6. attend a beer festival

When I wrote up my 30 before 30 list, I aimed for realistic achievements. #6 on my list was attend a beer festival. Now I have to confess, we already had this planned before I wrote up my list. So was this a cheat of an idea? I don't like to think so. You see at the start of the year, the only resolution we made was to drink 52 beers in 52 weeks. And when I say beer I don't mean lager. I mean ales and stouts and the like, real beers. We hit 52 beers ages back so I decided to double my target to 104 beers by the end of the year. So we talked quite a bit about exploring new bars and even attending a beer festival to get the best variety of brews.

It was with that in mind that we bought tickets for the Independent Manchester Beer Convention (IndyManBeerCon/IMBC). From their own website IMBC describes itself as "a world class showcase for the best breweries from the UK and beyond. Taking over the stunning surrounds of the Grade II listed, architectural gem Victoria Baths for its 4th year from Thursday 8th October to Sunday 11th October, IMBC brings together the most progressive, forward thinking breweries from across the UK, Europe and USA for a multisensory, headlong, hop- forward beer extravaganza."

With 6 sessions held over the 4 days we bought tickets for Friday evening and Sunday. So after work on Friday, we headed down to Victoria Baths. Now considering this was both our first trip to Victoria Baths and our first beer festival, that Friday evening was a little overwhelming. Victoria Baths is a beautiful building so we were a little distracted by our surroundings and quite baffled by the huge choice of beers. We wandered from room to room, trying to make sense of the online beer list, and navigate around the crowd (beer festivals can be quite the sausage fest if you know what I mean). In total I had a solid 6 beers on Friday night but now of them really stood out to me as amazing. Nothing I fell in love with.

Sunday was a much better experience. Seeing Victoria Baths flooded by natural light was stunning and I can massively see the appeal of getting married there, it's such a special building. The crowd didn't feel as overwhelming on the Sunday and I made the choice to stick to the types of beers I like. For me that can be a dangerous game as I am a dark beer girl, give me your stouts and porters please. But I loved it. I drank some really delicious beers on Sunday. The walk home was a bit more stumbled as I drank a heftier 8 beers in total but I have no regrets.

Overall I had a great weekend at IMBC and I would definitely go again in the future. It was such an interesting experience and helped me hit my boozy target for the year (I'm actually up to 107 beers now). I'm sad we didn't take more advantage of the amazing canning service, where you could get any beer canned to take home but lesson learnt for next time! What a great way to kick off my 30 before 30 though.

30 before 30!

On 3rd October, I turned 29. The idea of this did not remotely bother me leading up to the day itself. I don't get all worked up about birthdays, it's just another day after all. But come the big day and this phrase kept ticking over in my mind, '30 before 30'.

It was perhaps inspired by a friend's Facebook status about what she wanted to achieve before her 30th. I scoffed at it initially. Discussed it with my boyfriend (who turned 30 earlier this year) and laughed about the ridiculous goals that people in general set for themselves.

But then that phrase kept going round in my head. Before I knew it, I had 6 ideas written down. Then 11 ideas. And then I was sitting at my desk trying to think of 19 more (and feeling very frustrated when they weren't immediately obvious).

I wanted to set ideas that I believe are genuinely realistic and achievable. Researching the concept of '30 before 30', I came across list after list that were filled with ideas which were financially impossible unless you are flush with cash or incredibly well connected. I am neither of those things. I also wanted to avoid setting ideas that resembled the usual dross you see around new year. This isn't about changing who I am as a person or setting myself up for failure. This is about experiences, achievements, and ideas that I could actually do.

So here's my list, my '30 before 30'...

These aren't in any particular order, I recorded them as I thought of them. And my boyfriend has already sweetly pointed out the contradiction of buying a car and working towards being debt free. But c'mon, I'm not looking for an expensive car and by the end of this year I'll be down to just my loan to pay off. 

Now I did plan to write a little explanation for each of these but I think this post has been long enough as it is. Some of these things are already in progress which is a pretty encouraging start! By posting this then I'm already working on #4, revive my blog. And I plan to post for each idea I achieve so you can look forward to at least 29 more posts in the future.

Wish me luck!

A revival

It's been a long time since I felt I had anything worth posting on here. There's been some changes in my life but I'll get round to posting about those in due course. For now, I wanted to say hello again. Let you know that more things are coming. In fact another post is just around the corner.

However I felt it's polite to say hello before jumping right back into blogging.

Strength

It's been approximately a month since my boyfriend lost his job. It's a hard time for us because our future seems a little uncertain. We had a pretty solid plan for this year and that's been thrown in the air a bit now. It's weird. We had decided we'd move in together this year, probably about April/May time when pay rises rolled in and we'd paid off Glastonbury. But now he's had to move into my little flat and I'm not sure Glastonbury is an option anymore.

We've got things looking a bit more settled but there are moments when I'm just overwhelmed by how my flat isn't really mine anymore. I'll admit I'm not good with living with other people. I've only ever lived with a boyfriend once before and that ended terribly. When I lived in my student flat I was constantly frustrated by the other people I lived with, I never socialised with them, I don't think I even remember their names.

Knowing you want to live with someone and actually living with them are different things. We've been thrown into this and there's already been one massive fight. We're adjusting and trying to figure things out. It's tough. I won't lie about that. I'm scared for what this will do to us.

And with that I'm ending this post with this video, London Grammar - 'Strong'.

Tintypes

I fell in love with these tintypes by Victoria Will. Taken at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

There's something especially piercing about the portraits of the actors with blue eyes like Elijah Wood and Maggie Gyllenhaal. Evokes that old time feel in the photos. And the soft focus of Glenn Close behind Elle Fanning, she appears almost spectre like. I love all the marks around the photos as well, the wet plate process making each photograph entirely individual.

