Posts Tagged ‘life lessons’

How to Start Over

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

We’ve all been there, had that stuck-in-a-rut feeling and asked ourselves ‘is this it? Is this life?’ I read a postcard on Post Secret the other day that read: ‘Every single day that I’m trapped in the life I’ve made for myself, I hate it more and more. I’m almost 50 and I want to leave and start over alone.’ To that guy I say, do it. Yeah yeah, sure, I hear your ‘But Bangs! It’s not that easy!’ and I raise you a ‘you couldn’t pay me enough money to live in that kind of misery.’ I’m 30, I’ve started over many times and I’m oh so glad I did. Lord only knows what kind of madness I’d be living in now if I didn’t. So, if you’re teetering on a ledge, wishing you could change it all, here’s some handy lessons I’ve learned:

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I am Here, I am Listening

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

This blog reaches a variety of people. One of the reasons I started it was basically to start discussions. Over the four years this has been up and running, I’ve had many great conversations with people all over the world and made real connections. None have moved me quite as much as an email exchange I had this week though. One of my readers is a 15 year old girl from Canada. We’ve exchanged emails since early last year. An email she sent me over the weekend has stuck with me and really made me think.

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Second Chances

Tuesday, January 31st, 2012

‘Forgive and forget’ is a notion that’s bandied around often. Easier said than done. Obviously, it all depends on the circumstances and what exactly it is that we’re forgiving in the first place. Some things are much easier to forgive than others. Even if you do manage to forgive and move on, can things carry on as before? Can you truly move past whatever the issue was and give a person a second chance?

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‘No, I Can Push a Little Further’

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

There are certain moments in life where you learn a lot about yourself. They can be brief, fleeting moments that, if you’re not paying attention, can just fly right by without you noticing. I was lucky enough to be present when one of these moments happened for my Team Bangs on the Run member Sarah Mei over the weekend and it’s been replaying in my head ever since.

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5 Things My Dad Taught Me

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

My beloved Papa Bangs is a pretty incredible dude. When I was a kid, he used to come into my room before I went to sleep to scare away, in rather dramatic fashion, the monsters I believed lived under my bed. It feels like he’s done that all my life really. As I’ve gotten older, he’s given me the tools to scare away my own monsters. If I’m stressed or worried, Papa is always there with his own brand of calm reassurance. He’s taught me some pretty good lessons – some have taken me longer to learn than others but they are now an invaluable part of my life. Here’s my top five:

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Are You Who You Are or What You Do?

Monday, November 7th, 2011

We’re all guilty of it – one of the first questions we tend to ask people when we meet them is ‘what do you do?’ It’s a measuring stick by which we judge whether or not they’re our kind of person, if we’ll get on, if we have similar interests. It’s only within the past few years I’ve come to realise it’s utter bollocks really and far too many of us are guilty of allowing our professions or jobs define who we are. It’s time we all dug a little deeper.

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5 Things I Wish I’d Learned in School

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011

I had an okay school life. I went to a performing arts school and aside from English and a little interest in History and French, I wasn’t really much for the academics. I was much more at home expressing myself through dance, drama and music. As I grow up (sure, I may be 30 but I’m far from a grown up), I continue to come across situations that have me thinking ‘I wish they’d taught me this in school.’ I’m not saying what I learned in school was useless, but I’m a big believer that school should be much more of a preparation for life than just academic institutions. Here are my top things I wish I’d learned in school:

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Consequences and Repercussions

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

*peeps out from behind curtain* Is it safe to come out yet?

Well, as *ahem* a couple of people may be aware, yesterday I published a complaint letter I’d sent to Mission PR regarding how they had mishandled a Nokia campaign they’d asked me to blog about (whereby I was asked to run a half marathon, then pretty much ignored until three days before the race). My aim in doing that was to start a conversation so bloggers and PRs can communicate better and bloggers (and the work we put in) are actually taken seriously.

What began as me wanting to start a conversation turned into nothing less than a shit storm. The post spread across Twitter and the interweb like wildfire. Friends who work at PR agencies were emailing me to say the post was making the rounds in their offices as a kind of ‘How NOT to Treat Bloggers’ cautionary tale. Messages and tweets of support poured in. I could barely keep up with the response.

Within hours, both the MD of Mission PR and Head of Communications for Nokia had personally called me. And to their enormous credit, both agencies took responsibility. They didn’t try to make excuses. They apologised, they listened, they were adamant about learning from this experience going forward. It takes a lot for people to admit they’re wrong and I give both Nicola Stephenson of Mission and Anna Shipley of Nokia great credit for reaching out to me on what must have been a very difficult day for both agencies. It was agreed that my travel and accommodation costs would be covered immediately.

