Why Sometimes It's Better Not To Know

Living in the digital age, we're used to knowing pretty much everything we want to know. If we want to know something we didn't already, a few taps of a keyboard and the information is there in seconds. While it's important to educate yourself on things you're interested in, I find that when it comes to more personal situations it's sometimes better to not know.

I've always been a big believer in 'what you don't know can't hurt you'. I don't want to know what people say about me when I'm not there. I don't want to be told things that could upset me. While sometimes it is important to know, when there is nothing that can be done about it and the only possible outcome is upset, I'd rather be kept in the dark.

I'm aware that a lot of people have a problem with this, but my view is simple. If it's going to hurt me unnecessarily and there is nothing I, or anyone else can do about it, what will I gain from knowing it? If the answer is nothing other than becoming upset, I don't want to know. I know a lot of people would want to know if people were talking about them when they weren't there and I, like everyone else, obviously wonder what is said about me, but ultimately if it's negative I'd rather not know. While many people would argue that it's important to know, I'd really rather not.

The school I'm currently at is the complete opposite of me. There appears to be a culture of telling people every time their name is mentioned, despite what the outcome of this may be. If someone's talking about you while queuing up to buy lunch and someone hears, they'll tell you. If someone gets told something about you or someone you're close to, they'll tell you. Its not quite gossip because its contained, its controlled and it's all true, but I personally find it completely unnecessary. While I do believe you should be honest with your friends, I also think that's a very different thing to telling them things that will upset them.

What do you think? Would you rather know and be hurt by something or be left in the dark and never know any different? 

Lucy x

YouTube Changes

The more observant among you who also watch my YouTube videos may have noticed things have been a little bit different over there since the new year rolled in and I decided it's probably time I explained a few things.

You may have noticed that videos have been going up weekly at around 6pm on Monday nights. I've not made any kind of announcement that this is going to be a schedule because, to be perfectly honest, I'm not great at sticking to schedules. It is definitely not set in stone that I will be uploading every week or what I will be uploading but I do have a vague idea of what I would like to do to guide myself a little bit.

My plan so far, which will probably change very quickly, is to have an outline of what I will upload every month. My plan at the moment is that the first Monday of every month will see a new original song that I've written recently and I'm still deciding on the others, meaning they are the ones that are likely to change. I'm considering doing a mashup on the second Monday of every month, a song that I've been requested to cover on the third and then having the last Monday of every month (or last 2 when that happens) as a bit of a 'wild card' where I can upload whatever I feel like uploading. These could be just a song I'm really loving at the moment, a song I've always loved but never got around to recording and uploading or maybe even a vlog if I feel the need (although vlogging really is not my forte, I'm far more comfortable with a guitar/ukulele at hand).

As well as this, you may have noticed my thumbnails for my videos have suddenly become all fancy and wonderful. This is thanks to my lovely friend Ishani who, if you read my book blog you'll know, designs pretty much everything I need designed. 

The quality of my videos has also changed a little. I tried filming on both my normal video camera (a very old sony 'bloggie') and my phone, an iPhone 5C and noticed that the quality of the video from my phone was far better. It just looked brighter and more colourful so I've decided to film on that from now on. I know a few YouTubers who film on their phone and you can never tell as there really isn't any difference and I'd rather do that and have brighter videos than have to worry about how bad the artificial lighting looks!

Hopefully, this year my YouTube channel will start to be what I wanted it to be when I created it all those years ago: a place where I upload regularly, don't really worry too much about what it is I'm uploading as long as I like it, and somewhere where I can share the music I love and the music I'm creating to more and more people. 

Lucy x

New Years Resolutions?

To start this blog post, I'd like to wish a very happy belated New Year to you all. I know I've been a little rubbish with posting on here recently but, as always, school and life and everything else has just got in the way a little. 

A new year always comes with thousands of blog posts and YouTube videos from people sharing their New Years Resolutions and since I've been struggling with ideas of what to write about recently (another contributing factor to my lack of blog posts), I thought it was a pretty good idea to steal. I've already written a similar post on my book blog about my reading resolutions which you can see here.

