The Fear Of Failure

Failure - an act or instance of failing or proving unsuccessful

If there's something about me that defines me in my entirety, it's the fact that I am a complete and utter perfectionist.

The Aftermath Of The Leaving Cert

The Leaving Cert; Ireland's ultimate memory test.

If you're not Irish, the Leaving Cert is the set of exams we take after six years in secondary school and will basically determine or not whether we get into college.
After years of watching the news and Facebook statuses pop up on my screen with people sharing their results and college acceptances, it was finally my time.
I'm a bit disillusioned with the whole Leaving Cert even though I got good grades, or perhaps because I got good grades. The whole thing just consisted of massive amounts of rote learning and more rote learning. I even found myself having to take days off from exhaustion throughout the year because of the immense pressure I put on myself.

Review: For All My Eternity Coffee Scrubs

When the lovely people at For All My Eternity sent me this scrub to try I was so excited. The scrubs are 100% natural and use organic and fair trade coffee. So not only is it good for your skin, it's good for the growers too. The most important thing for me is that this brand is also cruelty-free. 

WIhen I opened the packet I was instantly hit with the overwhelmingly smell of, well, coffee. The first time I used it was in the morning and the scent woke me up so much that probably I didn't even need my morning cup of caffeine. The scrub has a very earthy smell to it which is a reminder that there isn't any harsh chemicals in it.

My Week In Pictures #2

A busy week it has been. We found ourselves with a stray cat which I have named Atticus, I bought a rather large box of cherries and I finally received my Leaving Cert results ( a separate post to follow soon on the aftermath of that)

I Am A Feminist

                           
I am a feminist. 

Feminist: a person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.

When you choose to identify with a label, that label is more than likely going to come with a list of negative misconceptions and preconceptions that society has built up. 

I am a feminist but I don't hate men. Yes, I have male friends. I am a feminist and I believe in the equality for both men and women. And equality between masculinity and femininity. I am a feminist but I don't believe that women are better than men. (Misconception number 1: Feminists hate men. Being a feminist does not mean you hate men or believe women are better than men)

Let's talk about misandry for a minute. Misandry and feminism are two very separate things. Misandrists have an ingrained hatred for men and want to be above men. They are not feminists. 

I am a feminist because in 32 states if a woman has a child as a result of rape, the rapist can sue for custody and visitation rights of that child. 

A Letter To My Teenage Self

Dear teenage me,

Fourteen is an age where you think you are beginning to understand life. You don’t. In 5 years time, you still won’t.

Right now you've just finished the Junior Cert, and don't worry, you did achieve that A in English, despite having the worst teacher in the universe. You are now transitioning into the Leaving Cert and you will find a love for French and for learning about the world around you. Soon you will become this open minded culturally aware person that you can be proud of today.

Favourite Books

I couldn't reach blog post no.4 without dedicating one to books now could I? In this post I want to discuss 5 of my favourite non politcal books, some of all time, some just recents.

1. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.

If you follow me on Twitter you'll know that I tweet about this book annoyingly a lot. I first found out about this book in 2014 after watching 10 things I Hate About Youand witnessing Kat reading the Bell Jar. The next day I picked it up from the library and fast forward 24 months and it's become one of my favourite books of all time. 

This book is a sort of autobiography for Sylvia Plath. Full of dark humour, wit and feministic views, it tells the tale of a summer writing in New York and then coping with life after that. Without spoiling it, ultimately Plath writes about her descent of depression and her deep traumatic battles with suicide, When I first started reading the book I was uneasy, feeling it was an extremely pretentious novel. Her descriptions were extremely detailed, often using words that one rarely hears spoken or even read. I went into the novel knowing from my Leaving Cert course that Plath was a poet and felt that at first the book was just another form of her poetry. But that only remained within the first two pages, because after that I became absorbed. Sometimes, once in a long while, a book comes around, with words so cogitative that they bounce off the pages and hit me with pangs of echoing familiarity.

And that, The Bell Jar does. Numerous times. And it's scary that I'm relating to a potential depressional and suicidal victim. 

If it's one book you want to read after taking into account this list, it should be this one.

You can purchase this book here