Welcome! Honest Lies is the personal site of a 26 year old graduate electrical engineer living in the UK. Covering every day life, books and various other randomness. Read more about me and the site here.

your eyes are stars of a different magnitude, they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT

I can’t believe I have to go back to university this Sunday. Dreading it doesn’t even cover it. I am not prepared to dealing with people again. I don’t feel like sitting through long lectures. I haven’t done any of my coursework, and revision isn’t really going well either. I don’t know if I’m going to pass my exams, and I want to, I really want to, but no matter what I do it never feels enough. I feel confused. I feel so stupid.

I’m really scared. Things have been going OK and it feels surreal, feels like I’m waiting for it to fall apart. Because I can’t succeed. I don’t feel like I’m good enough. I try and convince myself that I am, but then I become scared I’ll jinx it. Always this fear. I don’t really know how to be happy, without fearing the loss of it. I continue to tell myself “Everything will be OK”, but it feels more and more like a lie with every passing day. I’m tired of it. It’s not really OK.  I am trying but I don’t know if its enough, and I’m scared of the consequences if I can’t pull through.

Really, I’ll be so happy when this semester is over and done with.

cupcakes
One thing I have been doing a lot of now that I am home is bake. It is good to have a kitchen again. My first project was banana cake. They were selling banana cake at one of the cafe’s at uni which reminded me how much I love it (its one of my favourites actually). I therefore set out to learn how to make my own and it turned out very easy and very delicious. I even it with lemon icing too and it could have even been called pretty. My baking is never pretty. Always tasty, and always ugly. :| Clearly, I am improving.

Next up I made these cupcakes. Cupcakes are easy, so it wasn’t hard to make these. The butter icing is a new skill that I have learnt, and I’m now icing everything I can. (see above) I also saw these decorations at the shop and thought why the hell not. I’d actually never really planned to make cupcakes, but I remembered my sister gave me some silicon cupcake molds for Christmas that I hadn’t used yet and thought I better get round to making something with them. Turns out they’re fantastic. Very cute, easy to use, easy to wash, and eco friendly of course. I found some more at TK MAXX for and now I find myself wanting to bake more cupcakes. Although I also want to make carrot cake, and bran muffins, and biscuits, and basically I want to bake ALL the things. I am becoming very aware that I will be going back to uni in just a matter of weeks. Just 13 days left.

I am tired of waiting for disaster.

So I have now been home for just over a week. My dad picked me up as usual and somehow managed to get everything into the car once again, even though I seem to have more stuff each time. Like always, it was altogether very tiring. Packing takes a lot of time, and then there is the trying to get it all into the car so there’s still space for two people, and finally after all that there’s still the long drive back in the dark. We stopped at ASDA on the way home, and seeing so I had my duvet on my lap, I stretched out across the front seats as best I could, covered myself in my duvet, and promptly fell asleep. My dad came back, tapped on the window, and freaked me out quite a lot. :| Once home I couldn’t even go to sleep as my parents friends were coming over- so I ended up staying up until 2am, sorting out my stuff, then taking a long, very hot, shower before finally going to bed.  Over the weekend my parent’s friends came to visit, which was annoying, as I really wanted a weekend to myself and the whole staying up until 2am so the house was ready for them thing. Then again, I decided to be a rude bitch and slept through most of the weekend anyway, and spent a lot of time in my room even when not asleep. I was just so tired out from uni. It was good to be home though.

Since then I have…not done very much. I have slipped into the usual routine of the holidays- sleeping in very late, spending a lot of time doing not a lot. Its comfortable being at home, although after a week now its perhaps sometimes annoying seeing so I now have my parents around me again and therefore not as much privacy as coming home to my own room, locking the door, and being able to be well and truly by myself. The rules are different at home; they aren’t my own. I’ve also tried to do some revision, but it’s difficult to concentrate and it’s hard. I’ve complained enough about my degree though so I’ll spare you any of the usual.

I have been out once- I went into Manchester with my sister on Saturday. She took me to a Japanese restaurant in China Town which had freakishly friendly service (I’m awkward and I don’t know how to deal with strangers being so nice :/) and rather good food. I had ramen for the first time! It tasted like Ramyun? I would have thought there would be some difference? I had Ramyun before and it was unbearably spicy. This Ramen was thankfully not as spicy, but still way too much. But it was good! Next time I’ll go for the udon or the curry though :x After that we had an hour to kill, which we did, and we ended up getting lost on our way to go see Phantom of the Opera next. We got there a few minutes late but thankfully we were let in and didn’t miss much. The show was amazing. Just flew by, despite my sisters earlier complaints that it would be too long. It wasn’t. In fact, the ending was a little abrupt. I turned to my sister and was like “That’s it?!”. :/ The “limited leg room” advertised with our seats was very true though. So cramped, I could just about fit but not entirely comfortably. And what is with people talking and rustling sweet wrappers throughout the show? Why pay £20+ to see a show when you aren’t even going to watch it, and disturb every one around you?! ¬_¬ Afterwards shopped a little, ate doughnuts and then went home. It was a good day all in all.

Now? I don’t really have any plans for the next few weeks apart from lazing around the house. So exciting. :|

This entry is a little blah. But that’s my mood right now- listless, bored, and unmotivated. Still not in a good place but I’m trying, I’m trying just keep going. Everything is going to be OK. Everything will be OK. If I keep telling myself that it will be all right, yeah?

Forget the dragon, leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.