I've not set myself any specific resolutions this year, but I do have a couple of things that I'm going attempt to do in 2015. I know that if I call something a resolution and set it in stone I will probably never do it, so instead I've decided to have a few ideas that I'm going to try and pursue, without any pressure on myself to keep them going throughout the year. The reading resolutions in the other blog post are examples of this. I've decided to not put any emphasis on how much I read, but more putting emphasis on reading what I want to, not just things that I feel I should read.

I'm also going to try and worry less this year. This is an on-going aim of mine and anyone who knows me probably knows I can be quite an anxious person, although I am very slowly starting to manage the anxiety. Most days I find that I feel anxious or worried about something at some point and I'm going to try and find ways to prevent this throughout 2015. It may or may work, but it never hurts to try.

Another aim I have is something that may or may not stick, but I'm hoping it does. Inspired by Danny Gruff's #ontaw (one new tune a week) that he's doing this year, I'm going to attempt to write 50 songs in 2015. I wrote 46 songs last year so it's definitely an achievable goal but this year I'm going to attempt to share more of them on my YouTube channel. Normally I write a song and it stays in my little songwriting book and only gets heard by a few close friends but this year I want to share more. I love letting people hear my music and there isn't a reason I don't upload to YouTube more so I'm going to stop trying to make excuses and just do it. I've decided to aim for 50 songs in the year rather than one a week because I find I go through phases of writing something every day and then not writing for a while and that's absolutely okay. I don't want to force myself to write when it'd not the right time but I do want to encourage myself to finish things I start, which aiming for a certain number of songs in the year should do.

I've started off well with this one as I've written 2 songs in the first 9 days of 2015 and have uploaded one of the songs I wrote at the end of last year to YouTube and the feedback has been positive on it so far! You can watch it here if you think it might be your cup of tea or you're just interested.

Here's to a great 2015.

Lucy x

The Big Music Project And Musical Confidence

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook you may have seen that I got a very exciting email earlier this week informing me that I have been selected for the semi finals of The Big Music Project competition and I felt like I just needed to write about it. This may become a bit rambly so feel free to grab a cuppa and get comfy.

When I first got the email I was excited. My immediate thoughts were 'the judges actually like me, this is crazy'. It then developed into excitement to perform for the judges later this month. That evening I went to a party and told a few of my closest friends and everyone was all very excited for me and I was reminded of how I'm surrounded by the loveliest, most supportive people I could ever wish for these days.

A few days after getting the email I decided to check the line up for the Cardiff semi final, the one I will be attending, and this was probably a bad idea. After watching a minute or so of all the other competitors I immediately felt intimidated. After seeing how incredible all the other people who I will be performing alongside are I couldn't help but feel inadequate. It is going to be little old me performing alongside people with much better voices and much more experience. Their melodies are more catchy and their lyrics are more coherent. I know that I should be thinking 'if the others are all incredible and you are put in the same category as them, that is a good thing' but I just can't make myself think like that for some reason. Immediately after watching the other videos I thought that there must've been a mistake. The email I got was probably intended for someone else. Then I reminded myself that I was listed and linked to on the line up too so it's unlikely that it's a mistake.

For as long as I've been writing songs I've been very aware of the fact I am not and will never be the best songwriter in the world, although I am still more confident with my songwriting than I am with my singing. Growing up, I was never a particularly good singer and, believe it or not, dance was more my thing. I was surrounded by some incredibly pessimistic people for a long time and if I ever decided to sing for a performance or later when I started uploading YouTube videos, they were never far away, ready to remind me of how incredibly average (or below average) my voice is. It's taken far more people encouraging me than ever told me I couldn't sing to make myself believe that actually this is maybe something I can do and I am okay at. I will never be Beyonce and I will never have a voice that is anything like hers, but I do have a voice like Lucy and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The problem is, no matter how many people compliment you, you're always going to remember the insults more. It's the insults that stick in your mind and rear their ugly heads when you find yourself searching for a source of confidence. I still have very vivid memories of people insulting me about music about 7 years ago and I can't remember a single compliment from that time. I'm aware that there probably were some, they just don't stay in my mind.

