This point; right here.

Do you ever pause and think about where you are right now, where you were at this point in the past, and where you want to go? It’s something I think about from time to time, sometimes I feel good, sometimes I miss things and people, but if I hadn’t experienced any of it, I wouldn’t be where I am, and who I am. Currently, I’m planning lots of things, and whilst there’s a big part of me that is just itching to stop the planning and just do things, I know that the planning is essential. So I persist, and soon enough, I’ll be able to start the “do” part!

This time 4 years ago, I was in my last year on my college course, and I felt a bit strange. I was happy, very happy, because I was 7 months into my relationship with the boy, but I wasn’t completely happy education-wise. I do love the theatre, and the beloved-theatre-company, but I was at a point where I felt a bit odd; many of the friends I had grown up with there had moved on, gone to University etc, and I guess it was a bit strange to be in a place that held so many childhood memories, and yet I was studying there. I don’t regret it at all, because in doing the course, I had left my Secondary School behind, which was a good thing. But there was just something missing, I guess, because I was in a place where childhood was still so present, but I needed to grow up a bit, and to do that, I needed to go away.

This time 3 years ago, I was just starting out at Reading University. It started well. I thought it was a good course, and I had made some nice friends on the course, and a few from outside of the course. But I was away from home, away from the boy, away from those I loved. At the time, it didn’t really suit me very much. As the year went on, I got more and more homesick, and I realised just how much I was missing London too – even though it wasn’t far away by train, when you’re in a whole different place, well, it’s just not the same. I didn’t feel completely comfortable in the presence of those at University either, but I’m only starting to realise this now. There was a fair bit of back-stabbing, bitchiness and two-facedness, and all of that really isn’t who I am. From that year, I’ve gained one really good friend, and the other friendships have now more or less fallen away. However, I also don’t regret this year. I learnt a lot about myself – I’m a home-girl at heart, I like to be around those I love more than being by myself, I’m creative, I have an ever-present love of bright colours, and I always, always try to face things with a smile!

2 years ago, I had just started on the long journey with the Open University. It’s been tough, you need loads of self-motivation, and at times I do get a bit fed up with it all, but I just have to remember what I’m working towards…eventually, I will have a degree…it’s just taking a little longer. The big sis and I had also started to get a bit more serious about the jewellery business at this point, and in the December, we held a jewellery party and did quite well with it. Little steps; it was a bit stop and start after that, but we’re now on the way to relaunching the whole thing…it’s exciting!

This time last year, I had started my second course with the Open University, and I was also doing my Level 2 BSL course, at last. Through doing the BSL course, my confidence was slowly starting to grow again, and I was realising just how much BSL I already knew! With sign-language, if you don’t use it, you might lose it, but there was a lot of knowledge in me, it was just tucked away, not being used, so I’m glad I did the course, because it helped me to feel more confident when I’m signing. It also helped that our teacher was Deaf herself, so it was great to see a strong, confident Deaf woman every week.

Where am I now? What is happening right now, at this point in time? Well, currently, I’m not studying, as there wasn’t an Open Uni course that started in October that I took a liking to…but there’s one starting in January that I like the look of…so that’s the next step – with the O.U. you can do it bit by bit, working your way to a degree module by module, course by course. However, I’m currently making lots of plans; the biggest thing is the jewellery business, which has stepped up a level – I’ve been working away on a business plan, budgeting, market researching…it’s hard work! It’ll pay off though, and I’ll reveal more here when it’s all up and running. At the end of September, I finally took the plunge and got my first DSLR, and I’m so happy that I did. I think it marked a real change, because I’ve love photography for so long, yet I’ve been using the trusty point and shoot cameras, and feeling green with envy whenever I saw someone whip out a DSLR when I was out and about. But now? Now I have MY OWN. Happy days. I’ve been having lots of fun with it. Lots of fun. A lot of ideas have been bubbling up too, so I’ve been pinning things on Pinterest, and soaking up all the inspiration on the internet. Watch this space, because there will most definitely be more photographic adventures to come, which I will document on here.

After all that has happened this year, I’m feeling grateful at this point in time. Grateful for friends, family, life. I appreciate that I have this time to create what I want, which currently means setting up the jewellery business and playing with my camera. I don’t know what the future will hold, but I’m feeling happy, and I’m feeling excited. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this excited about things; and, excited, I’m glad you’re back. I’ve missed you. The next few weeks will be busy, busy and fun, as I put the finishing touches onto the business plan, and start the first steps on the “do”…and that’s the most exciting part. Sometimes it really is good to reflect on things, to look backwards at where you have been, to look forward at where you want to go, and to look at where you are now and re-evaluate things. If you don’t like where you are, then you have the power to change it. And if you can’t change it, change your attitude. It’s your life.

