My evaluation of the year blog (:

If you know me and my blogging tendencies you will know that at the end of every year since 2007 I have evaluated what I've done and what I've achieved. This year is no different! So what I'm going to do is paste my lists of aims and excitements for 2010 that I wrote at the end of 2010, and talk about them a little bit. Then I'll make a new list for next year! Here we go :D

AIMS FOR 2010
- Get 1200 subscribers on my YouTube account
I exceeded this by 52! Very pleased and proud (:
- Get into my first choice university
I so did XD
- Go to my first choice university
Yes! Not my initial first choice university mind you...but despite all the hoohars, I did it!
- Make amazing friends at my first choice university
Ohmygosh. At the time of writing this, by "amazing" I meant "Quite cool bearing in mind I will have only just met them." But alas, the people I've met are flat out AYMAYZING.
- Keep in touch with my old friends
So indescribably happy that I did this.
- See Donny and Marie in Las Vegas
Yes!!!! I can't believe that this actually happened!!!! It was so brilliant!
- Do well in my A2s
Bearing in mind everything that went on, I'm very proud of my A2 results.
- Get an iPhone
YESSS :D
- Learn how to use my Nikon D5000 properly
Yup! Obviously still learning, but I know everything that is important to know now!
- Learn how to use ovens
Who'd have thought it?! But YES!
- LOSE! WEIGHT!
No. But I completed my first semester of university without GAINING weight, so major win there! And I feel more comfortable about my body now too, which is an even bigger win.

THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2010
- Spending the early hours of January 1st with awesome people.
It was a brilliant way to bring in 2010
- Young Americas
Again, totally amazing
- Ski Trip 2010
Amazing!!!
- Seeing Mika with Eliot :D
Great concert and a lovely 18th birthday pressie XD
- Going to the West Coast of the U S of A
Words. Cannot Describe. <3

- University
o;awkljsdgfnfs Better than I could have ever dreamed/hoped/imagined.
- HP & the DH film
YUCK. But that was to be expected I suppose -_-'
- The Hunger Games part 3
Could have been worse!

AIMS FOR 2011
- Get 1400 subscribers on my YouTube channel
- Get over my psychological issues with blue cheese
- Get over my psychological issues with raw fish
- Go to Yo Sushi after I have completed prior aim
- Get my tattoo done
- Get involved in the radio at my university
- Get the dermatillomania to fugoff
- Get at least a 2:1 in Media Arts and at least a 2:2 in Film and Popular Culture at the end of first year
- Still keep in touch with all my friends from home
- Go on some sort of holiday with friends
- Do lots of cooking/days out with Joe
- Vlog MUCH more regularly
- Get a wide angle or a fish eye lens for my camera
- Get a place with Simon, Simon, Lizzie and Hannah (unless Simon ends up going to Australia ofc)
- Turn 20 without having a nervous breakdown
- Buy something from the Abercrombie and Hollister store in Kingston XD
- Carry on learning to not be paranoid about what people think of me

THINGS I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO IN 2011
- My Chemical Romance with Simon!
- Les Mis with the other Simon!
- Getting a place with friends when we have to move out of halls
- Another 5 months in halls :D
- Making even more new friends at university
- More of my Media course
- Everything really. I'm just so excited about everything to come!

So there we go. Another year over. It's true, every year is going faster than the last. I can't help but believe that this has been the best year of my life. I hated the first 8 months, but looking back now I realise that if the events of those months hadn't have happened I wouldn't be where I am now. I'd be at a different university studying a different subject. The last three months have been so perfect that I wouldn't want to change anything prior to them for worry of adverse knock-on effects.

The only portion of 2010 that I would willingly change is four days in August (I blogged about them at the time) in which I was at an all time low. I could have done without those. I feel a bit upset just remembering how awful it was at the time. But they can't be changed, so it's not worth thinking about. And it all got sorted out in the end (as it always seems to ^^) so in 2011 I really want to just forget that and move on from it entirely (:

For once, I'm entirely content to sit and accept this past year. Everything that happened. Good and bad. It all resulted in this. Which is perfect.


