I know that place

Occasionally at work I'm pulled in to run the show when others are busy. Today I was told the act I was working with was originally very famous, having at one point sold out Wembley Arena and toured the world before having a mental breakdown and retreating into obscurity. I was told he doesn't like to remember,  which is absolute fair, there are a solid two years of my life I'd gladly ignore. But how does a person go from selling out a 12,000 capacity arena to playing to 40 people in a glorified cellar? This is actually something I've seen quite often, fame is such that what goes up eventually comes down, or just blips out of existence, and you don't notice because that's the nature if fame.

So I met this man, and I was struck by his kindness. The kind that comes from suffering. The sort of fragility that comes from hitting the bottom and finding a new normal where you're creaking and shattered but just so so glad it's leaving you, whatever it is. Because almost always it's a case of it leaving you, because you leaving it suggests an element of control.

He was absolutely fragile. Like a child. And utterly self-conscious to the point of bombarding me with a constant stream of questions about myself, which (forgive me, famous people) is completely out of the ordinary. But I understood what he was trying to do. To keep the conversation from yourself you ask all the questions. You tease out and linger on the details of anything else. And it pulls you away.

So I just keep telling him about the time I fell offstage and think I know this. I see this. I know that hell.

I'm writing this out now because it hurts that I saw it so close I guess.

And perhaps because I kind of feel like a broken person too.

Another me, another me.

Every so often I get hung up on who I am and who I have been.

We had a lecture with an author called Nuala Casey today and she spoke about past selves, and what happens to them when you aren't that person anymore.

I've just done a massive sweep of this blog to clear it up for human consumption and I've rediscovered many versions of myself.

There's Nicole circa 2006 who was scared to so much as wear her hair up in case someone made a comment about it. I'm not her.

There's the one from 2008 who was so scarily hung up on a guy that looking back on it makes me slightly concerned. Not her either.

There's 2009, choked up with depression, school drop out and worker bee.

There's the one who went to college and shopped at Primark all the time I tried to do the girly thing and failed miserably.

There's the me who went to university to study live events production and was so sure she was in the right place, doing the right thing. And then she took a sharp turn and ended up in 2015 starting all over again.

Who am I now? I was this person who speaks way too languages and travels over to Norway all the time, but I haven't been in months. How can I be the same person who tours with a band seeing and doing so many crazy amazing things when I'm sat in a lecture on metaphysical poetry at 9am? How can I be the one programming lighting consoles and hauling cables and microphone stands around when I'm sat writing a poem?

These don't feel like the same people.

And then there's the people I knew back then. I feel like I should know them and I don't, and I don't know how to be who I was so I can know them again.

I suppose it's the realest example of time marching on, but it still caught me out today. Where are the ones I was? I'm not them.

The people who are

I've found that life is significantly better when you surround yourself with good people. This might seem like an obvious thing but it's taken me a while to come round to it.

 

Last year by all rights should have been horrendous. I lost my grandma to the absolute shitpit that is cancer, and in the last few weeks of her illness I felt like I was dying, because how could I possibly stand it? When she got to the final stretch, at first I couldn't even look, because it seemed perverse to be able to count someone's ribs from across the room, to be able to see their heart beating through their chest, to hand them a sippy cup of luke warm, extremely weak tea that weighed nothing and see their arm drop to the mattress like it was a dead weight. In the last week, I stayed in her house, by her side, talked away to her even though she couldn't hear me anymore. I never knew what to say to my grandma, and I always thought that out of all her granddaughters, surely the one with multiple tattoos, facial piercings and neon pink hair was the biggest disappointment, and maybe I was, but she loved me. So I prattled on, I read and re-read the death-and-dying leaflets a nurse had left me and when the time came, I knew exactly what was coming next. I watched her breathing turn into a spasm, I held her wrist and felt her heart stop. I took her pulse whilst my family watched and, bizarrely, panicked when I couldn't find it.

