It's Saturday night. I'm sat beneath my quilt cover, ignoring the fact that I am beginning to slowly overheat and instead favouring the notional feeling of safety with my feet tucked away. My hands are cradling a mug of chamomile tea in an attempt to tire out the endlessly turning cogs within my brain and in the hope that my eyelids will soon start to become heavy.

It's the first real moment that I have had to myself this week, the first real moment that I am able to sit and reflect on the goings on around me, the events that have occurred, and how my life is beginning to change. 

Life is strange. Complicated. Stressful. Beautiful. Fragile. It's made up of every decision you ever make, every person you allow in your life, every event that shocks you to the core and every emotion that you allow yourself to feel.

It's amazing. You can reach out your hand to grab another and interlock fingers as if they were made for no other reason. You can kiss, smile, play, touch, feel. You can find somebody that laughs at the same dumb jokes that you do. You can choose to be whoever that you want to be. You can make great decisions, you can make bad decisions, all with consequences and all filled with lessons to be learnt. You can have your cake and eat it, no matter what anybody says. You can say yes, or you can say no, with difficulty or with ease. You can run and jump high over obstacles or you can slow right down and run the other way. You can be impulsive, or you can take your time. You can be whoever you want to be, shaped with everything that you have done and that you will do.

Jamie's Italian, Leeds: Super Lunch Menu

Two Thousand and Seventeen

In 2017;

I will work on my confidence, my wit, my value. I shall flirt and touch and not be afraid, I'll sing a song, tell a joke, read a poem out loud; I shall make somebody feel special and I shan't be afraid to express my feelings.

I shall read book upon book, immersing myself in my own imagination and becoming lost within the lines of a world that is so far from my own. I shall not feel guilty for watching an entire series of a Netflix show within a day or two, because it’s what I enjoy in the moment that counts.

I shall take my camera everywhere I go, to remind myself that phone photos are great, but the feeling of taking a great photo on my camera is analogous, if not better, to that on my iPhone. I shall spark the creative side of my mind back up and rediscover the enjoyment that I once felt when sat surrounded by scrap paper and equipped with a stick of glue. I shall learn a new skill.

I will take chances and push limits. I shan’t feel as if I am a nuisance nor a burden, I shall take charge of what I want and, need it be, be frightened later. I will find my courage once again and I shall find my way – whether it requires knocking down obstacles or embracing what is already on my path.

I will begin to shape myself into the person that I want to be without punishing myself along the way. I shall find my strength and bravery, and discover my worth. I shall make 2017 one that I can look back on as the year that I found happiness.

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2016: Love, Life & Laura.

Every year I write this post out in categories, summarising each aspect of my life in three tight boxes.

If I even began to attempt to fit this year into boxes, they'd be bursting out at the seams like an overpacked suitcase. I'd be sitting on the words attempting to zip them up into a case in which they would refuse to fit, meaning I'd have to remove some, condense the thoughts that hold equal importance to the ones that are able to fit in the box, and only touching the edges of what has been an overwhelming year.

So, for this year, I'm throwing the boxes out because I've had enough of damn packing.*

Tiergarten Schönbrunn, Vienna, Austria | Interrail

We went to Vienna for one reason and one reason only. The zoo. 

As two zoology students travelling, would you expect any less?

Vienna Zoo is the oldest in the world - and that time has made it the best zoo that I have ever visited. It helps that it is based in Schonbrunn Palace grounds, which are absolutely beautiful and live up to the expectations that you imagine when the word 'palace' crops up.

Tropicarium, Budapest | Interrail

On our final full day in Budapest, we chose to visit the Tropicarium (or the aquarium if we wanna stick to basics up in here).

We chose to walk there. Because we are tits. Cue getting completely lost, ending up in a horrendous part of Budapest, having to buy data to use Google maps that still didn't help very much, ending up next to many strange buildings and finally finding the tropi-aquarium - in an indoor shopping centre. A's exciting 'biggest aquarium in Europe' turned out to be the 'biggest indoor aquarium in Europe', which still wasn't impressively big. But hey ho. It was an experience all-in-all, and a story to tell.

Sweeter Dreams with Leesa Mattress

For the longest time I had uncomfortable and restless nights' sleep.

I remember having a metal frame bed and the most uncomfortable mattress in all the land. You could feel the springs through the material - it was horrendous. I used to have to carefully position my ribs between them to make myself comfortable and to not have anything digging into my body.

Alongside being a boney little rascal, I also suffer with a bad lower back, leg pain at night, and more times than often I wake up with a bad neck/shoulder from awkward sleeping positions.