KATRIONA WILSON IS PROBABLY NOT A VEGETARIAN

Here are list of meats and meat related products that I have eaten since my original post about my poor attempts at vegetarianism.1. Beef2. Chicken3. Chorizo4. Pork5. Pastrami6. Sausages7. Sausage rolls8. Foie gras9. A Big Mac10. A steak bake11. Veal12. Ham13. The entire contents of the world's oceans (except prawns. I hate prawns)14. Steak PieSo... Am I still a vegetarian?

KATRIONA WILSON IS A GENIUS

So we come to the end of another year and get all reflective. We relive the good times (mainly by looking through facebook photos, right?) and relive the shit times. And we RESOLVE that next year, we won’t have any shit times. How will we achieve that seemingly impossible task? We will make resolutions of course. And this year, we will stick to them! Or will we? (Of course we bloody wont, don’t be so stupid)According to my research (a very quick google search) 35% of resolutions are broken before the end of January. I am surprised by this, I would have thought it was more. New years resolutions are supposed to be these big positive steps you make towards changing your life for the better and becoming a well rounded, wonderful person but actually, in making a resolution, all you’re doing is identifying something crap about yourself and using it as a drunken conversation topic it at a Hogmanay party. My extensive and scientific research says that the top 3 resolutions made are to get out of debt, lose weight and do more exercise. Now, for someone like myself, who is not in any debt, not fat and a non driver (therefore, spend a lot of time tramping up hills carrying bags of costumes, which believe me is exercise) I can’t really run to one of these very obvious resolutions. I need to be a bit more creative. Or nit-picky. I don’t really have any bad habits like smoking or drug taking… I am fairly sensible with money… Not trying to be egotistical here but on paper, I’m alright. But that’s no good! I need to identify something rubbish about myself and resolve to change it! Otherwise what will I talk to strangers about at this year’s New Year party?! Last year, Hogmanay 2011, I resolved to stop buying lunch out every single day of life and start making my own sandwiches at home. Fairly simple, money saving and healthy. Hooray! I believe this lasted about 2 days, until I ran out of bread and worked 15 days in a row and didn’t have time to go to Morrisons. I was FORCED to go to Pret every day for an avocado wrap and a nice latte, which believe me people was difficult. Then eventually the guilt subsided and I thought ‘You know what? I bloody love nice lunches. I don’t spend money on fags or gambling or anything evil like that. My vice is a beautiful sandwich from a deli. Shoot me.’ And thus, the resolution was firmly broken, forgotten and stomped on. And that felt good!So this year, I’m not going to make any new years resolutions at all. There are obviously things I would like to achieve in 2013- some of which may be fairly huge and life changing actually (not pregnancy or a wedding before any family members freak out and die and buy hats). But if I call them resolutions A) they wont happen and B) I’m belittling them and making the fact that I don’t already have them something to feel bad about. However, I do have a suggestion on how we can move past the painful self loathing of new years resolutions and make them great. Bear with me… Based on my research, nobody keeps resolutions and they’re usually unpleasant (6am jogging in the park/ cabbage soup diets/ making ones own sandwiches instead of going to Pret a Manger = rubbish, not fun and soul destroying) So, in theory whatever resolution we make, we will break. So let’s make some really fun resolutions. Some suggestions include: going to a party every single night, taking up some sort of narcotic drug habit, drinking a cocktail with dinner (which you will buy from a takeaway) every day, buying yourself a new handbag whenever you want (go on, you’re worth it), give up your job to follow your dream of making it as a singer. It’s FINE! We’re going to break these resolutions after a few days. But think of the crazy, hedonistic fun you could have whilst trying to see them through! We can call them REVERSOLUTIONS. I think it’s catchy. I might start selling tshirts with inspirational quotes. LOVE YOURSELF. MAKE A REVERSOLUTION. It’s a winner!Although, if you all take me up on this, and end up drug addicted, debt ridden alcoholics then it wasn’t my idea. Ahem… Maybe 2013’s resolution will be to stop dispensing advice…Merry Christmas!

