Finding HopeSome More of the Little Things
Posted on February 6, 2021
I’ve been working on some longer, more in depth posts recently, as well as trying to manage my physical health, mental health, and university work. Life is just… a lot right now. But I hate breaking my posting schedule. This blog is one of my absolute favourite things so I wanted to have something to post today, even if it isn’t exactly what I usually post. So, following on from this post, here are a few more things about me.
- I like origami but I’m not very good at it.
- I wish I could draw or paint.
- I’m a bit of a people pleaser but I’m getting better at standing up for myself and speaking my mind.
- I still haven’t found a tea or coffee I like.
- I have found an alcoholic drink I like: a passionfruit mohito.
- I love thunderstorms.
- I love taking photos.
- I have enough books on songwriting that, if you stacked them, they’d probably be taller than me.
- I love the smell of freshly cut grass.
- My favourite musicals are Wicked, Waitress, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Hamilton.
- Over the last year or so, I’ve started collecting candles.
- I love Gerberas and Dahlias.
- I’ve been rewatching Criminal Minds recently and I love Emily Prentiss so freaking much.
- Edge of Tomorrow (also known as LIVE. DIE. REPEAT.) is one of my all time favourite movies. I love the sci-fi of it, the very different aliens, the perfect amount of day repeats, and Emily Blunt being a complete badass.
- I wish I was more confident.
- I love stationary, especially notebooks.
- Bullet Journaling has changed my life.
- I’m very insecure about my appearance: how I look, my face, my body, etc.
- I have watched Hot Fuzz probably a hundred times and I’m still not bored of it because it reminds me of good times with my Dad.
- I wish I knew how to do make up well.
- My favourite season is Autumn.
- Reading fanfiction has become a real relaxation technique/technique for combating anxiety.
- I want to learn the Kalimba.
- I struggle with cooking because I find food so hard as an autistic person, although I like baking.
- I love golden hour.
- I really miss Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland.
- I’m still good friends with my best friend from secondary school.
- When I was a kid, I wanted to be a novelist or a child psychologist.
- Whenever characters leave TV shows, I make up storylines for them and I will not accept any other story.
- I love fairy lights.
- I’ve had three hamsters in my life: Hammie (I was six), Myfanwy (I was obsessed with Torchwood and the Pterodactyl was called Myfanwy and I couldn’t find a Welsh name I liked better for her), and Pumpkin.
- According to AncestryDNA, I’m 2% Swedish (I want to write more about the experience of this process and investigating my family history).
- I love typewriters.
So those are a few more of the little things about me. This blog bounces between such specific subjects that sometimes I wonder if you guys feel like you actually know me. So every now and then, I want to update you on stuff like this to make sure that you do know me. Because I want you to know me as a whole person, not me through the lens of depression or OCD, etc.
Things I Did In Lockdown
Posted on September 20, 2020
Given how stressful I was finding the pandemic and the lockdown, I thought it might be helpful to keep a list of what I’d done (achieved, managed, spent time on – whichever word is most appropriate), whether it took a huge amount of effort or was simply something I’d wanted to do, just to remind myself that I was still doing things, that I was still capable of being productive during such a difficult time. Some of them are silly, some of them important, and some of them are just interesting. And I thought posting it would be a good record of sorts when it comes to looking back at this time.
I don’t consider us to be out of lockdown by posting this. It’s just that now I’m starting a new year at university – the second of my Masters Degree – so my life is going to change. I’m doing all of my classes online, rather than going in for half of the classes as is the current norm at uni; I’d be commuting and the risks still feel too high for just two hours a week. So in terms of leaving the house, not much is changing. But it’s a moment of transition in my life and so it seemed like a natural stopping point for this post. I may continue it as a series, depending on how things play out going forward but for now, this is what I did while in lockdown, from 13th March to 20th September 2020…
- Watched the entirety of Grey’s Anatomy.
- Bought a Kalimba.
- Went down a YouTube rabbit hole of Otomatone covers…
This one and this one are my favourites.
- Did the Enneagram test.
- Tried (unsuccessfully) to teach one of my cats to play fetch.
- Watched all of the Harry Potter films one after the other (more than once…).
- Continued therapy via Zoom.
- Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)‘.
- Released and promoted the ‘Clarity (Academic Remix)’ Music Video.
- Wrote a 4000 word, fully researched and referenced essay about authenticity and imagery in ‘All Too Well’ by Taylor Swift for my Masters Degree.
- Finished the first year of my Masters Degree.
- Rescued one of my cats (the youngest) when she went missing, stuck up a tree for maybe twenty four hours, with the help of some kind neighbours (all of us masked and socially distanced).
- Rewatched many of my favourite films and TV shows, including…
Films: Hot Fuzz, The Martian, Miss Congeniality, etc.
