Friday Nights & Sunday Dinners

Doing things regularly. It's the perfect plot device, ensuring drama on a weekly basis and making sure there's always something to talk about. From the Gilmore Girls (MY MOST FAVOURITE THING EVER), having "Friday night dinners" at their grandparents' house every week - honestly barely an episode of that show goes by without one - to Olivia Pope's Sunday catch-ups with her dad (not all that much more scary than a meal with Emily Gilmore if you ask me...) many shows rely on the regularity and familiarity of ritual, of entrenched expectations to allow the pace to continue.

But in real life? Not so much. Apart from religious, borderline obsessive watching of my favourite TV shows, there is very little I'm capable of doing routinely. I marvel at Youtubers who are able to promise they "post new videos every Wednesday," or, god knows how, even daily. I can't stomach the idea of a nine-to-five job, a boring career, the thought of commitment to a life lived in one place. As cute as Tom and Giovanna Fletcher's lives are, from the wedding speech and now the pumpkin baby announcement video, the idea following the pattern of job, marriage, family, etc. etc. literally makes me feel ill. I can't really picture how I want my life to look in the future, especially as I barely even have a handle on what I'm supposed to be doing next week.

Sometimes its all I can do to remember to eat meals at the "normal" time of day. Is there anything really wrong with eating cereal for dinner or ice cream for breakfast? - not on my planet. I don't know whether its that I get bored easily or just that my daily life is really uninteresting, but when days go by, each one incredibly similar to the last, I start feeling trapped. And then I feel the need to go and do something crazy, like get something else pierced, run off to Reading Festival with a weeks notice, quit my job or get seriously behind with my school work only to panic, sit up until two am doing an essay and get to my 8.30 am history lesson just to realise I answered the wrong question.

I don't handle boredom well and I do admit to having a very low threshold for enduring things I don't want to do. An allergy, an intolerance, or just a severe distaste. I'll sit there, roll my eyes, force myself to get through another Thursday that will be exactly the same as the one before, and exactly the same as the one in another seven days time. My worst nightmare is predictability and the only thing I like less than knowing I'm going to be living right where I am now for the next year, sleeping in the same bed I've had since I was a child, is that I still don't know where I'm moving to. All I want to do right now is escape off round the world, without any idea when I'll be back.

Many of my friends are experiencing this same feeling as I am - probably they're capable of handling it slightly better than I am. To be honest, I think its perfectly common around age 17 to 18 to suddenly realise your whole life is ahead of you and the pressure to know what to do with it can feel completely overwhelming. Its like staring out into uncharted water, or off the edge of a cliff into a massive abyss ominously labelled: Your Future. "What happens now?" we all think. Since when do we make the decisions, decide the course of our own lives. I didn't sign up for this - no one asked me if I wanted to be born and now there's potentially eighty more years of this bulls*** that I have to plan out? (You can see why I feel other people are dealing with this collective emotional crisis a bit more maturely...)

So once I'm done with my ironically timed toddler-style tantrum about the fact I exist, I had better get on and start making some choices. Smart, useful ones that might actually get me somewhere. Not something I'm famous for being great at, but its probably time to start giving it a go. To do some preparation for the entrance exam I have to take, to sit down and deal with the mountains of work I need to do, to stop helplessly refreshing the UCAS track page in the hope it will tell me what to do with my life. If you feel yourself getting into this state (no judgement here, if you've made it this far you can tell that I am clearly losing the plot anyway...) I have one piece of advice for you. Watch Danisnotonfire's videos on this topic, and have a cup of tea. If this doesn't make you feel even slightly better you are probably in need of professional help that I am in no way qualified to give.

Hugs. We'll all get through this eventually xoxo

Reality TV

We all love it. It seems that they're more and more of our favourite TV shows, from the ones we curl up on the sofa to watch in the evening, to the ones we make the effort to catch up with online or even have on over breakfast in the mornings, while we're drinking coffee or doing our hair.

"Reality TV is morphine, give me that now, let me ease the pain."

From the glamorous lifestyles of The Real Housewives and the Kardashians to the more down-to-earth British reality shows such as Jeremy Kyle, The Only Way Is Essex and even the most recent one to appear on our screens: Educating Yorkshire, it seems that on every channel there are "real" people and "real" events for our entertainment. I don't know anyone who doesn't watch some form of reality show and I'm willing to bet you don't either. But just how "real" are these shows we seem to love so much? Are they actually nothing more than harmless entertainment, something funny to laugh over with friends or maybe just less depressing to have on in the background than the news?

I find it strange realising the window they give you onto someone's life - however many "scenes are created for your entertainment," essentially you are watching another person, just like you or me, living their day-to-day existence. And I don't know about you, but I would seriously struggle having cameras following me around. The silly things that slip out of your mouth without thinking; the times you trip up, hoping no one notices; awkward moments, arguments, things you wish you could take back - all documented and then broadcast for the whole world to see? I think it would be enough to make me never want to leave my house again.

What about those things that are - and should probably stay - private? Relationships, family
problems, illnesses, addictions? The plots of most reality shows centre around events like these: after all we're all human and stories and drama are what bring us together. But the difference between relating to a fictional character in a book or identifying and empathising with a situation in a film or TV drama is something we shouldn't ignore. It's cathartic to cry or to feel the emotions of a situation - but when it's someone's real life we're talking about, should it really be unfolding in the public eye?

I've been watching Educating Yorkshire recently, and in between laughing at my own memories of being in Years 7 to 11 and enjoying the funny moments on the show - including the girl that shaved her eyebrows off - I was really surprised by one of the episodes that dealt with the subject of a boy whose brother had suddenly died. I've been in a situation not unlike this myself and it was hard enough coping with the emotions and stress caused by a family member passing away on top of the normal issues of being a teenager and being in school everyday, trying to study for exams, cope with problems with friends and so on. I can remember leaving school at the end of the day, just desperate to get home and not have to deal with other people, or think about anything, for literally months.

I still feel like this now sometimes, although its far more under control than it was, but I genuinely cannot imagine how hard it would have been to be in this situation knowing it was being used as material for TV, for other people to watch and see how much you were struggling. I felt so awful watching it, knowing exactly how hard it is to get through even one day sometimes, let alone thinking into the future, as it feels like we're constantly asked to do at school.

Sometimes I think this is the main problem in our society. We're obsessed with "fame" and "celebrities" and entire industries are formed around building people up into stars and success stories and then tearing them down the minute we realise they aren't perfect. No wonder people rely on drugs or drinking to cope with the pressure and, to be honest, probably just to be numb enough to it all to be able to function. And really, its one thing when its someone who has actually signed up for a career in the public eye, but it begins to get a whole lot more complicated when we all want our five minutes of fame; we all want hundreds of twitter and instagram followers, reading our every thought and seeing all the photos we share with the world.

Where do you draw the line over what stays personal?

I admit this may have gone into a bit of a random direction, especially as this really isn't the kind of thing I normally write about and honestly, my Real Housewives addiction probably isn't going to end any time soon but I do think is something important to talk about. What do you think? Leave me a comment to tell me your opinion, or am I the one only one worrying about this...?