As I've mentioned before on this blog, last year I moved schools and was the new girl for the first time in my life. When I met new people, I didn't mention my music or YouTube channel as I had no idea how people would react but it didn't take long for my new friends to find it as I have it linked up to all of my social media sites. I was expecting a reaction like I had experienced in my old school, of 'why would you bother, nothing will ever come from it, you will never be famous' (they completely missed the point, clearly) but instead I was met with 'oh my goodness I had no idea you're a singer songwriter, you're amazing!'. Even teachers found out due to people talking to me about it during lessons and by the time we were a few months in it was not unusual for my Business Studies teacher and I to be sat around playing ukulele duets during lunchtimes. Even now, people are still excited by it and I have a friend who knows all the words to all the songs I have put on my YouTube channel and constantly asks me to upload more. I have another who helps me with any graphic design type things (you can thank her for the banner at the top of this blog!) and has offered to help me film some videos/take photos for anything I may need photos for. 

In addition to that, the last year for me has seen me attending a songwriting bootcamp run by the wonderful Amy Wadge (her brain combined with Ed Sheeran's produced the beautiful Thinking Out Loud). I worked with lots of other local musicians who were all incredibly talented and although I had so much fun and would go back in an instant, I felt intimidated by how good they all were on more than one occasion. One particular afternoon I was feeling incredibly intimidated and confided in the incredible musician I was working with when he asked why I sang quietly that I had been told so often that I can't sing that I often find it hard to sing loudly when other people are around. His wonderful words of encouragement (he is honestly one of the kindest people I have met in a very long time) definitely helped a little, as did the same from Amy Wadge, but those other voices remained in my head. Even support from other musicians I admire online (looking at you Dave Giles) hasn't silenced those voices, although they have certainly contributed to turning the volume down.

My point is, even though I'm surrounded by incredible people who are as supportive as is possible to be, those voices from my past are still in the back of my mind reminding me of how average I am. I'm not sure that they will ever go away. Slowly they are becoming quieter, but they are still there and they still make an appearance when I have a big event or am uploading a new YouTube video. Although I know it is probably a good thing to have faced criticism before I even really properly got into this whole music thing, it's still difficult and if I wasn't so stubborn and determined to prove them wrong, it would've been very easy for me to stop because of what they'd said. I considered giving up on YouTube a lot before last year. Although I now very rarely consider giving up, because the only opinions I hear are positive ones with the occasional piece of constructive feedback I can't help but wonder what the pessimists are thinking.

This slightly went off topic as late night blog posts often do but the point is still there. You could have hundreds of people complimenting you and all it takes is one insult to knock your confidence to the ground. I know now that the times I was told straight up that I can't sing were nothing more than them being mean because they could be, but that doesn't make them easy to forget.

Always make sure to be careful what you say to people. You never know what it is they will remember for years and once it has been said, it can't be unsaid.

Despite feeling intimidated and slightly inadequate, I am massively excited to be performing at the regional semi final of The Big Music Project. Even being able to say I am a semi finalist and one of 14 people they want to see there sort of blows my mind. 

If you are one of the people who has been supportive of me, there are no words to describe how grateful I am. Something as simple as saying 'I loved your latest YouTube video' may seem stupid and insignificant to you, but those comments whether online or in person absolutely make my day and it makes me more happy than I can say that I have been lucky enough to have encountered such lovely people.

Thank you so very much,

Lucy x

The It's Not Me, It's You Tour by Dave Giles

*This was written late last night - please ignore any grammar/spelling mistakes

Tonight I went to the Cardiff date of the It's Not Me, It's You tour with the lovely Dave Giles headlining and Danny Gruff, Robbie Coles and Matthias Harris all making appearances. I have seen Dave Giles live a grand total of 4 times (I learned tonight that I have attended all of the gigs he's played in Cardiff) and I would still go again tomorrow. Unfortunately, this is going to be Dave's last headlining tour due to it not being nearly as successful as it deserves to be and because of this I felt like I needed to share my opinion on it.

