4 February 2021

QuietOn Sleep Earbuds - A Review

Unsplash image

 The quieter you become, the more you can hear.


It can be said that silence is the rarest commodity.   It is a luxury that many cannot afford and most would trade almost anything to gain.

In the modern world, how often are you really left in silence, with your own thoughts?  Given the ability to read a book in peace, work without distraction; sleep without disturbance or even just sit in your own bubble, stepping away from the world and having a moment to yourself.

Silence is something that at some points during my day, I would give anything for.  The commute to work when I am readying myself for the day ahead and would give anything to mute the screaming child sat two rows down.  When I am working from home needing to concentrate, but can hear the sounds of the household, banging and crashing in the rooms around me.  When I want to sleep and the neighbours decide to play music at midnight on a Tuesday.

When I was looking for some earbuds to quieten my world when I chose, I wanted something that was portable, easy to use but also, I did not want complete silence.  If I use earbuds to enable a quiet and restful sleep for example, I also need to hear my alarm clock in the morning.  

I decided to try out the QuietOn sleep earbuds which are described as the world's smallest active noise cancelling earbuds.  


Rather than bulky headphones which are not easily transportable and do not fit into your handbag, no matter what the size (does anyone else find that the bigger the handbag, the more things you find to put in it?); the box is small and carries everything you need.

Along with the earbuds which come in their own charging case, there is a small charging cable which slots easily into your laptop for charging and three different sizes of buds so as to get the perfect fit in your ear.

Once charged, the earbuds last around twenty hours but with the compact packaging with everything inside, you do not have to play the game of "where did I put the charging cable" which I seem to do with every other chargeable item I own.

I have tested them in a variety of situations and honestly, for me they perfectly do the job that I wanted them to.

When I work from home, the sounds of the household are dimmed to a point where they become unobtrusive and I can concentrate on the task at hand.  In my commute, I can put them in, close my eyes and feel a bubble of calm around me.  When I want to sleep, outside noise and those pesky neighbours are muted and my sleep is uninterrupted.

The silence is not total, I would say that depending on the situation, sounds are muted to around 80%, but that is also welcome.   As I said earlier, uninterrupted sleep is perfect, but also, as much as I wish I did not need to hear it, that blaring alarm clock noise to wake me for work is essential; no matter how much I want to throw it against the wall.


Right now they are at a discounted price of £154 and honestly, I feel like I have got my money's worth.

I have been using them for a week now and they have made an active positive difference in my life.  Being able to turn down the volume of the world has given me calm when I needed it, peace where I craved it and a good night's sleep which is something that we all need more of.

I would not hesitate to recommend them.

15 December 2020

The Battle of the Breasts

 This post was inspired by the Twitter account: Wild Woman Writing Club

 I saw this tweet today and made my think about the tumultuous relationship I have had with my female body over the years.  I don't hate my body.  Now.  But I have wished that everything about it could be different.  I have cursed it.  I have hurt it.  I have never loved it.  But now, I feel that my body and I have finally become friends.

I don't think that I even thought for a second about my body, the size of it, the shape of it, or even what I looked like until I started primary school.  Before that I had been safe in the cocoon of my immediate family and the elderly neighbours that lived on our street. I knew, because I was told, that I looked like my mother; but other than that I did not have a care in the world in that respect.

Primary school taught me that I was "pudgy", the teacher called it.  My  mum told me that it was just baby fat (which it was) and to ignore the teasing and being picked on that had started after my teacher pointed my difference out.  (Thanks Mrs Ogden, two thumbs up).

A boy in another class was "pudgy" too.  He was not teased or picked on.  It wasn't the same apparently. That was the first time I learned that girls were held to a different standard than boys.  Even when they are five.

The baby fat disappeared but at around ten, my body threw me a curve I wasn't expecting.  Not yet.  Not so soon.  I wasn't ready.  I am not sure how you can be readied for it.

My body shape started to change and I started to grow breasts.  My child's clothing was now at odds with the shapes and curves that were appearing. 

