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3 Books That I Loved As A Child But Now Find Logically Problematic As An Adult.
One of the great appeals of reading fiction is the idea of escapism.
Books provide us with the opportunity to transcend our everyday lives.
As a child, I had a very intense and vivid imagination.
When reading a book, I would often become so immersed in the story that I would begin to confuse the fictional world with reality.
When reading, I would enter into a self-enclosed sphere of imagination in which my immediate surroundings momentarily ceased to exist.
The material world no longer featured as part of my own personal reality and, as a result, the things that my body required in order to function properly became completely irrelevant.
However, as I have grown older, my ability to become completely absorbed in a fictional novel has been somewhat compromised.
I come from a scientific family – my granddad was an engineer, my parents are doctors, one of my brothers is studying marine biology at university and the other one received a prize in Year 2 for ‘The Best Model of a Volcano’.
Therefore, although I like to consider myself a creative and imaginative person, there is a part of my brain that is inclined towards thinking in an analytical and logical manner.
As I have progressed out of childhood and through the teenage phase, I have noticed the logical side of my brain begin to exert increasing levels of dominance over the imaginative side.
I have seen this transition manifest itself most noticeably in the way that I now perceive the books that I used to find so captivating as a child.
1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar
The Very Hungry Caterpillar tells the story of (SPOILER ALERT) a caterpillar that is very hungry.
At the end of the book, the caterpillar metamorphoses into a butterfly.
Before completing this transition, he eats his way through increasing quantities of brightly coloured food items.
By the story’s climax, the caterpillar has consumed over 20 items of food, including an ice cream cone, a cupcake and a slice of Swiss cheese.
This was fascinating to me as a child.
However, as I have grown older and my knowledge of the anatomy of insects has developed, it has become harder for me to get invested in narratives such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
2. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt
We’re Going on a Bear Hunt details the story of a family who spontaneously decide to go out into the wilderness and search for a bear.
The structure of the book is similar to that of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Before locating a bear, the family is forced to traverse various obstacles in the landscape.
As child, I found the wide range of obstacles that the family encountered so completely captivating that I failed to think about the fact that they were actively looking for a bear.
As I have grown up, I have spent some time watching David Attenborough documentaries and other educational films such as The Revenant.
I have therefore acquired a greater awareness of the physical threat that bears can present to humans.
As a result, I have developed a few issues with the basic principle of We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.
3. Harry Potter
Quidditch was always my favourite part of Harry Potter.
Whilst I found all of Harry’s magical adventures fascinating, I was particularly enthralled by the concept of Quidditch.
However, I recently dipped my head back into The Philosopher’s Stone and, whilst reading, I became slightly alarmed at the rate at which Harry Potter learns to fly a broomstick.
Within the space of a one hour Broom Skills lesson, he progresses from barely knowing how to hold the broomstick to driving it at high velocity.
I am aware that Harry is special and Hogwarts is magical but this accelerated rate of learning still seems quite dangerous to me.
I also found myself slightly concerned with Madame Hooch’s conduct within Harry’s first flying lesson, particularly the point at which she leaves a group of 11-year-old children unsupervised with a load of flying equipment that is capable of reaching speeds in excess of 100 mph in order to take Neville Longbottom to the hospital wing.
It occurred to me that Hogwarts should probably run an INSET day before the start of term in order to properly educate its staff in Health and Safety procedures.
Then again, the fact that there was a massive three-headed dog, a massive poisonous snake and a massive ‘whomping’ tree on the premises at various points during Harry’s time at the Hogwarts suggests that Health and Safety potentially wasn’t a prioritised matter on the agenda at any of the school’s board of governors meetings.
If I were a teacher at Hogwarts, I imagine that my flying lessons would be a little less exhilarating than Madame Hooch’s.
In fact, I’m pretty sure that I would be Hogwarts’ most hated teacher.
Although I am no longer able to use fictional books as a form of complete and utter escapism, I often use them to inform my real life.
