How Do I Stay Motivated

Syke! I am sorry if you came here expecting a list of things that I do to stay motivated, and to be honest I had a list, a long one. I can tell you go for walks, listen to music, read a book and take a long soak in some bubbles in the tub. But I'm not going to because for me ways to stay motivated are just ways to distract myself that I still feel like shit and I'm going to do something else to cover up what I really should be doing. That's me, my belief. I still scroll through Pinterest for hours looking for that perfect motivation quote and I will read other peoples story and yes that makes me feel like I can carry on, but some day and only some days after I've done all that, I still feel like a pile of turd just a bit bigger. JUST BEING HONEST!

Motivation is one of those things that are great at the beginning of what ever you starting, whether it be losing weight/getting fit or quiting smoking (I've done both) but the truth is motivation doesn't last, it starts to come and go and that's when discipline comes into it, but we still need that motivation, and that's when we start to look in other places other than ourselves for it. Some days I really have zero and sometimes minus that. Some days I feel like staying in bed pulling the covers over my head and forgetting I'm there for the day, week, month, those days happen. They happen a lot to me but there are also ways to get me out of my phunk.

For me I'm standing in a boxing ring with two corners filled fighting each other with me in the middle, in the red corner I have motivation, determination and self-confidence and in the blue corner I have, self-doubt, depression and zero confidence. Some days they are sitting nicely in their corners quiet but then some days they are at full battle, arms throwing blows that get caught by me. It's a battle between good and evil and whenever it happens there is no telling who will come out of it notorious.

Sure you're most probably thinking, well you have a choice to get up and workout or to just get up in general but unless you have suffered/suffering with depression and have mental health problems then leave now, you will never understand this.

I can wake up and want to work out so bad that I make myself feel so sick because I'm putting myself down before I've even started, I'm telling myself yeah go ahead workout, you're still going to be fat and feel like crap. THAT HAPPENS, IT'S REAL! And when you're in that battle you don't look back at when you started and you don't see the changes that have already happened. All you see is yourself and how you are now and seeing how you're not where you want to be.

I have many mornings began a workout that my body has arrived to but my mind is saying 'fuck no'. I have completed workouts that I haven't been 100% there for, it happens and it's a strange feeling because you're there forcing yourself to sweat, feel a burn but you're completely detached from everything you're actually doing.

So I'll tell you honestly what my motivation is. I know what I want, and I know I need to work to get what I want, if I want to lose weight I need to workout hard and push myself everyday, change my eating habits and portion control. Change my lifestyle to a healthier one. That's what I do. This is also something else I do.

I SWEAT

Yes I sweat, I workout hard to lose the unwanted weight I have. I sweat so much that it will be felt dripping down me, when I'm doing planks, the sweat is hitting my exercise mat everyone would think it's raining. I sweat so that I can write little motivational things in the stuff. (I know it's gross but hey ho) I sweated so much once that when I sent a picture of my drenched top to my mum, she thought I had tie-dyed my top.

I work hard so I can have the body I want.

Those days I have that are filled with zero motivation are very few and far between, but they happen and they suck. I hate them and I wish they didn't happen but they do. It's hard and I manage somehow to push through it but some days I can't and I just want to say that it's ok. Your motivation will disappear every now and then, no-one can be focused and fixed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. Congratulations if you are, drop a comment on how that would be much appreciated.

This post went hay-wire rather quickly and I apologise if it makes no sense. I have no real solution to how to get your motivational juices flowing other than to just keep pushing through it. Push through the bad thoughts, the self-doubt, the days where you are feeling lost and not sure whether you can carry on anymore. Just stop, take a step back and think about how far you've come, look around and see other people on the same journey as you. See what they have done and how they've accomplished their goals, see what they have done, see that it is possible.

X

Movies That Get Me Grabbing for the Klennex Every Time!

*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*

Now there will always be a film that will have you reaching for the tissues every single time and I want to celebrate those movies, well the movies that always get me right in the feelings. I could write a list of hundreds of films that get me teary or films that would have that single tear fall down my cheek but no I want a list that puts that lump in my throat, ones that get me so bad I'm struggling to breath and cry at the same time and there is a few.

Steel Magnolias

Now if you want a film that's going to make you cry so bad one minute then literally the next second be laughing your head off this film is for you. I love this film so much it's full of so many important messages we could all learn from. 1. Friendships are so important in life, the girls or dudes in your life that are there by your side are maybe some of the most important people who you'll ever have in your life. 2. Sometimes life will hand you a crate load of lemons and no strength to squeeze them. It doesn't matter whether you're young, healthy anything can happen. 3. Your family is always there for you, hopefully even when you need a kidney from one of them.