TV Shows: Episodes, Lucifer, and Nikita, etc.
- Wrote and posted fifty three blog posts.
- Watched Season 15 of Criminal Minds, finishing the show after following it for ten years.
- Read a lot of Fanfiction…
This is something I did a lot of as a teenager but reverted to during my Masters as a form of stress relief: escaping into another world, a familiar and safe world. My most impressive achievements were reading all of the Ros Myers (Spooks) Fanfiction I could find and reading The Changeling and it’s three sequels (a Harry Potter alternate universe where Ginny is sorted into Slytherin, which totals nearly 600,000 words). Of course, there were more one off stories; these are just my greatest hits.
- Had multiple movie dates with friends and family.
- Had multiple Studio Ghibli movie dates with one group of friends.
- Multiple collaborations via video calling: working on my songs, working with new people, critiquing the songs of friends, and so on.
- Caught up with Law & Order: SVU.
- Received a grade I was really happy with for my Musicology essay on Taylor Swift’s song, ‘All Too Well.’
- Released and promoted ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
- Rewatched all ten seasons of Friends (multiple times – although mostly as background noise).
- Played the piano a lot, learning the songs of others and writing my own.
- Watched all of Little Fires Everywhere in one day.
- Released and promoted the music video for ‘Sounds Like Hope.’
- Bought a new cat tree for the cats (they’d practically destroyed the old one), one with beds for all five of them and eventually we caught them all in it at once.
- Had multiple panic attacks and meltdowns, some really severe.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 1 in one day.
- Watched multiple new films including What Happened To Monday, Isn’t It Romantic, Ocean’s 8, Studio Ghibli’s Castle In The Sky, Fantasy Island, The Half Of It, Official Secrets, The Accountant, and more.
- Watched multiple new TV shows, including Little Fires Everywhere, Absentia, Broadchurch, Agents of Shield Season 7, The Fix, Lucifer Season 5 (Part 1), Away, and more.
- Started watching Castle.
- Made multiple banana breads (and other things, like chocolate chip cookies, but that’s less uncommon).
- Signed petitions and made donations to various causes in the Black Lives Matter movement and collected a list of resources to educate myself more when I don’t feel so incredibly mentally and emotionally fragile (short pieces, like some of the infographics on Instagram have been really good and digestible but I’ve been struggling to absorb large amounts of new information due to my general mental state, which has included frequent meltdowns and panic attacks, all affecting my concentration and memory).
- Filled six diaries.
- Watched many of my favourite movies from childhood, including The Emperor’s New Groove, A Bug’s Life, and all of the Wallace and Gromit shorts and movies.
- Sorted through my clothes.
- Sorted through and reorganised my DVDs.
- Spent A LOT of time with my cats.
- Made a significant dent in sorting through all of my possessions.
- Sorted through my jewellery.
- Worked on my music theory knowledge during a series of piano lessons.
- Weaned myself off Pregabalin.
- Gathered up loads of stuff to donate to charity shops when they reopen/are able to accept donations.
- Cleared out my box of electronics, technology, cables, etc, only keeping the things I actually use and need.
- Cleared my eight USB sticks.
- Celebrated the kittens’ first birthday.
- Received my new laptop (plus other helpful equipment) from DSA, the process of which has been going on for months, only to find that it wasn’t the right laptop.
- Watched multiple online/streamed concerts, including ICMP Songwriters’ Circles, Kalie Shorr, Savannah Keyes, Song Suffragettes, Ingrid Andress, and more.
- Attended Ingrid Andress’ first livestream show with a meet and greet afterwards, which started at 2am and resulted in me staying up until 5am.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 2 in one day.
- Took part in multiple research studies looking at how the pandemic and subsequent lockdown are affecting mental health in general, specific mental health conditions, and Autism. I also participated in studies about experiences with therapy and about living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
- Received and set up the new laptop from DSA.
- Loaded up my old Photos library onto the new laptop, only to find three (or more, sometimes up to seven) copies of basically every photo so I started going through and deleting the duplicates (getting the wheel of doom approximately every five seconds). Got down from 85,000 to just under 30,000 and then organised them all into albums, which took about three weeks. It was a mammoth job but it was incredibly satisfying to finish.
- I applied to be part of the Disability Pride 2020 Livestream, got a place, and saw myself on TV!
- Managed to go out for a haircut.
- Planned the ‘Back To Life’ music video, having had to scrap the original plan due to travel restrictions and anxiety.
- Dyed my hair orange.
- Dyed my hair red when the orange wasn’t the right colour.
- Filmed the ‘Back To Life’ music video on the beach with Richard.
- Watched all of Absentia Season 3 in one day.
- Was interviewed by a Dutch journalism student about being a new artist during a pandemic.
