Newcastle Photographer and Content Creator, Mandy Charlton, Always on a quest for adventure, often seen on buses, trains and planes. On a quest to be happier and healthier. Lives in Newcastle with her 3 cats, Iris, Maggie and Arthur. Loves good vibes, musicals and cakes. Full time professional wedding photographer in the north east of england alongside content creator on Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook

Saturday, February 04, 2017

I've Made A Decision





Sometimes in life the hardest thing is to live in a fog, you can't see ahead of you and sometimes in the thickest fogs you can barely breathe, that's how parts of this year have seemed so far, thankfully we're only just over a month in and so I'm fairly certain that the other 11 have the potential to be brilliant beyond brilliant.

I spoke to Harriet last night about the medication predicament, up the dosage, be immune to love, unhappiness and the human condition but also lose laughter, feeling and be numb to almost everything including my children  and at the heart of it, they were the most surprised when I started laughing, it never even occurred to me that I hadn't laughed in 10 years.

I have a very weird love/hate relationship with social media, Facebook has always been my constant because it's where my real friends are, the people I love, the ones closest to my heart and I know that with all of the support I've received in the last few years it's not something I would want to be without, other than that though I fall in and out of love with most other forms of social media and being trying to be present on all of them saps both my energy and my time so it was whilst I was lying in my purple fluffy nest during yesterday's amazing Reiki session with Susan that I came to a huge decision.  I need to get some time back to refocus, I need to sort out my psyche, my business and my personal life, I want to live more in the real world and away from the constant microscopic examination of Twitter et al.

Obviously, I can't just give up social media or dramatically delete it, I do still need it for my career but what I can do is go on a digital diet, that means I get more time back for me, I can keep in touch with those closest to me via other means so I'm reining in my tweeting and going back to basics and this means I can concentrate on the things that matter, I have big aspirations where blogging is concerned and this is going to be my year when writing and photography lead to great things, I know it in my heart but that's not going to happen without a lot of hard work, I have a domain I bought at Christmas and I need to build the website for that,  I can't do that when I'm blabbering on Twitter about absolutely nothing!  

I've got the whole weekend off and I plan to take some time to reconfigure, work out what the important next steps are I need to take, both in life and in business, my future looks so bright and shiny but I'll be the first to admit I need to get a little help so yesterday I self-referred to Talking Helps in Newcastle, a much quicker and more effective way to have therapy than the last time when it took pretty much 2 years of fighting.  When I came out of my last relationship, I ended up being the woman with such low self-esteem, very little self-worth and my self-assurance was ultimately completely ruined.  I thought I had gotten that all back but it's only in the last few months that I've realised and I'm going to quote Ru Paul here because, why shouldn't I? "If you don't love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love someone else?"

I spend a lot of my life blagging confidence and sparkle and really, I'm either being very silly or very serious and there's not a lot in between, it's not that I'm lying it's just that I'm trying to convince myself I'm not so broken, I realise in the last few weeks I've decided to just own the fact that I'm messed up but wouldn't it be the dream to really be those things, to have self-esteem and self-worth, to really feel as self-assured as I would like to, well maybe I won't be able to reverse the damage completely but I think there's a fair chance I can at least feel good enough for myself and not be too much of a nightmare to date either.

So here's to the weekend and here's to the future, a future of good things, happy things and productive things and more time in the real world, walking in the sunshine, feeling the warm glow on my skin accompanied by a happy beagle and even more so here's to more weekends with real people, good people, people who fill my heart and soul with joy, let's call them friends, close friends, my wonderful friends.
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