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Life In January & February Goals

Wednesday 31 January 2018


I'm writing this post realising I never actually did a general 2018 goals post so there's that - I'm an excellent blogger, can you tell?!


Ellie took these oh-so-posey pictures of me today so I thought why not go for it and do my life in January post and just have a chat about life in general - going back to uni, getting back into the swing of student life and just all of that good stuff. But before we do can I just say (as every other blogger probably has) that I really can't believe January is over? It feels like it's gone on forever yet at the same time it feels like we were "cheers-ing" at the New Year just yesterday!

Prepping For SS'18 With Quiz Clothing

Wednesday 24 January 2018




(this blogpost contains a paid for advertorial!! i've wanted to say that for so long it feels so super professional oh my goodness)

I don't know about you, but winter has never been my favourite season. It has a massive downer on my mental health, I hate the cold and honestly, I detest dressing for the cold. And really, living in Manchester it's very difficult to believe that winter will ever be honest. I'm not lying - today is the first day in ages that the sun's been out!

So you can kind of imagine when Quiz Clothing reached out to me and asked if I'd like to collaborate with them and find a few spring picks from their massively extensive dress collection that my excitement went through the roof. After spending many happy hours browsing through their selection, these are the ones I came up with and I hope you like my picks!

Five Good Things From The Week #6

Saturday 20 January 2018


loveeee this picture so much mostly bc u can't rly see my face hahaha

I'm going to be honest, I've had another one of those blegh weeks so it's once again been very difficult to find five good things in amongst the breakdowns and the tears but I managed it and here we are :).


01 // We found a house for next year! My whole flat are moving in together next year plus two of our friends so there's going to be six of us in the cutest little house in Fallowfield next year. I'm very excited to finally have an actual house to be honest.

02 // I got my exam results this week and a first and a 2:1 isn't bad considering one of my essays was really just a lot of angst over how racist Robinson Crusoe is.

03 // I hit 250 on my YouTube channel! After the changes to the monetisation policies there was a massive amount of support on Twitter and all my new subscribers mean so so much ❤️

04 // I got a really exciting email from an amazing brand and guess which gal has her first brand deal YES THIS ONE. I was so excited when I got the email so look out for my post sometime next week hehe I'm actually really looking forward to working on it.

05 // I went thrifting again with gorgeous Ellie yesterday and found a pair of faded black Hollister mom jeans which fit me amazingly for £6, needless to say I was over the moon about that particular find!


What have you all been up to this week?

Em xx

100 Books Over 2 Years

Saturday 13 January 2018




It doesn't sound so hard when you say 100 books over 2 years, does it?!

For Christmas this year, my parents gave me this really cool scratch off bucket list with 100 books on it, ranging from classics to modern literature that basically, everyone needs to read.

I've set myself the challenge of completing this within two years, which sounds easy but when you realise there's 104 weeks in two years which pretty much means a week on each book, it starts to sound a lot harder! I feel like Victor Hugo's Les Mis is going to take me at least six months to get through, have you seen the size of that thing?! It literally looks like a house brick and while I might love the musical the book is an entire different kettle of fish!

Anyway, I digress. I've decided to try and do this for a number of different reasons, the first being that I've just got out of the habit of reading. I was one of those kids that could read by the age of four or five, babbling away to anyone who would listen about my favourite book named "A Million Chameleons" (or Chimmies Millies as I used to call it) and those amazing Rainbow Magic books we all loved at that age. I loved them so much I painted the fairies in a fruit bowl still life in a Year 3 art class...

My point is that I loved books. And then when I got to GCSE English Literature, I kind of fell out of love with them. Seriously, GCSE Lit is enough to make anyone dislike reading. To Kill A Mockingbird is on this list and I'm really not looking forward to having to pick that book up again because I remember how much I hated studying it. I'm still not a fan of classics, one thing an English Lit degree has taught me so far is that 19th century classics are not my thing. Dickens especially. Give me a Jane Austen and I'll devour it but Dickens? No thank you. But at the same time, having a wide range of literary knowledge is so important, not just if you're doing an English Lit degree.  I just need to get myself back into the habit of reading and reading properly so hopefully this will do it for me!!

