I'm moooooooving

Hi Fellas!

So I've been thinking about it for a while now and I've finally made up my mind - I've spent amazing four years on Blogger, but it's time to move! 

Feel welcome to visit my new blog - https://monycaandstuff.wordpress.com/

“[…] I liked him for liking me.” - a piece of journalism I regard as excellent

            From the very beginning, you know what it is about. Love. But not a usual feeling between two people that seems so extraordinary, lasting, beautiful, authentic. It was not one true love. At least not in the full meaning of it.

            Reading this article you fall in love, just like the fourteen-year-old girl, with her eight-grade history teacher. Slowly starting to see how smart, caring, understanding he is. He becomes your crush like he did among all the feminine students. As if you were there waiting for him to look into your eyes, thinking of how amazing it would be if you could talk just with him, without all those other girls. Students could listen to the stories about their teachers teenage years for hours. His unsophisticated look, the way that he walks, speaks, everything seems to be just hitting the spot. You slowly realize that he could use it easily and so he did.

Mr. Lehrer liked all of his students, but it is easily seen that he liked her the most. Thirteen-years-old at the time, fascinated by the new, young, handsome teacher just as I was reading this essay. Even when narrator made it clear that they, the young girl and her eighth-grade history teacher, had a love affair I was still, just like her, containing all of his lies, absorbing a huge mass of untruth and keeping it in a jar full of falsity closed tightly with a lid.

Feeling as if I was there if I was the girl. I fell under the spell of vaguely harmless Mr. Lehrer. It can even be said that I developed an affection towards him. Keeping reading to see if their love will survive, enjoying their truck-rides, discussions, the time they spent together. But deep inside I knew that what he was doing was wrong. Making a woman believe that you love her even if it can be clearly seen that what you do is just playing around with her feelings should be treated as the worst crime. No one should be allowed to play with the heart of another person.  

Months passed, her parents found out about the relationship between their daughter and her teacher. They decided to bring an action at law. Finally, after weeks of therapy the girl, as well as the reader, realized that it wasn’t her fault. She was the abused, innocent, underage victim and all he did was just using her.

                        If it hadn’t been for the title after reading few staves I would have thought that it was all about forbidden fruit which was the love of a young, teenage girl and 10 years older, married man. Jenny Kutner shows the beauty of essay in her piece “The Other Side of the Story” published in Texas Monthly in 2013. She made me feel what the girl feels talking to Mr. Lehrer, being touched by him. I developed an affection towards the history teacher and, just like the girl, at first, I couldn’t deal with the fact that his every single word was just a delusion.

            Apart from the gripping plot, this is written with the extremely large amount of emotions which can be easily felt while reading. It is surely one of the pieces of journalism that I personally regard as excellent. Metaphors, understatements, great vocabulary and the amazingly well written about the taboo situation are the reasons why this essay is worth reading.

Morning with mood swings

It's almost the end of the first term and I'm stressed. I'm stressed all the time, I stress about everything. My job, my coursework, my social life, my lack of sleep and proper eating habits. I'm a huge mush of stress and because of that, my mood swings tend to be much more intense than usual. Good thing that I don't tend to get angry or super fucking sad in front of people, not even friends. My breakdowns usually happen when I'm all alone in my room. I prefer it that way since then I don't need to explain anything. I don't usually even know how to explain what's going on in my mind. That's just the way it is. The smallest thing may trigger something, it kinda works like an avalanche. Most of the times it's not even the fact that somebody said something and I didn't like it. Usually, it's about the mess in my room, the temperature outside, the shape of my face in my glasses, quality of paper on which I printed something. It's ridiculous. I'm fully aware of that. Thanks to being aware of such things I know sometimes how to control myself. It's rare but, trust me, I'm doing my best not to start crying in the library or not to kick the fucking printer. That kind of intrusive thoughts makes me wonder if I'm even close to being a normal human being. If maybe there's something I can do about it but I never did and now I'll be stuck in this swing forever. You can't even assume when you'll start feeling like shit. Sometimes you can't even recognize the feeling you currently deal with. Am I angry? Sad? Ecstatic? Terrified? Aaaaa, how the fuck do I know?
But yeah, I'm stressing over the tiniest shit lately. I don't know why.

