A weighty issue....update!

So things didn't go good at weight watchers this week- I'd put on half a pound. Not a massive amount and seeing as I'd had a huge wodge of chocolate birthday cake at the weekend and copious amounts of alcohol (wine, vodka...the usual), I'm not massively surprised. In fact, I would have said it could have been more like 2lb. But anyway, feel very guilty this week.

Having said that, I did go and join the gym as promised and I have my gym induction at 7.30am next Thursday morning- yes, that's right, before work. I doubt even I will be able to crawl out of bed at that time in the morning. Ah the things we do for weight loss. I have to admit though, I hate the thought of going, I don't like it much when I'm there but I do feel better when I've done an hour or more. Also, it has this strange effect on me that doesn't make me want to dive for the bag of doritos when I get in. I feel like I've worked so hard that I don't want to spoil it with rubbish, high calorie food afterwards which can only be a good thing.

Swimming is on the menu for this weekend, in amongst visiting the tattoo place (eek!) and running around like a blue- arsed fly visiting the family in Leam/Warwick and wherever else they might live. To be honest, I haven't seen them for a couple of weeks so it will be nice to catch up with them!

LOTS more exciting things happening over the next week so keep reading and keep commenting! xx

A weighty issue

Before I go any further with the blogs, I have to admit something. I am on Weight Watchers. Now many people would say that I don't really need to be at WW and to a point I would agree. But since I started work at my current job which was 2 years ago, I have put on a stone. A whole 14 pounds. It doesn't sound a lot when it's in pounds but it feels a lot when your trying to squeeze in the same jeans as before.

The job I have is an office job and never having had one of these before, it came as a bit of a shock. I'd had retail jobs in the past where I was on my feet all day and ate exactly the same as I have done in the office job. The lack of exercise and the moving around in the day had caused the weight to pile on.

Joining WW wasn't a decision I took lightly. I tried to eat healthier and go the gym and went swimming and climbed the 6 flights of stairs to my office every day which is no mean feat let me tell you. But nothing was happening. My mum (who has coincidentally lost 4 stone at WW), said I needed to join WW to have the fear of someone actually weighing me each week. They expect me to lose weight on the plan and if you put on weight, you feel like a bit of a disappointment.

I ended up going along and in a couple of months, I'd lost half a stone. It had been gradual (which apparantly is the best way to lose it, as it stays off longer) but it felt amazing. I felt like I wanted to prance around naked in a field full of sunflowers, I didn't but I felt so good, I just didn't want to wear any clothes!

Since then, it has been Christmas. Major downfall. In the two or three months it had taken me to lose the weight, it had been piled back on in the space of the two week xmas break. Granted, I did take a "Oh well it's Christmas" approach to the endless chocolates, cupcakes and buffet style food pushed into my face. I felt very deflated when they told me at the first meeting back that I was right back at my starting weight, not a pound under or over, exactly what I was when I started.

My first proper week back on the WW was last week and I lost 2lb which was a miracle as I hadn't been to the gym or done any exercise but I'd obviously eaten the right foods. Tonight I'm going to join the gym properly. I'm very lucky actually because as a Birmingham resident, I get free gym, fitness classes and swimming until the end of March this year which is fab. I will definately be taking advantage of this in a bid to get back to that feeling of frolicking naked in a field.

Wish me luck! Next weigh in is tomorrow at 6.15pm!!

A busy weekend with plenty of vodka!

I had an absolutely fab weekend! My weekends are usually so crammed, I don't have time to sit down for five minutes but this weekend I took Friday off work to spend with Dan, the birthday boy! Turning 23 for him wasn't something to celebrate but we had a good day nonetheless with a family dinner and a three and a half hour sit- in in a dingy tattoo parlour!

Dan had his tattoo done back in Australia exactly 2 years ago and they completely rushed it so obviously it ended up a bit wibbly and wonky. The three and a half hours was to straighten it up and put in some shading. Some blood, sweat and no tears later it was done but it was a bit of an ordeal for him. I have to say I was fascinated though, I ended up asking the tattoist a million questions which probably annoyed him, but it's the journalist inside me wanting to know every detail! I will be posting a more detailed blog about tattoing next Sunday as I am making a trip back on my own on Saturday for reasons that I don't quite want to divulge yet!

So Friday night for Dan's birthday we ended up at a local pub with a few of his friends, which then turned to a lock in which included some absolutely vile shots with baileys in it. Anyone who drinks shots knows that baileys curdles in alcohol and ends up chewy when you try and swallow it in one. I ended up nearly spitting it down dan's back! But the night was good and we didn't end up too hungover.

Saturday night was the turn of my very good friend, Sarah Hallas' birthday, another traveller who accompanied me to Australia. To sum it up in a few words- lots of wine, lots of vodka, lots of dancing and I did end up with a very small shard of glass in my foot. In my drunken haze I did manage to remove after some hopping on my other foot for balance.