So one of my goals this year is one book a week every week this entire year and hopefully I will have finished half the list by the end of the year. Wish me luck, anyway!!

What sort of books do you like reading?

Em xx

Five Good Things From The Week #5

Friday 12 January 2018


my uni is more aesthetic than yours hahahahaha

What a long time it's been since I did a post like this! I finally got round to taking a bunch of photos for some upcoming posts so there's going to be a bit of a barrage over the next few days of posts 😂


01 // Coming back to uni wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be! Since term started the day after I got back it was really easy to get back into the swing of university life again.

02 // Being reunited with my uni families felt so good I love my lit fam and accom fam both so very much ❤️

03 // We did the joys of curse poetry in class yesterday!! I can finally get out all my angst at boys who don't understand that it's 2018 and no longer okay to slag off girls who are really sexually active if that's what they wanna do and they're being safe about it...
(you and your double standards have no place in this world can you tell I am angsty about this)

04 // I had my first trumpet lesson on Wednesday since getting my braces off! It's fair to say I'm feeling preeeetty talented all over again now 😏

05 // Athletics training started again this week and while my entire body now aches after three intense sessions it feels really good to have got back into it. Now for some commitment...


What did you get up to in your weeks?

Em xx


An Open Letter to Logan Paul (TW)

Wednesday 3 January 2018


This post may contain material that could upset people who have struggled with self harming, depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. If you have or are, there is a list at the bottom of this post of places you can turn to. I implore you not to continue reading if you're easily triggered.



Dear Mr Paul,

You see the girl who writes this blog? Hi, that's me. I'm eighteen years old. I'm a student, a writer, an artist, an amateur photographer, a very small YouTuber, I like dogs and I collect lipstick and like to scrapbook and three and a half years ago on the 21st June 2014 I tried to take my own life.

I'd been struggling with low moods, self harm and panic attacks for about six months. I felt like no one understood, no one cared about me and that I didn't have a place in this world. I had no purpose and my life was going nowhere. My family didn't get it, they didn't listen when I said I had to skip class because I couldn't breathe. My father told me to "pull myself together" when they found out I cut myself. I couldn't see a way out. So I overdosed and when I woke up the next morning without expecting to I was scared, confused and I didn't know what harm I'd potentially inflicted on myself. I was terrified because suddenly I realised I didn't want to die.

I was fourteen years old. I was the same age as a lot of your viewers.

My mother found out. I think it brought it home to her that actually something really was wrong. She took me to hospital that day and I was admitted to the CAHMS Crisis Watchlist and then underwent a year of weekly therapy sessions. Don't worry - I'm better now. I still struggle with depression and anxiety but I'm much more able to compartmentalise and deal with it myself. My parents now are much more understanding and for the most part, the feelings of four years ago are feelings I've not had in a long, long time.

Until yesterday morning when I found out that you had not only gone onto sacred, hallowed ground, with your cameras, filmed a dead body, laughed about it, went home and watched that footage and spent perhaps hours editing it, but also that you were stupid enough to upload that to YouTube knowing your audience demographic, knowing who would click on that video thinking "oh, it's just Logan having a laugh again" not knowing what they would find in that video. Young people, the same age as me when I made my attempt, the same age as me now, people who will never be able to forget the images they saw in your video. It doesn't matter that it's taken down now - you still did it, you made a conscious choice to upload that video and what's done is done. Young people have seen it and taken that in and may well be scarred for the rest of their lives which should be happy and healthy. They shouldn't have to deal with that and yet now they are because you put that video up.

Did it seriously, really, never occur to you in all those hours of editing and watching that footage over and over again that there may just be something terribly wrong with uploading that? Did it never occur to the team of people you inevitably have to help you to tell you that you were wrong?

And did it occur to you when you made your "apology" how bullshit that sounds? You tried, but filming and uploading a video of a suicide victim is never a way to raise mental health awareness. You can say over and over that you "didn't do it for the views" but you are not kidding anyone. You did it for one reason and one reason only. If you truly wanted to raise awareness, you would never have taken your cameras in there. You would never have joked and laughed and you would never ever have uploaded that. You would have sat down some time after, having had time to process what you had seen, and you would have explained it in non-triggering terms and pointed your viewers in the directions of suicide hotlines and places they can go if they are being affected.

