All the single ladies...

I'm coming up 9 years as a single parent and five since I was in close proximity with a male of the species and if you had told me that 10 years ago would I have maybe,made different choices?

But ten years ago I was still waist deep in the lure of love and I had no idea that being single would be the most empowering thing I could be.I was an insecure girl,validating herself by the men I chased around constantly in my head,looking for a soul connection outside myself,with a tinge of fairytale and happily ever after.I couldn't know then that it would take those single years for me to actually achieve dreams that had been half arsedly pursued in the heady 20's and that went missing,presumed dead after having two children in two years.That's not in a bitter way by any means,I was just too busy changing nappies to give them head space.

I had always wanted to be a writer as a kid but insecurity convinced me I wasn't good enough,not realising I could learn, and I chose the safer path,teaching,which I was hopeless at at 18 years old and I dropped out with my hands firmly up. I was always coming up with ideas for books but never finishing any of them, distracted by boys,work & just living.

I was never single for long and I didn't spend much time alone.

In the last 9 years since it's only been me and the kids at home, I finally wrote that novel,then started a second one, decided it would make a better film script,went to a script writing group to learn,won a film competition with the group, wrote a treatment & submitted it (with zero expectations) to a short film making scheme,got accepted,went on to get a contract to develop it as a feature script, got paid to be a writer,went to BAFTA, got a shortlisted for some other schemes,started a novel and a blog, then got a place on a BBC /BFI scheme with a different film,then churned out a 3rd script, got knocked down, several times,got up again,started my own vintage fabric/sewing/design business oh yeh and all be it too briefly, owned a vintage VW camper van. Bucket list tick,tick,tick.

 I know in my heart that had I stayed as I was, for the sake of being in a relationship I thought I so desperately needed, none of those things would have happened,because what I really needed to come into my own was to be alone.

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/communication/when-you-start-enjoy-being-alone-these-10-things-will-happen.html 

It's not all been smug quality time with myself, I've buckled many times under the weight of juggling a job and raising two kids coupled with elderly parents, the so called 'sandwich' generation and between all the achievements, I had plenty of insane crushes and broken hearts,some that took years to heal.For years I wouldn't have classed myself single by choice, more unlucky in love.

I've been working alone from home for a year now and apart from my son,Dad and brother in law I've spent no time with any men and frankly, I feel like it's been the making of me. I've never been so focused,so well informed,so content,so thoughtful or self assured,so able to look in a mirror and not criticise,so clear about life and mentally strong.

Am I missing out? Someone said to me yesterday about them being happily single," but I don't want to look back at 70 and regret it." I shrugged,that could happen. (My gut reaction was as if you think the planet will still be here by then...)

I haven't given up on Love by any means but one thing I've come to see is almost how secular our beliefs on male female relationships are.

Kate Nash says it succinctly

https://youtu.be/ryH5cga0yUI

Every man I've lived with (and at one point I lived with 6 of them at once) has been pretty much messy,lazy,smelly and has complained constantly about having the heating on, which, on the flip that makes me a nagging neat freak who can't sit still,is obsessed by cleaning and has the house too stuffy.All true in balance,so maybe this outdated notion that you have to live together needs to go bygones, I've always believed women with young children should not live in isolated pockets,ditto elderly women who mostly out live their men folk. Society would work much better if we went way back to our primitive ways of small female led communities. It does take a village to raise a child to ensure that child is nurtured,in turn to keep society strong in the future. Putting us in pairs, in little boxes (that we have to borrow huge sums of money to live in & never really own) makes us weak and thus easy to control.

Divide and Conquer has so many truths across the world right now but I digress.

Spending a huge amount of time alone has meant I've been able to dig back through the layers of who I became whilst chasing my elusive soul mate through the years,not realising that if I sat quietly and listened carefully,I would find my own soul and become mates with her and maybe that's all I'd been missing.

I guess what I'm trying to write is almost an addendum to my teenage self who would have seen five years without being kissed as a terrible tragedy, and not the best thing that could have ever happened for me to really know me. 

The Wayward Chronicles- And now for some good news...

https://youtu.be/qSwF-StQHSk

https://youtu.be/5HL1BEC024g

I don't know about you but I've had a long fascination with natural disasters, I know I'm not alone by the huge online community out there capturing,monitoring and speculating on them, all that science though and we still can't stop them from happening, despite our white knuckled grip on the controls.