It is currently the last day of the spring term. To say that this term has been hectic would be an understatement. Its just been go go go from the start. I feel like I haven’t even had time to stop, even though in reality I have wasted away this semester. I stopped going to Archery , and I rarely went to Badminton ( both for many reasons of which laziness was just a faction but still). I handed in all my course works mere hours before deadlines, and did no revision. I instead watched copious amount of dramas, spent too much time on youtube and twitter, and reading fanfic until the small hours in the morning. Getting no sleep, saying fuck this to the diet…

Everything was always I’ll do it later, I’ll start next week and now its the end of term and I’m still making those excuses. I admit I have started to crack under the pressure I am under- pressure I put on myself because of my fear of failure, and pressure I am under not to fail for outside reasons. I have started to slip into the old if i’m going to fail, why try? mindset of A levels which is crazy and immature. I do tend to take an ostrich approach when I become scared- that is, burying my head in the sand and pretending the problem will go away if I just ignore it long enough. Immature as fuck, really. Not impressed with myself lately :|

My apathy showed on my marks- several of my coursework marks were disappointingly low. Not failed, but still lower than usual and what I would like. I have really struggled to keep up this semester. RTS (real time systems) has been one of my most difficult subjects, and I’ve struggled with it even more than I did with C coding last semester. I feel really bad right now as I am working with another guy for the final RTS project and I feel like he’s putting in more work than I am, and doing a better job than I am. But I really don’t understand! Its not the only module I’ve struggled with. I’ll be honest and say I’ve not really enjoyed university this term. Too many course works, and boring lecturers and generally not finding the subject material all that exciting. Only two of my modules really interest me- the rest is dull, hard/confusing and just not that interesting. Perhaps when I study it then it will all just click and be OK. I hope. Its hard to motivate yourself when you’re just not interested. I’ve done a lot of electronics this term, and I am not sure how I feel about the electronic side of my degree. At times it interest me, at others it…really doesn’t. I find that I still remain more interested in the electrical stuff- big power electronics, energy generation, and renewables. I don’t know if this will change.

I also still had Japanese classes on Mondays and I didn’t study nearly enough for that either. I had my Japanese exam yesterday evening and it was really bad. We were allowed to take our kana charts in but I stupidly forgot mine which really impacted my exam. I could have done so much better on it if I only had that chart. :( I also had my speaking test the week before and I really stumbled over that one too. So bad. I really hope I manage to scrape a pass- I don’t want the money I spent on the classes to be a waste, and I want the certificate saying I’ve completed level 1 to add to my CV in the future.

I really need to get my act together. I have a months break starting now and I need to start putting in the work. I need to revise for my exams, and I also want to continue working on Japanese so I don’t forget what I have learnt in class. Its time for me to self study Japanese so I can continue to advance and learn. I don’t want to give up on it again! Apart from that I am looking forward to doing copious amounts of baking (I have missed going into the kitchen when I am stressed), going to see phantom of the opera in Manchester, and going shopping in Liverpool. The latter is something that isn’t confirmed but is something I really wish to do. Not only do I own no nice summer clothes, but I also miss Liverpool. Just a little? It was a large part of my life for a year, after all.

Anyway, I think I need to start packing now.  My dad won’t be pleased if he comes here to pick me up and I’ve not started!

hair
I wanted to post when I reached one yeas of no poo, but seems I missed it. It’s now been one year, and around one month since I last used shampoo! Here, have a picture of my hair. Just cropped, no effects. It’s kind of making me nervous posting a picture, because I have no idea how if it looks like it’s supposed to. If it looks you know, clean. I have even been trying to wear my hair down more, which also makes me nervous for the same reasons. I asked my best friend if it looked ok and she said it did, so hopefully the slight waxy-ness from bad water quality isn’t noticeable! Yes, it is a crappy photo. But I am a bad photographer and its pretty difficult taking a picture of the back of your own head. It took a lot of self timer abuse to get this :|

Anyway. Everything is ok with this no poo thing. Its very much so become a habit and I couldn’t imagine moving away from it. I do sometimes, when I’m reading other peoples stories, wonder why no poo couldn’t be my “miracle” re: my eczema. I read so many stories where problems like dandruff and itchy scalps were cured by taking away shampoo. But my scalp is still itchy and dry and I admit I started this thing with the hope that it would heal by stopping using shampoo, and I do feel disappointed that it hasn’t. But its not like my scalp has gotten worse. So I am OK. I know I was foolish to expect any kind of miracle cure. I’ve been dealing with eczema and other skin problems my whole life and I know that it doesn’t work that way. It’s not that easy. And really, I think my hair looks OK. And it’s in good condition. And it’s growing nicely, as I want it to. Currently I wash it with water, and use filtered water as a cold rinse after. Sometimes I use tea, or herbs, or lemon juice to get rid of waxy build-up- but not too often as my hair does not really like those things.

What I am going to be doing soon is to cut back how often I wash my hair. I’ve noticed my hair getting quite dry at the roots and I can’t help but wonder if I’m over washing it. Water can be quite drying. And I also want to cut it down to save time. So over the Easter break when I don’t have to go out too much I’m gonna see if I can transition to just once a week. I’m also thinking about using henna to dye my hair, well just to give it a bit of a gloss, perhaps lighten it a tiny bit or give it a nice red sheen I don’t know exactly how it works, but from the little I’ve read it seems quite messy and expensive and I’m not sure how my scalp will react. I’ve always wanted to dye my hair so yeah, I’ll see.

I’m not sure I’ll be posting about this thing again anytime soon. It’s been one year after all, and there’s really not much to say about it anymore.