There appears to be a lot more of wet plate photography appearing these days and it's something I find endlessly beautiful. If there's one thing I'd like, it'd be to have my own tintype portrait taken. I think it'd also make a really fascinating project for family portraits. A tintype a year to document a growing family.

You can see the rest of Victoria's tintypes on her website, http://www.victoriawill.com/TINTYPES.

What I want from 2014

Hello again.

I did say I would blog more but we've had a bit of an upheaval and things are all a little bit up in the air. To cut a long story short, my lovely boyfriend has suddenly found himself jobless and we're both trying to figure out what's the best direction to go in. But that isn't for me to discuss here right now.

I wanted to come back and put in writing those successes I wanted to achieve for 2014. I'm determined not to consider these as resolutions. Resolutions just seem synonymous with failure. And I don't want to feel like I'm failing 2014 before it's even begun.

So what do I want to achieve?

Implementing lifestyle changes

Diet? No. Lifestyle changes? Yes. Recently I've fallen in love with Katie Lowe's blog, www.fatgirlphd.com. It's an amazing site which is full of brilliant advice and articles on health. In her own words, it's not just about weight loss. I do want to lose weight this year, like I've wanted to do every year but this year I plan to push myself. I'm not going on a crazy diet. I don't plan to spend every night in the gym. But I am planning on implementing lifestyle changes which will hopefully help me on my way to becoming a healthier me. The first of these has been to break my truly awful habit of not eating breakfast in the mornings. I've always said I'm not a breakfast person and the truth is, that's a load of nonsense. I was just being lazy. Imagine being too lazy to eat breakfast?! Well that was me. However I am now turning this around. I've eaten breakfast every morning for nearly two weeks. It is a small victory admittedly. But I am proud of myself considering I didn't use to bother. 

There's other lifestyle changes I want to implement, to cover them in brief:

- Drink more water

- Make my own lunches

- Try more healthy meals for dinner

- Be more active

None of these things are particularly radical but a combination of these implementations will hopefully result in a healthier me by the end of the year.

Fall back in love with my hobbies

I feel like I didn't do much in the way of indulging my own hobbies last year. 2012 was full of photography and I had endless rolls of film to be developed. In 2013 photography near enough stopped for me. And I honestly couldn't tell you why. I mean I haven't even photographed round my little flat and I've been living here for almost a year now! That's pure madness to me. So I want to pick up my cameras in 2014 and start snapping again. Several of my cameras have half finished rolls in them and there's a box of films still waiting to be developed. So the first thing to do is starting sending those films off to be developed and get those unfinished rolls finished. Then with a fresh roll of film I can get fall back in love with photography.

There's also the small matter of the shelf full of unread books. Reading has been my staple hobby since being a child. I was never seen without a book. I took something to read wherever I went and there isn't a family member alive who can't tell you about some family do or other where I brought a book. But there's been this steady decrease in my reading habits. So it's time to reverse that and finally clear this shelf of unread books. I'm not aiming for a particular number of books or target per week/month. Just to clear that shelf first would please me. So I'm back to carrying a book with me everywhere, using my 15 minute bus journeys for a quick read and tucking up with a book instead of my laptop at night. I've already finished a couple of books and I'm just starting on the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. I might even go back to book reviews eventually.

Not to mention blogging! Only very briefly like but I would like to fall back in regular blogging. Even if I don't gain any more readers this year. If I can maintain regular posting then I'll be happy.

Straighten up my finances

I have this lurking debt hiding in my purse. It's in the form of a student account with a rather silly overdraft. An overdraft which is almost fully drawn out. And I've been really rather slow to pay money back into the account to fill that overdraft back up. It's a constant worry but by the end of 2014 I plan to have paid that overdraft off and to change that account to a savings account. This isn't something I'm going to write a great deal about because I find talking about money incredibly personal. But I didn't want to leave it unsaid. This also means being wiser with my spending and keeping a closer eye on my outgoings and incomings.

Be more open

2013 left me feeling quite closed off from a lot of things. I think the combination of moving out on my own and losing a friend left me withdrawing from life a little. Depression comes so easily to me and feels like the more natural me. I do continually struggle to keep myself from sinking into the worst of my depression habits. But I want to put up a more active fight against my depression this year and I think the way to do that is by being more open. More open to new opportunities, new friends, old friends and more open to my boyfriend. That's nowt kinky, I just think I need to show more willing to do some of the things he wants to do. Though he does mostly want to listen to noise music. I think being more open will be all the more important when Andy and me finally move out into our own little place. I'm such a homebody that there's a high chance I'll just want to retreat into the world of our home and forget to bother going out for anything other than work. So being open and staying open will be of high priority this year. And hopefully that'll lead to a more exciting 2014.

Remember my family

Moving out and moving away from my family meant I became quite detached from them. I don't see enough of my parents and nephews anymore and this actually saddens me more than I let on. Admittedly my family drive me up the wall half the time but I do owe them a lot and I need to spend more time with them. So more evenings with my mum having tea and giggles, and more weekends with my old man and nephews. I do hope to spend more time with my older nephew in particular because he's in need of a good influence and I've always been that for him. But since moving out we don't spend as much time together and I think there's having an adverse effect on him. More time with my favourite little man will be a great benefit to us both I feel.

So that's it for me and my hopes for 2014. There are other things I have in mind but I think this post is long enough as it is. Writing some stuff out has felt pretty good and I hope that I can come back to this post at the end of 2014 to confirm that I achieved what I wanted. If I can then I'll consider 2014 a success.