Finding HopeGoals For 2022 (Part 1)
Posted on February 26, 2022
I had intended to set goals at the beginning of the year but honestly, I was feeling so terrible that I couldn’t even see twenty-four hours ahead, let alone six months or a year. So I decided to shelve the setting of goals until I felt a bit more… like myself, I guess. I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to anything too… much just yet, given that I’m barely back on my feet (something that still feels debatable some days). It’s hard to plan ahead. So, I thought I’d split this post into two this year: goals for the first six months and then goals for the second. Maybe. It does feel a bit like I’m just going through the motions but maybe that’s just what I need to do right now.
GET MY MENTAL HEALTH STABILISED – Between the pandemic stuff I was already carrying around, the burnout post-MA, the disaster that was the ADHD medication, and the anxiety induced breakdown I had at the end of January (plus having been unable to see my therapist pretty much since last May), I’m one big mess. I’ve started the Moclobemide but it still feels too early to say for sure whether or not it’s the right thing. I’m starting to write again though, which is a good sign. Hopefully I’ll be back at therapy in the not too distant future, plus there are some other options for support to consider. I just feel like, until I get my head sorted – or at least a bit more sorted – my life is on hold and I hate it. I can’t have a real life until there’s some resolution here.
GET BACK TO SWIMMING – I haven’t been very mobile at all over the last few months, given how bad my mental and physical health has been, and I’m definitely feeling it. My chronic pain over the last couple of weeks has been awful – back to the levels it was last summer – and now that I actually feel able to leave the house, I really want to get back to swimming and to my hydrotherapy exercises. I want to get fitter and I want to get stronger; the hope is that, the stronger my body is, the better my life with hEDS will be.
RELEASE NEW MUSIC – I’m so desperate (in a good way) to release new music. It’s been so long since the Honest EP came out and even longer since I wrote the songs. So much has changed since then, for me as person and as a songwriter. I am working on an album and that’s my real passion project but it is going to take time and I don’t want to keep anyone waiting that long. Hell, I don’t want to wait that long. So I am working on music to release before the album and while it’s taking a bit longer because of the last few months, it is happening and it is coming.
I don’t have an exact deadline for these goals, especially since mental and physical health don’t always adhere to any schedule you set for yourself. But I’m hoping that I can do these things – and perhaps more – within the first half of the year. Then, maybe, I can set a new series of goals that are a bit more exciting and ambitious once I’m feeling a bit more solid.
Now That I’ve Finished My Masters…
Posted on September 25, 2021
After two years of being utterly focussed on my Masters, it’s definitely weird not having something specific to work on, having no deadlines to meet, and so on. It’s strange but also a welcome relief: between working on the module of the moment and dealing with whatever the pandemic threw up, plus my health stuff, it’s been an exhausting time. While I’m excited to start working on the next project, whatever that may be, I do need a break first – to rest, recover, and recharge my body and brain – and there’ve been a handful of things I’ve been looking forward to doing for when I finally reached this point.
These are some of the things I’ve held on to when I really felt the exhaustion or my motivation dipped:
- Gentle days – I’ve spent the last couple of months at least working relentlessly on my final project; unless there was a very good reason, I probably spent at least seven hours a day working on various elements of it. I really pushed myself. Unfortunately, my prime working time seems to start around 7pm; that’s when I seem to really get on a roll and sometimes that meant I’d be working until after midnight (those were the really long days), which completely screwed up my sleep schedule. But even if I didn’t get to sleep until 4am, I’d still force myself up as early as I physically could in order to get back to work – my sleep schedule is going to need some serious overhauling. Now that I don’t need to do that, I’m looking forward to having some gentler days. I’m still happiest doing things but it will be nice to do them at a more laidback pace, for a while anyway. I might even sleep in occasionally!
- See more friends and family – I’ve been so buried in this project that I really haven’t seen many of my friends or family, not properly, for ages. I’ve started catching up with people, both over FaceTime and in real life, which has been so, so lovely but there are still too many people that I haven’t seen in far too long. So I’m looking forward to that.
- Read new books – Given that my difficulties with concentration make reading somewhat of a struggle anyway, I could barely manage the reading for my Masters, let alone anything for fun (not that I had much time for that). But I’ve got a list as long as my arm of books I want to read so I’m looking forward to getting into a couple of those. I think I’m gonna start with The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green.
- Watch new TV shows and movies – While working on this final project, especially over the last couple of months, I’ve really only watched familiar things, using them as background noise – something that, most of the time, aids my concentration. I’m now thoroughly bored with all of them and, just like with the books, I have a great list of new things I want to watch, like Black Widow and Girls5eva.
