Week 23 - It's On! live below the line 2014

  I am now in day 3 of my Live Below The Line challenge week, if you want to read up on how I have been doing with it, visit: www.livebelowtheline.com/me/vegankitten So far I have felt hungry. A lot. I have however raised £144 for The Hunger Project UK, so hopefully it will all be worth it.

It has been an interesting challenge, it has made me scrutinize my portion sizes so much so that I am having to weigh ingredients before I cook a meal so that I can work out the cost of it. I have managed to stay under the £1 budget for each day so far, which is good as I thought I'd be pushing it almost every time. My sleep hasn't been effected by it too much, as I have tried to have a biscuit close to bed time so that I do not sleep on an empty stomach, and I may have lost 2 Ibs in doing it to this point, but I have never heard my stomach grumble so much 2 hours after a meal. It would be dangerous to do this on a full time basis as there is no fruit at all in my meals and vegetables are tinned or frozen. I'm really starting to miss having bananas now. It is startling how much we take having a roof over our heads and a full, really full tummy. I may be on minimum wages and not be in the life style or career I planned for myself, but I am feeling more grateful for what I do have. I also have some chocolate saved for Saturday as my reward for the week.

This week is also the start of petitions & protest season here at project 52. As a regular petition signer, I run a facebook group for sharing petitions in, which has until recently been largely unnoticed. I made the mistake of signing and sharing a petition that was aimed at the removal of a band as a headline act at a music festival due to the fact this particular band has been glamorizing bear hunting. I posted that I had signed and shared it in my group for the attention of the petition writers. What followed has been a steady trail of abuse by males my own age or older, mostly for the fact I am a girl, then secondly for admitting to signing it. Despite the fact they themselves will not be in attendance at the festival or are even fans of this band.

This has made it clear to me that while a petition itself can be good thing, it is also important to check just who will be effected by it and if indeed it contains factual information, as many have claimed this petition to be false, and I myself have stumbled upon petitions that are clearly false or misleading as the events they are campaigning against happened years before they were written. Or did not even occur in the first place.  I think for my next feature it will be valuable to those of you who are interested in the role of petitions for a guide to be done, looking at how to write one, how to keep those signatures safe so that others are not attacked for it as I was. And of course, how to deal with trolls that you'll come across if you wish to use social media to share your petition.