PS...It's mega weird to think that the next time I read this will probably be at the end of 2011. 365 days will have gone by and I will be reading it like OMFG IT'S GONE SO FAST! And I'll be TWENTY. Future Jocy, seriously, please don't mature. That would be your biggest and most boring mistake ever.

10: a post on what you believe about death

Once you're dead you're dead.
That's the issue I have with some religious people I know; it's glaringly obvious that they're only religious because they're scared about what will happen after they die.
But I think that's it.

HOWEVER.

I do believe that when someone dies, there is left an imprint of the departed's soul. I don't think it's tangible, but I think that if that person had a big enough impact or influence on you, or on an area, or even the world, then the imprint on the earth can seem tangible. Maybe not tangible, but that it can really be there.

A thought or three.

I genuinely think one of the WORST feelings in the WORLD is when you miss someone and know they don't miss you back.

But I think a really lovely feeling is knowing the people you miss also miss you.

Obviously missing people isn't a GOOD thing as such, but it's undeniably lovely knowing that someone whose presence you miss is also feeling the absence.

(':

The silver lining

So here's what's going on in my life as of the last 24 hours.

Last night, I had a nightmare and woke up in a blind panic. In the nightmare I had submitted the wrong copy of my website and podcast (semester one Media project), the copy with the 3 html errors. This morning, I couldn't get the thought of it out of my brain, so I decided to double check the version I submitted. Lo and behold, it was the wrong copy, the one with the 3 html errors.

So to summarise: I had a nightmare about handing in the wrong Media work, and the nightmare reflected reality, because I had in fact handed in the wrong Media work.

So, despite it only being 3 minor errors (the html links still work, they just open in the same window as opposed to a new one), I decided straight away that tomorrow I would trek back to uni (around 2 hours and 3 trains) to fix them and hand in the new copy.

All day I have been beating myself up and huffing and puffing about the annoyance, stupidity, inconvenience.

Anyway, just now something occurred to me.

I must have so much passion for the subject if it LITERALLY kept me awake at night. For me to have that subconscious inkling, that knowing despite not technically knowing, I must REALLY love it.

I knew I loved it, same as I knew I would love it. But honestly, this happening has really made me realise how much I absolutely LOVE studying Media.

So I'm not seeing the trek back to university in the morning to fix this as a negative, I'm seeing it as a positive. Hard, evidential proof that I bloody love my subject.

More in depth blog on this, and my first semester, tomorrow.

09: a post on your biggest insecurity, and why you feel that way.

I don't know what my biggest insecurity is.

I go through phases in which I think it's my body. And that I'm the fattest person in the world. And that I'm really ugly. And unphotogenic. And just generally hideously unattractive. But then most of the time I feel fine about my body; that yes, I could be thinner. But that I'm by no stretch of the imagination obese gigantic. That of course there's girls that are prettier than me, but that I could also look much, much worse.

Sometimes, I think my biggest insecurity is my personality. That I'm too loud and too annoying and too weird and too interested in silly things that people don't care about and that people are always talking about me and that no boy will ever fancy me. But most of the time I feel confident in my personality; that yes, I'm quirky and have different interests to lots of people, but that there's also many who think I'm a bit cool. To be honest I do actually feel...dare I say it...SECURE in my personality. I know that I don't go out of my way to upset people. I know that I enjoy making people laugh and helping my friends with their problems and I know that I make friends easily and I know that people like to be around me. Obviously, personality is a matter of taste, and there will be lots of people who don't like the sort of person I am, but I know I have lots of amazing friends who do.

So what's my biggest insecurity?

I suppose my biggest insecurity is the fact that my brain is temperamental. I worry constantly that the happiness I feel at the moment won't last. I'm not yet used to the carefree-ness I feel at the moment to entirely relax, because I always have the back at my mind that things might go back to how they once were.

08: a picture of yourself in your underwear.

No. But here's a really pretty slush puppy that I had in April.

Today one of my best friends from university told me that I'm the nearest thing to a sister that he's ever had. It made me very smiley (: