A brief encounter with Mr. Tom Hardy himself.. sort of

Wow, shit loads of you read my last post.. My newly single tragic life must make a good read - I'm fine with that by the way haha!

So as you often do when something significant shifts in your life, I've decided to make some changes. These changes started today at promptly 9:30am, when I was stood on my lonesome in a cold studio at the gym. After reluctantly dragging myself out of my lovely warm pit an hour before, I'd donned my sports bra and trainers for an hour of ass-kicking, Body Combat style.

I'd barely wiped the grotty bits of sleep from my eyes before I was jumping, kicking and karate-style chopping my way through a painful hour of pure sweatiness. I did find myself thinking - on more than one occasion I might add - why the hell am I up at this time, after not getting home from Dan's after work till gone 2am. But, as you should know by now I'm a 'silver linings' kind of gal, so it was nice to be up, calories burnt, showered, dressed and sufficiently protein shaked before noon.

Now I'm not going to pretend it was plain sailing; I was sweating from crevices I never knew existed to put it politely, but there was one slight detail which made the whole ordeal much more enjoyable. And that there my friends, was the Tom Hardy lookalike instructor. Yep. You read right. Tom Hardy lookalike. And I don't know about you girls, but I don't think there was a better use of bold text than that statement right there.

Not wanting to look like a complete exercise-phobic pussy, and wanting to give off a 'gym bunny' style vibe, I gave 120%, and pretty much nearly died in the process. Totally worth it though.

At the end of the torture, erm.. I mean, hour, I coyly enquired as to whether he took that class every Saturday morning. And guess what? I see myself being preoccupied every Saturday morning for the forseeable future. Score.

Safe to say a swift text to wingwoman Throopy, who I knew would appreciate such a detail on a Saturday morning, soon followed when I got back into the changing rooms!

Life has a habit of...

...biting you on the ass when things seem to be going swimmingly.

Well what a long month it has been. Brilliant highs and some serious lows.

A roadtrip to Amsterdam with my dad for some quality father-daughter time was great. We camped for 4 days, drank beer, saw some sites, ate alot and just generally hung out. Something I miss out on alot with us living 2 hours apart, but all the more worth it when we can fit it in.

Another high point - although I would've called it a low at the time - was finishing my first 10k race in 1 hour and 10 minutes. I know that's not an impressive time, but for a girl who's been working on her beer gut at uni for the last 18 months, I was pretty chuffed.

Great nights out with friends have been strewed across the month too, and the sun has even seen us pay the occasional beer garden a visit.

But just as life has a way of balancing itself out, there have also been some lows. Wednesday saw me and my fella of 4 years split up. And along with that I've lost my second family, a home and a gorgeous - but naughty - Beagle pup. But just as every cloud, apparently, has a silver lining, my inner monologue is going stir crazy with all the funny and slightly tragic anecdotes I will pen when the time is right to laugh about this.

Right now though, it's not. So I'm working to my deadlines, going to work, writing about everything and anything, getting drunk with friends and trying to instill some normality back into my life between all of that.

Updates to follow, as always.

Paris Brown: leave the girl alone

First of all, apologies for not posting for so long; I've just been so busy with other projects, but I'm going to try and post more often from here on out!

My first thoughts upon hearing the news of Paris Brown’s foul-mouthed tweets were actually that of sympathy.

I can’t help but feel that everything has been blown well and truly out of proportion. The teenager’s tweets were from quite some years ago, and chances are she was a young, impressionable child, showing off to her friends online, as so many kids do nowadays.

If you haven't heard about this story, you can have a look here

In a way I sort of feel her pain. The Internet has changed in recent years; it’s no longer exclusively for chatting to friends, shopping or playing games. It’s a much more powerful tool, especially when it comes to employment and upholding your reputation.

Over the past year or so I’ve really used the Internet to my advantage: I’ve gained loads of experience writing for online newspapers and blogs, and I’ve started to build my reputation as a journalist. And one of the things I’ve done to create a more professional online presence is vetting my Twitter. I removed tweets that could be deemed as offensive or taken the wrong way, and I changed my handle from the rather girlish and ditsy @graciebabesxo to a simpler @gracehutch28. I’m not sure if I can say yet whether doing any of the above will have helped, but at least I have my own piece of mind that something I posted on Twitter years ago won’t come back to bite me on the ass.

Whilst I understand that there are endless cases of racist/threatening/abusive tweets and messages posted online by the likes of celebrities/politicians/footballers and the like, but they have one thing on their side which makes these tweets less excusable: age.

With age comes experience, and with experience comes common sense; both of which Paris was obviously lacking when she posted about hash brownies and drinking binges. But we all make mistakes, and most of them are made when we’re young and naïve. And unlike Miss Brown, most of us get to make them out of the spotlight and away from media scrutiny.

So before you judge the 17 year old crime tsar – as the Daily Mail today dubbed her – just think back to when you were in your teens, making whatever mistakes you did and only having your parents to answer to, not the entire British population.

Back to reality with a bump

Every now and again something brings you back down to Earth, and often reminds us in the process just how precious life really is. As cliche as that it, it's the truest of them all.