Dear waitress, please kill someone with me #1

As you all may already know apart from being a full-time art student I also work as a waitress at the local sushi place. I love my job, it's way better than working at that last crappy place with a dickhead boss. I treat it more like hanging out with my friends rather than a job, which says a lot about the atmosphere at my work. But it's not what this series will be about. Being a waitress means dealing with a lot of weird customers and I'll be describing funny stuff that happens to me during work. Since some of the events are super odd the title of the series is weird as well. I'm pretty sure one day a customer will ask me to kill someone with him though.
There's this guy, let's call him Garry, so Garry comes to the sushi place at least once a month with his family for a dinner or supper or lunch or whatever. He's a lovely guy, a little bit older than me, studied economics in London and graduated three years ago with flying colours. Every time when he comes in I already know what he is going to order, as he never tries anything new but sticks with his basic choice. That's not weird at all since more than a half of the customers do that. With every meal, he always drinks at least 3 jars of sake, and all that you need to know about sake is that it's fucking strong so it gets you drunk very quickly and super easy. You don't even feel it and then - you're shitfaced. Garry gets drunk every single time when he comes with his family for dinner. I've never seen him sober for more than a few minutes. There's nothing wrong with that, I honestly don't care about his life choices and the fact that he's getting hammered during the family meal. But after he gets drunk he starts hitting up on me, which is super awkward and funny at the same time, but usually, I neither have the power nor am I in the mood to deal with that. Last time it went pretty much as always. Started off with commenting on how good I look in the kimono, proceeding to complement my makeup and tell me that my smile is the most beautiful thing in the world. Then after I went to warm up another jar of sake for him he decided to come up to the counter and just watch me do it. Okay, cool, I don't have to bring it up to him, but I didn't really feel like talking to him at this very moment since it was busy and I had a lot of stuff to do at the same time. So I just let him talk. He spent a few good minutes talking about irrelevant to me stuff and then decided to say the funniest pickup line I've ever heard. And trust me, I've heard a good amount of them to judge now if it's any good. "Hey, you're a single Pringle, I'm a single Pringle, we can be two Pringles in a can." Yeah, he called me a Pringle. It started off okay, but the can part got me. It sounds as if he wants me to end up in jail with him. Can=jail, that's pretty obvious to me. I tried to be polite so I just said thank you, but I don't think it's a good idea, that's your sake and then went on to do what they pay me to do. In the end I'm still working and I don't have time for anything else while I'm there. I wonder what I'll hear next. Will I be a chocolate bar or maybe a broccoli?

Morning with mood swings

I'm extremely happy. I have no idea why. I just am. It's weird to think that after a few months of feeling like shit I can finally say that I'm happy. God, I'm so excited about the smallest stuff. It's like a sudden boost of energy and I'm not complaining. Is it because of next academic year starting soon? Probab;y. Maybe not. I don't even know. Tough to explain. I found some new music favourites lately and that may be a factor but nothing especially great happened. It's good to feel good. I missed that so fucking much that I can't even explain. But now all I want to write about is how jolly I am lately and I got a new mug, which is great and I can have an incredible amount of coffee in it. Shit, life's great mate. My friends came back from holidays and we started hanging out as we used to, I've got so many stuff to do and even more energy to do it. Bad months seem to have faded away and new opportunities come up so quickly that I don't know which one to pick. Maybe I'll just go big and start doing everything at once to find a place for my energy. I'm just afraid that after some time I'll get tired again. Being tired is not my forte. I'll dwell on being tired and end up sinking in sadness again which is not good for my mental health. But for now, let me just live my life as I lost so much time crying and thinking that nothing good will ever happen to me. Now I'm here smiling like an idiot just writing happy stuff about everything. Because no matter what - life's good though somet=imes you want to kill everyone around you and stuff just doesn't go your way.

Mornings with mood swings

Everything is pissing me off. Literally everything. The cup that I left on my desk the other day is weirdly annoying and the ceiling isn't as white as it should be. There's nothing wrong but at the same time everything is just not right. I don't know what is going on with my head but some morings are just tough. One day you wake up feeling just fine when the next day although nothing especially worrying happened you don't want to look at anyone, talk to anyone or sit in the same room with anyone but you also hate the thought of being left on your own. You don't eat because making food requires effort and you can't be bothered, making yourself a cup of coffee is the peak of the fucks you can give that day. Everything is wrong being so perfectly fine and normal. Those are just mood swings screaming to your ear that your room is messy, coffee went cold too quickly and everyone around you is just annyoing. But there's nothing wrong with you. That's just a bad day and soo it will be all over, but it will also come back soon.

