The inevitable 'I'm ill' blog post

I have a really shitty cold. It's only a head cold - scratchy sore throat, sneezing, runny nose, blocked ears - which is even more annoying as the rest of me feels fine(ish). To put it into perspective, annoyingly it's one of those colds where you're not quite sick enough to justify a day in bed feeling sorry for yourself, but you're also not feeling up to scratch and as you sit at your desk working and really all you want to do is go back to bed. I'm so conflicted right now.

However, I am trying my best not to be totally pathetic (which I usually am when I'm ill), so have endeavoured to see the bonuses in my current not-so-healthy state. Here's what I've come up with...

Hot Toddies
Bollocks to mugs of sickly tasting Lemsip, the only drink worth having when you're ill is a hot toddy, preferably just before bed as the shot of whiskey/brandy/gin (that's right, you can make them using gin as well) will mean you sleep just that little bit easier thanks to the warm booZZZe. Lovely.

Stuff Yer Face
It's a well known medical fact (maybe) that you should 'feed a cold and starve a fever'. I'm not one that's usually conscious about my calorie intake anyway, but for those who are on a health kick, here is your perfect excuse for a guilt-free face stuffing opportunity. Eat, eat and eat some more until you feel better! It is for exactly this reason that I am allowing my friend to cook me a lasagna tonight and I intend to eat the majority of it (sorry fellow dining-friends). On the down side, I've found chocolate doesn't help, it just makes your throat feel worse: why is that, when obviously it's supposed to be the ultimate comfort food?

Do Those Little Jobs
There's no way that when you have a head stuffed full of cold that you can tackle that big assignment/project/annual report, so leave it to the side for a day or two until you're less fuzzy feeling. However, we're not slacking, there's still work to be done! Instead let yourself finally get round to doing all those little, less important admin jobs you've been needing to do for aaaages, but can't justify the time. It's still getting work done, so that's definitely a win.

Use A Nasal Spray
Honestly, they're just hilarious and make you pull the stupidest faces (or, is that just me...?).

Early To Bed
Being sick is a great excuse to be tucked up in bed and watching crap on NetFlix by 8pm and asleep by 9pm. Usually you can't get away with this, as your so-called "friends" refuse to believe you're getting old even though you've explained time and time again that "things are different when you reach your late twenties. I like being in bed and sleeping for longer on a school night."

*Le sigh*      

#Nomakeupselfie update

So it seems that vanity does pay. To be more specific it pays for 10 clinical trials to go ahead, which a week ago didn't have money for funding.

According to the latest statement from Cancer Research UK, the #nomakeupselfie trend has raised £8 million from people texting BEAT to 70099 or donating at www.cruk.org, which, as much as I snubbed the trend and continue to question the narcissism behind it (especially even after all the publicity I am still seeing people simply posting 'here's my selfie, I nominate X, Y and Z #cancerawareness'), it can't be doubted that it has achieved something amazing.

The trials that now get the go ahead are nine clinical trials and one tissue sample collection. The trials will look at new treatments for sarcoma, acute myeloid leukaemia, abdominal neuroblastoma, liver, head and neck, breast, prostate, bladder and oesophageal cancers.

Not so made up about #nomakeupselfies

What the hell is all this #nomakeupselfie thing about? I was nominated in a Facebook post to take a photo of myself without any make up on and plaster it all over social media to help raise awareness of cancer, although, how exactly this will help to beat cancer was beyond me?

Having recently lost someone very close to me to cancer, I am all for active promotion of cancer awareness and fund-raising initiatives, but I failed to see how this social media trend would help to make a difference. Looking through my FB feed there was image after image, but very few of them at the time contained any information on how to donate, or any knowledge of how doing this will actually help to raise cancer awareness in a positive light.

Before taking a snap and adding myself to the #nomakeupselfie #cancerawareness trend, I wanted to check the background. Where had this come from and in aid of what exactly?

WHERE'D IT START?

The idea of the 'selfless selfie' was capitalised on by act!onaid. The idea was to buy a t-shirt, the funds of which went towards the Typhoon Appeal, then take a selfie while wearing your charity t-shirt. Escensual.com beauty retailer also launched a selfiecampaign back in September 2013 to help raise money for Breast Cancer Care. This seems to be the most similar campaign so far to the trend we've seen in the last few days. Elsewhere, it's reported that the viral trend began when author Laura Lippman posted a photo of herself without make up as a way to support actress Kim Novak, who was slammed in the press for how she looked at the Oscars.

There has also been the launch of a new app this week, Put Yourself In The Picture, by Jo's Cervical Cancer Trust - the only dedicated cervical cancer charity in the UK - encouraging women to take a selfie with their reminder to go for a cervical cancer test. The app has been launched following new research* which looked at the reasons why women in the first (25-29 years) and last (60-64 years) screening ages had delayed or not been for their cervical screening. Thirty percent said that a friend reassuring them about the procedure would encourage them to attend. 

I get this, more than I initially understood the social media selfie trend.

Like with most internet virals, it's hard to pin point where it began. I did double check with Cancer Research UK (CRUK) press office, thinking Perhaps this was something they started? Carolan Davidge, director of communications at Cancer Research UK told me: “The #nomakeupselfie Twitter trend isn’t something Cancer Research UK started – but it’s great to see so many people getting involved to help raise awareness of cancer amongst their friends and family. If people would like to choose to support our work to beat cancer sooner, they can visit www.cruk.org.”

Please note the last bit about where to go to donate, because the odd thing with the current trend is that people were forgetting to actually do anything. It became, for some, an exercise in narcissism: taking a photo without make up and posting it and putting the correct hash tags doesn't mean you've done your bit for charity. You've aided nothing. Added nothing. It's just a picture and a comment that (well done you), you know cancer exists. Text a donation, go out and buy a Marie Curie daffodil; buy a pink ribbon; donate some clothes to your local Cancer Research Shop or hospice; donate some money to the cancer ward at your local hospital, because that's when it starts to make a difference.