 

By rights the last year should have been the worst of my life, though I'm pretty sure I say that every year. But it's easy to hold on to the shit in life and ignore everything else.

 

Actually, last year was the best. Last year was fantastic. I've never been so consistently happy, and I think it has a lot to do with who I've surrounded myself with.

 

I've spent the last year jumping between being on tour with a band and studying for a new degree. Starting at a new university has been fantastic, I had no idea how much I'd love it, how different it is from my last degree, and that I'd make such goddamn excellent friends. Getting to do a degree with such a creative angle has given me so much to experiment with, and I love it.

 

I can't adequately describe touring. I've grown up with the band, their music is the music I listen to when I'm homesick, and being with them feels like home. Clichéd as it sounds we are a family (actually one member is my family), there's nothing I could do that any one of them would judge me for. Even without the element of going all over the country and out into Europe seeing new places and playing shows, the times spent in the tour van listening to everyone's favourite songs and just talking is the best feeling in the world.

 

 

(My guys and my ladies. Photo by Howard Rankin)

 

The shows are hard. I load and unload everyone's equipment from the van, I set it up, I go into a new venue every night and learn the lighting rig in time to produce a lightshow every night and come home bruised and achy, and it's the most rewarding job in the world. Not only do I get so see the band pour their whole heart into their performance every night, I get to be part of it too. And we get the occasional day off in Amsterdam too, which is always, always an event.

 

I was low-key terrified that there wouldn't be a tour this year, that it would be an album-writing year, but last week we started up again, and after six weeks off it was such a relief to get back on the road again. There's nowhere else I'd rather be than everywhere with the best people.

This was not done under duress.

S ome of the more long-term readers may have noticed that
E very so often I refer to my sister as "fuckface ravioli" or other
N ames that are not really all that complimentary.
D ue to this, would like to make the following statement:

H aving come to terms with the fact that my sister is
E asily The Most Awesome Person That Ever
L ived, I will now accept that she is just much cooler than mortal
P eople and I am just grossly jealous of that fact.

N icole.
O wner of this blog.
W ell, sort of.

Bindings

I have read so many books. I know so many people in those books. It's impossible for me to feel like a stranger in a bookshop, which is a lovely warm feeling.

It probably sounds like something featured in the ramblings of a crazily lonely person, but when I see books I see people I know. I know their stories. I know their quirks and choices and their best and worst moments. I know that they order mu shu pork from the takeaway. I know they're allergic to pollen.

I can wander around the bookshop and know people everywhere. (Raging spoiler alert) Young adult fiction, Alec and Magnus are wandering around New York being ADORABLE. Epic fantasy, I don't care that you died Joffrey, you're still a dick. Mystery, hello Sookie Stackhouse, how are you? A quick detour back to young adult and NOOOOO TRIS, WHYYYYYY? And at that point I go to the café and mourn for half an hour over tea and cake before wandering down to look at the classics where Mr.  Darcy is still frolicking about in high boots.

I met someone at university that told me that he hasn't read a book in ten years, whilst looking at me like I was hilarious. And it just made me sad for him.

If you can't sink into a story, escape for a couple of hours and come back with new experiences every time, what's the point in anything?

Heart lines

I'm finding it hard to frame the grief I'm feeling.

When my grandma, Rosie, died, her health declined very quickly. She was only meant to be in the hospice for two weeks so she could sort her medication out and get back on her feet, but she died eleven days after admission. I was working a lot at the time and so didn't visit during the first week but sent my love across, when I was sure she would be out and home again soon. When my mum told me she wouldn't be going home, I started to visit. The change was terrifying. I'd seen my grandma ill, she had breast cancer twice and beat it both times, but now she looked shrunken in, she barely recognised anyone and the nurses were being too kind, too soft-spoken. I'd just got home from school (1st of February 2010, 4.15pm) when mum called me to say she'd died, and I had to go pick my sister up from school and tell her the news. I can't remember how I broke it to her but I know I wasn't kind. My only excuse was that I now know that since having seizure the previous summer, I'd been suffering from severe depression but wouldn't be diagnosed until two months after my grandma died.  