“This is your world. Shape it or someone else will.” – Gary Lew.

Sunshine Saturday.

Whee. Today has been absolutely lush. The sunshine has made it a day full of lovely moments. The big sis and I met up with one of my friends, and her lovely boyfriend; we got some cupcakes from Ella’s Bakehouse in Covent Garden and then hopped on the tube, ending up in Hyde Park, where we joined countless others in sunshine relaxation on the grass! Was a truly lovely afternoon. Hmm, think “lovely” is definitely one of my favourite words!

The big sis and I were snapping away with the cameras, managed to capture some funny moments. I also got a snap of my friend signing the “I Love You” ASL sign, whilst I was taking pics of the blue sky, and it looks great! It may make an appearance on here… (Lots of technical problems with actually uploading pics at the moment, as my laptop’s memory is full to the brim – keep telling myself that I need to get an external hard-drive – and also I keep taking pics on other’s cameras…meaning that I don’t seem to have the pics MYSELF! Bah. Well, the sis is trying to email me the pics as we speak…so you may be in luck.)

Was talking to the boy before I took him to work (he’s doing a lot of bar work at the moment, so I’m his personal taxi driver…), and I mentioned how funny us Brits are… Whenever we have sunshine, we don our shorts and sandles/flip-flops/summer shoes, and head for the nearest park/garden/beer-garden/beach…and so on! It just makes me smile. Foreigners must think we are so strange, he-he!

I think I’ve been drunk on sunshine today. Uh-huh. I’ve been happy as can be. Was nice to be out with the sis, and spending time with a fellow deaf friend, who I don’t see that often. We have similar philosophies in that we both are very happy people, who try to make the most of a situation and just be happy-go-lucky. Yip-yip. Yay for happy, smiley people.

This is what Saturday afternoons are for; spending time with family and friends, and being happy. You don’t need to spend a fortune to make good, happy, special memories! You just need a smile, and a willingness to have fun, wherever you are, and you need to appreciate the people you’re with! Good times will roll.

Okay, still pretty drunk on the sunshine…

Hidden

It’s strange, how other people with disabilities sometimes perceive D/deaf people. Some, not all, seem to think that we’re not disabled, and we have no right to claim to feel excluded and different from able-bodied people. It’s almost as if because our “disability” isn’t visible, it’s not there. When in fact, it’s the opposite. Whereas they can learn not to let their disability stop them from building good friendships, learn to accept it as a part of them…and just generally feel included with understanding/accepting hearing people…we can’t always get that. We have to work so hard, if we lipread, just to follow a conversation. Our eyes are doing most of the work every single day. We won’t always hear the dangers around us. Some of us rely heavily on hearing people to keep us alert to the world around us. Some deaf people, like me, can never hear the radio…it’s just a static, crackling noise in the background, never coming into focus. There’s so many things that make up our daily lives, that so many people don’t even think twice about…and yet they think we have no right to be “disabled”. And they wonder why we hate the word so much.

“Disabled” means you’re not ABLE. It means there’s something about you, that holds you back, because it doesn’t work as well as it should do. For us, it’s our ears. However, the reason we hate the word…is because for the majority of us, our deafness is NOT something that holds us back. For most of us, it’s a unique part of us. It makes us who we are. It’s ingrained into our personality. Rather than sitting and feeling sorry for ourselves all day, we get on with it. I find other Deaf/deaf people so inspiring, because they allow their deafness to make them stronger and a lot of Deaf/deaf people I know/have met, do not let anything inhibit them. Life goes on, and we know that only too well.

There is no point in this life, to sit and worry too much, to let things get you down all the time, to never go forward. And I NEVER want anyone to feel sorry for me. I hate it, absolutely hate it, when I meet someone…and they realise that I’m deaf, and their whole attitude changes, for the worse. They get patronizing. They look down. That look crossed over their face and then they treat you completely differently to how they did a few seconds ago. Although, admittedly, this hasn’t happened for a long time now. I think the times are changing at last. More and more people are becoming aware, and more and more people are wanting to be more accepting.