It is comforting to know that, no matter how crazy or fantastical a book is, the struggles of its characters are always partially drawn from the author’s real life experiences.
If I am going through something difficult, sympathising with a character can make me feel less alone.
Or alternatively, if I am facing a difficult decision, observing how characters deal with their issues can sometimes give me an idea of how to move forward.
Books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, We’re Going On A Bear Hunt and Harry Potter, for example, have provided me with some valuable advice on how to deal with my current quarter life identity crisis.
How To Increase Your Conversion Rates – I’d Tell You But I’m Not Really Sure Myself…
It’s Valentine’s weekend and, as we all know, nothing screams undying love like a post on conversion rates.
For the past couple of weeks, I have been doing some work experience at a digital marketing and web design agency.
Everyone who works at the agency is very smart and this is reflected in the sheer mass of technical terms and abbreviations that they use their everyday speech.
I therefore found the first few days of my placement quite confusing.
In the past, I have never been massively keen on abbreviations.
However, during my first week, I found myself using them much more frequently than I normally would in a slightly desperate attempt to fit in.
Luckily, the team are being very patient with me and I am gradually beginning to wrap my head around the technical slang.
One of the team’s favourite items of abbreviated lingo is ‘CRO’.
CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimisation.
The conversion rate is the percentage of people that visit a website who also end up ‘converting’ – whether that be by buying the product or service that the site advertises or subscribing to a blog.
I initially found the whole idea of conversion rates a bit confusing but I have managed to reason it to myself by thinking about the dark side of the force.
Now, there are several optimisation techniques that you can implement in order to increase conversion rates.
However, I don’t have a clue what they are yet.
As far as I can make out, an important part of the process is to ensure that your site clearly communicates exactly what it is that it is offering a user in a way that convinces them to develop enough trust in you to convert.
I have therefore created an image which I feel effectively summarises exactly what my blog has to offer a potential subscriber.
I have tactically placed this image above the follow button on my blog’s homepage.
You may have noticed that I have incorporated the word ‘promise’ into the image.
This is because it is a commonly accepted fact of life that when a person uses the word ‘promise’, you can absolutely 100% trust them…
I am aware that the title of this post suggests that it is educational in nature.
However, I’m not sure if we’ve actually learnt anything aside from the fact that I can draw an alright picture of Darth Vader.
If you are looking for something that will genuinely help you to increase your conversion rates, I would suggest reading this article – although I can’t say for sure if it’s any good because, as we have already established, I don’t actually know a massive amount about online marketing.
The Main Thing I Learned From My Time As A Teenager Is That It Is Quite Hard Being A Teenager.
Writing was very important to me when I was a teenager.
During this period, my main creative niche was moody, self-obsessed fiction.
However, I would occasionally stray into other formats.
At one point, for example, I wrote a letter to JK Rowling explaining why I possessed the perfect personal attributes to be her assistant but I think it must have gotten lost in the post because I never received a reply.
I also wrote in a diary on a regular basis.
I was reading through one of my diaries the other day when I came across a series of entries which I feel prove that, even at the tender age of 14, I was in possession of the emotional maturity and sensitivity that all good writers need to create complex and compelling characters.
A mere day after meeting Luke, it became obvious I was contemplating taking the relationship to the next level:
However, five days later, I discovered something that would change my perception of Luke forever:
It was a devastating blow that altered my world view on a fundamental level:
I think that I was experiencing emotional anguish because I felt very anguished and emotional.
I listened to Britney Spears’ ‘Everytime’ quite a lot – and by ‘quite a lot’ I mean at a rate of around 30 times per day.
Thankfully, it wasn’t long before I learned to channel my angst into healthy outlets, such as physical activity:
My teenage years were quite a disorientating time for me.
I was very confused and unsure of myself.
Every little thing that happened to me seemed incredibly dramatic and the world frequently felt like it was on the verge of ending.
Before I was a teenager, life was very simple.
