asked to do was stay and bed all day and dry to feel better. As you can imagine this was pretty easy, and so towards the end of the day I decided to ask myself to do something. Going out in public by myself is something that I sometimes find really difficult, I can usually do it but it makes me feel anxious and stressed. So I decided to ask myself to go to the shops, for no particular reason, and try to be as relaxed about it as possible.
It actually went surprisingly well; I made myself walk slowly and take in the air and the things around me, not to get worked up if people were walking near me and not overtake them to try and get away from them, and not get angry when people in the shop were being slow or getting in the way, and it worked.
I ended up feeling way better from the fresh air and just getting out of the house, so far so good.

The second day required me to smile at everyone I saw. This challenge I found much more difficult. Partly because this is the kind of thing I find hard anyway, I generally tend to avoid eye contact with people, particularly strangers, but this challenge made me realise how many other people in the world feel this way. Almost all of the people I attempted to smile at wouldn't look up from the pavement, or even deliberately averted their eyes as soon as they accidentally met mine. Another reason this wasn't the easiest challenge was because, I was doing my smiling while I was walking into town to meet and friend, and then I got stood up. So I wasn't really in a smiling mood. (She made up for it with lots of lovely sweets and chocolate the next day (: )

Mission 3, "The chef's surprise", asked me to go to a restaurant and order something completely new from the menu. Being a poor student, and not a big fan of eating in public places, I decided to go for a cheaper, supermarket option. I already had plans to see Rachel that day, so she helped me with the verdict on our chosen exotic food: the dragon fruit..



I also bought dried goji berries, but I wasn't really a fan. Because of their colour I was expecting something like cranberries or raspberries, but they tasted more like weird raisins? Maybe I kind find a recipe to use them in.

Yesterday's mission was to try a new form of entertainment, and again I decided to go for something cheap and that didn't involve me going outside: tv. So I watched an episode of "Take Me Out", which is this weird dating tv show where poor single men are paraded around and judged by overly dressed up and fake tanned women. Not something I will be watching again. But it did make me think that I should check ITV player for things to watch, rather than just my usualy BBC iPlayer and 4od, so that's something.
I might not have been a great advocate for this revolution so far, but it is fun (: My profile is here.