Hey friends!

So as many of you probably know, I have just started this blog as a way to fill up time on my Gap Year and most importantly document my whole year online. Many of you may also be aware of a massive YouTube channel called JacksGap. This guy Jack Harries created this YouTube channel as a way to document his own gap year through videos on YouTube. He then garnered a massive following and even though his gap year has been completed, he is still carrying on with the project.

A lot of people have commented how similar my blog name is to JacksGap. Contrary to popular belief, I am not trying to BE JacksGap. I am simply trying to be A Jack on a gap year. There aren't many ways to make my name and a gap year very different to JacksGap and I wanted my blog name to be something with my name and the fact that the purpose of the blog is to be about my gap year. 

I'm not gonna change my blog title because of this because I like the name and I'm pretty sure that it is not going to reach massive popularity like JacksGap. Not to mention this is a blog and his channel is a vlog. If at some point I do decide to start making videos on YouTube again my channel will definitely not be called GapYearJack, it will be on my JackBeedle12 channel because that's where the majority of my videos already are so I'm not going to make a new channel. 

Just thought that I should put this out there so that people know that I am aware of the similarities but just don't think it matters very much. 

On with your day :)
Jack

Hey Friends!

Okay so I don't normally post myself singing covers on YouTube unless it's for a specific reason or unless it's from a performance that I've done but today I was playing around on Garageband and I decided that the song I was using to test it I would make a full version of. I was using 'Happy Little Pill' by Troye Sivan which is a song that I love at the moment so here is my YouTube cover of Happy Little Pill:

I thought I might aswell just post it. I'm being cringey enough by writing this blog so I might aswell go the whole way and post some covers on YouTube. I haven't got anything better to do! I spent the best part of today doing this really so here is my Day 4 of the 365 challenge:

Really hope you all enjoy it. I thought that it sounded a bit repetitive and boring but I'd love to know anyone else's thoughts on it. I would also really love it if you could subscribe to my YouTube channel. I'm thinking about doing more stuff on there so if you could that'd be great and it would make me happy :) 

Byiiiiie,

Jack

Hey Friends!

I've been thinking of all of the stuff that I wanna achieve during my gap year and I've decided that I'm gonna make a gap year 'bucket list'. This isn't my first '50 Things' project. When I started my YouTube channel my first 'video' was a '50 Fact About Me' video:

This time I'm hoping to complete this list by the 9th September 2015 (the last day of gap 'year') and here are all of the things that I want to do:

1. Perform in 2 different musicals
2. Read 25 books
3. Make a start on writing a play
4. Read 20 plays
5. See 50 pieces of Theatre
6. Audition for a drama school
7. Get accepted to a drama school
8. Make at least 10 new videos on my YouTube channel
9. Finish watching the last 3 series of Ghost Whisperer
10. Get to 100 subscribers on YouTube
11. Get to 4,000 followers on Twitter
12. Go on holiday abroad
13. See Lady Gaga in concert
14. See Sara Bareilles in concert
15. See Next to Normal live
16. Perform in a theatre outside of Hull
17. Learn to edit videos better
18. Learn to play the guitar
19. Go to Edinburgh
20. Go to New York (again)
21. Take a trampolining class
22. Sing at an open mic night
23. Complete a food challenge
24. Bake a rainbow cake
25. Sing with a West End performer
26. Write a song
27. Record some songs
28. Paint a picture
29. Go to a singing lesson
30. Go to a dance class
31. Graduate from uni
32. Perform something Heathers related
33. Do some sort of teaching
34. See Lorde in concert
35. Move to a different city
36. Finish the play that I'm starting to write
37. Go to a haunted place
38. Create a character
39. Get a new job
40. Go camping
41. Volunteer for something
42. Get a new hairstyle
43. Dye my hair
44. Learn to cook properly
45. Go on the Hull land train
46. Create a Gap Year Jack logo
47. Go on a treasure hunt
48. Create an Instragram scrapbook
49. Complete my 365 project
50. Commit to this blog

It was so hard to create this list because I had no real idea of what I actually wanted to achieve this year. Now I have some sort of basic list of stuff though I'm really happy with some of the stuff that's on there. Some of them are obvious fillers but creating a bucket list of 50 things to do in the next year is hard! The last two (49 and 50) will only be able to be ticked off the list once my gap year is finished so if I keep up the blog and the 365 project that's when I'll be able to tick them off.