The night ended around 2.30am where Dan came to meet us and the two of us decided to carry on drinking in my flat. A good idea at the time but this morning? Not so good. We generally spent the night drinking (or eating) vodka jelly's and listing to club tropicana on you tube. I think I recall some singing and dancing aswell. Bedtime finally rolled around at 5am!! Needless to say we weren't up until 2pm this afternoon!

A fab weekend but I'm shattered! Was lovely to spend time with the croc and the girls. Happy Birthday!! xxx

A little bit of Smudge makes the world go round

Something exciting has happened! If I had'nt been busy enough, I've just doubled my workload at my request. Why may you ask? Well, to expand my portfolio and to continue my long and arduous process of becoming a top- class, award- winning journalist.

Alas, Smudge Magazine require my knowledge and expertise to educate them on the Walks of Warwickshire. My knowledge and expertise on Walking? Zero. Still, in the task of saving face (as my byline will be printed on it), I will do what any other budding journalist would do and drag my other half down the tow paths and rambling muddy walkways of Warwickshire. The end result? I stun the editor and the readers so much that they offer me a full time position of assitant editor with a huge whopping salary.

In my dreams. Although I will get stuck in and do the job. I am genuinely excited to add another string to my bow and show the media world what I can do. Will look great in the old portfolio as well. Now where are those walking boots?

Tinkerbell and the Croc

It sounds like a Disney film doesn't it? But actually it's the start of the story of how Dan, my boyfriend and I met.


I love telling the story of how we met. For some reason it has that air of fairytale about it and people are always in awe when we tell them (I say we, I actually mean I. He doesn't like to shout from the rooftops how soppy he is!)
When I mentioned in my earlier blog that I met a young man in Australia who completely changed my idea of love, I wasn't kidding. He turned it upside down and shook it very hard!

After Uni, as you know, I decided to go travelling and never on this earth thought I would ever meet anybody. The great thing about backpacking is you meet thousands of people, literally, from all different walks of life, different backgrounds, different religions, different countries. But miraculously in amongst all of this you occasionally find people you want to spend time with whether that be a work colleague (Rach Sears), a roomate (Katie Fowler) or a young man that goes by the name of Dan.

We met in the middle of a busy, smoky, drunken Irish pub in the middle of Darwin, the Northern Territory in Australia, funnily enough in the same pub I worked in at the time. We had this random guy sitting between us and we ended up talking around him for the best part of an hour until he got bored and walked off.


Anyway, to cut a long story short, we became inseparable for the time we stayed in Darwin. When it was time for me to move on, I couldn't do it so I changed my plans so we could spend another three weeks together. Soon enough, it was time for Dan to move on. After I waved him off on the shuttle bus (which was way cheaper than a taxi... and we were skint backpackers), I cried buckets.

When my visa expired after a year, I had to return back to the UK and Dan and I still spoke every day. His visa didn't expire for another 6 months and rightly so, wanted to stay and enjoy the rest of his trip. It was hard. The thought of not seeing him for 6 months was awful. I had no idea if we would last- we wanted it to so much- but we were backpackers. The words holiday and fling come to mind but we persevered and managed to do it. But one day about 5 months in, I couldn't do it anymore. I was only one month off seeing him but it was too hard. I think my family and friends had started to think he was imaginary- that it was all in my head and I'd had enough. I sent a massive long message to him saying to bloody hurry up or I was off!

One night I was on a night out with the girls and at stupid o clock in the morning, I decided to call Dan. What with the time difference it was their lunchtime- but there was no answer which was odd. I joked that he must have come back early.

And it turns out I was right. He'd only gone and cut his trip short by a month to fly home from Australia to surprise me...on Valentines Day. It's stuff you just couldn't make up.

I can now wholeheartedly state that I am, for once in my life, completely in love. Soppy as that may sound, it's true. He completely turned what I thought was love on it's head. I've had various relationships in the past but nothing has even come close to how I feel for him. It will be three years this June since we met in that smoky, drunken Irish pub in Darwin and you know what, I think we'll probably go back there one day.
Becci and Dan. Tinkerbell and the Croc!

An Aura of Mystery

When I first started thinking about what I wanted to call this blog, I was stumped. It was like trying to come up with a good headline. I wanted something catchy, something with an underlying meaning and something which just sounded good. So I made an extensive list of some catchy words and started playing around with them. When I finally came up with Indigo Aura, I instantly fell in love with it. My grandparents and Dan's aunt, Denise, are very into spirtualistic healing, reiki and clairvoyancy. I must admit, I'd always been curious and as I was growing up, every now and then my Grandma would say, 'There's something very special about you.' Something which one of her spiritual friends had also noticed.

