Hey Hey Its Jade

Ok, so I've realised that my coping mechanisms to deal with stress are heavily flawed. I'm naturally quite an emotionally unintelligent person so over the years I developed various mechanisms to deal with this. When I'm sad I eat, when I'm lonely I shop, when I'm nervous I clean, and when I'm stressed I cook. Ok, so this is what I have in place, very ineffective but yeah I've been surviving. On Thursday I got some really bad news so I skipped the rest of my lectures and went shopping. I started online and then went to the shopping centre, even treated myself to Nando's and then Creams and I thought it was over. Thursday night I couldn't sleep so Friday I decided to miss my lectures again and clean. When I say I cleaned I mean I cleaned . I swept and mopped my whole flat including my room and the kitchen, I bleached my ensuite, I took out all my clothes and reorganised them, I washed all my makeup brushes and even went as far to add fairy lights to ...

Growing up my grandad was like a father figure. Before the epic adventures of Jade and Nana, there was my grandad and I. We shared the same birthday so I guess a connection was inevitable. When he died it hit me hard. Before that, I hadn't lost anyone close to me. It was a new emotional challenge that I wasn't ready for. Especially because even though he was 89, he had survived 2 strokes and was enroute to being back to himself.  He was back to speaking normally and the carer helping my nana out, was now part time. My mum and all her siblings had even started making arrangements for a big 90th birthday celebration, where all his kids and grandkids would be together for the first time in years. Then all of a sudden a random Sunday morning my sister and I woke up to a large breakfast spread. There were pancakes, sausages, bacon, everything. My mum can cook but doesn't like to, so whenever she does, it was always for a big announcement. Up until this point the announceme...

My whole life I've worn uniform. From primary school to secondary school to sixth form to work, I've always been told what to wear. So all of my fashion creativity was reserved for parties and summer. About a month before uni started I realised I wasn't going to have a uniform and I didn't know how to dress casually and thus began my decline into hobo-chic. I've always loved fashion. My main inspiration is Elie Saab especially his haute couture wedding dresses and I've always spent my weekends and summers going to fashion shows and exhibitions. But I didn't know how to dress casually, so I did what I do best: research. I looked at every blog post, YouTube video and website about finding your street style. This is when I discovered my love of ripped jeans and realised that there are more colours than just white, black and grey. So I went to uni armed with all my new clothes and a determination to have a well-planned outfit for every day. That lasted two ...

Ok cool so I’ve got this new lease of confidence but now there’s a new problem: fear of the unknown.  I come from a family of over achievers. My mum is a lawyer turned IT project manager, she started her career in IT when the internet was still a very new concept and now she’s a successful entrepreneur. She became self-employed, multinational speaker, author and general superstar all while being a single mum. My dad studied medicine in Poland when he could barely speak English let alone Polish. So, he studied a medicine degree while simultaneously learning Polish and is now a psychiatric consultant. Even my sister follows this trend, she did a GCSE early and got 100%. Let’s not even start on my grandparents or we’re going to be here forever. But needless to say when I said I come from a family of over achievers I wasn’t lying.  Then there’s me.    I’m not a fabulous go getter like my mum, I can’t speak 5 languages like my dad and I’m not super popular l...

Ok, so I've finally figured out what uni is all about. Before uni, I thought uni was all about getting a good degree to get a good job and eventually retiring with a nice bit of money set aside. When I first got to uni, I thought uni was all about figuring out the balance between social and academics. Deciding whether to go out when I had a 9am the next morning or stay in and do the reading. Now, over a year in I've realised it's just about self-motivation. On Wednesday, I nearly dropped out of uni. I was stressed, behind in every module and broke. So, when my mum called me and asked how uni was going I broke down in tears. After the usual pep talk she said that it was my choice, that I'd got to the age where if I did drop out she probably wouldn't find out till it was too late anyway so what I decide was down to me. Last year a friend out mine dropped out of one of the top universities in the world and she didn't regret it, another friend of mine dropped ou...

So, the other day I got the funniest DM ever asking me for relationship advice. Now, the relationship question wasn't funny at all but the fact that someone was asking me for advice on their relationship had me in stitches. In case you guys don't know I'm single. Not like haha in between boyfriends single but like single single. The main issue with this is I quite like being single. I have no current desire for a relationship and to be honest it's a bit worrying. I feel that at 19 I should join my friends on the hunt for boyfriends/girlfriends to go to winter wonderland or on dinner dates with, after all it is cuffing season. I should be thinking 'goals' as I scroll through IG but I'm don't, I just think it's cute that someone else is happy but I don't crave that for myself. Don't get me wrong it's a very normal thing to want at my age so I'm not looking down on people that do want a relationship now. Oh, and just to be clear I do...

So time for a bit of good old fashioned reflection. Ok, cool. So I was planning to skip today's post because I have nothing new going on and I wasn't feeling super inspired by anything. I was scrolling through my Instagram and remembering all the great trips I've been on and all the fab experiences I've had but they all seem to start from 2016 summer. I'm not really sure what happened to me that year 11 summer but my confidence grew and I no longer hated taking photos. Before that I despised taking pictures because I never looked as good as my friends or family. Both my mum and my sister are natural posers so I relegated myself to their photographer, only jumping in front of the camera when I was forced to at family events. Looking back it's actually sad because a lot of those memories aren't documented. Anywho fasted forward to year 11 summer arguably the most influential time of my life. I made loads of new friends, starting liking myself and just ge...

So, it's been all over twitter recently but it's not a new topic; saying the n**** in songs. So, one of my favourite artists is J. Cole and for those of you that don't him he's a black rapper who uses the N-word a lot in his songs. A couple of weeks ago I went to a J. Cole concert and his fans were from all the different demographics. I was standing next to a particular white guy who felt the need to emphasise every single N-word that J. Cole said in his songs and this has happened to me before at a Drake concert. First issue was he was saying it, second issue was I didn't do anything to stop him because to be honest I was shocked. I feel like when it comes to racial abuse I've been lucky that it hasn't been fully in my face. Yes, I've had people saying things like "wog", "go back to your country" etc. but that was from afar and easy to ignore. When it comes to music I've just been around intelligent people who know to s...