Italian ice cream and contemplation.

Hey, I'm back from my adventures. I had a really nice time in Italy, and it was great to do something independently. Turns out flying on your own isn't much different from taking the train or the bus on your own. My friend once met someone at uni who'd never been on a public bus before, but that's a whole other kettle of fish.

Anyway, Italy was great, but too hot and I got devoured by mosquitoes. They seem to like me, but my skin reallly doesn't like them and I had a massive allergic reaction to them. Pale pasty chunky legs + lots of red angry swelling lumps = a very unattractive mess. I didn't feel that hot stood next to amazingly thin and tanned Italian women. I'm just not made for the heat!

The scenery and overall experience of Italy, however, was pretty good. The food was great, the buildings were breathtaking and the people were friendly. Sometimes too friendly, but I guess me and my friend did stand out quite a lot with our moon white legs and constantly sweaty complexions. We were bound to get some comments. And, I've never eaten so much pasta and cheese in my entire life. It's on everything, and in everything. It was definitely turning into a 'too much of a good thing' kind of situation in the end. I was kind of looking forward to a beef stew when I got home. (I don't even think I've ever had beef stew before, but I was trying to think of the most English dish and that's all that popped into my head.)

So now I'm home and everything has settled back into the mundane trudge of everyday life. God, I'm such a pessimist aren't I? I wish I'd taken better photos whilst I was In Milan, but if we're wishing for stuff I wish that I had an amazing camera with which to take amazing photos with in Italy. Despite doing photography at A-level I still feel like I'm not too great with a camera. I know how I want things to look, and I know what I want to get from a shot, but it never really seems to work out. I see a lot of blogs with amazing pictures on them, and I'm just like, 'Wow'. I can talk a lot of airy crap about a photo, but I can't really capture things the way I want to.

This all kind of brings me onto something that I feel has been holding me back from blogging more. (Apart from the obvious fact that loading photos onto here is more tedious and annoying than a crack in a glass eye.) The things is that I feel like I don't really know what to blog about. I'm not that crazy about make-up, as I don't buy it enough, or care that madly about it to blog about it. I don't cook enough to focus on recipes and food. I don't buy that many clothes, nor am I that focused on fashion and trends to talk for pages about what I'm going to buy or what I want. And although I read many books, and watch quite a few films, reviewing doesn't really do it for me. I think I've dabbled in all of the above somewhere in this blog, in the hope of kind of finding my direction. It's kind of how I feel in real life tbh: Jack of all trades, master of none.

Oh dear, I didn't mean for this to such a pessimistic and despondent post, but I guess that's pretty much how I feel at the minute. I kind of always think, 'Oh, I'll do this post with all of these pictures', and then realise that I don't have a decent camera, so I just don't bother. I guess I feel intimidated by all of the other beautiful bloggers out there. To me it's not about the amount of followers, that's not really an issue, it's about the content and the amazing talents behind all of the blogs that I visit. I guess it's that age-old issue where you feel like the awkward new kid in the class, and you just sit and admire the cooler kids who you know you'll never be like.

I guess to me, inspiration and aspiration is also riddled with intimidation and self-doubt. You see how good everyone else is, you compare yourselves to them, and then you give up and ask 'why bother?' I think I need to change the way I think about this. Comparing yourself with others is a dark road to go down 'for there will always be better and lesser persons than yourself'. I know you don't need amazing pictures or an expensive camera to make a great blog, but it feels that I've had this blog for so long and not really utilized it.

Hopefully this will change! I'm tempted to start again, but I don't think that would be right. I like the name of this blog, and you can't really delete things in rl, so I shall move onwards and upwards. *Que fan fair and choruses of Hallelujah* :)

Do any new bloggers share my feelings? And do any of you well honed writers have any advice? I'm really interested to know what other people's opinion is on this.
xxx