The musings and misadventures of a girl unprepared

Monday 27 May 2013

The Journey Begins

This year has been both simultaneously the most exciting and challenging year of my life due to many reasons: starting uni, meeting so many incredible people, leaving old friends behind, learning about myself and becoming more independent are just a few. However January to March were without a doubt the worst three months that I have ever had to survive. I was very ill and had to miss a lot of uni because of this and because of the struggle to get better, I lost myself a little too. You may remember my post Refinding My Muchness, which I actually wrote at one of my lowest points as an attempt to keep hold of the little bits of myself I still had left. I wrote about how travel is my 'muchness' it helps me to discover and express myself. However due to illness, I haven't been able to travel since November, which for me feels like a life time! I have just under three weeks left until I am finally let loose upon the world again, but since my final exam was on Friday, I figured why wait that long to let the adventure begin?

The past couple of weeks I have been on a journey of rediscovery. My friends have mocked me a little since in the past year I've tried to 'refind' myself repeatedly, though to little avail. However this is the first time I've started to feel a real difference in myself. My happy-go-lucky outlook is creeping back in and I'm moving away from my newly developed self-consciousness, towards my old 'it's my life and I'll do what makes me happy and I don't care what you think' approach, which I have sorely missed. So to celebrate the return of the old Em with a few new updates (I couldn't not learn from the past year's experiences) I have decided to rock a new hairstyle which I have been dying to try for many years now... Dreadlocks!


Josie helping me dreadlock!


Bless this girl's patience of a saint AND her epic dreadlocking skills. Who'd have thought it?!


My first two dreads! Repping the Snapchat ;)

I made the decision to start them yesterday as I went on a bit of a youtube binge watching various videos about how to dreadlock and why people dreadlock their hair. I also read a lot of articles on dreadlocksite about the reasons behind dreadlocking. It seems that for most people, dreadlocks are a kind of journey, whether it be of self-discovery or spiritual or otherwise. Since I have spent most of my last year constantly worrying about what others around me think about my appearance, my mannerisms and generally just trying to act to please others and no matter how hard I tried, I was finding these habits hard to kick, I decided that I would finally do something for myself, despite the criticism I may face. Also I kind of like the idea of the journey, though I'm not exactly sure what that means just yet... I'm sure I'll find out in due course.

This video inspired me because of the look, I think her hair is just incredible. Oh and she's danish, which only adds to her awesomeness.



Also this one, for the reasons behind it.



I currently only have three as a kind of experiment, to see how they mature and to practice maintenance before I go the whole hog. After extensive research I decided to use the 'twist and rip' method, which is no where near as painful as it sounds, as it allows me to keep most of my length and since I'm a little OCD, I wasn't feeling brave enough to go au naturale. The only downside to this method is that it takes a bloody lifetime to do, around four hours to do three, though my hair is rather long and it took a little while to get the hang of. I got the overwhelming impression NOT TO USE PRODUCTS such as wax etc, apparently they're extremely unnecessary and just bad for your hair. I also bought the Lush solid shampoo bar 'Seanick' after reading multiple recommendations for it. So if you're worrying about becoming stinky, don't fear! My dreads are going to be squeaky clean :D And that's just about it... I'll keep you updated on their progress as I travel, as for me I already feel they're gonna be a significant part of the adventure.

Oh and I finally reached my 7,000th blog view today! Feels like a positive sign. Thanks so much for reading and supporting my efforts :)

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