A fond farewell?

Well this could be my last ever post for my Learn To Love Yourself More blog, or maybe just the last one for a while.

You see while I have had fun completing all the assignments, I am still slightly frustrated by the amount I haven't and wanted to complete. For instance number 69 Climb to the top of a tree and take a picture of the view could have easily been included. Well not in Sunderland anyway, trust me I looked everywhere and there was not one decent tree to be found.

Also assignments 34 Make a sign and protest or number 10 Make a flier of your day are two which I thought about doing since day one but never got round to it.

Now this may just be laziness on my part and it seems a shame to end it on this way but that is why I may still continue the blog at a later date when other distractions such as other university work or part time job will not get in my way.

But saying that I do feel I have time to complete one last, and very fitting assignment. Number 70 Say goodbye.

Goodbye Learning to Love You More blog
Goodbye 21 Lorne Terrace (hello number 5 Belvedere Road)
Goodbye Carlos Tevez
Goodbye 2nd year of university
Goodbye 3rd year university students who I’ve met recently
Goodbye Ryan Stuart Allsop
Goodbye...for now at least

A little help from the Palmer clan once again

As my previous post briefly explained the story of how I broke my jaw and an earlier post described my favourite scars, I feel now is a good time to show assignment number 35 Ask your family to describe what you do.

Even though the assignment does request that they don’t talk about what happened in the past, inevitably there is a link between those two assignments and this one. Except for my Dad's description who wrote:

"Ewan is Emeritus Professor of Party at the University of Sunderland."

My eldest Brother Alex (of the Beauty and the Beast fame) describes me by saying:

As far as I can tell Ewan does very little. Officially he studies journalism at Sunderland University, but I suspect that this is just a front to divert attention away from his ACTUAL occupation, which is to purposely desecrate his entire body with scars, so not only will he eventually be covered so completely in scar tissue that he can finally follow his true calling (becoming Scarman, the North East's premier Supervillan, who lurks around the back streets of Sunderland and Gateshead, kicking over bins, loitering needlessly and playing ball-games on pieces of grass where it is explicitly prohibited) but also because it's a great ice-breaker. Ewan's religion strictly prohibits employment. In his spare time he remarks to himself how hairy his arms are. At the moment he's already preparing to regret what he gets up to tomorrow night. He wears t-shirts that regularly fall foul of the Obscene Publications Act.


And finally, my dear Mum who has possibly been traumatised the most through my actions writes (her bold lettering by the way):

Well here goes. What do I think that you do? I know that you are a second year student at Sunderland Uni, studying journalism, and you live in a large shared house on a street whose address I always have to look up on my mobile. You work at the Uni bar that re opened this year and enjoy your course. Most of the time I don’t try and think what else you may be doing because of your ability to sustain physical damage, but I can always watch the best of them on Facebook. I think that you enjoy Uni and have a good set of friends. This latest assignment that you are doing seems a bit of a hoot.

Love you
Mum x

Encouragement and my favourite pair of jeans

Now that my blog as the backing of both the Oliver family and the Learning To Love Yourself More project itself (well, its twitter account at least @ltlym if you're interested) I'm glad to announce the completion of my latest assignment. This one is kind of like the mascot for the exhibition, one of the more popular ones when it come to the number of people also attempting it and the very first one I noticed when I first came across the project when it was advertised at the Baltic all those months ago. Ladies and Gentlemen, assignment number 63 Make an encouraging banner.

All you had to do was make a banner with a bit of encouragement that you tell yourself often and hang it somewhere where it can encourage others. I chose to use a famous Japanese proverb 'fall down 7 times, stand up 8'. Not bad eh? Certainly works for me. But then it all started to go wrong for me.

Firstly since I had to put each letter on a separate piece of coloured card, I had to do this 22 times and it took me hours. It is surprising how stressed I got cutting out bits of brightly coloured bits of card and sticking them to another piece, I seriously don't know how I used to do it all the time when I was younger and not suffer from high blood pressure.

I then had to try and hang it up where it could encourage people. I had an idea to hang it up on a gate near my uni to help people as they take the dreaded hung-over walk to a lecture. Here’s proof of me and my house mates attempting it at in the middle of the night.




Now perhaps this is just me but this was bloody hard and for a moment we thought the police were going to stop us. We gave up on the idea (for the time being at least) and went for the far easier option that thankfully other who decided to complete this assignment and just hang it up in their house. So here it is:



Now looking at this, I have to say that this is the assignment that I am most proud of achieving so far. Not only did I spend the most amount of time and effort on it but this simple idea is what the project as a whole really represents, that anyone can create art which can inspire and encourage people. My only regret is that I couldn't hang it where I wanted as the actual message would have worked far better had more people seen it. But at least I can take comfort in it, especially the amount of time I have 'fallen' over the years.

This leads me beautifully to my next assignment number 55 Photograph a significant outfit. Now hang on I know what you’re thinking, what is the link here? Well bare with me. Let me first show you the outfit.




Now the next day after finishing my banner I got a phone call from the CID letting me know that I can now collect this outfit from the police station as it was no longer needed as evidence. You see, this was the outfit In was wearing when I got assaulted in September of last year which resulted in me getting my jaw broken and unable to eat solid food for a month. He mustn't have liked that belt. A pretty grim story you must admit and one of my many fallen moments for me of recent years.

But this project is supposed to make you see the finer things in life and appreciate them so we'll talk no more on the subject except the silver lining of the story here.

The Oliver Family

For this post I've decided to take a slight break and instead talk about one family who are featured on the Learning to Love You More website as a family who managed to complete all 63 assignments (that is how many there were in 2007 with seven more been added to the list since.)

The Oliver family wrote a blog which gave constant updates on them completing each assignment which you can read here if you so wish. The work was then displayed at Bumbershoot 2007, a music and arts festival in Seattle.

For a while I felt a bit guilty about not completing more assignments than I have done at this point, but reading the Oliver's blog and realizing it took 6 members of the family months to complete reassured me slightly.

I have commented on their blog to let them know that I am attempting a similar blog, with less success when it comes to the number of completed assignments and the quality of work I have done in comparison. Whether they still read the blog though, it’s been nearly a year since the last post, I'll just have to wait and see.

So this is a smaller post than usual with normal services resuming from now on.