You can't go wrong with this movie and if you don't cry you have no soul, I'll just state that now. And there's Dolly Parton, Sally Fields and Julia Roberts and others. Go watch it if you haven't it's great.

Pearl Harbour

Now this is the first of two Ben Affleck movies on this list and I think it's all down to him that the tears start rolling. In this movie it's his reaction to realising his childhood friend is not going to be coming home with him when the war ends, that he'll have to take his friend home to the woman who loves him, a woman he loves and although he feels betrayed he is his friend and the idea of his life ending is too much. If that made sense as you read that, congratulations, I had no idea what I was saying.

I enjoy movies that entwine real life events with stories of fiction, if they are done well they can be a great film and seeing as it's one of my favourite films ever, it did it's job well.


Rocky I,II,III,VI,V 

I am a huge Rocky fan, they are some of my favourite films and I know a lot of people will question by mental stability when they read this, yet I have a soft spot for the Italian Stallion Rocky Balboa. I was brought up watching these movies and I just enjoyed watching Rocky and as I got older the more I understood about the message each movie had. Something a lot of people don't see because they see it as only a boxing movie. Be gone haters!

Anyways I can tell you exactly when and where I will cry in all 5, number 6 doesn't get me at all which I'm fine with. Rocky I - when he loses to Apollo and his all beaten and calling for Adrian and she's calling for him and yeah that happens. Rocky II - when Adrian wakes from her coma and tells Rocky to win, shivers every time followed by the best training montage ever. Then the end when he wins the fight and he shouts 'Yo Adrian, I did it' *cries cries cries* and you can tell where I'm going with all the others.

Armageddon

Nasa if you're reading this, if there is an asteriod coming for Earth do not, I repeat do not send up Bruce Willis, do you hear me Houston?! - With that being said, this film is at the top of my favourite films of all time, you have all the great funny actors and a killer soundtrack by the awesome Aerosmith, what more do you need from a film. Maybe Owen Wilsons character not dying but I guess I already ask for too much.

That moment where Harry pulls AJs oxygen tube things off his suit to take his place, I had never been so angry and upset in my life. Well there's actually a moment before that, that gets me eyes watering, when POTUS gives the orders to over ride the nuclear war head that's up in space and Harrys daughter charges forward yelling 'You haven't told him yet, that's my father up there.' Trust me I did not google that, then Truman turns pointing his finger telling the general, 'This is one order you shouldn't take and you fucking know it,' BOOOM! I'm sorry I got way to excited writing that. This only proves one thing, I have seen this film far too many times.

Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is one of those timeless classics that you could watch over and over again, fast forwarding the scene though where he runs, I can't be the only one? The scene that gets my tears a flowing is when he finally gets off the bench and he arrives at Jennys and he introduces her to her son, which is revealed that Forrest is the father and it's the moment he asks if his smart and his standing tall, choked with tears in his eyes, shocked, proud and extremely happy that he has a son, that moment for me just makes the whole film tie together perfectly. It's such a beautiful movie moment that will always get me in the feelings every time.

So there they are the five movies that will forever having eyes producing those little things called tears. I don't even mind because they are all amazing films.

Do you have a specific movie that gets you reaching for the tissues when you watch it? If so leave a comment.

My Passions - My Words, My Stories, My Writing.

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie," - Stephen King

If I think about what I would be doing if I didn't write I truly believe it would be drugs, or I'd be a serial killer. I'll be completely honest now and admit some of my first stories ever written was ones of horror, crime and just general disaster. As I was growing up I had thoughts, thoughts that I put into words, I gave those thoughts to characters because they scared me, I didn't like them and I didn't know how to deal with them other than put them into a world I had control over. Thankfully I have grown out of those thoughts.

Now when I write, I write fiction but I put in real feelings, real emotions, although it's completely made up I want to provoke real emotion when people read it, that's why I love this Stephen King quote that starts this post. I don't know but I feel that you can write freely and honestly so much more if you're writing fiction, and because it is fiction you can get away with so much more. A lot of the time what my characters are feeling, are feelings I've felt sometime in my life but I've never been able to speak freely out loud about them so it's easier to give them emotions to fictional characters, and I'm ok with that because my stories are filled with all kinds of emotion no-one could tell between the real or the fake.