Obviously I want to achieve all of the things on this list but some of the things might not happen so as a target I'm gonna set myself a goal of completing 30 of these things before the end of the year. If I complete that challenge I will be happy with myself. If I complete the whole list I will be very, very surprised!

If you're doing anything similar to this or have any sort of bucket list, let me know in the comments what kind of things you're doing/achieving and what is the thing that you most want to achieve off your bucket list! Also let me know if you've done any of the stuff on my bucket list!

I also did some drama stuff at my old school with some of the students who are doing Performance enrichment after school. They're doing a Pantomime for their first show which should be cool so I'm excited to start working on that. This is going to be really good experience for me in the way of teaching because I've not done much of that before. Ideally I'd like to be doing musical theatre work to gain some experience which this isn't but it's still a good thing to do to keep myself in the performing mind frame. I loved the way that even though it was an after school thing the students didn't have to be there and some of them were quite inhibited at first but then by the end some of them wanted to stay and do more which really says something about the quality of the drama staff at Kingswood. Overall it's been quite a good day, and here is my 365 day 3:

It's my old school, except it's been rebuilt. I didn't go to this version of it. It's so weird how different it is now. I really wish my old school was still there!

Thanks for reading!
Peace and love :)

Jack

Hey Friends!

Here is day 2 of my 365 project!

Nothing much exciting happened today other than going in to town, going to work then going to see Eli's new pad. We ended up watching most of Bring It On the Musical and then some of Bonnie and Clyde the Musical and then I went home. I had been in to my old college earlier on to ask my singing teacher if she knew of any specifically Musical Theatre singing teacher's in Hull who can play the piano because I really need one. I'm not having much luck within Hull at the moment so I might have to venture out of Hull and have some singing lessons elsewhere. On the bus home I started to feel really ill in my stomach so ended up just going straight to bed when I got home. Had a 2 hour nap but then still felt the same. I'm currently in the midst of a YouTube binge, trying to catch up on videos that I've missed over the past couple of weeks and it is a LOT. I hadn't seen any of Tyler Oakley's AuGuest videos so I'm just in the middle of trying to watch all of them but there is a lot.

Hoping I feel better tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have something much more interesting to write about soon!

Peace and love,
Jack

Hey Friends!

I have decided that I am going to do a 365 photo project, which I probably should have started on day 1 of my gap year so that I could finish it at the end of my gap year - but I didn't. Anyway, I have tried these things before and they never work out because I am awful at committing to things as some of you probably know very well...

But here we are with 365 project - Day 1!

The past few weeks have been pretty hectic. I've been to London a LOT, I've had 3 trips in 3 weeks and I was there for 10 of those 21 days - not bad! I saw a lot of shows: Wicked, Once, Courtney Act at Heaven, Dogfight, The Book of Mormon, The Pajama Game, Miranda Sings. Aswell as drinking a lot in between aswell. Now I'm not going to London again for a while and I'm kind of focussing on life in Hull for a while. As I have been for a while I am still trying to find a full time job which is proving quite difficult but I'm not giving up as my future at a Drama school next year definitely depends on it! (So if any of you know of anywhere...holla!)

I need to start having singing lessons and going to dance classes and all that sorta stuff so that I don't lose all of the technique I've just spent 3 years trying to acquire. I'm struggling to find them in Hull though so I might have to go out of Hull to find some good classes which isn't exactly ideal. I'm also dying for a new project to work on. I have a few things that I'm thinking about trying to make happen but I don't know if they will or not. I need get my thoughts together and really try to make the ideas as cohesive as possible. Another thing I really need right now is to be in a musical or to be in rehearsals for something. I'm missing performing and rehearsing already and it isn't helping that around now is when everyone's either starting or going back to uni/drama school. Anyone want to cast me in something? Please do. I want to a show I've never done before or just be Leaf from Spelling Bee for life!