The gig itself was everything an intimate gig should be. The downstairs room of Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff,  while not full, had enough people for it to be a decent audience and the audience that was there were respectful of the artists while still knowing when to make a bit of noise. The four singers and Dave Giles' band were sat in the audience when they weren't on stage and then whole evening had a really relaxed atmosphere to it.

Matthias Harris, who kicked off the evening, is not someone who's music I was aware of before this evening. I can honestly say I was completely blown away by him straight away. He is far from your average singer-songwriter in that he takes to the stage armed not only with an acoustic guitar but also with a keyboard and section of an electric drum kit as well as a laptop to allow him to loop what he plays. He manages to make it sound like there is a full band on stage with him when in actual fact it is just him. Matthias Harris is truly an incredible musician and is obviously very talented at what he does.

Next up was Danny Gruff. I saw Danny Gruff live the last time I saw Dave Giles, at the most recent Upload Tour in Cardiff, so I was already aware of how talented he is but he did not disappoint tonight. It was great to hear him play with a full band rather than just hearing him and his acoustic guitar like it was the last time. Having bought his EP Saturday Nights, Sunday Mornings last time I was able to sing along to a few of the songs but it was nice to hear a few I wasn't familiar with as well. Danny Gruff has an incredibly unique voice that I believe is the kind of voice everyone enjoys listening to.

Robbie Coles followed Danny Gruff and as with Matthias Harris, I wasn't aware of Robbie or his music before tonight other than seeing him on the poster for the gig. I was definitely impressed with him. He has fantastic stage presence (although that may have been assisted by alcohol as it was his birthday and it's safe to say he was celebrating) and his songs are incredibly catchy. On the way home, I found I had one particular song of his in my head which is always a good sign. Robbie Coles is clearly a fantastic songwriter and performer and I would've happily watched him play a much longer set.

Finally we have Dave Giles. As any of you who have read my posts from the Upload Tour 2 or the Summer Warm Up Tour (2013) will know, Dave Giles is one of my favourite musicians for so many reasons. He is an incredible singer/songwriter and an incredibly skilled guitar player, but more than that he manages to build up an incredible relationship with fans of his while remaining professional. The first time I met him, friends of mine told him I had a YouTube channel and he told me to send him the link on Facebook which I did thinking nothing would come from it and he took the time to not only watch one of my videos but to comment and give me constructive advice alongside compliments. Since then, he has watched my cover of one of his songs and given me advice about music on Facebook on a few occasions. As I said to the friends I went to the gig with tonight, Dave Giles is what I hope I would be if I manage to pursue music as a career, not in terms of sound as my music is quite different to his, but in everything else. In his incredible organisational skills that allow these events to happen. In the way he manages to remember names and faces of fans and encourages them to do what they love to do, as he has with me. In his stage presence and the way he makes the audience feel that they are all friends of his, rather than complete strangers. 

I am absolutely gutted that more people don't see how incredible Dave Giles is and that he doesn't receive anywhere near as much recognition as he deserves. If you've not heard his music, please, please listen to it. Every song of his tells a story and his lyrics are beautiful. He honestly is a fantastic musician who has not only influenced me, but also encouraged me in what I do. I've never come across a musician like him and, from what I've seen, he honestly is a lovely person.

Dave, thank you.

Lucy x

Dear Future Me (2)

To see last year's letter to my future self click here.

Dear Future Lucy,

You're 17 at the moment. 17 is the age where you're expected to act and think like an adult but in your mind you are still a child. It feels like yesterday that you were 14 and the thought that in less than 4 months you will be 18 and legally an adult is ever so slightly terrifying.

