First post

Hi everyone,

I have created blogs in the past about different things, but this is just going to be a blog about me and my life and I will see where it goes. I want to incorporate all my interests and hobbies and have a positive attitude to my life, (in contrast to other blogs which have been somewhat negative). Perhaps this blog will help me to realise what I really want from life, help me to focus on what is important. I have recently bought and read a book by Kelly Rae Roberts called "Taking flight" which talks about listening to a whisper inside that is calling you in a direction, but which you can't quite verbalise or form yet, but by collecting together these whispers you can realise what you really want in life. I will try and include whispers and perhaps this will help me discover what I want.

Here are some of my hobbies, activities and interests which might help give an idea of the kind of person that I am and what my life is currently like (in no particular order):

I am an Art and Design teacher in mixed secondary comprehensive in Reading which has a large number of ethnic minority children and children with English as an additional language, and has a large number of children from deprived backgrounds. I am not very happy at work at the moment, I find it stressful and quite unrewarding, but need to pay the mortgage and don't really feel like I have another choice. You can read about some of my experiences in my other blog "The Truth About State Schools"

I love creating art, crafts and photography. You can see some of them on http://serendipity-child.deviantart.com/ Sadly I don't get enough time to do the kind of creating that I would like to do but one of my new years resolutions is to do more so perhaps I might keep to this. Here is a picture of my most recent painting:

I am married to a lovely man who I would love to look after really well and have his dinner on the table when I get home from work (I do manage this sometimes!). I would like to be a house wife, but the mortgage needs paying, however I do really enjoy cooking, baking, preserving and all sorts of other food related things. My wonderful husband bought me a smoker for Christmas so smoked food is currently appearing quite often on the menu!

I am really interested in self sufficiency and almost everything this involves, would love to one day own my own small holding and be totally self reliant, you can find a bit more out about me and self sufficiency at http://www.selfsufficientish.com/ my user name is Helsbells and I post there most days.

I have two guinea pigs called Florance and Matilda.

I am a Christian and try to lead a good life, its hard sometimes because I spend so much time at work being angry and that's not very Christian. I think that I try my best though.

I feel that I am a very creative and multi-faceted person, but am frustrated because I don't have time to express this creativity. Well perhaps in the new year I will be more of the person I want to be, my new years resolutions include:

Watch TV less. Shockingly I probably watch about 5 hours of TV per day, I just get back from work and collapse in front of it, its a total time stealer and it very un-beneficial, so will try much harder to watch less so I can do more craft stuff.

Throw less away. We consume way to much in this country and throw away far too much. So I would like to reduce the amount of rubbish that I throw away to one bag every two weeks. (or make that half a bag a week) for our whole house.

Pay off my overdraft, currently I am about £1800 overdrawn and must pay this off because I am paying interest on it. Once I have paid it off I want to get an ethical bank account with the co-op or the like.

Get back to the weight I was on my wedding day. Have gained a considerable amount since August and want to lose it by my birthday which is in May. I am having a photo shoot on the beach in Wales then, a friend of my sisters is an amature photographer and wants to take some images, also, my sister made my dress and she wants some really professional images on if, so that's my motivation.

So hopefully 2010 is going to be a really great year. Wish me luck!!