With my writing I want to get under the skin of my readers, I either want you to say 'that's not right, can't believe she wrote that' or say 'damn I needed to read those words,' I want to write that because that is what I look for in the books I read, I want to pull in the reader, make them think, make them feel, to me those are the elements of a great book.

When I was younger I wrote to escape life, now I write to create life, I want to create a world with great characters that will inspire, that will provoke, that's what I am always aiming for in my writing and the story I'm currently writing, I feel should do those things or at least I hope it will.

I don't really know how other writers write, I haven't looked in their process but mine is pretty simple, as I write I am playing it out in my mind like a movie, if something doesn't go well in my head then it doesn't get written down, trust me I'm not crazy. It's the only way I know how to write. Writing has been something that has grown along side of me from a young age and I don't necessarily know why or when I started writing but I just remember how much I loved creating worlds on paper, putting together conversation, imagining life and transferring them to pen on paper. Writing became something I felt I was meant to do. I'm not saying I'm great I'm just saying it's something I love and I'll work on it until maybe one day when I'll be great.

'Write the story you want to read, write what scares you, write what you don't know. Push yourself creatively to pull on the boundaries of your imagination, to write the most truthfully honest, fear filled, greatest story you'll ever write.' - Myself

As much as I can some nights write till my hand cramps, I can also spend all the time I'll spend on writing on Pinterest reading inspiration writing quotes and posts that guarantee they'll help me become a better writer.. That is procrastinating and it stops me from doing what I really should be doing. especially if I have one really good evening of writing then the next night it's as if I've forgotten how to hold a pen. 

'But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it's all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can't change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed. - Stephen King

My Passions - Throw me a Graphite Pencil and I'll Draw you a Pretty Picture

Passion   /noun

1. Strong and barely controllable emotion.
2. An intense desire or enthusiasm for something.

Now a lot of people may have thought the first of my passions would be writing but not really, not this time round anyway. I have been drawing since before I could write, it was something that seemed to come natural to me when ever I put a pencil in my hand, and from that moment I didn't stop I drew all the time and really I haven't stopped. My drawings have changed over time, the quality my technique but something has always stayed the same, my love to draw remains and I love it even more when someone wants to me to draw for them.

I could start a drawing at ten o'clock at night and sometimes not stop until it's complete around 5 in the morning, then it'll be time to get up for college so I would be walking round college like a zombie for the entire day, but I'd have a drawing done by total zoning out. That's what I've always been able to do when it's come to drawing, I would completely go into my own world and I would be in a room full of people and I as I drew it would become only me, that's what I loved about drawing. It was something I could do and be completely free from everything, just me, the paper and my favourite pencils.

When I go through my old drawings I would feel a little sick because I see just how bad it was, but it was all a learning curve for me, for me to figure out my drawing style and discovering how I best work. Here are some of my better early work.

Drawing was always something I loved doing for myself or for others on my own decision, but I got to a point once when I was drawing for others, commission pieces that were too much, not the actual drawings but the amount and sometimes the buyers, and I got to the point where I actually said I don't want to draw anymore, it wasn't fun anymore for me, I'd actually began to hate it. The one thing I enjoyed most in my life the one things I'd always thought was the only thing I was good at was affecting me in a way I didn't believe it ever would. So I stopped, I put my pencils away and I packed up my paper pads, I was done.

I don't particularly know what happened but one day I picked up my pencils and dusted off my papers and started drawing again but this time I toke it back to how I used to draw, I forgot about what others would think, I stopped thinking about what others would like, I began to draw again for me. I don't do it as much as I would like but I do little bits here and there and I enjoy it more now than I think I've ever done.

Here are a few of the pieces I did after that period of stopping.

Now if you've had something in your life you have been doing for so long and you had got to a point where you hated it and didn't want to do it anymore, it hurts. Drawing was and always has been a part of me, not just something I did, it was more than that, it was who I was and suddenly it wasn't but I'm glad it happened because now with two children and many other things on my plate when I do find the time to draw, I treasure those couple of hours and I put all of myself into that drawing.

Here is a portrait I drew of my daughter Mia, who I always said I'd never draw but I did and was pleased with the outcome, especially after having a break from drawing.

I will surely be adding Robyns portrait next to this one of Mia soon, when she sits still enough to get a clear photo.

Would a personalised portrait be a good idea for a GIVEAWAY once I've hit so many followers?

My Passions - 100 Things I Love

Now the 100 Things I Love part was inspired by a fellow bloggers post (found here) that I saw the other day and loved. It made me start to think about all the things I loved and seeing as I'm doing a 'My Passions' series throughout November I thought it would fit nicely if this little list came first.