I'm really gonna try and keep up with this 365 project but I'm hopeless. I might not make a new post on here every day about 365 but there is a dedicated 365 page where I'll be posting the pictures of the stuff that makes up my year. 

Hope you're all doing good and actually want to read this stuff. Really I'm just writing it for my own amusement. The last time I had a blog was for my media coursework at college which was really not an exciting time in my life. I can't actually remember what my blog was called but if I ever do find it I'll post it on here so ya'll can take a gander.

Peace and love,

Jack 

Hey, friends!

In March 2014 I auditioned at Guildford School of Acting for their MA Musical Theatre course and was successful in getting a place to start studying there in September 2014. Before I auditioned I knew that the course fees were going to be steep and they ended up totalling £15,730 for the 1 year course. When I first got the place I had all of these ideas about possible fundraisers I could do and bursaries I could apply for but then I realised I wasn't moving as quickly as I thought I was. Time was running out and before I knew it it was June. I had sent out many, many letters to grants organisations and charitable trusts asking if they would sponsor me to help pay my tuition fees. Most of these letters just came back as a no - reasons being that I had applied too late.
This is when I knew I needed to kick my ass in to high gear and actually try to fundraise instead of waiting for responses that I might never get. I set up a Fundraising Concert at my old school (Kingswood Academy) for the 29th August and I started to advertise this around on Facebook and Twitter. On top of this I had set up a fundraising page with GoFundMe entitled 'Get Jack To Guildford' which I made £120 from. The fundraiser I organised featured myself and 4 friends (some of whom had come from out of the city especially to perform) singing a few songs from Musicals. After the show had finished and I'd had much help from the performers, the Host (Jonathan Parker) and the techies I had helping me (Melissa and Ryan) I ended up making £150 from the show. I was quite pleased with that as the night was so flawed and it just didn't end up being the show I had hoped it would be.
I applied for a Professional and Career Development Loan from Barclays in June and after sending it and re-sending it three times they finally came back to me that my application had been successful. After losing out on funding and not having fundraised too much myself looking at the scale of this massive loan and it's repayments was daunting. I would finish my course in Guildford and have to immediately start paying back £200 per month for the next 5 years. It made me come to my senses *song cue* very quickly and made me start to re-evaluate my options. I could go to Guildford with this loan and scrape by for the next year and then probably have to move back home to Hull for god knows how long trying to work to pay off this loan, or I could withdraw my place at Guildford, get a full time job and save up all year, auditioning for Guildford again earlier than I did this year and really trying hard to secure some funding as soon as I get my place there again - if I do. The first option would have probably left me doing the opposite of what I would have been doing the course to achieve - which is to be on the stage professionally.
Ultimately I decided that I had no option but to withdraw my place at Guildford and just try again next year. I've been told that the first batch of MA auditions are in December and that I don't have to pay for my audition because I was accepted this year, which is great. All I can do now is hope that I'm accepted again. I think I will try and steer clear of the 'GoFundMe' type route this time round as, although it's been helpful, it does feel like I haven't earned the funds.
For anyone wondering any money that I raised from the Fundraiser or other donations have been put in to a bank account separate to my own so that I cannot access them and I plan on saving them to do with what you all donated for me to do this year - only next year instead. I hope nobody has any objections to this. As for this next year of my life...Well - I'm calling this Day 1 of my 'gap year' and I plan to spend it working, going to classes, making myself a better person and performer and ultimately putting myself in a better position to go to Guildford next year than I was this year - both financially and physically.
I hope, if anyone has actually got to the end of this long winded post (and I hope you have), that you understand what a very, very hard decision all of this has been for me and it definitely comes with a heavy heart. I also hope that people understand that I had saved a LOT of money for this myself without the Fundraiser or the funding pages and I know some people think they know everything about other people's business but when it comes to me and the money I spend in my free time please rest assured that it is my money I'm spending and not any money that anyone so kindly donated to me.
I really hope I've not missed anything out but it's late and I really just want to get this post out there so Guildford friends I will see you in time and everyone else - drop me a message and let's not lose touch wherever in the world you may be :)

Jack