HAS IT ACTUALLY HELPED?

Luckily, in the last 12 hours and since I've started writing this blog, many people realised the flaw in the plan and (finally) started to post details on where and how to donate to various cancer charities – the most popular being CRUK. Many cancer charities aimed to capitalise on this awareness viral too and began to promote all the ways and means people can actively donate. Soon, selfies were appearing with people adding in a snap of their text confirmation to show they'd donated.

The latest update I have received from CRUK says, “Thanks to people choosing to donate to us as part of the #nomakeupselfie trend, we’ve been overwhelmed with donations and support in the past 48 hours. We’ve raised over £2m so far, and the #nomakeupselfie is still going strong! If people would like to choose to support our work to beat cancer sooner, they can text BEAT to 70099 to donate £3 or visit www.cruk.org.”

SO, WHAT'S MY PROBLEM?

Although the money raised is staggeringly amazing, there is one particular aspect about this whole thing that really grinds with me: the use of the word “brave”, the wider issue of how much attention is created when a woman publicly appears without wearing any make up and then the crude link of associating it with 'cancer awareness'.

It's a sad sign of the times when women after posting a photo of themselves sans slap were being told how “brave” they are. I couldn't agree with this more if we were having a conversation about the societal conditioning of women and what is 'expected' of them in terms of appearance. It's crap that it's surprising, 'not normal', or brave to see a woman without foundation and blusher. But that's not the debate we're having. We're discussing cancer and I believe the word “brave” means a lot more than the choice of whether or not to forgo wearing make up for a single picture.

Some context of what brave and cancer means: brave are the patients that have to undergo painful treatment, sometimes trying new, mostly untested drugs; brave is finding the words to explain to your loved ones that you might have less than a year to live; brave is the word to use to describe those carers that do all they can to make sure the person suffering from cancer is as comfortable as they can be, despite how painful it is for them to watch a loved one slip away.

One friend I was discussing this issue with summed it up well: “To me, 'bravery' or looking like yourself, vs what someone with cancer goes through is staggeringly offensive comparison.” Like I said, I'm all for raising awareness and the promotion of fund-raising initiatives, but why in this way? Why when cancer is such a degenerative disease that strips away and changes the appearance of someone, sometimes to the point where they no longer look like the person you know, did this have to run?

Think I'm being over sensitive? Please take a minute (literally) to watch the following video: a series of selfies taken by EmilyHelck who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012 and took a photo each week for a year while undergoing treatment. This is why I will not be posting, because my face without make up is not a big deal. 

* Research conducted by Censuswide, with 2,021 women aged 25-29 and 60-64 during 6th-12th December 2013. Surveys were conducted from a random sample of a representative panel across the country. Censuswide employs members of the Market Research Society and abides by its code and rules.

Death By Desk: the slow demise of a freelancer

Winter, plus a desk job, equals a much unhealthier me. Although I'm a keen cyclist, I'm also keen to make more of my career and the only thing that could tear me away from being attached to my desk for 8+ hours previously was the prospect of going for a cycle ride in the sunshine. Now that's gone and been replaced with grey winter skies, I'm even less inclined to leave the comfort of my office chair.

Sadly, the reality of it is that if I don't get up and do some form of exercise, I will die sooner. Apparently. I particularly like this headline that Forbes ran: 'How To Stop Your Office Chair From Killing You'. It's just sensational enough and has caused me to view my own office chair in a homicidal light that I'd previously overlooked. How foolish of me. Everybody knows is was the chair, in the office whodunit.

Part of the problem is that it's ale season. Where in the summer months I was drinking light and cheery Pimms or G'n'T, now I'm indulging in frothy, filling ales. It's wonderful, it really is, apart from the fact that it's ale. And I'm not exercising as much. It doesn't take a genius to work out how "jolly" I must be looking at this time of year.

I'm a total desk jockey. Despite knowing it's bad for me, there will be days when I don't even leave the house. The furthest I move is from office, to kitchen, to living room and back again. They're all on the same floor, so there isn't even any climbing of stairs involved. This is very much an area of being a work from home freelancer that I hate.

For all of the stress it caused me, there was one great thing about working in the high school all those months ago: it got me out of the house and I was mainly working with the PE department, so I was super active every day. There are loads of naff sounding desk exercises I could do, but none of them really appear to be what I'd call "exercise". Stretching and flexing my feet or whatever is. If I'm going to exercise then that means getting the heart rate going.

With the view that I'd be writing this blog this evening, I did manage to persuade myself to go for a walk around the park on my lunch break. That kind of helped appease my concern about being slowly murdered by my office chair. Tomorrow I'm planning on going to a pilates class and on Thursday and Saturday I promise to go cycling. Will this be enough to offset my sitting? One can only hope that cycling in the cold will help to decrease my "jolliness". I'm confident that in many ways, it will.

EDIT
Had a few useful suggestions from friends on Facebook, so thought I'd share them here too, so you can make sure of them too.

Emily - also a writer - suggested the little and often approach. Try doing 10 mins of an activity like jogging, skipping, pilates, on the exercise bike each weekday. At the weekend do a bigger get out of the house activity. The beauty, as Emily says, is that you can really fit this in around your work schedule each day.

Gym-bunny friend Harriet - has a desk job - recommends hitting up You Tube for some short, power bursting exercise vids. Specifically she suggested the channel 'Fitness Blender' (sound violent!) as they do short routines that are ideal for home.

Any other good ideas, feel free to post them below and I'll put them up for others to benefit from too.