She was comfortable and sleepy and loved when she died. I took the time off school to arrange the funeral and never went back. Helping with the funeral planning was cathartic. There's something very practical about people in the funeral and death certificate business. Closing all her accounts, settling debts, talking to the florist and drinking cups of tea whilst choosing a coffin helped in the process of letting go. I felt collected enough to view her body, but ended up being held onto by my two aunts, sobbing uncontrollably in the family room at the hospice that is meant for that kind of thing.  

The hilarity of the funeral, the vulcan death stare the vicar gave me when my sister announced too loud that I had refused to wear a cross, the same vicar's robes going missing, the wrong song being played... my grandma would have howled at our pitiful attempt to be formal. Clearing out grandma's house, tearing out and refitting the kitchen, writing "NICOLE IS A LOVE MACHINE" on the wall before repainting, spreading her ashes on a field and accidentally inhaling most of it when the wind blew the wrong way, it all helped me say goodbye to my grandma.   And I'm writing this now, just under five years later, because my other grandma, Thelma, has terminal liver and bowel cancer and there's nothing I, or anyone else, can do.  

I've known for a few months now, and whilst I'm relieved she chose to live it out as comfortably as she could rather than doing chemotherapy, and that the doctor seems to think she has a while left yet, this long, protracted way of going is in many ways crueller for those who have to watch it.   And selfishly I'm at a point now where big life events are about to happen and I want her to be there. And so the questions are, will she be at my graduation? Will I be able to tell her I've applied to another uni? Should I not tell her in case I don't get in? Have I got my last Christmas card from her? I didn't want to open it. My children are never going to meet her, and she's wonderful.  

Every time my mind takes me down a morbid path I have to tell myself over and over that I'm not the one that is dying, and that there is a time to grieve but it is not now, while she's still here and alive and kicking. And that she doesn't want us to be morose. The jokes my uncle makes about expiry dates when he takes my grandma shopping and the blasé way in which my mum refers to her illness makes me feel that I should have accepted it by now and not cringe whenever it is mentioned. And in many ways I have accepted it, and it is just part of the inevitable, but I'm still allowed to want my grandma to stay, surely? I'm sure jokes and blunt statements help them ease the process, but for me it just underlines the loss. I don't know how to deal with what I'm feeling. I don't know how to process this grief. I don't know how to show it. Right now I'm just bearing an unbearable thing, and making it bearable.

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

Doodle doo.

I need to talk about my dog. I slipped a disc working at the comedy club and I can't get to my mum's house to see him, and I miss his floofy face.

Barney, Barney Bear, is a goldendoodle. He's a cross between a poodle and a golden retriever. The name goldendoodle is daft but it was either that or Poo Retriever, and he hasn't learned that trick (thank god).

When we went to look at puppies at a lovely lady's farmhouse, Barney was one of six gorgeous little fluffballs. Barney was the fluffiest, with the lightest fur. He was the first puppy I held and I was adamant that he was the one. He was also deceptively mellow, and when him and one of his brothers ate a poo off the ground whilst the breeder wasn't looking, I covered for him. He was my little comrade.

Me and Bear have an understanding. I get to sit, plait his fur and grumble and in return he gets an unending supply of treats. And braids.

He's mental. He's great with the kids and babies in the family. He has claimed sole ownership of my sister. He doesn't like potatoes but if you offer him one he'll act really happy about it then dispose of it when you aren't looking. He's a polite dog. He is also so fluffy he absorbs water, mud and smaller dogs like a sponge. And he does a world-class impression of Davy Jones when he's wet (will dig out a picture at some point).

And his fur smells of biscuits.

Je t'aime, little cookie dog!

The next stage

I think that if there was any question about whether I'm in the right industry,  the past two days would have answered it.