And that's a preview of anoother series I want to include in my blog apart from poetry posts. Mornings with mood swings are not as deeply personal as they may seem but mostly that will be a short narrative about how you feel when you wake up annoyed for no reason. Hopefully you'll enjoy my little rants from now and then.

Quitting the job that you hate

 I'm my own, personal hero. At least I think about myself this way because I finally found the courage to quit the job that I hated. Maybe it's fair to say that I didn't actually hate the job as the place and customers - I loved being a barista, but my boss... The guy was driving me mad. 

The thing is that sometimes you should sacrifice something that you love to maintain the right state of mind and just put your mental well-being first. Finding a job when you're a student might be hard 3- man, let me tell you that it even may be described as a fucking hell. That's why it's sometimes hard to quit, even if you passionately hate the job, the boss, and the customers. In my case, it wasn't that bad. To be honest just as I said - being a barista was great, I enjoyed serving coffees to customers who used to come in every day when I was at work. In my opinion, I can easily say that I made lots of friends among customers which is great. 

But then we've got my boss. The guy seemed to alright at the first glance, but trust me, he's not. The first thing to start with - I find it inappropriate when the forty-something guy asks his employee "who's naughty" or calls the employee "mean monkey". Sorry, but I'm not into that kind of jokes or whatever the fuck it was. Also, I don't like when someone leaves me on my own to make coffees, smoothies, milkshakes, toasties, waffles and so on on the Friday evening when every single table is taken and it's just impossible for me to take care of every single order on my own. And if I refuse to make something or keep a customer waiting for too long in my boss's opinion he'd go crazy on me. If you want me to work better I need help when 20 out of 20 tables are taken and people are waiting for their food and drinks. 

The next thing that simply drove me insane was every time my boss decided to threaten me that if I don't take an extra shift he'd fire me. Fuck off. Now you have no one to fire so yay you. The other day he decided to ruin my good mood from the beginning till the very end of my shift. Working there for seven months was enough, I had a new job so the moment he started screaming at me I decided to quit and never come back. I don't care about the leaving period or whatsoever. 

If the employee doesn't feel good at work the quality of the provided service by the employee won't be as good as it can be. If a job causes stress and it doesn't provide the good working environment - quit. Put yourself first and you'll find something that will make you happy. 

Wow I'm so positive after leaving the Cafe. 

Types of customers in a coffe shop

Bitching about my work is something that I do on daily bases. It's not that bad, trust me, but sometimes I just don't want to go there and see same people, ordering same things and try to talk to my boss when I'm not in the mood to talk to anyone about stuff. Especially when the 'stuff' is just shitting on everything that has ever existed. Then someone comes in, someone who I've never seen before, which is weird, because the city that the cafe is in is super small and even people who live there don't like it. So that new person comes in and I'm all excited to see a new face, or just to see a face as sometimes I spend hours watching people pass the coffee shop and then there's me just sitting in the empty room full of seats and trying to forget that I'm going to waste another seven hours of my life... So usually after the excitement, there comes a huge disappointment as the new person turns out to be one of the types of customers that I truly hate. And there's my personal list of people that I wish I've never met during my work in the coffee shop. If you are one of them - we will never get along.

1. The coffee snob
You don't know shit about coffee so please stop pretending. I'm glad that you can read which coffee we serve today but at the same time I don't care about that one time when you drank Costa Rica in one of the best coffee shops in Mexico because guess what - we're in fucking shithole and you don't even know the difference between flat white and dry cappuccino. So just stop boasting about your knowledge when it comes to coffees because I just made a normal cappuccino for you and you didn't even notice.

2. The girl on a diet (or a guy)
I really don't know how many sugars are there in the vanilla syrup and I don't really care.  I don't even want to look for an almond milk for you because it doesn;t really make any difference when you order a flavored mocha. In addition, you also have a waffle and a slice of cheesecake so just stop lying to yourself...

3. The 'what's good' person
I'm pretty chill, how about you mate? But, seriously, I don't know and I've never had any of the cakes that I'm selling in here, I know that if I'll tell you that I like the macchiato you will probably die drinking it as I make it with three shots because otherwise, I'm unable to function. Just take a latte or whatever and just stop trying to figure out which coffee you want, because we both know that you can't tell the difference between them just staring at the menu.

