GOING VEGAN (well, trying to)

IIIIIIIIIII’M BACK BITCHES! 

So I’ve been thinking for a while now about going vegan, it started after a facebook friend shared some videos on animal abuse in the dairy and meat industries and they were pretty unpleasant to say the least. I will preach no more, I’m in no position to right now as I ate pretty much half a roast cow last weekend. However – food for thought (do I get pun points for that?) during the time I’ve been pondering going vegan I’ve thought to myself – would you be happy to pop your family dog into a mincer and make him into a delicious doggy casserole? I imagine the answer is probably something along the lines of ‘FUCK NO’. So why are we brought up thinking that cows are for killing but dogs aren’t? If your cat got knocked up and you were out of milk, would you just squeeze a bit of hers into your morning tea? Absolutely fucking not mate. Minging right? If we weren’t brought up drinking milk before being able to fully understand where it came from, I imagine most educated human beings at the age they are able to exercise free will would be like ‘what the fuck man, cow milk is for baby cows what the actual hell are you doing.’ It's normalised because we've never known any different, but does that make it right??

Of course the main problem with giving up meat and dairy is that it is unfortunately absolutely fucking delicious. I love steak. I love roasts. When I think of my life without cheese it basically brings tears to my eyes, I will have to get special pasta because there’s fucking eggs in the normal shit, BREAD, HOW CAN I LIVE WITHOUT BREAD? And I mean, come on - bacon. I’m trying extremely hard to block out of my mind the thought that if this all goes to plan I may never eat another McDonalds again in my life. That thought crushes my soul and makes me wonder what my reason for carrying on living would be. But I have to remember that to get that chicken nugget in my mouth hundreds of thousands of little new born baby cute yellow chickies were GROUND UP IN A FLUFFY MASACRE. Not ok.

I’ve found myself talking to non-vegan people about this and being almost apologetic about the fact I’m thinking of doing it. Almost like ‘I know this is a silly idea but…’. And people’s reactions are always pretty negative, like they think I’m going to turn into some raging lunatic hippy who wears grass skirts and marries a tree. Nah dude, I just don’t want to be a part of slaughtering animals anymore, that ok? But no pressure if you want to carry on eating them, I can’t deny they’re fucking delicious, so you do you my friend.

The other reaction I get is ‘You? Vegan? HAHA are you fucking kidding me mate’ which is because I eat so much crap that I would immediately have to cut out if I went vegan. Pizza’s, all fast food, microwave meals (oh my god it just occurred to me I will never have a hangover microwave macaroni cheese again *despairs*). And on top of the enormous amount of junk I eat – literally daily – I have the will power of a fat crack addict. Who just eats food and takes crack all day. So although my intentions are good, I can’t say there’s not a very high chance that I will decide it’s too hard and order a pizza with extra cheese and pepperoni on it in a few weeks’ time… But hey. I’ma give it a go. I will just repeat in my head over and over again every time I open the fridge ‘I love animals more than cheese, I love animals more than cheese, I love animals more than cheese’ and hope that does the trick. I imagine I will be smoking a lot more as a coping mechanism. Who needs steak when you have tobacco.

Oh and plus point – I DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP ANY OF THE BOOZE I LIKEEEEEEE. (Obviously the very first thing I researched)

So next week I’m in Spain (haha suckers don’t be jel) but when I am back I will be blogging about my first week as a vegan, what I eat, what I’m missing or struggling with, and how many times I slip up (I love animals more than cheese, I love animals more than cheese, I love animals more than cheese).

If any team V’s are reading this, meal ideas are more than welcome. As are coping mechanisms. I imagine giving up cheese is like coming off heroin, right? Wish me luck guizeeeee! And happy adulting! x

Quitting The Cigs

So, hand in hand with my terrible adulting and general bad decisions, I have been a smoker for two years now and I am quite severely asthmatic. Clever I know. 

In the spirit of improving my adulting, and also not dying, I have decided / I have no choice but to give up smoking.

This is how I feel when I think about actually doing it.

But unfortunately, having my one millionth chest infection since I started smoking those 2 years ago (also who the eff starts smoking at 20 years old?!) and my 4th trip to hospital in that time has left me with little choice. 

This isn't fun 

Neither are these 

Neither is this 

AND NEITHER IS THIS 

No I was not injecting heroin, that's an arterial blood gas test. It's how they get a good indication of your blood oxygen levels. Where they take BLOOD from your WRIST. They have to stab through MUSCLE to get to your ARTERY. I'd rather have 10 asthma attacks than have that done again. OUCHHHHHH.

Apparently, because I'm an irresponsible, ignorant child, it has taken me the 4th trip to hospital to realise that my chest is too weak to keep smoking. The first 3 times I was like 'Meeeeeh no big deal, it's just a shed load of drugs, 8 steroids a day for a week, that's completely normal for a 22 year old. I'll just lay off the cigs for 3 days and then I'll be fine!'. But it's pretty terrifying being 22 years old and just standing up being enough to completely take your breath away.

I've mentioned my backwards logic before.I freak out about the tiniest things, like when I run out of soap or the supermarket is out of my brand of pasta sauce, I'll tell the whole world how angry I am about it and go on about it furiously for days on end - but when massive life altering things happen, I tend to either deal with them really well or do a total ostrich and bury my head in the sand and pretend it's not happening (which kind of makes it look like I'm dealing with it well to everyone else). With the hospital trips I just did the ostrich and convinced myself that because I was still alive it wasn't a big deal, maybe uploaded a light hearted post taking the mick out of myself on Facebook, but actually it's not funny. To get serious and a bit grim for a second, realistically I could have died any of those 4 times. And that's bloody terrifying. So, no more cigs for me. 

AND IM FUCKING FURIOUS ABOUT IT. 

I'm having a complete toddler tantrum. My sister and my dad and a handful of my cousins are also asthmatic, AND THEY CAN ALL SMOKE AND THEY ARE FINE AND THEY ALL HAD WORSE ASTHMA THAN ME. LIFE IS SO UNFAIR AND IM SO ANGRY. But my life's actually quite good and I have really nice friends and family and I don't really want to die. So I have to stop. DAMN YOU WONDERFUL FRIENDS AND FAMILY.

I have no real technique for quitting yet, as the last four days have been smoke free purely because I can barely breathe in oxygen at the moment, never mind tar, but I know as soon as I'm better the first thing I will want to do is chain smoke 20 cigarettes and have a bottle of wine. I am worried I'm going to replace smoking with even more drinking. But I'm going to really try not to, and give it a proper go and bring you all along with me on my journey, maybe help some others in my position. Here's to being a better and healthier adult!

I had planned on doing a ton of blogs while I've been off work about cooking and budgeting on beauty products and bits of that nature but as you can tell, I've been a little preoccupied by finding somewhere to live and not dying. I PROMISE I HAVE ANOTHER TINDER BLOG IN THE PIPELINE, hold tight people.

Thanks for all the well wishes and happy, happy adulting peeps x

Follow me on Twitter, Instagram and bloglovin for updates on my silly weird life. 

Instagram: sophiabailey93

Twitter: @sophia_bailey

Link to bloglovin at the side!