I'm exhausted,  I ache, I spent yesterday on a construction site and today in a warehouse (full of literally thousands of bottles of Vimto...)  building stages and taking names.

It's a physically exhausting process. And one that is almost never seen in public. I feel like I should document it because it really is an incredible process, and a fantastic world to be a part of. After the event brief, after the design and after the manufacture comes the test build which is what I've been working on.

Yesterday I spent all day hauling 60kg steel stage decks around a building yard, making scaffold structures and and fitting the stage together way above my head. The work is so intense I could feel the pressure on the individual vetabrae of my spine, and later our after-uni pool game took far too long because no one could bend down.  I went over to my mum's house and dozed off with/on my dog before I'd even taken my hard hat off.

 

Today was similar.  We were in a huge, cavernous warehouse building a stage for Tiny Tempah's tour. When people see the stage in summer it will just look decorative,  but again, hundreds of work hours, many many tonnes of staging, many expletives expelled. One hour in, I trapped my thumb in some scaffolding,  later, I got a metal splinter down the side of my hand, slammed my knee into a solid hunk of metal, broke a nail and went over on my ankle. Not so much an occupational hazard as me just being hungry.

But I love it.  I love the hard work and the noise and the stress of working to a very immediate deadline all the time. I love the pre-show nerves, being able to perform in my own way for thousands of people without having to go onstage. I also love the banter that can only exist between people who have been working for 18 hours solid at 3am.

Also we learnt how to put a staircase together on live TV in under a minute. I'm not even joking!

The Niece Acquisition

Today was a funny old day.

13th of March,  the birthday of my newest niece, Evie. I've written about her older brother and sisters before so it's fair to write about Evie too.

Today I have spent 4 hours sat in traffic on the A64.

Today I learnt how to set up and operate scissors lifts and star traps (magical hydraulic lifts that make people appear up out of the stage).

Today I ate a shameful amount of Doritos.

Today I also realised that someone in the group really doesn't like me.  And that's just fine because he's annoying. 

Today is a good day because The Big Bang Theory was renewed for three more seasons.

And today Evie was born. And she's tiny, and snuggly, and already looks confused.

And in the morning I'm going round for cuddles and photos.

And that's what tomorrow is.

Will be there from your first day to my last, little noodle!

Boop

Busy busy busy!

Ish. The audio module is over! Sort of. I have 2 assignments to do but now at least I don't have to sit in classes with no understanding whatsoever.

Last week I got an email through asking me to create a CV and a video to accompany it. And like most people on my course I was a bit apprehensive about having a video of me begging for a job floating around on YouTube. However I have no problem presenting you all with the leftover footage.

Presenting!

The CV Blooper Reel

What I've done

So Monday was just a day sat in the stadium full of admin and no heating whatsoever. Tuesday was an absolute disgrace. I was cautiously optimistic that I was actually absorbing the information and breaking down whatever barrier in my head was stopping me from really understanding audio, Tuesday was just one long horrible day. First we all drove out to the nearest shopping park to get lunch and the people who I went there with drove off and left me there, an hour's walk away from the stadium. Then when I got back it was straight back into audio physics and theory and it was all going fine until the tutor started talking about physical wavelength. I was struggling to get my head around it and everyone else was getting it and making calculations based on it and I couldn't understand how. Out of 80 people, when asked if everyone understood I was the only person who didn't. And I totally missed the next section on harmonics because I was trying not to cry.

I had a sort of dismal revelation at the same time. I really wanted someone to comfort me at the time. I was miserable with it, and I was sat in a room full of people I don't really know that well and I've lost contact with most of my school/college friends, the rest of which are distributed across the country at university somewhere. So I didn't get a hug and I realised I have to man up. Which is crap. I want a hug. I like hugs.

Two days have passed and really focussing, sitting right at the front and asking a question every five minutes and getting dirty looks and very loud huffing noises from the rest of my class has actually allowed me to understand the parts of audio I didn't understand a bit better. I have a tentative grasp on it. We'll see if it holds tomorrow when I have six hours of dynamics, effects and a lecture on microphones (?!) when it gets all complicated again.