4. The 'do you have a menu or something?' person
No mate. No, we don't. Oh, what's that huge thing behind me? Oh, nothing, don't bother looking at that, it's not that we have everything written down with prices and shit. No. Just ask me what we have in here because surely I know all of the shit written behind my back by heart.

5. The way too friendly customer.
I don't care that your girlfriend dumped you last week, that your hamster died and you forgot to write your essay. All that I care about is which coffee you want and if you give me a tip. I don't want to get to know you because I just don't. That's my work and obviously, I'm going to be friendly, but sometimes it's just a bit too much...

6. The wifi thief
Yes, you can use our wifi and plug your charger but at the same time, that's a coffee shop not a charity organization for people who want to chill somewhere while browsing through facebook. Order something please because if my boss sees you with a bottle of orange juice for 80p sitting there for the past 4 hours he'd kill me.

7. The family
I like when a family comes to the cafe but at the same time it takes some time to make all of the waffles and sundaes and toasties and coffees and hot chocolates and smoothies and milkshakes and if your kid comes to ask me where's the waffle it will only slow me down. If you kid starts screaming and fucks up half of the cafe I'd have to clean it up first so be prepared to wait for around an hour... And please don't scream at me because I' on the edge.

8. The person in a hurry
It's a coffee shop, not McDonald's. OIf you come in here that means you have time to wait for your order. Wait or fuck off.

9. The music fan
If you want to order something I have to hear you, but you have to take off your headphones so that you can hear me as well. Otherwise, I'm just not going to be able to make sure that I'll make exactly what you tried to order man. Don't come and cry that you didn't want sprinkles on your cappuccino because guess what - now I don't give a fuck.

10. The single
I know you are old and still single but I don't want to see anything exciting after work. If 'something exciting' is a secret code for your private parts then you came to a wrong place. GO AWAY, TAKE YOUR COFFEE AND JUST LEAVE.

11. The extra guy
If you already paid don't ask me for an extra creme/shot/chocolate on your order because it's stupid. You have to pay for something extra, that's not a charity but a shop so go away and pay for it first.

I'm fuc*ing 20

That's right lads, I've just turned 20 and you know what? I'm pretty amazed looking at things I've achieved so far. Although I woke up thinking - shit, it flew so fast, if another 20 will flow so quickly then one day I'll just wake up being 40. Which is not as bad as it may sound - maybe I'll finally know who I am and what the fuk I'm doing with my life...

But hey, looking back at things and all of the amazing memories - I'm amazed and I'm truly blessed to be where I am right now at this point of life. 

I was an ambitious kid since I can remember. It doesn't matter what it was about - I just always wanted to be the best - I know it's pretty fucked up, but at the same time thanks to that by the age of six I could write and speak in three languages - Polish, English and Swedish - unfortunately, I ended up not continuing my journey with Swedish so now apart from Jag hetter Monika I can't say anything else. Well - shit. I could also count and I dealt like a boss with simple mathematical equations. During my early stages of education, I started to learn German and I found out that history is the thing that I love. The writing was right by my side at every stage of my life, but back then when I was 13 I didn't know that this is the thing, yeah, THE thing that I want to do every day, every second of my adult life. I just knew that I like doing that but I was pretty damn sure that in the future I want to be a lawyer. Well, although I'm pretty good at proving my point I'm also pretty fucking lazy (and I swear a lot). I know that if I had decided to study law I would manage to do my best, but would I be happy? Not really. It consumes so much time that I'd rather spend reading, taking pictures or writing...
So here I am - studying journalism and creative writing in the UK and even Brexit can't get rid of me, I hope.
When I was a teenager my mom showed me a great part of the world and at the same time, she helped me to develop another passion, right next to learning languages and dancing. Travelling has always been a huge part of my life and after I started modeling I was sure that sitting in one place for the rest of my life is just not for me... Thanks to that I know also that writing and photography are the things that will be the main part of my future as they are now. If someone ever tells you that your passion can't be your job - they are lying! If you try hard enough and pursue to make your dreams come true, you'll make it one day and they can stare at you with their jaws on the floor. Prove them wrong. You do you boo! Even if sometimes it means to make a lot of mistakes and learn everything the hard way - hey, it's your way and that's the most important thing in life, to do everything as you want to.
I'm blessed having the most amazing mother in the whole world and I could never wish for any better. Thanks to this amazing woman I achieved so much. Every time when I wanted to give up and stop doing things that I love, because, fuck, it's so hard sometimes and you start to question if it is even worth the shit you have to go through. She was always there for me and she still is right by my side telling me to go for it and don't care about people's opinions because they are not in my body so how they can know what's best for me? Mom, thank you for being my angel who is always there to laugh, cry, scream, travel, run, eat and diet with me. I love you to the moon and back and to the moon and back and to the moon and back and to the moon and back and to the moon...
20 years of my life were rough, I started up as a small, shy fetus. I was bullied, I bullied others (I'm not proud of this one, but we all make mistakes), I was obsessing about that boy who up till now has no idea about my existence, I had no friends, then I had a bunch of friends. I was traveling, missing my home, finding a home from home, making amazing memories, riding a motorbike without a license, I got my first piercings and tattoos and I started to figure out what the heck life is about. I'm still not sure if I know exactly what's up, but at least I'm trying... Although I keep learning everything the hard way, maybe just because that I'm dyslexic.