- Obsessively listened to and analysed Taylor Swift’s beautiful new album, folklore.
- Bought a Gretsch electric guitar (for my birthday but early so that I can make use of the time I have before uni starts, in whatever way it starts).
- Tried to go to the gym but didn’t feel it was safe.
- Finally saw Hamilton via Disney+.
- Met up with a friend for a dog walk, meeting her gorgeous new puppy for the first time.
- After experiencing serious and ongoing pain in both shoulders down to fingers, I had a Zoom appointment with my GP who referred me to an occupational rheumatologist (which would apparently take two to three weeks). And since any medication stronger than Ibuprofen and Paracetamol will cause side effects similar to those of my anti-depressants, she’s reluctant to prescribe anything stronger unless absolutely necessary.
- Finished Liar Series 2.
- Updated my photo albums, after getting eighteen months behind.
- Got up to date with Agents of Shield Season 7 so that I could watch and celebrate the finale of the season and the show itself with the show’s cast, crew, and fandom on social media.
- Watched the Perseid meteor shower and saw a handful of ‘proper’ shooting stars.
- Suffered severe electric shock like pain in my lower legs, requiring more doctors appointments. The information was added to my rheumatology referral and I started taking stronger painkillers.
- Watched Hamilton with some of my family who’d seen it live and loved it but not seen the film.
- Watched the finale of Agents of Shield, not just of Season 7 but of the whole show, and cried my eyes out, although sometimes I was laughing at the same time. I loved it and thought it was a really beautiful end to such a fantastic show. I’ll miss it more than I can say but I’m so grateful to have had it, to have had Daisy Johnson, and I’ll always carry with me what it’s meant to me.
- Released and promoted ‘Back To Life.’
- Did an interview with Vents Magazine.
- Went on several dog walks with my friend and her puppy.
- Contributed to #DaisyJohnsonAppreciationWeek2020 and #QuakeWeek on social media, posting edits on Tumblr and Twitter.
- Did an interview with Middle Tennessee Music.
- Filmed the Behind The Video for the ‘Back To Life’ music video.
- Went through my clothes a second time (sorting through my possessions, especially when I have an emotion connection to them gives me decision fatigue and I stop being able to make objective decisions – there was a lot to go through the first time).
- Did an interview with Zap Bang Magazine.
- Made the decision to do the next semester of my Masters Degree 100% online.
- Bought Bon Iver tickets for November 2021 – here’s hoping it’ll be possible to go!
- Put together the ‘Back To Life’ music video with Richard.
- Released and promoted the ‘Back To Life’ Music Video…
- Kept a two week photo diary for the CFS/ME research study.
- Finally captured the motivation to start learning the Kalimba only to find out there was a problem with the one I’d bought so I have to sort that out before I can really start learning to play it.
- Went through a traumatic few weeks worried that there was something seriously wrong with one of my cats but after multiple vet visits and lots of tests, she’s been given a clean bill of health.
- Attended the (online) Induction event for the new year at university.
- Acted as a guinea pig for one of my tutors as he fine-tuned a couple of things for the upcoming online classes.
- Was given a signed copy of folklore by Taylor Swift as an early birthday present.
- Signed up for a home recording course.
I doubt I’ll ever be able to look back on this time positively (from a personal perspective – in the wider sense, it’s clearly been catastrophic) but there have been moments and experiences that I am grateful to have had. As I’ve said, I don’t consider lockdown to be over so this post may become a series but with my Masters to focus on, I will have significantly less time to dedicate to bigger projects like organising my photos or sorting through my possessions. So lockdown continues; I’m just entering the next chapter.
My Lockdown Favourites
Posted on July 25, 2020
As stressful (and often traumatic) as it’s been, lockdown has provided the opportunity to try out different pursuits, things that we didn’t have the time or mental energy for previously. Even though said lockdown isn’t actually over yet, I’ve been thinking about some of the things I’ve discovered or things that I’ve been finding relief in during this difficult time and thought I’d share them, in case they’re helpful or comforting to anyone else.
The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy – My therapist gave me this book just before lockdown and I read it all in one go. It’s comforting and inspiring and the illustrations are just stunning. But even though I’ve read it, it’s a really good book for just dipping into, for just opening at a random page, and ruminating on the message of the words – while there is progression to it, it’s not in a traditional story format so you can simply read it in this way.
My Kelsea Ballerini sweatpants – Obviously any good pair of sweatpants will do but my favourite pair come from the merch line accompanying Kelsea Ballerini’s third album. I know that a lot of people have talked about needing to get up and get dressed as they did pre-pandemic to be productive but I’m honestly more productive when I’m comfortable and these are just super soft and cosy without being too thick. I’m pretty sure they’re one of the best pieces of merch I’ve ever bought.