Overnight it seemed grown men looked at me in a way that I was not used to and did not understand, other than to know it felt wrong.  I couldn't go on my own to the local park anymore because a group of older boys had noticed my blossoming breasts and cornered me on the roundabout; pointing my early development and asking if they could "cop a feel".  

I felt like my breasts had stolen the childhood that I was not ready to leave.  My growing female body set me apart from my female peers and I was jealous of them and their flat chests.  Some of the boys noticed and I learned to stay away from some.  The innocent "kiss chase" game I had once participated in without a thought, became something I knew to stay away from.

Moving to high school, I was the only girl, in certainly the first two years, to have breasts.  It definately set me apart.  In a way I did not want, when I all I wanted was so desperately to fit in.  Attention from men also increased.  I hated it.

Coming into my third year and other girls started to develop too, making me more normal again.  Able to blend more into the crowd.  Yet mine were still bigger and were a figment of fun.  I gained a nickname which I won't repeat here, but it was related to the size and shape of my breasts.

I still hated my breasts and resented the boys that were allowed to grow up normally, without a body part being the thing that they were known for.  

For around six months when I was 15, I was attacked by three boys at the bus stop at the end of school, every, single, day.  Throwing me down to the small rise of grass next to the bus stop, grabbing my breasts.  I remember the fear.  The embarrassment.  The wondering of why, on a main road, no one ever stopped to help me.  I was invisible.  It felt like because of my adult, larger breasts, it was somehow allowed.  Accepted.

I remember telling a teacher and being told that "boys will be boys".  Something about male hormones and a suggestion to wear a larger shirt.  I didn't tell my parents.  I was too ashamed.  I felt that it was my fault.

It stopped eventually, because I paid them to stop.  A packet of cigarettes.  They and I acted like nothing had ever happened afterwards.  I think that was when I began to feel like my breasts were intrinsically linked with my self worth.  I had paid them to stop, my breasts had become a commodity to trade.

Now, I weep for my 15 year old self.  The question still rolls around in my head.  So many cars passed by each day.  The drivers, the passengers, so many must have seen.  Why did no one ever stop?  Did I matter so little?  Did they think I encouraged the assaults?  Back then, I could only conclude that I did.

Fast forward a few years and I was a larger girl, with the larger breasts.  My self worth had plummeted to a level that my breasts were the only commodity I could use to attract the attention of boys that I then desperately craved.   Their attention, no matter how depraved, how wrong, made me feel like, for that moment, I wasn't invisible.  I was, in that moment, worth just a tiny bit.

I think the thing I am most ashamed of is that in those years, I met again one of the boys who had accosted me so many times at school.  I slept with him.  Now I cannot believe that my self worth had sunk so low that I would allow that to happen.  To court it.  Jesus Christ.

The self harming I did back then I now realise was a punishment to myself for what I allowed, and encouraged to happen to me.  

This tale of mine doesn't sound great inspiration for girls to feel better about their female bodies and their worth.  But reader, my life got so much better.  I found hope again.  I found self worth.

I slowly began to realise that I was more than my breasts.  They did not define me.  I threw away those who objectified me for them.  I began to dress differently.  No longer the black to hide the larger body but with the breasts showing.  Instead pretty dresses.  Patterns.  Colours.  I started to write about being confident in yourself and growing yourself as a person, not seeing yourself as purely an object to try to attract the male sex.  The more I wrote, I more I became a real person.  

The proudest moment of my life appeared when a reader of my confidence blog emailed me, thanking me for encouraging her to find her own self worth.  Enabling her to think of herself as more than her shape.  Instead, a whole person. I still have that email.  It was a defining moment of my life.

Now, at an undisclosed age, I am finally at peace with my female body.  I have worked on my character, my thoughts, my beliefs.  Twitter, the cess pool that it is and can be, helped me to step out of my shell and find the person who, I was surprised to find, I had so many thoughts, so many opinions.  

I finally allowed myself to trust.  To have a relationship.  With a man who loves my body, my breasts, but just as much, my mind.  Someone who encourages me to constantly question, to learn.  Never telling me what to think.  

The battle with my breasts lasted decades and started in a time that is not now.  But girls face different challenges now. But they can, like I did, get through it.  My mental health didn't help throughout.  But I battled, and eventually, I won.

