Living with meaning - a blogger's manifesto

Recently I've been thinking a lot about happiness and mindfulness. I've always been fenced in by my fear of failure and feelings of guilt and remorse. I've decided to start to change my life for the better by setting myself achieveable goals and sticking to them, but not beating myself up. Ultimately I want to follow my dreams without fear of failing, so I'm starting small to give myself a chance to fail, learn, and grow. This is kind of the opposite of a bucket list - the things I want do to live a fulfilling and happy life, to not be filled with remorse later. The only rules are that I must do all of these things at least once before December 31st 2012 and I must blog about them as I go. I will set resolutions for next year on January 1st 2013.

1. Consider what my dreams are and how I will achieve them
2. Try 100 new things (activities, recipes, foods, places, products, music)
3. Blog every day for a month
4. Cook a meal for someone else at least once a month
5. Bake something at least once a month
6. Read a new book every week
7. Go camping
8. Get something I've written published
9. Do three things which are completely outside my comfort zone

Sunday Morning Music: Renewed

On my previous blog I used to post a playlist almost every Sunday morning of music that was inspiring to me at that moment, and in an effort to renew my sense of meaning in life (will be writing more on this soon) I'm heading back that way. Experiencing music, new and old, is such a tangible, soulful, and easy way to tether yourself in the reality around you. It is also a sincere way to express your tastes and validate your sense of worth and meaning.

This playlist is dedicated to the cold, rainy, windy days and nights we've had around here for a while. I'm (slowly) teaching myself to appreciate the beauty in grey days.



1. It's Been Raining - Kimya Dawson
2. Oré - Aṣa
3. Shovelling - Alessi's Ark
4. You Really Got a Hold On Me - She & Him
5. Cosmia - Joanna Newsom
6. The Hill of Thieves - Cara Dillon
7. Country Mile - Camera Obscura
8. Sophia - Laura Marling

Visit my 8tracks page for more mixes.

What to do when you're wrong on the internet

So you suddenly realised the flaws of your argument and need a quick way out? We've all been there. But rather than admit you might be wrong (what are you, a girl?), why not continue to argue using this handy guide and hope you come out on top anyway?

1. Make something up
There's a good chance that the person you're arguing with also has no idea what the fuck they're talking about. Just make up some bullshit statistic or anecdote and hope for the best.

2. "You're too sensitive"
This works especially well against women by implying that their inherent femininity is somehow hindering their argument. If they're using a personal example to explain something then they must be simply too emotional to argue with a solid factual rock such as yourself.

3. "But what if ... [insert ridiculous hypothetical situation]"
Stall for time by inventing a crazy situation the other person would never find themselves in. Good examples include:

• Vegans: "But what if you were trapped on a desert island and the only thing to eat was a chicken?"
• Feminists: "But what if there were another world war? Men would be conscripted and women wouldn't!"
• Atheists: "But what if you're wrong and God does exist? You won't get in to Heaven!"

Good one! They won't have heard any of those before and will have to spend innumerable hours calculating a defence!

4. Call them a stereotype
You've got this far, way to go! Now completely invalidate their experiences and previous arguments by telling them how much of a stereotype you think they are.

5. Tell them they're boring or annoying
There is no better way to enrage people than to tell them how boring or annoying you find them or their arguments. If you run out of things to say, just leave your finger on the 'z' key for a while. They'll get the picture.

6. "You're too angry"
Is the other personal good and riled? Then unleash this bomb on them. Your arguments have made them so angry that actually now you don't have to listen to them at all.

7. "You haven't replied so I win"
If the other person takes a while to reply (what better things could they possibly have to do than argue with you on the internet all day?) or stops replying altogether, then according to the rules of arguments, you win by default! Lucky you. Now celebrate by gloating or posting an inane Youtube video. This will show how mature you are.

International Women's Day highlights

Hope you all had a positive and productive International Women's Day! Here's the best writing and images from the day (along with the worst):

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, started the day with the following tweet, received with indignation by some:

Overall, Huffington Post had the best coverage, with dedicated sections on both their US and UK blogs. The latter featured a slideshow of the day's events, lead articles by David Cameron (patronising) and Cherie Blair (suprisingly agreeable), and best of all an article entitled 'Which Woman Inspires You?', in which the HuffPo team pick their favourite female writers, journalists, activists, and artists in a lady-friendly festival of awesomeness.

The Guardian's coverage featured a gallery of cartoons addressing issues facing women globally, although it seems somewhat incongruous that almost all of them were drawn by men. The paper also featured an interactive map of what women around the world are celebrating today, as well as lots of great comment pieces by female writers, addressing issues in many areas from poverty to theatre. By far the best piece on the site is by activist and author Kevin Powell, who writes a compelling and insightful open letter to men calling for an end to violence against women.

Meanwhile, the online feminist group Gender Across Borders has been encouraging people to Blog for International Women's Day, with a huge list of over 200 bloggers taking part so far.

Al Jazeera posted a great roundup of the day's events using photos, tweets and videos from around the world. The site also features an analysis of women's role in politics globally, along with a refreshingly honest article about the specific challenges faced by female journalists.

For the designers among you, open-source t-shirt design company Threadless has launched a competition to design a shirt which "empowers women to change their world". 100% of the profits will go to the charity CARE, which helps to promote womens' health and education across the world.

Unfortunately, somebody had to ruin all the good things that were happening today, and unsurprisingly that somebody was Rick Dewsbery of the Daily Mail. This truly repellant individual wrote a moronic and inappropriate article bemoaning a treaty by the European Council (who he seems to think are "a group of militant feminists") which is intended to stop all harrassment of women. Somehow this disgusting man seems to have missed the memo that wolf-whistling and 1970s-style sexism are only acceptable to the kind of absolute ballbag who reads the Daily Mail. This is clearly a man who has never been sexually harrassed and cannot imagine the utterly demeaning and humiliating nature of a supposedly "innocent" but completely unwanted wolf-whistle or arse squeeze. The article also includes such delights as victim-blaming ("... just because he wolf-whistled as she walked by in [a] figure hugging skirt"), patronising and sexist talk ("a few sensitive little sweeties"), and just plain old fucking idiocy ("...a few mini-Hitlers who want to excercise some power"). Notice the contradiction there - surely one can't be both a "sensitive little sweetie" and a "mini-Hitler"? If you want to retain a sense of sanity then I suggest you don't read the comments to this article, the majority of which made me want to go to the supermarket and vomit copiously into the face of anyone buying this awful waste of paper.

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