Kalie Shorr – I’ve loved Kalie’s music for years, especially her debut album, ‘Open Book,’ which came out last year. Her music really is unique: her lyric writing is brutally honest and perfectly balances detail and metaphor, her melodies surprising yet effortlessly catchy, and the production not only perfectly matches each song but takes you on as much as a journey throughout the album as the lyrics do. It’s one of the best albums I’ve ever heard and as a songwriter, I learn more from it every time I listen to it. I’ve been playing to it a lot during lockdown and even learning some of the songs on the piano as I try and improve my skills. It’s so cohesive, emotionally, lyrically, and sonically. It’s so utterly Kalie. I hope that, one day, I’ll be as assured of my musical identity as Kalie is.
My keyboard – I love playing the piano but between life and managing my mental health, I do often find it difficult to just sit down and play simply for the fun of it. If I have a university assignment or song idea, of course I’ll work at it until it’s perfect but I struggle to fit in time to just play because I like the sound or learn a song I love or practice a specific skill. So having this extra time has allowed me to do that. There’s also the added bonus that piano playing takes up so much concentration for me that I’m distracted from my near constant anxiety, something I’m very grateful for.
Absentia – I’ve been meaning to watch this show for ages; it’s been on my To Watch list in a number of bullet journals now. But I always felt guilty for putting the time aside to get into a new show. In these current times though, it’s been the perfect escape and I found it so addictive that I ended up watching a season a day. If you like a mix of crime show and thriller, plus an awesome, well developed female lead, then this is a show for you.
Banana Bread – It’s a bit of a lockdown cliche but seeing everyone making banana bread inspired us to make it again. I haven’t had it in years and oh my god, I’d forgotten how good it is. We went a bit overboard, probably making (and sharing) at least fifteen of them…
Fanfiction – As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been struggling to really get into reading. Whether it’s my anxiety about the pandemic or my mental health in general, trying to absorb brand new characters, settings, and storylines just seems to be too much for my brain and I just can’t concentrate. Reading stories set in familiar worlds (Stargate SG-1, Sanctuary, Harry Potter, Criminal Minds, etc) with familiar characters just feels more possible and I love how they build on and fill out something that I already love. I’ve always found it to be a really good form of relaxation, a really good way of escaping reality when everything gets too much. Maybe one day I’ll make a post listing my favourites because some of them are genuinely among the best pieces of fiction I’ve ever read.
1SE App – I’ve been a fan of the 1 Second Everyday app for years but I’ve found it particularly helpful and enjoyable during lockdown. It reminds me of the good moments, that I am actually achieving things, that we are moving forward. I don’t know if lockdown is going to have a definitive end but if it does, I may post a one-second-a-day-of-every-day-in-lockdown video. Otherwise I’ll probably post the video of the whole year at the end of 2020.
Lauren Cimorelli – I have been loving Lauren Cimorelli’s recent music, especially ‘Atom Bomb’ and ‘Rabbit Hole.’ The lyrics create these beautifully dark and romantic images, they’re super catchy, and the production is awesome: vivid and chaotic but glittering and iridescent. They really inspire me to get better, particularly at production.
Isn’t It Romantic – I’m not usually a huge fan of romantic comedies but me and my uni friends have been having regular movie nights, taking turns to choose the movie. I can’t remember who chose this one and I was prepared to simply watch it and then forget about it but I absolutely loved it, so much so that I’ve watched it three or four times since that initial viewing to show it to other people. I loved the ridiculousness of it and how it made fun of the romantic comedy genre, while still being a really fun, feel good film.
Broadchurch – My brother and his Mum watched all three series in a week and insisted that me and Mum would love it so we tried it out and got through it in even less time. It follows the partnership of the moody, complex DI Alec Hardy (played by David Tennant) and the bright and bubbly DS Ellie Miller (played by Olivia Colman) as the try to solve cases (one per series) in the small, seaside town of Broadchurch. It was thoroughly gripping and we repeatedly went to bed hours later than intended because the cliffhangers were so intense.
Taylor Swift – I know folklore only came out yesterday but I’m already completely obsessed with it and I know I’ll be listening to it daily for a LONG time. I do miss the big, bold, glittering production from her previous albums but I also love this new sound for her. I’m finding it completely impossible to choose a favourite but I absolutely adore ‘the 1,’ ‘exile (feat. Bon Iver),’ ‘my tears ricochet,’ ‘mirrorball,’ ‘this is me trying,’ ‘illicit affairs,’ ‘mad woman,’ ‘epiphany’ (although it’s actually painful in its sadness), and ‘peace.’ It’s a stunning album.
So these are some of the things that I’ve been enjoying in lockdown (the words ‘enjoying’ and ‘lockdown’ in the same sentence sound very strange). I hope these are interesting to you and if you have any favourites of your own, please share!
Finding Hope 