You've had to do a lot of thinking over the last few months, mainly in relation to university. You've had to decide what you want to study and where which sounds a lot simpler than it is. As always, you put too much pressure on the decision and build it up to be a decision that defines the rest of your life when the likelihood is, it won't. All of this has led to the development of what appears to be anxiety, although nothing is diagnosed.

Your cousins from New Zealand came back for 6 weeks this summer as always. Yet again, you've found yourself loving them even more than you did last year despite thinking that wasn't possible. Currently aged 7 and 3 they are both hilarious and adorable and you wish they lived closer although, you recognise that New Zealand is their home. You were best friends with them this year, in their words not yours, and have been promised that they will facetime you soon.

Music is still a prominent figure in your life although you've not written a song or uploaded a YouTube video in far too long. There isn't a reason for this, you just haven't felt inspired to which is fine. Your channel now has 139 wonderful people seeing your face pop up in their subscription boxes when you bother to upload anything and you've had some incredible opportunities in the last few months thanks to your decision to upload some videos to YouTube 3 years ago. You've met the lady who wrote Gold Rush with Ed Sheeran, one of your favourite songs of all time although you managed to remain cool and not blurt that out mid conversation, and you've worked with some incredible musicians who you now have the privilege of calling friends. You've also written an outro for one of your school friends who also has a YouTube channel which at this current point in time has over 2,000 subscribers and you feel lucky to have such incredibly talented friends who are lovely enough to give you that sort of opportunity and exposure.

Blogging has become a bigger part of your life this summer. You have put a lot of time and effort into each of your four, yes four, blogs and you're incredibly proud of them. Although you will probably constantly be updating and changing things you're very happy with how they are and you're incredibly thankful to your wonderful friend Ishani who helped you get them to that point. You have put the most work into your book blog which is getting more and more views by the day and you are now able to earn money from it as you now have an affiliate account with thebookdepository. Although you're yet to make a noticeable amount of money this way, it's exciting that the opportunity is there for you.

You got your AS results a few weeks back and although they're not as good as your GCSE ones were, you're not unhappy about them. You know it was the best you could've done at the time and that's the most important thing. They may be average results but you worked your butt off for them so you're proud nonetheless.

Things are okay at the moment. You're not super happy due to being terrified about university but you're surrounded by incredible people so you know you'll be fine in the end.

Until next time,

Lucy x

Life Offline

There have been a couple of instances over the last few weeks where I've been forced away from my laptop screen and not through choice. Without going into details, there was an instance where we were left without power throughout the house (except from one plug socket in the kitchen that for some reason wasn't affected) and another where my laptop basically decided not to work for a day. Both times made me realise just how heavily I rely on technology, specifically my laptop.

If you're reading this now, chances are you're more than a little familiar with the internet. As someone who is fairly active online on most social media sites I spend a lot of time on my laptop. And I mean a lot. If I'm not watching YouTube videos I'm blogging or chatting to my friends via Facebook Chat or seeing what the latest news is on twitter. I've always been aware of the time I spend on my laptop but I never really considered how much I rely on it.

Obviously, spending time on my laptop is not the only thing I do. I'm a fairly big reader so if technology is down my automatic reaction is to head to a book. I love that I'm able to do this and I have that back up, but I've noticed that my attention span when it comes to reading isn't great anymore because my brain expects things to be constantly moving forward like a twitter feed. It takes a really good book to captivate me and hold my attention for hours at a time these days whereas even last summer I read whole books in a day because they held my attention. I feel like because I rely on technology so much, I feel like I always have to be connected to the world around me through it which means I find it difficult to switch off from the world and enter the world of a book.

I don't like how much time I spend on my laptop, but I don't think it's a massive issue either. I'd like to not rely on my laptop as something to hold my attention for long periods of time and a tool for curing boredom that nothing else can cure but my reliance on technology has also led to me setting up this blog and my others. That proves that the time I spend online isn't a total waste because at least I have produced something at the end of it. 

What do you think? Do you rely heavily on technology? Do you think it's a problem if you do?

Lucy x