KATRIONA WILSON IS A MASSIVE QUITTER

Tonight I decided to write about being a quitter. Then I got distracted by a TV programme and was about to shut down my laptop and then realised 'Wait a minute? Am I quitting writing about quitting???' I recognised the irony here, had a little chuckle to myself and started to write. Might not finish this one though. Like I said, I a massive quitter. I have quit 2 uni courses (one course was quit 3 months in, the other was quit 2 months into 4th year.) I have quit countless jobs (but read my crap job post and you will understand why!) As soon as shit gets real and I dont like it any more, I quit. I don't have any hobbies. THERE I'VE SAID IT!!! I work endlessly, even on days off I am sitting in front of my laptop doing bits and pieces of work. When I am not working I am either trying to be productive by writing (which is kind of like work), going on driving lessons or I am sitting on the sofa watching TV and eating crisps. None of those count as hobbies. I don't know if it's because I am an extreme workaholic, or if it's just that actually grown ups don't really do hobbies anyway, but I remember the good old days when I used to have a different club to go to every night and actually learned and developed new skills on a weekly basis. I went to LOADS of clubs as a child.1. Gymnastics2. Dancing3. Youth Theatre4. Athletics5. Swimming6. Keyboard Lessons7. Creative writing classes8. Bird watching (Yes, really... I am surprisingly good at identifying birds, get over it)I'm sure there were others. But I have quit trying to remember them. But for each and every one of those hobbies, there was, at some stage 'the quitting'. Where you had to go to your mum and say you didnt want to do it any more, you didn't like it, it was boring, your friends had all quit etc etc. My mum was always fine about my quitting, except keyboard lessons. I think she was pretty annoyed about the keyboard lessons. To be honest, I am pretty annoyed that she let me quit keyboard lessons. Imagine if I could play the keyboard? I would be, like, doubly more employable and interesting than I am right now. Plus, when I went into a room with a keyboard (which happens to me more often than you might think) I could actually play it instead of looking longingly at it, then bashing out the theme tune to 'Rugrats' which, nowadays, impresses nobody. (Back in the day it was super cool. Oh why can't it still be the 90s!)The only hobby I actually stuck at was drama. Which then became my degree. Which has now become my job. Somewhere along the way it definitely stopped being a hobby. In fact, it quite emphatically stopped being a hobby as I was very busy trying to prove to people that it could in fact be a career, not just something that I do for fun. As a grown up, I have dabbled in hobbies. At university I joined a tap class. I even got to be in a tap show! Amazing right? But then I quit. A few years ago I joined a contemporary dance class. It was marked level 1 beginners and I thought it would be full of actual beginners. It was not. It was full of people who could actually dance, and look graceful. I could do neither and started to feel a bit like I did in high school PE, when nobody wanted me on their team or wanted to go my partner. I pulled a muscle in my leg (which hurt for approx a year by the way!) and contemplated buying a sports bra. Eventually, contemporary dance had to be quit. There was no way I could continue to feel like a dick on a weekly basis AND wear ugly underwear AND pay money for it. QUIT.As stated above, driving lessons are not a hobby. But, they are things that are very easily quittable. I did my first batch of driving lessons about 2 years ago. I did around 20 lessons, and was pretty rubbish. I started to feel that I was being scammed- I went out for one hour a week, stalled a car a few times, drove through give ways, made my instructor angry and basically felt like a complete buffoon for 60 long, painful minutes. THEN PAID MONEY TO THE PERPETRATOR OF THE BUFFOONERY (It was totally the instructors fault you understand...) So of course, I quit. I have now re-started driving lessons and the following words actually came out of my mouth a few weeks ago whilst making a tit of a turn in the road. 'God I just hate being crap at stuff! Normally if I'm crap at something I just dont do it. But I kind of have to do this.' Now, first of all, OH MY GOD. My instructor must now think I am sort of egotistical nutjob. But also, why couldnt I have applied this same ethos to keyboard lessons? Or contemporary dance? Why is being able to drive a more valuable skill than being able to do a graceful roll across a floor and end in a standing position? If I had used this logic throughout my entire life I would now have 2 degrees, a driving licence and be some kind of multi-talented keyboard playing gymnast with a spectacular knowledge of British wild life.There are some things I would now like to do for a hobby- I would like to learn how to knit. I quite like the idea of cake decorating. I think I would probably enjoy some sort of dance class now and again. But am I going to do any of these things? Probably not. I will probably be rubbish at it to start with and get bored 3 weeks in. So I am going to quit while I'm ahead, and not even start... OK. Bored now. Going to make a cup of tea.