I’d like to point out something that I think was greatly overlooked yesterday. I sent that letter to Mission last Thursday and the Head of Digital did call and apologise to me at that time. I made the decision to go ahead and publish my letter of complaint on my blog because I felt the apology came as too little too late. But they didn’t wait until after I’d published to apologise to me. For me, it was also about much more than Mission. This is happening to bloggers all over and I feel as though the attitude of these big companies is ‘they’re just a blogger.’ They don’t consider that there may be repercussions for acting poorly. There’s a certain attitude that it doesn’t matter because they’re a big company and we’re just the little fish.

It occurred to me that I’d probably been approached in the first place as it was understood that I may have a certain level of online influence. In making the decision to publish the letter and name the companies involved, I think we now know what online influence can do.

That blog post has had over 15,500 hits so far.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive – though I’m sure my face is on a few dart boards in PR offices right now. I had a couple of negative comments about how I agreed to do this for freebies, they didn’t come through and I should stop crying about it. For anyone who has read my blog post about the actual half marathon itself, it’s clear that this was about much more than freebies or monetary gain for me. This was truly a life changing experience. It’s about so much more than a free phone, or sports kits or hits on my site. In fact, it’s not about that at all. It’s about how you treat people and the handling of a campaign. As I said to Anna Shipley of Nokia, there was a real opportunity here for this project to be so great and the reach to be so much wider than it was, if it was handled properly. When I think of how this whole experience has changed me and how many people have told me they’ve been inspired by my journey, it saddens me that I wasn’t given the opportunity or resources by Nokia and Mission to spread that word further, inspire more.

The decision to publish the letter was not one I took lightly. I wrestled with it for days. Had I not done that, the half-baked apology I received beforehand would probably have been seen as enough and perhaps Mission and other agencies would continue to believe that’s an acceptable way to treat a blogger (or, you know, a human). At least now, both Mission and Nokia are taking a serious look at what went wrong and other agencies are looking at how they handle blogger outreach.

So, is there anyone out there still questioning the power of bloggers? *gives Andrew Marr a death stare*

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Posted in life | 28 Comments »

Blood, Sweat and Tears

Monday, October 11th, 2010

As you may be aware, I’ve been training for a half marathon since May. The day of the big run finally arrived yesterday and you’re reading this which means, I’m still alive. VICTORY! And what a journey this four months has been.

When I first started training in May, I couldn’t run for 30 seconds. But I kept at it and soon, I could do 5K. I worked on building my fitness level through boxing, pilates and powerplates sessions. I did hill training (running up and down steps like Rocky) with my personal trainer, Coach Qu, who gave me fun workouts centred around building power in my legs. And I just kept at it. I hated it at first but, as time went on, I saw my body changing, but more importantly, my mind. Something was taking over. I was changing. I was more focused. I was more dedicated to everything in my life. I was thinking clearer. And I was determined. Boy, was I determined!

Along the way, the fantabulous Claire Nelson signed up to do the half marathon with me. You will be hard pushed to find a better Twitter friend than her, I tell you. She did it for Scope and raised over £500 – phenomenal! I had a lot of people emailing me saying I’d inspired them to get fit/lose weight/start a fitness regime. People on Twitter and Facebook were keeping up with my progress and it all just made me that much more determined to do everyone proud.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I came down with laryngitis and couldn’t train. Not ideal in the home stretch before a half marathon. My last day in bed sick was 11 days before the big race. I was panicked because I’d only managed to train to six miles in my preparation, when technically, I should have worked up to 10 miles.

I went down to London on Saturday. After being out with my friends all day and feeling a bit snuffly, got back to my hotel that night to find I’d developed a full on cold. With the race just hours away, I wasn’t a happy bunny. But I got up on Sunday morning, sneezing, congested, with a totally blocked head and just thought ‘I’m not backing out now’. Another of my Twitter friends, the amazing Charlie Dark, had signed up for the race a few weeks ago, purely to pace me through it and ensure that I made it to the finish line. After he did that for me, I couldn’t very well say I wasn’t doing it ’cause I had the sniffles!

Charlie Dark and I right before we set off

So, me, Charlie Dark and Claire Nelson enjoyed a few laughs and the start line and then, we were off! I hadn’t realised it, but apparently, I took off like the clappers and kept a bit of a stupidly fast pace for the first five miles. But I felt good, so I just kept with it. By mile seven (which is the furthest I’d ever run), I took a couple of short walk breaks. By mile nine, my cold was really making my breathing difficult. I pushed on where I could, but had to walk in a few places to try get my breathing back (or breathe at all!).