I was grumbling to my step-dad about how much I'm struggling with this part of the course, and he's laid out the fact that I set myself ridiculously high standards to work to. In my first assignment I got 70% and was gutted. Turns out that's a First, and I still think that I could have done better. And I'm beating myself up because I don't fully understand what I'm being told about audio, something I have no interest in going into anyway. But I really need to know. It's £5995 a year to be there, it would be stupid (I think) to write off an entire subject.

I don't think I'm doing the university thing properly. I just don't have it in me to go out, go mental and walk around with a traffic cone on my head. I have assignments, I have deadlines. And I want to do well because that's pretty much what I do.

We'll see what tomorrow brings. I'm back at work for the first time in six weeks tomorrow night. I can't wait to get back to lighting bands again. Something that comes naturally!

Oh nooooo...

Hello. My name is Nicole and I am 20-and-three-quarters years old.

And I don't want to go to school (err... university) tomorrow.

I am a lighting person. Give me a stage and I will light it up beautifully. Or I will try to. But tomorrow is the first day of a 4-week module on audio. And I can't stand audio. Even though I've studied it for years, I dont get it. I can have it spoon fed to me and I still can't wrap my mind around it, and it frustrates me no end. I find the whole thing stressful and upsetting.  I had a bit of hope that this time round it would be easier because they're starting from scratch but I had a nine-hour class on audio mixing software last week and I had to sneak off for a cheeky cigarette afterwards, I was that aggravated. And that was just one day.

I'm already miserable with it. My books arrived for this module the other day and just scanning through, with everything all broken down and explained,  made no sense in my head.  It feels like usually my brain is a sponge for information and currently it just feels like a rock.

I haven't been this edgy about going to an educational establishment since the days of 12 word spelling tests.

B ig
E lephants
C an't
A lways
U se
S mall
E xits

Yeah I can spell.

Accio Butterbeer

I went for a wander (a 5-hour coach journey) down to London for an 'inspiration day' with uni and we ended up at the Harry Potter studio tour.  And it was fantastic!  Even as a backstage technical person seeing the scaffolding holding up the other side of the walls in the great hall didn't spoil anything for me.  There's a picture of me and Voldemort circulating Facebook somewhere.

I also tried Butterbeer.  That did ruin it for me. It was nasty stuff. My poor insides will never be the same.

And I got wondering.  The studio was used to film parts of Harry Potter and there are homes all around.  It's no big secret area and yet there were never people storming the gates. Then I realised it is just like the industrial estate where I go to uni. All kinds of mad stuff happens in the arena with all kinds of people and the people in the town/village next to the estate have no idea. A bunch of students come crawling out of the estate and down to the town on a lunchtime. Very sinister.

Diddums.

I was skulking around the nether and I found an old post I wrote on my other blog which I thought I had deleted.

This post is six years old but still as relevant as ever.

"To whom it may concern,

I will love you at some point. I will. And you’ll love me too. We’ll be happy.

I can’t wait to meet you.

I’ll love you.
Nicole."

Short but sweet.

Bless, 14-year-old me, you had a few rare moments of insight.

Then they took you away.

Happy new year!

I didn't bother posting a new year's resolution this year because last year's is still applicable. And also I spent new year sat in with college friends watching Mean Girls and freaking myself out with statements like "What if you're new year's resolution was to break your new year's resolution?"

Think about it. Trippy, no? Almost stoner talk, that.

I'm checking in to document a strange change I have noticed in the past few weeks. I don't really recognise myself anymore. I dress well, my makeup is done before I leave the house, my nails aren't chewed, my hair is pink, I'm addicted to Sherlock, I like a One Direction song (a mortal sin), I've taken up sketching and drawing everything, I go to the gym four times a week, I'm used to early mornings and I feel genuinely content and happy for the first time in nearly two years.

This is madness!

