My first flight, our first girls holiday and my first time in the beautiful country of Italy.

As we took off, I was blasting 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen - a moment I will never forget. My mum, sister and I explored Venice, Lake Garda and Verona, three beautiful places. I'm someone who loves experiencing/learning about other cultures and Italy is defiantly the place to be for that. Everywhere I looked, photo opportunities sprung up and as you can imagine, I didn't hesitate to whip out my camera to snap some shots.















It was amazing to see all the names written on the wall at Juliet's Balcony - love is love.

Thank you Mum x

Hope you all had an amazing summer - I'm working on two videos that hopefully will be finished soon.

Have you been anywhere nice?

Nicholls x

As someone who hasn't personally had depression, I find it hard to grasp an understanding of it sometimes.

Depression is invisible and is more than 'feeling sad'.  
It's highly likely that you will not be able to notice that someone you know or a stranger walking down the street has depression, making the understanding process harder. Maybe as someone who hasn't experienced it, I'm not meant to understand it. Maybe I'm not expected to. How can I? All individual experiences are different, so how are we able to really understand an others emotions, even if you have experienced a mental illness or not.

However, just because the understanding of depression may be hard, it doesn't mean that you can't have awareness of it. It's like thinking that because you're not gay, the LGBT community are not important - it's illogical. I'm not black but I still support Black Rights eg. 'Black Lives Matter', because it's important. I've never had depression but I support the groups pushing for greater awareness, because it's important. There is a large stigma around mental health, as if those suffering from mental health problems, are a group of weird creatures that you're not meant to go near. The girl that cuts at school is a 'goth' or 'doing it for attention' and the boy that doesn't talk to many people due to anxiety is a 'creep'. No one is less of a human due to their mental state.

Moreover, I feel that the stigma around mental health is not helped by certain things on social media. As soon as you type in depression, numerous images come up - like so:



Sites like Instagram and WeHeartIt, for example, have thousands of images related to the topic of depression and mental illness, some of which are extremely negative. Expressing emotion through images, text posts and creative edits, is a way that someone can reach out to others or simply release thoughts. However, I don't think that the images above and text posts that spring up on the internet often, help anyone really understand mental health. When I first got WeHeartIt (an app/website for sharing cool images), if I was in a bad mood, I would make it my duty to find images that would relate to how I was feeling, 'heart' them, thus sharing it to my wall, for others to see. This would mean that I was often sharing negative images with my audience something that over time, I realized didn't actually help how I was feeling. My friends would do it too, so you would instantly know if they were in a bad mood. My conclusion is that, sharing these negative images and text posts about suicide, hating everyone etc etc, has no real link to understanding mental health or, in my eyes, would help someone who is suffering from it. Glamorized depression.

On the other hand, there are a number of positive images on the internet surrounding mental health awareness. Even though the topic of mental health may not even cross your mind or 'it's not that deep', to some indiviuals, it's an everyday a battle. Why not make it easier for them and understand that not understanding depression and mental illnesses is not the issue but treating someone as a lesser human just because they have a mental illness is.

Spread awareness, they aren't nutty, murderers, attention seekers or 'just sad'.



Simply by listening to someone, you can help.
Let's tackle depression... together.

I wrote a post similar to this last year and went on to be my most viewed and shared piece of writing. Thank you for your continued support for this blog and the topics that I write about.

Nicholls x

Mid-way through the summer holidays and life is good.

My GCSE exams are OVERRRR and in the space of about four months..,

My parents have blessed me with a beautiful new bed that improves my life in every way possible, my braces have been removed, I have found a deep love for Prison Break, the dislocation of my shoulder has happened once again, the UK have made the decision to leave the EU, I've finally graduated after five years of high school, I turned 16 - which does mean I can legally drive a tractor in the UK and in a days time I'll be flying for the first time in my life.

It's easy to say that I'm extremely glad high school is over. After five years of being in the same place with the same people, you are soon dying for a change. I think it has been well overdue. Yes, high school carried some amazing memories and good people but with change comes new experiences and for me, new experiences always provide new lessons.

These exams were hard for all of us but I personally don't even feel like I have even done them. I've already had more than a month of the relaxing summer off, before returning to some kind of education and its been amazing so far. Prom was an experience in itself and I've recently come back from my home away from home in Dorset.

This truly is an end of an era for myself and the people around me. I didn't want this to be a post where I state all the cool things that have happened recently or, leave it as a reminder to people that we have school again in roughly a months time. My main reason for this post was to express the need for change and how important I feel it is. Just because high school has ended and the uncertainty of what I'm doing next year is always on my mind, that change that we are all about to face isn't a bad one.

The Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, always allows me to be relaxed - despite being in the confined space of a caravan for two weeks with my family. I think it's the change of air and mood there. I can think clearer about everything. I was sat on the beach on our last day, trying to cop a tan (yes, still in England), and I was just thinking about how minute the change into yr 12 can be. There will be no stress, if you don't stress.

I also wanted to share with you guys some photos from the past couple of months.