I love lists and was excited to begin this so it's understandable that it really only took me all of the time I spent eating my breakfast this morning to complete this, so now as I type this up I'm deciphering incredibly bad spelling mistakes and complete vowel disappearances for this post to be readable.

100 Thing I Love

1. My man Nick
2. Our baby girls, Mia and Robyn
3. Watching Sunsets
4. Black and White Photography
5. Kind and caring people
6. Feeling sand between your toes
7. Writing
8. Swimming
9. Drawing
10. Hot Chocolate
11. Getting a high five from my 2 yr old
12. Hand wrote letters
13. Exercise (I know right, am I crazy)
14. Reading
15. Supernatural
16. 80's Fashion
17. The Ocean
18. My Journals
19. Dream Catchers
20. Strangers who become the best of friends
21. Books, Books, Books and Books
22. Ferrero Rocher and Toblerone (The King and Queen of Chocolate)
23. Dr Pepper
24. Sherlock Holmes
25. Coffee
26. Christmas time
27. Snow! Snow! Snow!
28. Pizza
29. Lana Del Rey
30. Fire (not in a Pyromaniac kinda way)
31. One Tree Hill
32. Superhero Movies
33. My Mum
34. Red Roses
35. The Beach
36. Avenged Sevenfold
37. Scrap-booking
38. The Colour Red
39. Confident people
40. Space. The Stars
41. F.R.I.E.N.D.S re-runs
42. Spinach (this is no joke)
43. Fresh flowers in Spring
44. The Backstreet Boys
45. Winter Socks
46. Chinese Take-away
47. Notebooks, Notepads and those spiral reporter pads
48. Criminal Minds and Modern Family
49. Aliens and all things Paranormal
50. My Tattoos
51. Rocky
52. All Things Disney
53. Stephen King Novels
54. Polar Bears
55. Motorbike  (Harley Davidsons to be exact. Sorry Nick)
56. Wall Paper samples (I just can't help myself)
57. Being kind to others
58. Julia Quinn books
59. Bagels
60. Playing Solitaire
61. Jack Daniels
62. Listening to Elvis Presley
63. My Onesie
64. People who are true to themselves
65. Burger King (but my diet forbids it)
66. How The Grinch Stole Christmas
67. Fireworks
68. Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
69. Purple
70. Wolverine
71. Peppermint Candy Canes
72. Over-sized jumpers
73. Apple Juice
74. Mulan
75. Going to the movies
76. Bruce Willis (don't judge me)
77. Going out driving
78. Combat Boots
79. Marmite on crumpets
80. Calligraphy
81. Salt 'n' Vinegar Pringles
82. The Big Bang Theory
83. Golden Nuggets Cereal
84. Musicals
85. Anything in Khaki
86. Inspirational people
87. Getting into your own bed after being away on holiday
88. Long Train Journeys
89. Melissa McCarthy
90. Family Time
91. Date night with Nick
92. Phoebe and Mikes wedding in F.R.I.E.N.D.S
93. Peanut M&M's
94. Katy Perry and Lady Gaga
95. Saying nice things to people
96. Tom Hanks movies
97. Water colour paintings
98. Conspiracy Theories
99. Moments that make me grateful for all I have in life
100. Loved - The moment my girls were placed on me after birth

That was fun. Making this list made me realise just how lucky I am with who I have in my life and where I live, I also may have realised I'm a little strange. I really recommend everyone doing this. I would love to read others.

Totally should check out this ladies awesome blog also - Hello Dashwood

Hello November.

Ok, I need this year to slow down some what so I can stop to catch my breathe. I'm finding it hard to believe that we are two full months away from seeing in 2017. When did time all of a sudden put on his big boy pants and decide to speed up. 

There are so many things I'm looking forward to in November and I won't be acknowledging Christmas until those things have passed. One being The Gilmore Girls on the 25th and also a new blog series that will be posted on my blog called, 'My Passions' It will be a four part series, each post will include a subject or activity I love to do, hence the name, they are things I am extremely passionate about.

October was a great month for me, I reached my 3 and a half stone lose which now only leaves me with 3 more stone and a half to lose, so once again this month will be filled with sweaty, out of breathe mornings from workouts no-one in their right minds should attempt. I am determined to get to my 4 stone lost mark by December and hopefully I will see the New Year in a little bit lighter.

I wish everyone a great start to November.

Much love. Zoe x