I don't recognise this girl. She seems okay, she's shiny new and not very sure of what the hell is happening.

Oh well.

University is the best thing that has every happened to me. People ask how the degree is going and I can only tell them with a big grin that I have never felt more like I'm in the right place and the right time then right now. And my timing is fairly awful. Only yesterday I found out that an assignment I thought was due in for next Tuesday isn't in till the middle of February. Relief! I have no idea what to do with myself now.

My current module is all about event design, and it gives me a lot of creative license. I haven't done much design since college and I really enjoyed it then so this is just peachy. The week after next we are going to Harry Potter World in London for an inspiration day before developing our own event concept. I'm equal parts excited to share my idea and apprehensive about sharing what I think is an absolute GOLDMINE of an idea. But then I would say that... ;-)

Also I get to ride a broomstick. What's not to love?

Boom.

So it turns out I wasn't able to get any pictures of the pyrotehnics lesson because having anything electrical (e.g. my phone) near explosives is a REALLY TERRIBLE IDEA.

But it has been an interesting week so far.

On Monday I spent the day swinging ten feet from the ground in the warehouse learning to work at height without dying whilst massive explosions were going off in the arena next door.

On Tuesday I had a class on industry roles with Justin Hawkins' pony. And the class kept squabbling over which role in the live events industry was more important which led to a picture of me sacked out on the floor in despair.

 

 

And then to Wednesday!! Into the arena, pyrotechnics training. I was grumbling to one of the managers at one of the music venues I work at that it would be SO MUCH BETTER if he'd let me blow stuff up on stage but after having to sit through videos showing the worst-case scenerio I no longer want to. Also the venue is pretty much rum-soaked so I suspect it would go up like a Christmas pudding.

 

My area is mostly lighting and visual effects and pyrotechnics is something I'd quite like to go into further. Researching is a bit tricky because unfortunately (in this case) you can't google how to assemble explosives without an alarm going off somewhere.

 

At the end of the day we had to present our own pyrotechnics show but again, no phones so I don't have a video of that but after that the person teaching us put a small show together for us to watch and film and I caught that on video.

 

 

And today I'm having a well-earned day off (still at work tonight though, boooooo) before a whole day of health and safety tomorrow. Yay.

In which our heroine craves valium

I had my first actual lesson-lesson today and my confidence for the next two years has been completely undermined. I haven't had a problem putting my hand up and offering ideas and answers since I finished school and the last few days have been so relaxed that the classes felt more like a group conversation where there were no wrong answers.

Today I was late because I have a forty mile commute and hit traffic in the last mile so I was already worried I'd pissed off the tutor but it was all for nothing. The class was being held in one of the hospitality boxes at the stadium with a big window overlooking the pitch and I sat so I could see the man who cuts patterns in the grass. And I was settled in for class. Today was portfolio writing and Harvard referencing, and I kind of got it. I think. Then the tutor asked a question, I can't even remember what it was now, but I offered an answer expecting he would just say yes or no and move on to other people.

But he didn't. He decided to look at me expectantly like I hadn't finished my answer. So I scrabbled for a fuller answer, umming and ahhing and making no sense towards the end and then finally giving up and asking him to move onto someone else. Which, mercifully , he did. I was ridiculously shook up by the whole thing and you'd think I'd learnt my lesson but it had to happen twice more before I learned to stop putting my hand up.

We then had to write mock report conclusions and introductions and though my conclusion was the only one that didn't get critiqued to pieces, after he had read my introduction out he stared at it frowning for a full 30 seconds before murmuring "there is something about it..."

Blind panic. Alarm bells. Armageddon and horsemen. I blurt out everything that could possibly be wrong with my writing. After, he looks at me, hmms, nods, and moves onto the next person.

And now I will be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my natural essay-writing life.

Hmm.

Ta-daa! I finally started university yesterday, two months later than the rest of the country. It would be exciting if this week wasn't all admin and learning how to use the university's weird system and it would be enjoyable if I knew anyone/wasn't crap with strangers.

