56 Central - Something New

Take a minute to scan your surroundings. Are you in a familiar place or somewhere new? Stop reading this, and just look around you. Pick an object, maybe something you hadn't noticed before, and focus your attention on it. If you really focus, it'll get brighter and more 'real' than it was when it was just an unnoticed piece of the background noise of your life. Now, try to view your surroundings from the point of the object. Some people can do this with no effort, and for others it takes some concentration, you may notice a slight shift in your perception, a weird jump in reality. Where you are suddenly viewing the world from a different perspective.

Passing by 56 Central for example you might not be aware of the magic that lies inside. With countless restaurants and bistros down Shop Street, it's easy for a business to get lost in the cobbles. Venture inside though and you'll find an authentically vibrant, distinctive, and visually uplifting space, that's managed to capture the heart of Galway, even if for some outsiders it might have gone unnoticed. 

( Photo courtesy of Love Joules )

Branching Out

Tomorrow my younger sister starts her first day of college. It's a momentous step in her life.

She begins her own search in finding a new place to call home. It'll be a mixture of ups and downs, highs and lows. Hopefully she'll embrace them and they'll help enrich her life. She'll have more responsibility, I'm sure she'll exercise her new found freedom wisely and learn to find a balance. It is a significant transition and I'm proud of her. It's the start of a new phase, it'll bring up a range of emotions, it's pretty daunting but exciting too.

I know she will love it. The parties, the all-nighters, the sudden opportunities that will present themselves. It's a time of exploration. She's going to make a lot of new friends, some of which will be people she'll count on for the rest of her life. She'll find a group of mates who she can really talk to and not stress about fitting in with.



Weakest Link

Everyone of us feels some level of anxiety when we are made wait. In Supermarkets, we all jockey back and forth to the line we perceive is moving the fastest, easily getting frustrated when we choose the 'wrong' queue. When driving, we will swerve across multiple lanes of traffic to avoid the one with the biggest delay. Even in elevators we hate waiting so much that we will push the 'close door' button so often that those buttons are typically the ones most withered. Waiting rooms in medical practices though are a particular pet peeve of mine. And it's not the waiting itself that bugs me. My issue is with the place and the people.

Whenever I'm there it's generally packed to the rafters, frequently there's no available seating, and the magazines on display are often so dated that I need an archaeologist with gloves assisting me in flicking through one. Also, there's always some gobshite that seemingly cannot go anywhere without twelve to fifteen friends and family members attached via their umbilical cord. So imagine my mood yesterday, when I had to make a trip to my local clinic. 

( Picture via Thedogpaddler.com )
I wandered in and instantly eyes were staring, observing me from almost every direction. I came anticipating boredom and unease, but this was something I wasn't prepared to endure. Armed with my skinniest jeans and flaunting my most flamboyant oversized jumper, I stood out in the array of hopeless souls. My man bun refused to cooperate that morning, it didn't help the situation that my hair resembled devil horns on arrival. This was an extremely unnatural environment for anyone to be placed in.

The average age of the room was easily over sixty. Shuffling through the crowd I felt like I was one of the seven wonders of the world or some sort of character from The Ripley's Believe It or Not. The locals were looking at me like I was the Grand Canyon or had a third eye. One or two of the patients probably assumed Jim Henson created me. The only available chair was the one under the gonorrhoea pamphlets, which I accidentally picked up to read before realising what it was.

Once seated, I instantly felt a shiver down my spine. Various incarnations were still peering nervously at me. I saw a woman flinch as I bypassed her. With sideways glances I noted one man making a tutting noise and rolling his eyes in embarrassment. It was increasingly uncomfortable, feeling sensations of being watched made me get vertigo and goosebumps. I became conscious of how different I was to the rest of them, horribly different. The majority of the elders were terror stricken by my presence.

I have two piercings, they were examining me like I was a damn cheese grater, having holes all over my entire face. The woman beside me was acting like I had the Empire State Building shooting out of the side of my head. The same woman was one nut away from looking like Panti Bliss, so she should have kept quiet before I clocked her.

( Picture via DesignMom.com )
Waiting rooms are considered bright places, usually they have strong fluorescent lighting installed to illuminate the entire room. But this one was dark, with some of the back rows almost pitch black. Strange, inhuman sounds gravitated towards me from those rows every couple of minutes. I turned around at one stage to detect what the commotion was about and all I could see was big beaming eyes of a frantic nature glaring back at me. One man shined the light off his phone back there later on to try and secure a seat, I could hear people snarling at him, then scattering away weirdly to an even darker corner of the room. I rarely get scared, but at this point I felt real fear. Who were these people? Did that area enter the void? Was there another realm or portal in the same room as us? Maybe there was a decent WiFi connection back there?

What I noticed most is how incredibly annoying certain people can be when they are placed in a small space with strangers. One idiot had the television remote, guarding it like he earned the right to watch Animal Planet at an unsociable volume. If I ever have to listen to someone vividly narrating sexual intercourse between two orangutans again, I'm going to flip. There was another man chewing toffee so loudly that at first I assumed it was the sound generated from him readjusting his false teeth. The sweets he was eating were individually wrapped, every single wrapper had been thrown on the floor. The bin was two seats away from him.

The guy opposite me kept fidgeting, he was off-colour and continued scratching in a contagious manner until I got seen to. So although I'm safe for now, I'll probably be back there by early next week

May the odds be forever in my favour, I guess.  

( Picture via Pritchettcartoons.com )

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I've been shortlisted for both Best Lifestyle Blog and Best Youth Blog by this year's Blog Awards Ireland. I hate to hit ye with such a cliché but it genuinely was such a honour to even be nominated. A lot of my fellow nominees have far larger followings and greater fan bases than Loading Life so I don't expect to get any further, but regardless I'd like to thank anyone who has ever taken time out of their day to read my ramblings and musings. I blog fundamentally for myself, so to think that other people get enjoyment out of anything I've written remains quite surreal to me, it makes me very proud. It's nice to think that anything I've penned has helped pave understanding on a particular issue even slightly better for certain individuals and that the humour posts might have lightened up the dreariest of days for someone out there going through a tough time.   

The next round features a public vote, if you think I deserve a vote the link is attached above for both categorises. I'm not going to hound anyone for votes, that's not my style. In my opinion an award should be earned so only choose me if you feel I deserve it. Making the shortlist has made my month regardless.
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