My mind operated in a very logical and consistent manner.
If I had a problem, for instance, I would go to my parents for advice.
Once I progressed into the teenage phase, I found that I was worrying about things great deal more than I had done as a child.
However, I also suddenly experienced an intense desire to keep my issues to myself.
As a result, I existed in a near-constant state of contradiction.
I no longer actively sought out my parents’ advice.
In fact, more often than not, I found myself vehemently disagreeing with them.
This was completely irrational.
I was fully aware of the fact that my parents possessed over 30 years more life experience than me but this failed to prevent me from operating under the assumption that everything they suggested was automatically and intrinsically wrong and not applicable to me in any aspect.
When I was a teenager, I felt like I was the only person who had ever experienced what it was like to be a teenager.
I suspect that this was one of the reasons why I had difficulty apprehending my parents’ advice.
I was unable visualise them as teenagers and therefore found it hard to believe that they could understand what I was going through.
I think I just presumed that they had skipped puberty altogether – as if, by some weird flux in in the space time continuum, they had spontaneously progressed directly from childhood to adulthood.
‘But I Was A Sheep Last Year…’ – The Plight of Every Curly-Haired Child During Nativity Season
When I was in Year 1, I wanted to play the baby Jesus in the school nativity.
However, there were several fundamental problems that impeded this desire.
There was, for example, the slight issue that I looked nothing like a newborn baby boy.
This was due to the fact that I was a five year old girl.
Nevertheless, when the cast list was put up in the assembly hall, I crowded around it along with my fellow classmates, wholeheartedly expecting to see the following words imprinted before me:
As a result, I was somewhat taken aback when I was greeted with:
It was hard not to feel dejected, especially when it was consequentially revealed that a plastic doll from Toys R Us had been cast in the role of Jesus instead.
Nevertheless, I knew that the majority of successful actresses had to play some undesirable parts before they hit the big time and so accepted the decision with reasonable levels of grace and dignity.
However, I was a curly-haired and somewhat introverted child and, over the course of several years, a trend started to emerge with regards to the roles I was given in the nativity each year:
After my fourth consecutive outing as a sheep, my mum tried to console me in an attempt to reinstate my damaged sense of self-worth.
Despite her efforts, I became increasingly bitter and began making subtle attempts to sabotage the play.
My subversive actions evidently had an impact.
In 2003, I was finally cast in a different role:
At the time, the opportunity to play the backside of a donkey seemed momentous.
The fact that I had been upgraded to a slightly larger barnyard animal seemed like a significant step in my acting career.
However, like most humans under the age of ten, I was not particularly patient as a child.
This lack of patience was particularly evident during the Christmas period.
When my mum first decided to have children, I imagine that some deluded part of her envisioned the family Christmas as a refined and civilised affair, like it was in Downton Abbey times.
However, the building excitement of the festive season severely compromised my ability to do things at the appropriate time.
This tendency began to manifest itself right at the beginning of December when my mum would hand me an advent calender.
The proper use of an advent calendar relies heavily upon the idea of self-control, a notion which my 8-year-old mind struggled to apprehend at most times of the year.
During the Christmas period, it was a concept that no longer existed on my personal cognitive spectrum.
Halfway through December, my mum would buy a Christmas tree and me and my brother were allowed to decorate it.
The process would start off relatively placidly with each of us placing decorations carefully on the branches.
However, it was not long before it became apparent that there was a significant discrepancy in each of our individual creative visions.
The situation rapidly began to deteriorate.
What had started off as a nice sibling bonding session soon became a savage competition as to who could place the most decorations on the tree in the shortest period of time.
It was not long before we exhausted our mum’s supply of relevant, Christmas-based decorations.
In desperation, we began throwing any item in the immediate vicinity onto the tree in what I can only guess was a crazed attempt to claim it as our territory.
In the end, our tree had a slightly different aesthetic than that which is usually adopted in most other households.
Some Words That Say What I Think 