Charlie Dark ran alongside me and encouraged me literally every step of the way. I couldn’t have asked for a better companion. We were taking a little walk break just before mile 10 when an old man in the crowd saw us and shouted some encouragement our way. ‘Come on guys! Not long to go now! When you get to that 10 mile mark, your breather’s over!’ He walked alongside us, egging us on and when we got to the 10 mile marker, Charlie and I started running again and this old guy (who must have been in his 70s) ran alongside us on the pavement for a few paces. He smiled and gave me a thumbs up and I was on my way. I’m not gonna lie, I got a little choked up at the kindness of that man.

Mile 11 was a tough one, I was so close and everything was hurting. It hurt to breathe, I had a stitch, my body just felt like a big sack of stones. But I knew the finish wasn’t far off. Seeing the 12 mile marker gave me a little buzz – my God, I can run a mile in 10 minutes, I’m almost done! We came around the corner about half way through that mile onto the home straight. Charlie grabbed my hand and said ‘let’s do this!’ Now I was emotional. I could see the finish line in the distance and all the work I’d put in over the past four months kind of hit me at that moment. I was almost there. Charlie was literally egging me on with every step. The closer I got, the more I smiled, the more I fought back tears.

And then I did it. I crossed the finish line. In 2 hours, 30 minutes and 21 seconds. It’s the most amazing feeling I’ve ever had. The whole day was amazing. 12,500 people participated in the race. So many were running for a charity, so many kind people came out and lined the route to cheer for us. There was such an energy about the whole day.

This is the hardest but greatest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Six months ago, I never would have thought I could do this. I am living proof that it is mind over matter. Tell yourself you can do something, work hard at it and you will. I want to thank my glorious blog readers and Twitter family who have been so amazingly supportive and sent me such lovely messages throughout. All my real life friends who kept me sane. Tabio for sending me some awesome running socks. Misticon Clothing for sending me some workout gear. The wonderful Coach Qu who pushed me just the right amount and believed in me during the moments I didn’t believe in myself. Claire Nelson who’s dedication and support has just been mind blowing and of course, the inimitable Mr Charlie Dark without whom, I’d probably still be on the race route in floods of tears!

This has been such a life changing journey for me. Thank you all for being a part of it.

Moments after I finished

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Me, Myself and I

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Being alone is something a lot of people find difficult. No, not being single, just being by yourself. Hanging out with you. It’s scary. I mean, once you take all the people away and it’s just you and your thoughts, you might discover that you’re boring or that you actually kinda suck.

I’m a very solitary person. I spend most of my time alone and I actually kind of love it. Sure, I love spending time with my family and friends, but I think it’s important for me to nurture myself as an awesome hang out buddy by just hanging out with myself.

Most people can muster the places where it’s acceptable to be alone. You might be able to master a quick coffee in a cafe by yourself. Bookshops, libraries – both perfectly acceptable places to hang solo. The gym, pumping some iron with your iPod on – no one bats an eyelid. Supermarket – no brainer.

But then we get into the sketchy territory, where you might start to feel a little awkward. Bars – well, it’s a little suspect to be drinking by yourself, eh? Restaurants – what? Like, to eat a whole meal? Alone? The movies – but, but, there’s all those couples there. Everyone will look at me!

Let me break something to you: nobody cares about your ass. I regularly dine at restaurants alone. Sure, I always get a funny look when I ask for a table for one and the other diners do look at you as if they’re expecting someone to show up, but who gives a crap? I will take my time, enjoy my food and I WILL have a dessert, damnit! I pretty much always go to the movies by myself. I feel no way about buying one ticket and getting a monster bucket of popcorn. It’s easier than trying to coordinate all my friends and convincing them to see whatever obscure foreign film I want to see that week.

It’s not that I dislike hanging out with people. I just like hanging out with me. I can do what I want, in my own sweet time with no expectations or limits. I spend a lot of time in my own head. Admittedly, it can be to my detriment. I went through a difficult period during the three years I lived in Toronto where I think it’s safe to say I struggled with depression. I cut myself off to the point where leaving the house and even answering the phone became extremely difficult. If I did make it out to see friends, I don’t think anyone ever knew how much I went through to actually get myself out of the house.

Now, it’s different. I’m at peace. I don’t understand people who must be surrounded by others all the time, suffice to say, they’re clearly not comfortable with themselves yet. Alone time is important. It’s not taboo and you’re not a sad loner if you choose to do things by yourself – the fact is, I’m pretty awesome company, so it just makes sense that I like to hang out with me.

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Posted in life | 25 Comments »