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This weekend the Deise Greenway had its grand opening. For those of you not from Waterford (also known as the Deise), The Greenway is a walking/cycling path that stretches from Waterford city to Dungarvan town via the most scenic route you could imagine. With the miserable weather we have been having it was quite the stroke of luck that it should open the weekend gone as the sun was shining, everything looked its best and you could be forgiven for thinking it was almost summer. On Saturday we soaked up some of the Sunshine and took a look at one of the entrances to the Greenway closest to where we now live (we in this case being the boyfriend and I) . We walked for a while and my boyfriend kept asking if we could rent bikes but I was incredibly unsuitably dressed for such an activity as I was wearing my new super tight (but pretty flattering jeans) and I probably wouldn't have been able to lift my legs enough to reach the pedals. So we just took it all in on foot and I promised

Ive become used to my negative self talk around my body. I barely even notice I'm doing it but it feels like for as long as I can remember I havent been happy with how I look and I've always been at the front of the queue when it comes insulting myself.  Derogatory remarks are second nature and I know part of this is the quintessential Irish thing of not wanting to seem too up yourself. There's another deeper part thats engrained in me, this feeling that I will never be good enough. Right now if I was to honestly assess myself I would say my stomach horrifies me, my face is not slim enough, I have cellulite galore and If I were to jump I would jiggle so much there would probably be a ripple effect strong enough to create an earthquake on the other side of the world ( admittedly I have no factual basis for this last one aside from the fact that I am very jiggly). Anyway I could pick myself apart for weeks until there was nothing left but thats not the point of this post.

With my 35th birthday this Saturday, I find myself taking a real look at where I am in life versus where I would like to be. At 35 there will be no denying I am a bona fide adult, in fact I have been a proper adult for quite some time now but for some reason I still feel like someone playing dress up in my mothers clothes. This is my real life and not just me pretending. I have a full driving licence over a year now and actually got my foot on the career ladder properly for the first time, plus I am not riddled with debt and live with my very cute boyfriend so its not like my time has been totally wasted. Obviously on my birthday some real life presents would be quite nice but there are some other things I'd like that bit more and I don't think they are the kind of things you can buy so good luck sorting any of these in time for my birthday. This year I'd like to actually believe in myself and not find myself doubting my every action and thought. I'd like to stop le

If anyone has some wonderful tips on how to attract luck then I would surely welcome them. Anything I have gotten so far in life seems to have involved a lot of hard work, sweat and certain amount of crying. If luck really is a thing, if we wish to assume that good things come to us while we sit waiting patiently, then I must have been waiting in a queue for something else. I don't tend to win competitions but I obviously have a little hope that I someday might because I still enter them on occasion. I don't play the lotto but if I did I doubt I'd win much. That's because the odds of winning the lotto are so infinitesimal that the majority of people are just contributing weekly to some complete strangers potential wealth but that is another story. The reason I have been thinking of this is because someone recently told me how lucky I was to have successfully gotten a social care job and I actually felt a little bit put out because luck really has nothing to do with

Today I took the second step on my fitness odyssey. By this I mean I went to my second Crossfit class. If I was honest the second step would really be cleaning up my diet properly and taking a proper break from the foods that make me pile up the weight (spelt and sourdough bread, I am talking to you) but I am a work in progress so that bit will come. Hopefully that will be soon because I have limited wardrobe options and I can't wear my stretchy work pants on my days off.  I find (I know this because I am a serial gym quitter with long breaks before I return like the prodigal daughter) the first two weeks of classes to be really tough and then your body starts to remember how to do exercises and you gradually get a bit stronger. I had only recovered from last weeks class by Monday because I did have enough protein or sleep so I was actually in bits in work all weekend. Sometimes I would sit down for a while and forget how much everything hurt until I had to get up again and the

I know it's not cool to admit this but I have never really cared about being cool. I really like learning new things. There I said it. Really though I'm not 17 anymore so it should be perfectly acceptable to say this and yet I find adults my age still have a tendency to downplay their enthusiasm for anything like this. I have always enjoyed learning, even when you had to pretend you were suffering too just so your friends wouldn't look at you askew. I liked filling my head with new things and then enthusiastically sharing what I've learned with others  ( even when they didn't always share my enthusiasm) I like reading a wide range of topics and storing this knowledge in my head should I ever need it, although I have never seemed to have had full control over which stuff stayed with me forever and what gets forgotten as soon as I have finished reading the sentence. I like buying new stationary and knowing that I'll need to buy new stationary. If it was up t

Today, at work training, someone who hadn't met me before expressed genuine surprise that I class myself as an introvert.This is not the first time this has happened but it got me thinking about the different personas I present to the world. In some settings I can come across confident and self assured but the people who see me here would scarcely recognise me out in the world. When I first started working in my current work place I was nervous. I often am in these settings and I overtalked, Too much talking about nothing in particular out of some need to fill all the silences with words. Then I relaxed as time passed and withdrew more into myself. I talked less and learned more. I eventually reached a point where my confidence in my own abilities and knowledge of the people we supported had grown enough that I started to stand my ground and share my opinions. This is where I am now. Sit me in a training room, a meeting or with any professional that we have to call upon and I

This may not be the most accurate blog post title I have ever put together but of all the things I regret in life I am certain a misleading blog post wont make the hitlist. Today has been an up and down kind of day. Due partially to my very overactive brain and the noisy things that woke me last night, I arrived in work on four hours sleep and barely functioning. This also meant everything hurt way more than it should have because no sleep means my poor battered muscles didn't get a chance to heal. Surely they will heal in the next day or so and I will not be cursed to crab walk down my stairs forevermore like some geriatric old woman masquerading as a thirty something. This kind of tiredness meant I was way more uncoordinated and maybe a tad emotional for the day so sorry about that work folks but it's really hard to cope as a zombie. Despite all this hardship, ( I jest) I muddled through the day as best I could managing to complete basic tasks plus a few extra activities

Today turned out to be a very good day but I didn't know that waking up. When I woke this morning I initially thought I had been in an accident because everything hurt so much. Then it filtered in to my poor sleep fogged brain that I had returned to the gym yesterday and my muscles were in shock. Getting out of bed and getting dressed was an ordeal. I got myself to work somehow and struggled through the morning. Anything I dropped stayed on the floor unless there was something to assist me to the floor and back up again. I walked like John Wayne and I wasn't as much help as I should have been thanks to my attempts to tackle my chronic lack of fitness. In the middle of all this fun I answered a routine work call. Seeing the Kilkenny number I thought it was the house I worked in as I was out on a errand at the time. Instead it was the work HR department calling to see if I had received my letter. Not to paint myself as too much of a pessimist but in the years since I qualifie

So today was the day that after an incredibly long break from the world of fitness (but not my longest to date), I made my return to the gym. I had been meaning to go back ever since I finished nights but I had an endless list of excuses that kept me away. I was exhausted and lazy. The early start on my day off did not appeal to me. I didn't want to drive for 40 minutes to do a class when I am driving up and down to Kilkenny every other day for work. Then of course we had my biggest excuse of all, fear. I have taken enough breaks from training to know the return is tough both physically and mentally. The first class is the one where you realise how chronically unfit you have become in your time away and the one of many where you catch sight of your reflection in tight gym clothes and recoil in horror. I turned up this morning cold and nervous. I had gone to the trouble some months ago of buying gym clothes that fit me and this did save me the embarrassment of pausing every 10 s