KATRIONA WILSON IS A CRAP VEGETARIAN

So I am aware that my last blog post was perhaps a little smug and self congratulatory, so tonight I thought I would share with you something that I have utterly failed at. And that, my friends, is being a vegetarian. Those of you who knew me circa 2001 will remember the demise of my morals and I shall lay them out for you below, to remind you all that I am not actually perfect... I was a compassionate child and always loved animals. I had very intense relationships with pet hamsters, to the extent where they wrote me letters and bought me Christmas presents (I think they were actually from my mum but you don't really know do you? Maybe hamsters are nocturnal so that they can stay up all night and buy stuff on Amazon and write on nice note-paper). So around age 10 I decided that I did not want to eat the animals any more. I was making a moral choice, and I was determined that I would become a one woman animal saviour. I memorised statistics of how many animals I would save if I became a vegetarian and bought 'Meat is Murder' stickers to put on my school jotters. Yes, I was one of those vegetarians, the kind you want to avoid at BBQs, restaurants and general every day eating situations. Or any situations. Now, my mum actually refused to allow me to become a vegetarian until I was 14, which at the time I thought was INCREDIBLY HARSH but actually gave me a few more years of normal iron levels. Remember those? Nope... me neither... I counted down the birthdays until I could finally become a proper vegetarian who didnt eat meat (instead of one who did solo talks on factory farming at school and then went home to a plate of mince and tatties). On my 14th birthday, 2 great dreams came true. I got my first mobile phone, and I became a vegetarian. My family took me to lunch at a vegetarian restaurant and I felt like this was a life-changing moment where I would forever more bask in the glory of my own moral choice.But then I discovered drinking. And I dont know about any other vegetarians out there, but 14 bottles of smirnoff ice and a few shots of apple sours REALLY MAKE YOU WANT TO EAT MEAT. I started dabbling in the dark side of meat eating after crazy nights out and although I secretly loved it, I was also terribly ashamed of myself. That battered sausage- even though it was probably only 12% actual pig- was tainting the moral choice of years gone by and, in honesty, kind of making me look like a bit of a twat. The lowest point in my meat experimentation came at a house party hosted by a friend who I shall not name as his mum and dad might one day read this and find out he had a party. Anyway, the friend's parents had gone on holiday for a few weeks and very kindly left him a good couple of weeks supply of frozen meals. After excessive booze consumption, I found myself starving and craving meat in the middle of a nice estate with no nearby food shops. There was only one thing for it- I turned on friend's parent's oven and cooked every bit of frozen meat in the house. This included chicken nuggets, burgers and a frozen roast beef Sunday dinner. My friend was obviously rather distraught that I had cooked his entire 2 weeks worth of meals left by his parents but I felt no remorse. I needed meat. So I ate a shit load of meat. And oh how we laughed. But of course, the next day, I was hit with the intense vegetarian guilt. Even thought it was MY moral choice, and really it wasnt actually affecting anyone else whether I ate meat or not (well, except my starving friend), I still felt terrible and decided to get back into vegetarianism.But along the way there were some spectacular slip ups. There was a walk home down Leith Walk with a friend. Me- ramming a sausage supper down my face, weeping and asking my friend if she hated me. My friend- looking on in bafflement and, let's face it, yes, probably hating me for being such a psychopath. Then there was the now infamous 'battered fish in handbag' incident. This involved me getting drunk (sorry, almost all of these stories involve me being drunk... maybe I will do my next blog about driving lessons. Amusing anecdotes, NONE involving drinking) and sneaking to a chip shop and buying a single fish. However, I was obviously not as drunk as usual as I wanted to hide this one from my flatmates. So I shoved the fish in my handbag, jumped in a taxi and got home with the fish festering in my bag. I got inside, said a quick hello, then locked myself in my bedroom and ate the fish. The bag was effectively ruined- it's very hard to get the smell of fish out of a handbag is one of the many lessons I learned that night. It was a slippery slope from here on in. The meat eating just kept on coming.So now, I am no longer drunk on a daily basis (the above stories were from the student days, I hope that was obvious!) but I do eat something that once lived on an almost daily basis. I am now officially what they call a 'pescetarian' which means I only have morals about creatures that did not live in the sea. But in all honesty, I had a bite of a cheeseburger a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. So how does that fit into pescetarianism? Did this particular cow enjoy swimming? Or am I actually just a total veggie failure living in denial that I actually quite like a nice bit of meat? I am planning a little experiment- I am going to Paris in a couple of weeks and, from what I gather, the French don't know what vegetarians are so I might abandon all of my morals and just eat whatever I want. I think I have a fear that if I suddenly start eating meat I will have an instant heart attack and die, or my body will forget how to process it and I will vomit and possibly also die but actually, when I think of all my meat eating secrecy over the years, I am still very much alive and at the most have just suffered a little bit of heartburn.It's sad that I am no longer as good a person as I was age 14. Yes, meat is murder... but it tastes quite nice too... **Kat runs to chemist and stocks up on Gaviscon**Tweet me @misskatriona