It wasn't until I had this very strange experience one day that it stopped me in my tracks. I was at work one day (back when I was working in retail) and a customer, or what I thought was a customer, walked in and stood very, very close behind me. We're talking very close, she definately invavded my private space. She was an older lady with brilliant white hair and repeatedly asked me to check the time. She asked probably about three or four times before slowly walking back out the shop whilst looking at me intently.

It was strange. It could have just been a crazy old lady just wandering the streets of Leamington (probably more likely of an explanation), but for some reason, in a split second, I made the decision to contact all my loved ones to see if they were safe. Or to see if anything formidable had happened at that time of day. Everyone was fine, so it probably nothing more than a confused old lady. But I mentioned the incident to my grandma and she just smiled and said, 'Never pass those things off as nothing'.

Strange as though it may sound, to this day, I still think there is more to it that meets the eye. I think my Grandma might be onto something.

That said, when I had picked the name Indigo Aura for my blog, I googled it to see what it might mean and what an indigo aura stood for. Turns out it relates to the third eye, seeing something that's not always in front of you. To have an indigo aura means you are intuitive and it reveals psychic power of attunement with the self. It indicates people who are clairvoyant, gifted in magic, sensitive, deep feeling, empathic and often spiritual.

Coincidence? I'm starting to think not.

A retraction

Already.
 

Second post in and I'm already having to write a retraction. Typical! I have had so many good reponses to my first blog (thanks for that!) including my very good friend, Katie Fowler. However she brought my attention to a couple of mistakes in a sentence towards the end of the blog. It's bugging me so much that I am going to re- write the sentence...you ready Fowler? :-)

'So came the day that will be etched in my memory forever. At the age of 22 on the 20th September 2007 (not the 24th), a year after I finished uni, I travelled at 4am to Heathrow (not Gatwick) airport to board the plane with a bunch of strangers.'

 

So much for it being one of the most amazing days of my life, I couldn't even remember the date! Eek! Don't hate me Australia lot! I promise for the next installment of the blog, I will dig out the travel journal to get the dates spot on.

Thanks Miss Fowler, I will be relying on you to correct me in the future! :-) xx

A whole new world...of writing!

I've got to admit blogging is completely new to me. I started scouring the internet and came across a few good ones, but it wasn't until I stumbled across one particular one which, along with my love of writing, completely inspired me to start my own. It wasn't that it was based on a particular topic as such but it was the quality of writing that drew me in. Before I knew it, I'd been looking at the page for the best part of an hour reading blog after blog and smiling and nodding knowingly at the content thinking, oh my god, that happened to me last week. I suppose it was the small window that looked into this person's life which drew me in. Someone who I originally thought was a completely different person to myself turned out to be scarily like me in many ways. The writing was personal, intelligent and didn't hide behind anything. It was open and honest and if I could make this blog half as good as that, I'd be a happy girl.

So that said, here's my story so far. I only decided I wanted to become a journalist about a year and a half ago. I guess it was always in the back of  my mind as every career opportunity I created for myself, every decision I made was directed towards it. It was only when my boyfriend, Dan, said, 'Look, what do you actually want to do?', did it shake me into saying the words, ' I think I want to write, I think I want to be a journalist'. Obviously the defining moment for me was seeing the first story in the weekly newspaper that did it. The byline just underneath the header, 'By Rebecca Higgerson' and that was it. It seems funny that the first story I'd written was only a year and a half ago and things have just snowballed since then. Trust me, they haven't fallen into my lap, I've worked hard and I've still got a very long way to go but at least I'm on the right track.

When I finished University back in 2006 (Media Communications and English Studies- see journalism was always there!) I had to sit down and think what I wanted to do. Go back home? Get a job? Or do something completely out of character and pack a bag and travel the world. Just the idea filled me with a rainbow of emotions. When I told my mum, she didn't believe me. Honestly. It was only when I produced the plane ticket under her nose when she was cooking the family roast on a Sunday that she started to take me seriously. She was heartbroken but the idea was there and I had to do it.

So came the day that will be etched in my memory forever. At the age of 22 on the 24th September 2007, a year after I finished uni, I travelled at 4am to Gatwick airport to board the plane with a bunch of strangers. Little did I know that the trip I was about to embark upon would be the best decision of my life, as you will probably find out in the many blogs to come. But for the moment let me say, that the bunch of strangers I travelled with? They are now my best friends and I also met a young man who would completely turn my idea of love (or what I thought was love) completely on it's head...in a very good way!

Which brings us to today. I adore writing and am rather excited about having a blog I can pour my heart out on. I freelance for a magazine and luckily have the opportunity to have lots of my ideas published in the magazine. Keep an eye out for links to the magazine and please, anyone who is studying for their NCTJ law exam at the moment...help me out! Comments are always welcome.

Lots more posts to come!

The first of many!

Starting off the blog completely confuddled with how to start while the other half sets up his new DIY ikea desk...it's going to be a long night! LOTS more posts to come!