Why blog?

On January 24th 2014 at exactly 2:32pm, I decided to set up a blog. I was mostly inspired by Zoella who I first heard of on YouTube. After seeing one video of Joey Graceffa, I was immediately drawn into the hidden world of the YouTuber. I went a little crazy subscribing to Sprinkle of Glitter, Zoella and their second channels and I also started following their friends like Jim Chapman, Tanya Burr and, of course, Alfie Deyes. I highly recommend following all of these channels as it has brought me great enjoyment in my life!

Now, back to me. As I said, I was inspired by Zoella and seeing her video about using YouTube and her blog to help deal with her anxiety influenced me to start. I have never been officially diagnosed as having anxiety but I know my own body and I know that something isn't right. If you don't want to read my story then I suggest you scroll down very fast!

My Story
I feel that my anxiety started around age 15 when a new girl started at cheerleading (I know that sounds crazy) who I really did not get on with. We tried everything to be friends but nothing worked. Unfortunately, I have quite a public tolerance of people so I was always stunting with this girl. Any cheerleader will know that stunting is one of the most nerve-wracking part of cheerleading and it is CRUCIAL that the team trusts each other - of course, me and this girl had NO TRUST in each other whatsoever.

For most of the time she was there, I would go home crying with frustration. Why did I have to be with her?! I promised myself if I was put with her for the next competition I would stand up for myself and politely ask the coach to switch me into another team but - thankfully - that day never came.

Anyway, she caused me to have anxiety as every time we went to cradle (move down from a stunt) I would panic even though I'd done it a million times before with other teams. I could feel my heart beating faster than it should, my hands would shake, my head would be running at a crazy speed and I'd often end up having to remove myself from class to calm down. I realised this feeling wasn't going to get any better by itself so I had to do something. I had a real good look at myself and decided to just throw myself into it - unfortunately this lead to an argument which I, admittedly, started which made the coach threaten to bench the both of us. Obviously, neither of us wanted this.

After she left, I felt like I could relax, but then I started college. Because my college is so far away, I spend a lot of time travelling by myself. For most people this would be beneficial but for me, it made my anxiety worse. I'm not sure whether this affected things but I started getting really into NCIS - an American crime drama for those who don't know - and although I love it, it was making me really paranoid so I spent most of my time travelling to college looking behind me and reacting to every little sound. I live in a city where one look at one person could virtually end your life and I am very aware of this which makes my anxiety much worse.

Most people who suffer from anxiety also experience panic attacks. I, luckily, don't have any physical panic attacks but I've realised that my head is full of mental panic attacks every single day.

Although my anxiety is very mild, I can understand what others are going through and I find things other people (like Zoella) do to help settle theirs really works for me. This is why I started the blog as Zoella uses YouTube to talk about her anxiety and I found talking in my head or talking to other people takes my mind off my anxiety.

That really is the only reason I started blogging but also because it's something fun to do when I'm bored or need to relax. I will try to blog something everyday except for Sundays when I spend the whole day at the cheer gym.

That's all folks,

georgiadaisyiv