Good Vibes Sunday #25

xx

Lessons You at 13 Could Teach You at 23.

I don't think 13 year-old Claire gets enough love. I think I try to bury my teenage years as one big period of shame and trying to be popular when I just wasn't going to be. I remember a pathetic version of myself, desperate to be liked and drawing attention to myself in horribly embarrassing ways. But the more I think about it, the more I think I'm not giving myself enough credit. I might not have been very successful in my quest to be 'cool', but that was mostly because I adamantly refused to be any less of myself. I didn't want to look like anyone else or be like anyone else. I wanted my voice to be heard just the way it was. And I seem to remember myself as a little more carefree, more time in front of me and at a stage in life where as long as you were still in school, you were doing okay. 

So here's what the awkward, weird, teenager in all of us could teach us now we're adults. 

Your hair is your hair, is your hair

And there's nothing we can do about that babe. It's never going to to look perfectly done and if it did it would take all your time and money. Just try and find some hair ties that don't give you tension headache, and don't brush it when you let it dry naturally. 

How pretty you are is not the point

Girl, listen. You look the same every damn day. Only you notice your 'bad' days. No one gives a sweet shit what you look like so you get ready for you and let everyone keep loving you just the way you are.

Some people will always be awful

I know you thought you wouldn't be dealing with this shit now you're an adult but people still have nothing better to do with their time. Remember when you knew that being bullied just showed how insecure the other person was? Never ever forget it; bullies still exist and it still isn't anything to do with you. 

Your friends are your achievements, not your love life
These people are some of the best you'll ever know and they've chosen to be in contact with you for the rest of your life, so what you doing letting some boy who barely knows your name tell you how much you're worth? More than that, why are you boiling down all your achievements to whether you have a partner or not? 

What you eat is no one's business

Don't you remember the time before it was a personal character achievement that you are salad? Just eat whatever the hell you like and remember life will be better if every meal tastes great and fills you up, rather than looking great and tasting of nothing. 

Not every day has to be great

Also remember the time before motivational quotes. Basically, do you remember the time before social media. Not every day has to be awe-inspiring or come with a sunset background with some writing over it. Your days will largely feel unproductive and frustrating but they'll have nice moments and that's the best we can hope for.

The people with the most active social lives aren't always the happiest

At this age you had to spend so much time with people you didn't even like. So much. Literally more time with people you didn't like than people you did. You're a proper adult and you don't have to do that anymore, so don't. If that means more nights to yourself then that's fine. 

xx

Good Vibes Sunday #24

First evidence of professional lift improvement.

This moment, when a dog was asleep on my lap. 

This film. I still love dinosaurs. 

Getting really started on my dissertation. 

Last night with these babes.

xx

Good Vibes Sunday #23

A day in York with my MA girls was just what we needed. 

And here's to a tiny bit of professional success. Well done me. 

xx

Impostor Syndrome

The first time I got impostor syndrome was during my internship in Brussels. There's something about being 20, and female, and really still only a student, and going to meetings where actual influential people are discussing the actual policies of the actual EU which easily makes you feel like you might have somehow ended up in the wrong room. I wasn't of course, I was there because it was my job, because I was a research assistant and I was a research assistant because someone had met me and decided I could be one. The people who decided that knew how important their work was and they thought I was a good person to do it.

 This is quite normal; I do tend to get jobs and be considered fairly competent. So what am I doing feeling so out of place, and so surprised every time I'm just a little bit successful?

Then I got the job I had before my current one, in the sort of clothes store I'd have been really intimidated to go in, and not only did I do fine but no one once looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be there. I totally knew what I was doing and everyone knew I had a right to have that job.

And finally, I got the job I have now, the kind of job I always wanted but also the kind of job other people had and not me. But some people met me and they thought I was the sort of person who could have that job. So there I was, that girl with the job she likes and the masters degree and applying to do her PhD and I am totally that person. But sometimes it feels like I'm not that person, that I'm just playing at being that person because I just want to be that person, but actually it's completely unattainable.

It's hard to explain if you've never felt it. But this post is for those of us who feel weird in shops where all the shop assistants are impeccably dressed and their hair always looks perfect, and also for those of us who managed to get jobs that everyone else tells us are really great but we still just feel like we're flailing around and have no idea what we're doing.

A good example of feeling like an imposter in my own life is this blog. I feel like any moment now someone's going to email me and say 'Claire that blog is super embarrassing, you are not the sort of person that should be blogging, please get off the internet and go read or something, okay?'. No one will of course, and no one does, instead people comment and say things like 'me too, this was great', and sometimes my real life friends read it and they tell  me so and I feel happy but also like I've been found out, as though people actually reading all this stuff I put out there might be my great undoing. And the people of the internet will realise I'm not supposed to be there, because my posts are irregular, and not fashion or beauty related (some of the time) and my photos aren't edited.

I'm just going to throw it out there, I think social media has made us believe that good things are only for people with perfect lives. And when you know your own life, including the fact that one time you dropped a 4-pint milk carton on the kitchen floor and it split and went everywhere, its hard to think of it as perfect.

For me, good things are for people with good hair. The love-hate relationship I have with my hair always tends to the hate side of the equation due to its inability to fall nicely without some serious graft. I don't have naturally good hair and things don't just fall into my lap. They take a lot of work and a lot of failure and they're never as good as anyone else's things.
And when they are as good I get the feeling that everyone around me thinks I don't deserve it, or I'm the wrong type of person to have it. I'm not the right sort of person to have a cool job, but I also don't let my academic work consume my life so I probably don't deserve PhD funding either.

But when I (fingers crossed, touch wood, salt over the shoulder) get all of these things, and in fact, the things I already have, I just feel like I don't deserve them, or I have to play them down and not celebrate them because there must be an excuse for them somewhere. Because it doesn't feel very likely that all these things are just for me because I didn't find it easy to get them.
But then isn't that everyone's reality, isn't it more that the people we think of as successful don't talk about the times they failed. Most of us apply for jobs we want but don't get and don't wash our hair for three days and our successes are never quite as wholly perfect as we imagined. Certainly not as easy as everyone else makes it look.
 So when we're there and its good it's easy to feel like you're not good enough to meet the credit that's been given to you. And when you're successful but it's not what you hoped it would be just as easy to think this might be the best you can do and you should just be grateful.

So that's where we're at, I'm making changes in my life for the better that I feel like I don't deserve because as a woman I'm not taught to think of myself as successful and as a person I feel like I'm constantly middling so feeling successful doesn't come very easily. The most difficult part of this is that my successes so far have come as a result of some really tough decisions and everyone else makes it look so easy that I don't really feel like I'm doing as well because I had to cast stuff out to get to this point. 

But that's what imposter syndrome is that's what it's about, you feel like you're not doing it, or you shouldn't be, because you're not doing it like everyone else is, or how you think you're meant to do it. But no one ever talks about the nights out they turned down and the days they spent hitting their head against their laptop. They sure as hell don't talk about the years out to work and wait they had to take and the travelling they didn't do. Everyone makes it look easy but it isn't and when I got some great career-orientated news this week I thought about everything I'd done to get here and realised I am definitely not an imposter, I deserve it.

xx

Good Vibes Sunday #22

Monday and Tuesday in Masstricht were also beyond perfect and I could effuse forever about how much I love my girl. 

We won the pub quiz because we are masters of knowledge and also very few other people participated. 

Went to a conference on a Saturday because history is my life and that means going into uni all day at the weekend to listen to people talk about Waterloo. 

xx