How on earth do you think your viewers would have felt if, like me, they were a suicide survivor and they saw that video? I never had the displeasure of watching it but even seeing the outcry online made me shiver and it took me back to four years ago when I was at that point. As a suicide survivor and someone who has made an attempt on their life, who has been at the absolute lowest lows of their existence, what you did is deplorable. It not only invalidates suicide and makes it seem attention seeking and makes it look like a joke, things we are struggling with anyway, it invalidates that particular person's struggle, let alone everyone's struggle.

Did you think about that person? That person was a person. They were a living, breathing, human being, much like you and me. They had thoughts, an imagination, dreams, hopes, a life. They had a family who are no doubt still grieving for their loved one. Losing a loved one is hard as it is, but losing a loved one to suicide is the hardest. Losing a loved one to suicide and then seeing what you uploaded on YouTube? I can't even imagine how that must feel and you clearly can't because you would simply not done what you did if you could.

You are an influential man. You have millions of people in your "Logang". You have power. You have a platform. I'm going to be honest, I've never really liked you because I've found your content a little silly and immature, but you've been harmless up until now. You've never been blatantly disrespectful towards other people and a country's culture and history. Yes, you used your platform in a stupid way, but it's been harmless. But now? You've abused that. You've abused your platform, you've abused your influence, you've abused your power. 

You asked for forgiveness. You called it a mistake. But here's the catch - a conscious choice is not a mistake. You made several choices in the making, editing and uploading of that video and each time you made the wrong one. You cannot possibly call it a mistake. You exploited a victim for views. You asked us to forgive you. And you have been forgiven - but not by the right people.

And no, Mr Paul. We do not forgive you. People who fight for real mental health awareness do not forgive you. People who have uphill struggles every day of their lives due to mental illness do not forgive you. People who will be affected by this video for the rest of their lives do not forgive you. People who have lost loved ones to suicide do not forgive you. Suicide survivors do not forgive you.

Good luck for the future, Mr Paul. I think you'll need it.

_____________


If anyone has been affected by the content in Logan Paul's video or indeed by the content in this post, here is a list of suicide helplines: 

UK - 08457909090

US18002738255

Australia - 131114

If you're in another country click here to find your helpline.

If you are not suicidal but you need some support, there are other places you can turn.

Samaritans - 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org

Alternatively, you can ALWAYS get in touch with me. My social media is all @emiliarachblogs and the links are in the sidebar to your right. 

All we can hope from this event is that YouTube realise that something has got to change in the way they are policing their content and that people realise just how serious this issue is. If you wish to know more about Aokigahara please check out this thread, it includes some really important points about the culture and history of the forest.

Thank you for reading and please remember to remain respectful if you choose to comment!

Em xx

2018 Bullet Journal Update!!

Monday 1 January 2018


Happy New Year boys and girls!! Hopefully you've had the best NYE ever and are as ready as me to kick ass in 2018!!!! (hahahahaha who am I kidding I'll kick ass for like a day and then give up, let's be real here) but anyway...

It's here!! Finally!! I've been waiting for most of December to do my bullet journal for 2018 as I've not really ever started it properly from the beginning so I was sooo excited to do it! So without further ado let's go for it as this is a long ass post!!


My title page I kept super simple, I went for this light blue/purpley colour which is the Tombow dual brush pen in 553 which I also used for my accent colour in January which we'll get into later. I wrote out this little "let's make it a good one" as well, and I really love the minimalistic look of this.


My next spread is my 2018 At A Glance, which is just every month written out on a page so I can quickly flip back to this any time I need it. For 2018 in general I chose yellow as my accent colour given that it's my favourite colour. On the opposite page I did my goals and bucket list for 2018 but I kind of messed up the calligraphy which you can kind of see a little bit, plus I want to do more of an in depth post/video about my 2018 goals so I'll save them for that.
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