The effects of climate change are all ready kicking us back with flooding, extreme heat, species extinction and unpredictable weather patterns. Have you noticed how wrong or vague the media weather reports are these days? It's because the weather is behaving outside of all predicted computer models making it impossible to predict ahead of time anymore.

Grave predictions of the rise of violent natural disasters such as super volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis that will drown coastal cities, are everywhere when you research the oncoming effects of climate change.

And they may well be right and quite frankly, I think we deserve a good punch in the face from the planet that most of us have thoughtlessly ruined in a very short space of time. I don't wish for innocent people to suffer the consequences but actually millions all ready are in the thick of it,
 when you look at what's really going on in the world, so more of the same before we claw it back seems horribly inevitable.

Mega Hurricanes & Donald Trump's administration aside, however, amongst all these dire outcomes, there are some huge,positive changes happening in the world right now. 

Watch the great episode of Viceland above and the TED talk by Taylor Wilson and you'll be blown away by his genius solutions to clean energy, all be it feeling like you totally wasted your teenage years...

+Elon Musk  crops up everywhere, thankfully, these days which means what he's doing is working.He has invented many solutions using clean energy that are slowly filtering out into the mainstream, may he nail them all & get us out of this mess.

The Women's march on Washington, inspired by opposing Trump, was echoed around the world when over a million women took to the streets to protest for human rights. Trump is proving to be perhaps the exact catalyst required to get people to change, almost a necessary evil, his repugnant face is like a sharp spike prodding us to get up & stand up for what we believe in. The world should not be in the hands of misogynists. Only good things come when women gather peacefully to change things. Women rights have never seen such widespread support, there is a long way to go in some cultures, but as more women get a voice it empowers others, that's how we roll.

The global powers that be are actually making clean energy changes, but being in such unprecedented times no one knows if it's too little too late.What did strike me though,whilst watching the Viceland   Clean Energy documentary, was that this situation has almost developed at the right time, if there could ever be a right time for destroying our natural resources... When Nuclear power was first touted in the 1940's we obviously didn't have the knowledge we have now, in order to fully utilise it's potential in a safe way. Nor could we pay such attention to the value of the earths resources.

 Now thanks to the information & development age we live in today we can quickly build on these discoveries ( hello,err, the windmill...) with advances in technology we never dreamed of in the 1940's and, like the Trump catalyst, perhaps it takes us a brush with some natural disasters to really consider what's best for the environment and make those changes.

What also struck me was that the argument for green energy is driven by a somewhat skewed demand for a life style that has a huge need for energy but saying that, my kettle is boiling,the heating's on and my mac is plugged in and in the scheme of things I'm low impact, so they have a valid point. 

But I can't shake the sense that actually,wouldn't it be better if we moved toward a society that just used, less? 

In another programme on +VICELAND  - 'Abandoned' Skater Rick McCrank travels round America visiting ghost towns & defunct buildings (dream job) charting the history behind their demise in an interesting way. The episode on Newfoundland resonated on so many levels but what struck me is that the residents who had voted to stay, had been forced to leave anyway, as the government had cut off their power. 

That seems more like a Hunger Games tactic than a civil right to me Canada, I always thought you were better than that...but can we really not exist off grid anymore? Millions of people do but they probably would choose power if they could afford it & had access.

The economies in these ancient fishing ports had been completely ruined in the space of twenty years by commercial trawler fishing and then the outright ban on any fishing,devastating for communities founded and thriving on sustainable fishing long before greed leapt into the water.

But today I have good news.The ban of fishing on the island has led to signs of a rebirth in stocks and now the residents are allowed to fish recreationally again at certain times of the year with sustainable fishing a reality again in years to come.

As my geography is rubbish, I did some research on Newfoundland and it turns out to be located at the most easterly point in North America, on a pretty similar latitude, from a glance to the UK.

To get to my off topic point, there are tons of empty houses sitting on the rocks on an island not dissimilar (sadly no warmer though) to the UK. It's roughly half our size and yet boasts a population of HALF a million to our 60,000 million and it's beautiful & unspoilt and I promise I'd keep it that way if the Canadian government would see fit to let me move there.

Friends, I know the Mongolian commune idea was a bust (cheap but cold) but I'd be well up for a move to Newfoundland.Google it and let's charter a boat...

