010: Reason to Shave My Legs

It is the middle of winter here and I am quite single at the moment. With that perfect combination, it is a rare occasion when I actually shave my legs. It is not the season to be showing skin, so most of the time everything is covered by with jeans or stockings or my favourite striped pyjamas and sadly when out of sight, things are too often out of mind. If I know I’m going out, I’ll give the pins a once over with a disposable in the shower, but it’s never a particularly good job and has to last until the next night out is planned. I am quite a lazy being, and will endure all the prickly shins and unsightliness that cause many to turn to drink, but I am rarely phased. And if I am willing to put up with it, it can’t be that bad.

This afternoon, when I had nothing more than season one of GIRLS to consume, I whipped out my trusty epilator (a device so obviously designed by a man and tested by compliant women) and gave it a go. Like every other time I have left it too long, I was thankful for the atrocious amount of n

oise the small thing can make  as it masked almost all of my swearing, but it also gets me thinking.

Too often in the past I associated smooth hair free legs with boys. I remember a conversation I had with a girlfriend where we noticed that too familiar collation with the nights we epilated and the nights we pulled. She having a fun adventure one night, and I the next because we had been sharing a bathroom and couldn’t both have been silky smooth at the same time. We worked out (as many women before us have) that by not shaving our legs we gave ourselves a strange but legitimate reason not to go home with a fella – the embarrassment for one is a  certain way that can get me running for the razor ( I have had a charming man announce loudly for those around him to “beware the cactus” that is still leaving scars) But also, in a backwards kind of way, having a little touch of sexy beauty can give you that added need of confidence that can really change how one handles a situation.

This also got me thinking, and my chaotic stream of consciousness followed thus: Why should I let a boy be the reason that I want to shave or epilate my legs? Who cares if no one else is going to come near enough to feel just how silky smooth my legs are now? Why should it be strange that I want to feel comfortable in my own body and go through self-inflicted pain to get there? Why does the effort I put into the way I look have to be solely for the benefit of the people around me? Why can’t I try to look pretty purely for the sake of not wanting to look ugly? Why feel like I need a reason to do this?

I could very easily wait around for someone to be my reason to shave my legs – be it a night out with my girls or an unusually strong desire to find a tall dark handsome stranger but I might accumulate a pair of legs similar to my father. Why can’t I be my own reason? Why am I not allowed to be my own motivation for getting out of the house and embracing the influence that I have on my own life? Am I not reason enough?

Embracing ones appearance is an important part of growing up. So much time and energy is put into the way other people see us but I think it is invested for the wrong reason. The days that I curl my hair or a splash of my favourite lipstick or have endured all the pain with an epilation session, I feel like a can conquer anything. So watch out world, this week Katie comes at you with socially acceptable legs - I might accidently change everything. 

009: Routine, or lack there of

A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about my life in England. Be it a photograph or a status on Facebook or doing something again for the first time since I got back. I miss my friends, the environment the lifestyle and I miss the person that I was. There was so much excitement of living on campus, drinking every second night, barely studying and enjoying the freedom of living a life where consequences hardly matter. The things however, that I miss the most isn’t the parties and the cheap booze and the plentiful amount of attractive international men – it’s the routine that I created.

Each morning, I would be work by a knock on the door, throwing on whatever clothes that were lying on the floor and met with my three favourite housemates (or people. In the entire world) and trekked sleepily down to the dining hall for breakfast. We would part ways go to classes, if our time tables suited, we’d meet up for lunch or lounge around in each-others rooms before heading down with our whole dorm for dinner, gossip and a whole lot of laughs. Every day, normally integrated with some of the drama that seemed to follow us wherever we went. But that was the main part. It was normal. There was normality.

But since returning, that routine has vanished. I wake up in the morning with no plan, no structure and no motivation. I know I need to create something; something to give my days reason again. I want to make a new routine to get me back into a somewhat normal life again. I want, no, it’s more than a want, it’s a need – I need to regain some of the routine. 

008: Looking Back

In the now month and a half of being back in the country (it does not  feel like it) I have been trying a new way of thinking, trying to create a New Katie to tackle the new world that travelling showed me. Sticking to my original idea, I have been determined not to return to the rathe miserable lifestyle that I had myself enduring before I left, by changing little aspects of my life rather than falling back into a bad routine. And with the two month mile stone just around the corner, I guess it’s time to look back over my return and see how I've done.

I had five major “Room for Improvement” areas, each with subcategories and little steps towards the New Katie. And I can comfortably say that not a single one of these areas are thriving (and no, they are all thriving in their own little way either). Really, a staggeringly small amount of change has actually happened. But the biggest change is a much subtler one – a very internal change: the new knowledge that I am capable, I just need more time.

Perhaps two months is too soon to hope to grow into an entirely new person, it would make sense. It took over two decades to create the last one.  

007: Candlelit Dinner (for one)

My housemate has gone out for the night, leaving me in our little flat. I love there moments when I'm by myself, when there is no one to impress no one that cares. I made myself a tasty little dinner. Lit a candle or two and dusted off a bottle of wine that I'd been hiding in the cupboard for a "special occasion" and settled in for a night in.

I've been having a rather strange week and as a result, having had a serious lack of Katie-Time. I'm still 'in between jobs' and living rather desperately for each coming pay day. (and with unstable jobs come unstable pay, so they are often few and far between). Every second day is another job interview or another trail shift, each time having to be just as bubbly and employable as the time before. But I'm not phased by this (much to my mothers dismay who continues to ask if I'm eating regularly) I'm looking for the good job and that even harder than finding a regular job. And it's out there, waiting, I just have to find it. 

Also, have been seeing more of my family, introduced to a baby cousin (or second cousin, what do you call the child of your cousin?) and saw my Grandparents for the first time since returning to the country. And have been able to sit down to tea with most of my close friends to brief them on the absurd change that occurred while I was away. And what with uni starting back and the homework already beginning to pile up, a night when I am fully obliged to do nothing is more than reasonable. 

 

006: Fear of the Idle

I have been home now for just over two weeks and the one constant thing about the past sixteen days has been a strange fear of being idle.

Before I went travelling, I led a very simple life. Although I had a full load at university, for a time worked two jobs and had regular weekend tips down to see family and friends, I longed for my afternoons of doing nothing. When I could curl up, in some disgusting assortment of dirty clothes, tucked up in bed, lap top resting on pillows beside half a dozen mugs and bowls, smeared with the remains of meals or lingering dregs of tea. I would browse through the Internet and watch reruns of old TV shows. Although it included living in my own squalor I was content with the idle life I led.  

But since my return, I can't seem to enjoy sitting around doing nothing. I can barely stand sitting still. This might have something to do with my lap top still being shipped from the UK and my bed still in storage, but I am still incapable of having a full hour of nothing, let alone a whole day. The truth is I seem to have a whole lot of things to do. Finding work, unpacking my boxes, teaching myself how to cook again, reconnecting with people I haven't seen in years with the excuse of "oh but I've been in England" because I know, as almost everything that does, that the subconscious Katie has something else in mind.

I can't bare the thought of returning to that lifestyle. Not doing anything. No having a reason to get dressed in the morning, or to check the mail box. Because I had deluded myself into thinking that it didn't matter. That it was only going I effect me. That one one else was cared. And I didn't care. 

I am so scared of going back, that I am filling my days so I don't even have to time to be idle. If I get into different routine then there is one less thing I will have to worry about. However, I am nervous that once I resettle back into my unit - unpack all the boxes and put everything thing into place - I will run out of things to do. 

Guess I'll need something more to fill in my days. Any suggestions?