I left my flat this morning in a bit of grump: I'd got up late, only just had time to straighten half my hair, and my good intentions of getting up early to make myself a healthy smoothie were ditched in favour of a measly cereal bar on the run. I wasn't on the war path, but I was in a less than perfect mood.

From leaving my front door to reaching the end of the road my mood had done a massive U-turn. Suddenly the small things I'd annoyed myself over just ten minutes before were insignificant and silly. The change happened as I witnessed a hearse and accompanying funeral car pull up at the church, and a devastated family get out and slip inside.

I could only begin to imagine what they were going through; what the week leading up to this day must've been like for them, the misery and heartache they were no doubt experiencing. And that was enough reminder for me; that life can be snatched away in a second.

So next time I'm whinging that I didn't get Beyonce tickets, or I'm bogged down with assignment deadlines, I'll remember the black car I saw today.

Big changes, small changes; life a year on

So my blog turned 1 year old yesterday - happy birthday blog! - but how much can really happen in a year? Well, actually, a lot as it turns out.

This time last year I was wondering if a career in journalism really was for me; university wasn't what I thought it'd be and my course seemed to focus on the elements I didn't enjoy so much. One year on I'm certain I've chosen the right path and am actually practicing as a freelancer as I work to build my portfolio up.

A piece of advice I'd have been glad to receive a year ago was never lose sight of your dreams. Some 52 weeks ago I never would've thought I'd be writing for an online newspaper, contributing to one of the county's leading glossy magazines and making contacts here there and everywhere. But I am. As cliche as it sounds, if you want something, go and get it. It's not going to find you.

So what else has happened in my life since I set this blog up for a university assignment? Well maybe the next biggest change that's happened is my only sister moving some 12,000 miles away to Australia. I did a post about it here. Friendships and relationships have changed - some for the better and some for the worse - but I'm surrounded by people I love and who make me laugh, so it can't be bad on that front.

I'm excited to see what the next 12 months hold for me, and I look forward to writing a similar post in another year, no doubt detailing all the mischief and misdemeanours I've been up to since this day.

We're all guilty of it

Facebooking someone you've just met or are due to meet, to get a bit of an idea of who they are. Facebook is basically the Google of all humans. Well, most anyway.

It's fairly harmless, usually all we're able to find out is where they're from and if they're single or not, and largely we don't use their profiles to formulate our opinions on them.

But what if your future boss was to have a snoop at your page? Photos of you falling out of a club with your knickers on show, or a raging status update slagging off someone or something that has pissed you off. Are these things you'd openly share with prospective employers?

Obviously, that's a no. However it doesn't stop them poking around your social media presence anyway, and even worse; there's nothing to say they can't discriminate against you after seeing something YOU posted on YOUR page. But is it fair?

Just because you like to go out on a Friday and get insanely drunk, doesn't mean you're an unprofessional person who wouldn't be an ideal candidate for that dream job. In a way I think it's unfair that employers are searching through social media to get a better picture of a job candidate.

However, in the same way, if there does happen to be a seemingly endless amount of photos of your latest drunken escapades on your page - where you also clearly display the name of the company you work for - employers aren't going to want to associate themselves with you.

Fair or not, it's easy enough to stop potential bosses getting to know you before you've even met, just check your privacy settings. And hopefully if you are an ideal candidate for your dream job, you'll already have this covered!

Sibling

I like to think of myself as someone who isn't a great believer of cliches - especially as a journalist - but there are certainly some that do ring true.

You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

Pretty obvious, really. In this case I'm talking about my sister. Thankfully, she is alive and well, but she just so happens to be existing some ten and a half thousand miles away from me. This isn't ideal for girly shopping trips or nights in on the sofa.

When she announced she was moving to Australia to be with the love of her life, I never thought for one minute it'd be this hard without her. We both had pretty separate lives anyway, aside from sharing the common bond that is our parents, but that doesn't mean I love her any less.

Big sisters are a blessing that not every little girl is lucky enough to have. Whilst your mother teaches you the valuable lessons in life; manners, honesty, integrity, sisters teach you the things you really need to know as a girl. Your makeup, clothes, hair, how to dance, get drunk, even flirt. All of these fundamentals come from hours spent watching my older sibling do it best.

But it wasn't all adoration and niceties, she also taught me how to be tough. Let's face it, you have to be when your sister's favourite past time is to yank your feet from under you as you're carefully making your way down the stairs. Or hiding in the dark dining room and jumping out as I toddled past into the kitchen. It wasn't all fun and games.

I miss her a lot now. I miss her on nights out; the getting ready, conversing on what to wear, her nicking half of my wardrobe for so long I forgot I even owned the items. I miss her whilst I'm sat on my sofa with my duvet eating biscuits - something our mum never allowed us to do as kids, so we'd indulge in the rare luxury on the odd occasion she was out for the night. Even when I'm eating cold pizza for breakfast, or picking my nose and wiping it on a piece of kitchen roll (gross, I know!) - all things that she taught me to do.

Just as people say a father is a little girl's first love, I think as sister is very much a girl's first best friend, expect she always will be, because she's irreplaceable.