Today I spent four hours being told that liking PCs was wrong and that Apple is the best thing ever. Here's a trio of terrible secrets I have, dear reader... First: even though I know a lot about technology I refuse to certain operating systems (i.e. Mac) because I'm weirdly sentimental about Windows. Second: I hate Apple with a passion even though I know it's better. Third, and this is the worst: I still use Internet Explorer. I'll never change. I'm doomed to slow internet and crashing computers. We were invited back after lunch for a couple more hours learning the ins and outs of Apple Macs. My god, no. I'll probably regret it later in the semester but at the time it seemed like a life or death decision.

At university the whole being-social thing is a complete mystery to me. Most of the people on the course (there is only one course) live together nearby and so know each other. I commute 40 miles every day with two people I work with but I haven't made any new friends or anything at uni. It's only the end of day two now but I'm pretty sure I'm doomed to die alone. I don't really like parties because big social situations are my own personal hell and I don't drink so I'm usually the only one sober anyway. I say stupid stuff I regret and I do stupid stuff I regret. Today I was trying to turn the heater in the common room on and it was going AWOL, I panicked, thinking I'd broken it and it turned out the guy behind me had the remote for it and was flicking through the settings. And everyone was laughing. Shit.

Half of my classes this week are in a football stadium because the main uni building is busy and there is no heating. It's fine for all the sweaty rugby players walking around because they do weights for three hours a day but by the end of yesterday everyone was so cold they were going into spasms.

I also gained the nickname "Garfield" because I love lasagne.

I'll try get some pictures next week, we're being taught fire safety and pyrotechnics (boom).

 

New things

7 new things this week:

1. I bought this face mask stuff from Soap & Glory (I love everything about them) that heats up when it's on your face and I thought I'd try it for science and I swear I nearly burnt my face off. In a really pleasant way. My face is all smoothy-smooth and lovely now. And I didn't have to turn the heating on.

2. My sister's birthday was this week so I took her to Big Scary Leeds to do some proper shopping and dropped £200 in one go. I wouldn't mind too terribly but it was the morning of pay day.

3. I noticed that someone I absolutely despised at college has only liked three things I've ever posted on Facebook. Two of these were checking into A&E, the third was when I got glass in my hand at work. I love it when I'm not the crazy one.

4. My beautiful new dress! Yay.

5. I doubted a friend and I feel terrible for it. They were accused of stealing from the till at work and I have believed they were innocent the entire way and I have had their back. And then one person told me a part of the incident I didn't know about and I doubted them. My major gripe is that even if they did do it, I wouldn't care, I would just rather be told the truth. And if it turns out they lied to me, they know I will at least attempt to break their legs. :-) :-) :-)

6. I made my step-dad laugh so hard with a joke about gravy boats that he nearly crashed the car. My insurance doesn't cover the cost of repeating it.

7. When we went out for my sister's birthday meal we ate a ma-hoo-ssive main meal and then got 'cakeaway' for dessert, and I took home a slice of cake that stood 10 inches tall. Eating it was a daunting experience but I am wiser for it.

Times are hard for dreamers.

I can't decide what I am.

And I can't quite explain what I mean either because it's 2am. I think what I mean is that I hoped at this point I would have a specific niche that defines me, like, "That's Nicole, she's [insert adjective here]". I'm doing a lot of meeting new people at the moment with university starting and stuff and I have absolutely BOMBED when trying to introduce myself at every point so far.

I can't define myself. My label should probably be "unspecified".

I think the problem is mostly that there are things I want to do and people I want to be that are just impossible. And I don't want to settle for less, because passing that up would suck.

I have no idea if other people have the same problem. I guess it's kind of open-ended.

It probably doesn't come across but I'm actually feeling pretty cheerful at the moment. I'm sat in bed with a bowl of popcorn watching Family Guy, life is good.

I probably should have put a 2AM EXISTENTIAL CRISIS warning at the top of this post.