KATRIONA WILSON IS AN ARTIST

I keep threatening to make a show. I already made one, that lasted 5 minutes but my biggest threat that I make is that I will expand it and make it more than 5 minutes... Maybe if I say here that I am going to do that then I will HAVE TO. Because once it's on the internet then it's true...Here's the 5 minute version-http://vimeo.com/groups/149755/videos/45905692

KATRIONA WILSON IS THANKFUL FOR CRAP JOBS

WHY I AM GLAD I WORKED IN A CALL CENTRE...Last night I took a bus journey that I used to take on a very regular basis, when I first moved to Glasgow in 2008 and worked in a market research call centre. I used to get up each morning, shove on a jumper (it was always freezing in the call centre), put on my headphones and trudge out to the bus stop wondering what the hell I was doing with my life. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get a ‘good job’, it was more that I wasn’t really trying. I was holding off and buying time, as ultimately I wanted a career in the arts. So 5 days a week I trudged to the call centre, and one day a week I skipped to a theatre and taught children’s drama classes. One day a week I did something that I enjoyed, where I got to use my brain and where I could be creative- and that one day a week made me certain that I had to keep ploughing on and make that become my full week.Most of my friends who work in the arts have a fabulous back catalogue of ‘crap jobs’. Trying to find part time employment that fits around your bizarre, ever-changing arts schedule can be tough and I have excelled in finding the most soul destroying, menial of jobs to tide me over through the bad times- I have handed out leaflets in the rain, phoned people up to try and convince them to change their broadband provider, phoned people up to ask their opinions on their GP, written reviews of cafes for websites (which I never did get paid for in the end, by the way…) . But has it been worth it? I left university in 2006 with a drama degree. I joined the huge pool of graduates in Edinburgh with drama degrees, and I was already at a disadvantage as I hasn’t even bothered to finish fourth year and get my honours (I now see this as a huge advantage, but it’s taken me some time to come to that realisation!). At school, I was one of the ‘clever people’ (read: geek). I got A’s for almost everything, and cleaned up at school awards ceremonies. But that said, I have never considered myself to be academic. I was just lucky. I hate writing essays, I hate reading boring theoretical books, I hate studying… I love learning, but I just prefer to do it practically and in the real world. Anyway, I reached fourth year of university and was faced with a 10,000 word dissertation. I decided to write about the role of a playwright in the community. About one day into my research I realised that the best way to explore this would be to ACTUALLY be a playwright in the community, so I packed in my dissertation and volunteered to write a play for a youth theatre. This was the first of many voluntary projects I did as a graduate, and obviously I needed actual paid employment to keep me in food, wine and h&m jumpers during my ‘trying to make it in the arts’ stage. My ‘day job’ after quitting university was as a sales assistant in a health food shop. This was actually one of my favourite jobs ever- I was left to my own devices to arrange displays of chocolate raisins, unpack boxes of dried fruit and advise old ladies on the best cure for constipation (It’s prunes. Always prunes.) We also stocked a bottle of pills for erection problems called Horny Goat Weed, which I used to pray on a daily basis someone would come in and buy but nobody ever did. This job was great thinking space. The shop was pretty quiet, I could play my own music, and my boss was an artist. We would chat about art and how frustrated we were working with seeds and nuts, and then she would leave me to lock up and I would listen to music and think through ideas for plays that I would never write. It was fun, it was relaxed and, most of all, it was hopeful. I was starting to pick up little bits of theatre work here and there, and still had my ONE DAY’S PAID THEATRE WORK PER WEEK, teaching youth theatre. All in all, things were going well. However, I was forced to leave the shop after getting an artistic summer job. It was after this