Deafness is, and probably always will be, a hidden disability. You can’t see it. One in seven people are deaf. But you won’t see it. Unless you can see their hearing aids – but even then, not every one wears hearing aids/cochlear implants. Not every deaf person signs. Not every deaf person lipreads. Not every deaf person sees their deafness as a part of their identity. Not every deaf person will be happy to associate with hearing people. Not every deaf person wants to be deaf. Not every deaf person wants to be hearing. What I’m trying to say, is that every single deaf person is different. You cannot generalise. Every Deaf/deaf person you meet will be different, because everyone is different. So, whilst it’s nice if, when I meet someone, they start signing to me, they shouldn’t. Because the whole point is that you need to ask. Ask the person you’re talking to what their communication methods are, because, if you start signing like there’s no tomorrow, and then the deaf person doesn’t even sign…you’re going to go pretty red. Everyone in this world is different. That’s what makes us all unique.

I’m still learning about who I am, and how my deafness fits into who I am. Every day, it becomes more and more a part of me. I like being deaf, because it’s shown me a whole other world. It’s shown me how to adapt to many things in life. It’s made me more accepting of others. It’s me. And it’s hidden. Always hidden. But always there. I’m deaf, and it’s alright.

Note: this is just my view, and there are so many other views out there. My view is not the RIGHT view, it’s just MY view. I know that some people won’t agree with everything I’ve said…but then again, isn’t that the whole point? Life would be dull if we all agreed!

Absence makes the heart grow fonder…

Hello…once again, it’s been a while! I don’t know why I keep neglecting this poor blog, it’s done nothing to deserve this treatment from me! I keep thinking of a good blog post…and it’s normally as I’m drifting off to sleep at night, and I tell myself: “I must remember to post that tomorrow…” and lo and behold, tomorrow comes and I’ve forgotten about it all! I’ve said this before, but I’m gonna try and break this non-blogging habit I’ve got myself into! Uh huh. Yes I am. (Let’s see how long I last for this time.)

Right, so…what’s happened in this absence? To summarise it all:

• I’ve joined a small theatre group, voluntary…and they’re really cool! C-O-O-L! Yep. They’re a theatre company aimed at a mixed audience of deaf AND hearing people, young and old. This means that they combine the use of sign-language, speech, physical theatre, mime, puppetery…and make theatre that has a punch. At the moment I’m just learning the ropes but in the new year I’ll be getting involved in the performance side of things…it looks pretty exciting at the moment!
• BSL Level-2 classes… It’s going well, today was the last class before our first exam next Thursday – eeeeek! But I feel that my signing has vastly improved, probably because my confidence in my signing has improved. I’ve also noticed that I’m increasingly switching to the BSL word order, rather than using SSE (when you follow the word order of English…BSL requires you to change the word order and omits a lot of small words, such as “it”, “to”, “and”…) So this is quite good, as it means I’m learning to sign “properly” in a way – not that SSE is bad, it just follows the wrong word order really (SSE means Sign-Supported-English).
• I’ve started the shows at Chickenshed…so far, so good
• The jewellery business is slowly getting back on track! I think we’ve managed to re-ignite the passion there – we lost it for a while…and now it’s BACK. Good times.

Generally, I think things are going fairly well at the moment Although, on a bad note, I had my first car accident yesterday! Whoops! It was only a minor accident…but it was the first one I’ve had (touch wood no more) and it just shocked me, more than anything. It’s so true that just a split second is all it takes. Just one little look out of the side window, then you look back at the road…BAM! Too late. It just served to remind me that I need to concentrate ALL-THE-TIME! There’s not really any room for errors on the road :s nope. Oh dear, at least it was minor, no injuries, just knocked the bumper of the car in front…

Hope everyone is getting into the festive spirit…tis the season to be jolly! (And I promise, I’ll try not to be absent for so long again.)

New beginnings…

Well, come Saturday, I’ll be starting my next Open University course! I finished the last one, Creative Writing, at the beginning of June and I spent most of the summer pondering which course to do next…although at the back of my mind I knew that it would be the one I’ve chosen to do – Children’s Literature. It should be an interesting one…fingers crossed. The course material arrived a week or so ago but I had yet to open the package, til now that is. I was reluctant to open it for some reason, probably because I was slightly nervous at the prospect of another year’s study.

I’m pleased to say though, that I’m pleasantly happy with what the package contained It includes: a study guide that takes you through the course week by week, which contains all the activities you need to complete and also some reading extracts that accompany the activities; two study books to go along with the study guide; two DVDs containing “a variety of audiovisual material including performances of children’s literature, and interviews with children, authors and publishers” (may need to get some help with these as I’m unsure if they’ll have subtitles or not…); a book – ‘Peter Pan and Other Plays’ by J.M.Barrie; and a course guide, which explains each part of the course. Phew! It all looks pretty exciting though and I’m genuinely looking forward to starting now, whereas before I was feeling a mixture of trepidation and nervousness! Silly me.