Veganism has risen 350% in the UK in the last ten years, led by the 15-34% age group who cite their reasons as being a reaction to modern farming methods that are cruel to animals and the effects of mass agriculture on the Earth. I gave up eating all meat, cows milk & fish after watching +Cowspiracy  and am trying to have more vegan days than not and it's remarkably easy,even to a kitchen hater like me,in fact it's definitely improved my attitude to food & how I consume groceries.

If the whole world went Vegan we could solve world hunger five times over. ( A problem that will only get much worse as the impact of climate change ramps up.)

The terrible plight of our wildlife has never been so obvious and yet again, come on humans, it's taken us to get to a crisis to act to save the flora and fauna. Most of us could plant some kind of a bee garden, grow our own,stop eating unethical food and support those who work at the coal face in conservation. 

Another thing I realised when watching Taylor Wilson explain about energy

 is that chain reaction is an inevitable part of the make up of life on Earth. Keep being the change we need to see in the world and we are seeing results, masked away behind the convenience of fear mongering, good things are happening.

Start today at grass roots and watch how it grows.

Love & Peace.

The Wayward Chronicles- The wake up call.

I'll hold my hands up to a life mostly ignoring politics & politicians, stemmed from a deep rooted belief that the political system is primarily motivated by power and money,therefore we would never be singing from the same song sheet, ditto world politics. The events of 2016 however have forced me to pay attention, all be it for the wrong reasons, to how the world has & is being governed. Turns out I was right...Maybe, we needed those bombshells in order to all pay better attention...



We've all heard mentions about climate change from the mainstream media over the last few years, but when the Barack Obama states clearly in his closing speech that without bolder action our children will be busy dealing with environmental disasters & economic crisis, you kind of need to listen up.







If NASA data is anything to go by ( and maybe only until Trump gets his hands on them) the world is in a critical state. We have sprinted past the "safe" level of Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere- 350, go to/http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/, it's all there and it's not pretty but people need to know, because without awareness, how can we change our behaviour & positively influence the behaviour of others?



http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/

We are right in the middle of a rapid extinction of Earths wild life, losing species and vital habitat every minute. Google it and you'll be shocked at what's really happening and how quickly. Conservation groups are talking about 2 / 3rds of all vertebrates by 2020 ...just 3 years away.
Things are being done,don't get me wrong but I'm sure all those charities could do with our help. Lest we forget we too are vertebrates,the UK death toll rose considerably and without explanation in 2015, as did the U.S's, & when figures for 2016 are released I'll bet it's risen again and is probably behind the current NHS breakdown. All those celebrity deaths are just an indicator of ratio...

Alarming right? But alarms are a wake up call and every time I see Donald Trumps revolting face, I vow that I can not sit back and watch that future unfurl for my children & all the children who were born into this mess without choice. I know I'm not one the American citizens that Barack was addressing but all human beings have the, "Essential spirit of innovation and practical problem solving" required to make the changes required to stop things from getting worse.

It would be easy to settle into a negative mindset, or worse just ignore the evidence entirely and carry on as before being thoughtless,wasteful & greedy, but once you know what's really happening, you are duty bound to take responsibility and try your best to make amends.

There are many problems out there, overwhelmingly so, but a friend of a friend gave wise advice about picking the ones you feel most passionate about and really get grass roots involved in supporting and promoting your work to reach others who want to help the same cause.
The world is 7.5 billion people just like us, that's a lot of hearts and minds. If we could actually come together imagine what we could achieve.There are far more ordinary people than there are power mad politicians,we just need to go round them and maybe surprise them from the flank.



There are so many tiny and massive ways in our everyday life that we can make a difference. Commit  to changing your diet, commit to not buying plastic, shop second hand, recycle,upcycle, use public transport,walk, shop local,eat local, grow your own, use less energy, plant for wildlife or just open your mouth & speak up for what you believe in. As Gandhi knew, we have to be the change.

There are many positive and ground breaking projects across the planet and people are willing to take a stand more than ever before. On the 21st of January Women are uniting all over the world in a protest march for human rights and democracy. Innovations and movements are increasing every day but we have to start fighting right now,in whatever way we can, to stop Capitalism ruining the future of our children.

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/14/womens-march-on-washington-protest-size-donald-trump

https://www.womensmarchlondon.com

http://unfccc.int/2860.php

http://www.eco-business.com/opinion/6-environment-and-development-stories-to-watch-in-2017/