Poetry #1

As a typical creative writing (and journalism!) student I decided to start posting bits of stuff that I write in my spare time. Some of them are better than others but hey, writing poems after midnight is not as easy so... don't be so fast to judge mate! Here are some bits and ppipeces that I've recently put together from free writing sessions that we used to have those past terms. Enjoy!

Why only "white" is perceived as beautiful - portrayal of race in media.

Considering the portrayal of beauty in the contemporary media we can easily spot one major problem. If someone is beautiful, the person, according to media, must be white. In this blogpost, I will critically discuss the images of black women in media considering adverts, which are nowadays a huge part of our everyday life and media content as well. 

Representation of race in media consists of pretty much the same stereotypes as those in the gender portrayal.  This is visible considering, for example, various commercials, which show that white women are somehow superior to black, but both of them are perceived as sex-objects, or they spend their whole life in the kitchen. 

Although multiple examples can be given I'll focus on one advert, which is a pure definition of a racist portrayal in the contemporary media. PSP billboard, which caused a lot of controversy in America. Thanks to the public, it wasn't widely published. On the black billboard, we can see a white woman in the center of it aggressively looking at the black woman, who is almost invisible on the billboard. The white woman grabs black woman’s face (or rather tries to squeeze it?).

According to the Oxford Dictionary racism is "the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.". The accuracy of this definition considering this ad is huge. The white woman is superior, she represents something better, innovative and desired.

Bell Hooks argues that in the broad media spectrum people perceive as feminine only women who are white, so in order to achieve the idealized standard of beauty one can go to great lengths... 

According to Abhik Roy (2005) commercials glorifying fair complexion upheld the elitist aesthetic that only woman with light skin can be classified as part of the upper-class as the skin reflects her aristocratic fragility. So just like in this ad – white means better.

Fiske claims that white part of the population regards other ethnicities, especially black people, not only as worse race, but also as a threatening one to the perfect, white world order.

Some people claim that there is no such thing as the "white privilege", but when we consider produced images of a race all over the media we can see how the portrayal of different ethnicities varies and somehow still, always the white person is the supreme one. 

Looking at that PSP billboard one can easily notice the misrepresentation of race, how one ethnicity is shown to be superior to other. As we almost can’t see the black women it seems that she’s not important.  

My example shows not only how black people are portrayed in the contemporary media, but also it shows how the images like that are being consumed in our times. People start to see how ads, movies, cartoons or tv-series are racist and they start to speak up. Thanks to others defending the equality we will soon be able to live in the world without controversies around ethnic groups. There’s just one race in world and it’s the human race.

If you are interested in TOP 10 most racist ads of the modern era - CLICK HERE. 

Bibliography:

1) Dyer R. 1997: White. London and New York, Routledge

2) Fiske J. 1994: Media matters: everyday culture and political change. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, in UK distributed by UCL Press

3) Hooks B. 1992: Black looks race and representation. Boston, MA, South End Press

4) Roy A. 2005: The 'male gaze' in Indian Television Commercials: A Rhetorical Analysis. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford,  University Press of America.





















































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