I’m hoping that I’ll enjoy this course, as the last one began to stifle me a bit. I do enjoy writing but I’ve learnt that I prefer to do it by myself and keep it to myself, rather than writing something that I know has to be marked at the end…for me it blocked my creativity a little. It was the first time that I had my creative writing analysed and thoroughly marked – before that it was only at GCSE level at secondary school and the marking system isn’t as tough as it is at University level, obviously! I’m guessing that the Children’s Literature course will mainly be built upon analysing books and poetry aimed at children, and looking at how it can aid their development, whilst also studying the history of children’s literature and how it has evolved. Uh huh, I think I’m definitely looking forward to this one.

About two weeks ago, I finally got started on my way to achieving my Level 2 in BSL (British Sign Language). I’ve been talking about it for quite a few years but have never gotten started. I did try when I was in my last year at secondary school but the GCSE exams got in the way and took all my attention. For me, it’s mainly a case of honing my signing and polishing it ready for the exams. There’s three exams in total, each one different from the other. The first exam involves watching a video of someone signing a story in BSL, and at intervals they will pause the story and ask you four questions about the story – all in BSL of course – and then you have to mark your answer on a sheet of paper with multi-choice answers. The point of this exam is to remember the details from the story, such as remembering which pocket the person took their phone out of – either their shirt pocket or the pocket in their jeans – which will prove to the examiner that you can process BSL correctly and hold the information that you’ve been given. There’s no signing from you in this exam, it’s just a video/paper exam. We’ll be sitting the first exam in mid December so we’ve still got time to practice and scrub the memory sections of our brains! Eeek.

I’ve been looking into becoming a Level 1 BSL tutor again…and it’s not quite as confusing as I thought it was. Basically, if you’re going to be teaching post-16 level, you just need to be a qualified teacher but not in the sense that you need to get a PGCE and all that. Which was the confusing bit. You just need to get an award called ‘Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector’, PTLLS for short and then you have to get another qualification that is suited to the role you’ll be undertaking. Then you’ll need to be fluent/knowledgeable in the subject area you’ll be teaching, in my case, Level 1 BSL. I’m not sure how long it’ll take to be fully trained but I’m just relieved that it’s not quite as complicated as it seemed when I researched it before. For now it’s a possible option…watch this space!

I think new beginnings can be scary, but once you’ve taken those first few steps, the scaryness starts to fall away and you can tread your path confidently. Just got to take those first few steps.

An afternoon in Covent Garden

Yesterday, I went with Cats and Chocolate to her audiology appointment…and it poured with rain. Literally. There was no escape from it, you just had to get soaked. It probably wasn’t helped by the fact that we were attempting to share one umbrella! After the appointment we popped into Starbucks…yummy. Whilst there, we decided to go onto Covent Garden for a bit of a wander – plus I had the excuse of needing to get a friend a birthday present :p

I simply love Covent Garden; there’s the market, Neal Street, Neal’s Yard (where an adorable little Italian restaurant is tucked away) and shops galore! There’s also that lovely atmosphere, it’s relaxed, yet it’s in the centre of London. Although, I do admit, it can get busy at times and it’s also quite touristy…but then again, a lot of places in the centre are these days, hey diddle dum. We went for a stroll along Neal Street, popping into the usual suspects – Office amongst them – and then we went into Apple Boutique, a little compendium of unique clothes and accessories. After, we walked back towards the market area and went to Ella’s Bakehouse – something you cannot miss if you are a fan of cupcakes! I had a Red Velvet cupcake – a red sponge chocolate cupcake with cream cheese icing…delish! Topped it off with a cup of tea…then it was back home for us.

Last night was the second session of our (Liz and I are doing it together) Level 2 BSL (British Sign Language) class…scary stuff! Although it wasn’t as nerve-wrecking as last week! There’s about 17 of us in the class, which was probably why it was a bit scary last week and it was also down to it being the first session… So far, it’s not been too bad. I’ve been signing fairly fluently since I was quite young, and I got my Level 1 when I was 12…so it’s about time I got my Level 2 really!! The teacher expects you to use the same signs as her though, which is fair enough but sometimes it’s a bit difficult to remember the signs if you’re used to using another one – there are often many different signs for the same thing, normally due to the accents from different parts of the county (believe it or not, sign language has accents too!). I guess it’ll get easier as it goes on.

Eeeek, I’m in a bit of a rush now…going to have to cut this short and get a move on – meeting two friends for a coffee in two hours and I’ve got to get a few things done first…why do I leave things to the last minute?! Hope you liked the video I posted previously Ciao for now…