So what would I say to a girl who is battling against her female body, her shape, her form now?  You are more than the value that others place on you.  Work on your mind.  Your personality.  Your thoughts and beliefs.  They will grow, improve your mind and carry you straight through your life.  

I am at peace with my body now.  I can even now, once again, flash a hint of cleavage in a dress because I like the way it looks.  Not as a symbol of worth.  That belongs to my mind.

This body you have is the only one you will ever have.  Do not hate it.  Do not let others define it.  Tell you it should be different.  Don't modify it, change it, mutilate it, harm it.  Embrace it and love it.  It will carry you through the years of your life when those who would judge it are long gone.

Work on your heart and your mind.  You will find yourself and believe me, once you find the person who you are, happiness and peace will come.

27 October 2020

Being an Emotional Succubus

I have talked a lot about self
confidence, self esteem and self worth on this blog, and my previous
one.


All things that I have lacked in my
life and have strived to achieve. Progression has been slow, but constant.


But today, I want to talk about how the
above affects the people in our life. How the things that we think that we lack,
can drain the people around us and those that we love.


The thing about having a lack of self worth is that it can also create self absorption.  You are so wrapped up in how you feel like that you are not enough, that you drain those around you.  

The "Do I look ok?" repeated a thousand times before a night out, never believing the response of yes.  The feeling like everyone's eyes are on you when you are out in public.  Do you think that you are that important?

Rejecting or not believing that someone loves you because you think that you are not good enough for them.  Never for a second considering the hoops that you make people jump through to prove it.  The disbelief and utter rejection of what they feel.  

If you push people away enough and stay in your safe bubble, which is not safe and it is toxic; this can only lead to them leaving you ultimately as they cannot cope, understandably, with your negativity.  Only for you to think that you have been proven right.  That they didn't love you, or want you, after all.

I have been guilty of all of the above for years.  OK.  Decades.

I have been an emotional succubus.

It is only now, at this stage in my life that I can admit that my lack of self worth, self confidence and lack of happiness over the years has, to put it bluntly, been a massive pain for my friends and those who love me and want to love me.  Because I have made it SO DAMN HARD to do so.

So where am I now?  

I am in love.  With a wonderful man.  I have been with him for the past two and a half years.  For most of which I have felt not good enough for him.  That he was too good for me.  That he didn't really find me attractive, he just thought he did and one day he would realise he didn't.  

But with real happiness, comes realisation.  Stepping away from your insecurities and actually listening, watching and acknowledging will always reveal the truth.  Even when you run so fast away from it because you cannot believe it.

He has never been one for compliments.  My lack of self confidence whispered to me that it was because he didn't find me attractive.  Now I see the look in his eyes when he looks at me.  The passion when he touches me.  That doesn't change whether I am dressed up and with a full face of makeup, or bare faced and in pyjamas.

After we exchanged our first "I love yous" I didn't really believe it.  Because he says it rarely.  But now I see and feel the love he has for me in his actions, the way he treats me and the way he pulls me close for a cuddle.  The way he looks at me and touches my face.

This is love.  Real love.  I feel cherished. And I nearly missed it.  I nearly ignored it and dismissed it.  I won't make that mistake again.  

So what lessons have I learned?

Maya Angelou said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time".  I always took that quote to mean that when someone shows you their bad side, believe it.  But now I acknowledge that this phrase has a double meaning.

When someone tells you they love you and shows it, believe them.  If someone says you look nice, accept the compliment.  If someone wants you in their life as their friend, it is because they like you, not because they pity you.

I know just how damn hard it is to believe that you are not enough.  The pain that you feel can overwhelm you and take over your life.  But now I realise how painful it also is for the people around you.  To be rejected, disbelieved, unacknowledged, dismissed.

So the advice that I would give to a younger me and anyone who feels like they are not enough is this.

Believe the words and feelings of those you trust.  Those you love.  They will not lie to you or steer you wrong.  Open yourself up.  Stop being so damn self absorbed that you reject happiness and love offered to you.  

You are enough, and so are those around you.  Believe them.  When do you, your world will change and that happiness you never though that you would have?  You find it.