summer that things all went a bit downhill. I suddenly found myself without my seed shop safety net and, oh my goodness, I was skint. I needed employment and I needed it fast! I found casual employment in a market research call centre which seemed to be staffed entirely by arts students and graduates, but as a new person, I was only able to book in for evening shifts. My day times became incredibly mundane and depressing. My boyfriend (an actor) was also working in the call centre but he had friends in high places and was given the elusive day shift. He would leave our flat about 8am. I would lie in bed, wondering whether it was worth getting up. I would eventually get up, lie on the sofa, watch Maury and frantically scour arts job websites looking for something, anything, that I was qualified to do. When I found that basically I was qualified to do very little, my mind would wander and the obsession with ‘the back up plan’ would start to creep in. Now, I’m almost certain that every artist at the early stage of their career has considered an ill-fated back up plan. Mine fell into two categories:- Going back to university and doing a masters (a variety of potential masters degrees ensued including dramatherapy, teacher training, creative writing, play therapy, social work… and rather ironically, I did spent so much time trying to fathom out my own career that I became rather interested in a post grad in ‘Careers Guidance’. Yes, really.)- Just sucking it up and getting a ‘real job’. Maybe working for the council or perhaps in the voluntary sectorThen after a grim day of soul searching, I would leave for the call centre and spend four hours a night phoning people who didn’t want to speak to me. I reached a point where I just couldn’t do that any more, and found a temp job in a café. This was one of the better time filling jobs- free lunches and cappuccinos and an artist for a work-mate! Hooray! Around this point, I also added ‘café owner’ to my list of back up plans. Things felt optimistic again. Maybe I could be an arty coffee shop owner who runs a trendy basement theatre where people come to read scripts and drink lattes and want to employ me for all their future creative projects….I then decided to move to Glasgow. My one day paid work in the theatre per week had now grown to two and I was spending a lot of time commuting. When you work in crap jobs for minimum wage, train fares can be the difference between eating and, well, not eating so I headed for Glasgow, full of hope. Things were good in Glasgow for the first few months. I was busy, I was meeting new companies and people, it was all very exciting. But, as always happens, eventually the work dried up and I found myself back in old spot- slumped on the sofa, watching daytime TV (not Maury, he was on Living and we didn’t have cable any more) and scouring gumtree for a time filling job. I found myself back in a market research call centre. However, this time it was different. Firstly, I was allowed to work day shifts. Secondly, I had more than one day’s paid work per week in theatre so only needed to work part time. Thirdly, I was being mentored by the Royal Court Theatre so would come home from work and immediately start writing, which gave me a focus that things would not be like this forever. It almost seemed glamourous to come home from my boring day job, light a cigarette, pour a large gin and start writing. (OK, I never lit a cigarette or poured a large gin. I had to get up early for work the next day. But you get the idea…)It was around this time that I started to feel like I was making the right choice. I was picking up more and more theatre projects and had some fairly regular employment from a number of companies. The call centre was almost just pocket money now. And eventually I found myself confident enough to leave and just be a working artist. I wasn’t even that skint. It was great! But as always, things quieten down, projects come to an end and I turned to gumtree once again for inspiration. This was autumn 2009. I had now been out of university for 3 years and was determined not to get a completely hideously mind numbing job. I wanted to find a time filling job that might actually benefit my other work in some way or another. I found a job as an activities coordinator in a nursing home. At my interview the manager seemed thrilled that I was an arts graduate and told me I was free to do what I wanted. I was pretty excited. I had, coincidentally, just finished a training course in reminiscence work, and it all seemed to be falling into place. However, after day 1 in the nursing home, it was quite clear that the manager was the ONLY PERSON in the building who was excited about my arts background. I went in full of ideas for projects but very quickly learned that I was bottom of the heap. The care staff were visibly annoyed when they saw me, and went out of their way to make my job difficult. I was given an office, but was not allowed to have a key. So every morning I had to hunt down a cleaner and ask to be let into my own office. The office was also a store cupboard for paper towels and incontinence pads and I often witnessed carers sneaking in and stealing more than their departments allowance and begging me not tell. The office was also used as a holding area for the manager’s dog and ‘Thera-pet’. The office had no heating and by the time the snow hit in December I was at the end of my tether. I was constantly freezing, hiding in an office that smelled of dog and getting into trouble from cleaners for leaving art materials in cupboards without asking. After an art session, I displayed some of the work made by the residents on the walls in the living room. The next day, I came in and the work was gone. The cleaner chased me up the corridor and said the blu tac had left marks on the walls and I would need to scrub it off. When I asked her where the art work was she said she had binned it. One day, the residents and I decorated a Christmas tree and told one another stories about past Christmasses. It was one of my favourite days in the nursing home, as, uncharacteristically, the staff just left me to it. But, the next day, I went up to the living room and saw that the tree had been re-decorated. I asked the staff what had happened, and they said the residents had made it look a mess so they fixed it. Utterly soul destroyed, and with no other work on the horizon, I eventually made the decision to just quit the job and embrace unemployment. However, this was January 2010 and actually the last time filling job I ever did. Things started to pick up from here and suddenly I found myself working 7 days a week, every hour of the day IN THE ARTS. And it had continued to grow and grow. I am not saying that it’s an easy career, far from it. I think practicing artists have to be very brave- I willingly put myself in a position of career and financial uncertainty and I never really take time off. I can’t commit to my friends weddings and birthday parties and I never really get to take advantage of early bird holiday deals because I don’t know what I will be doing a year from now. More seriously, when I was younger, I would have assumed that at the age I am now, I would own a house or a car. I have neither. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a mortgage and I have never quite found the time to learn to drive (I have tried, but work always gets in the way!) Working in the arts is consuming and immersive. It can take over your entire life for weeks at a time, then leave you sitting in your pyjamas at 2pm on a Tuesday watching repeats of Jeremy Kyle and contemplating a masters degree. However, I genuinely wouldn’t change what I am doing, and am so glad I stuck out the time filling jobs. People say they are ‘character building’. I don’t really think they are. They’re shit. And that’s all. But they have helped me see so clearly that I am not willing to settle in a job I hate just so that I can have a bit more money and be able to book a holiday a year in advance. On the bus ride home last night, I reminisced about the journey home from the call centre, when I sat wondering if things would ever get better. If my perseverance with time filling jobs would ever pay off. I’m glad to say that I am creative on a daily basis, I go to work feeling excited and I leave work feeling even more excited. I facilitate other people’s creativity and in turn they continue to drive mine. And that, I think, is better than having a masters. Better than having a mortgage. And better than I could ever have imagined my life would have turned out while hiding in a freezing office in a nursing home. Plus, crap job stories always go down well in the pub!Tweet me! @misskatriona