- Swim more – Obviously this isn’t an immediate goal: I’ll have to build up my swimming in accordance with how my hEDS is affecting me. But I am looking forward to doing a bit more here and there and slowly building up. While doing the Masters, I was always aware of how much energy it required, balancing that against the energy I needed to keep working at the necessary pace. So it will be nice to push myself a bit and not worry about whether I’ll need a rest day afterwards, at least until I get into whatever the next project.
- Work on a new project – I have a lot of ideas in the works but they all depend on a bunch of different factors so, as of this moment, I don’t know which one will be my main focus (because, of course, I’ll still be working on the others) but hopefully it won’t be long until I do know and can get started. I’m really terrible at not doing things; I love having a project to work on.
- Release new music – Whatever project I launch into next, I want to keep releasing music. It’s been a while since I released anything new (the acoustic EP was a different kind of release, in my head at least) and I’m dying to put more music out. The Masters was just too big and took up too much of my brain. So, now that that’s done, I’m so excited to start putting stuff out again. I have multiple ideas for bigger bodies of work but those will take time so I’m thinking of releasing a few singles while I pull that next body of work together. There are always songs that I love but that don’t really fit into the concept of an EP or album project so it will be really fun to give them a life out in the world. So, stay tuned! (That pun was accidental, I swear.)
- Finish my album – During my final project, I started writing an album that I’m really excited about. I feel really good about it but there’s still a lot of work to do if I want it to be as good as I think it could be. With the Masters imposed deadlines now out of the way, I can go back to the songs and work on each one more slowly, using everything I learned throughout the process of the project (something that the earlier songs didn’t have the advantage of). I think this album could really be something and I want to give it all the time and attention it needs to achieve that potential.
- Get back to writing on here – I’ve really missed blog writing while I’ve been working and I’ve had to actively restrain myself from writing blog posts when I should’ve been working so I’m very excited to be back and writing here. My brain is bursting with ideas and I’m struggling to figure out how to fit them all in, which, all in all, isn’t a bad problem to have.
There are also things that I’m less excited to do but they are important and I’ve been putting them off, either because they took too much time and energy away from working or because I was worried about how engaging with them would break what felt like the very fragile hold I had on my concentration, like it would be impossible to concentrate on my project again if I stopped, even for a little bit.
So things like continuing my Pain Clinic appointments, getting the prescription for my glasses updated (my current pair are at least four years out of date or whatever the phrase is – it must be doing a number on my eyesight and it’s probably not unrelated to all of my headaches), figure out what’s going on with my therapy situation, make a definitive decision about my medication, and try again to tackle my Trichotillomania. None of these will be fun or easy but hopefully they’ll all improve my life in the long run so they are worth doing.
So there’s my list. I love a good list. I find that they help me organise my thoughts – my often very restless, whirlwind thoughts. It’s been a tough few months but I’m looking forward to diving into all of these things.
Goals for 2021
Posted on January 2, 2021
I think it’s safe to say that we have no idea what this year is going to look like so making resolutions or goals could seem a bit pointless. But considering everything last year, I did make some recognisable progress with my 2020 goals, something I’m really proud of considering how much I was struggling. Yes, it’s a bit of a shot in the dark to make any sort of long term plans this year but I find that having goals like these give me some direction, some structure, which is especially helpful when I currently have so little external structure in my life. (As I said in my previous post, I prefer goals to resolutions: I find that resolutions create unnecessary pressure whereas goals help me to focus on particular areas. That works better for me but then I’m sure that that pressure is helpful for others.)
Since we don’t know what this year will hold, I’m still going to make goals. If I have to abandon them, then so be it but otherwise, they’ll hopefully be a helpful tool in moving through the year, creating some internal stability if nothing else. I’m hopeful that I can make progress in all of these areas: in my physical health, in my mental health, and in my work.
FIND A RHYTHM IN THERAPY AGAIN – The pandemic and lockdown have really thrown a wrench in my therapy sessions. Not only have they been physically disrupted, in the sense that they’ve moved from in person to online, but the pandemic has done such a number on my mental health that I couldn’t even cope with going to therapy for a while. And now that I’m going again, I feel like I don’t know how to do it anymore. I have a really good relationship with my therapist so I don’t know why I’m finding it so hard to talk about stuff; we just end up catching up about what’s happened between sessions. I really want to find a way back to the place where we really dug into things, the big things that affect me and my mental health. I’m not sure how to do it but my therapy sessions are so vital that it needs to be done so we’ll have to figure it out.
PROGRESS WITH MY INVISIBLE BRACES – Given how up and down last year was, I’m surprised I managed to wear it at all but this year I really want to build and embed the habit in what daily routine I have. The main problem is that, often, I’ll need to take a break and suddenly I haven’t worn it in months. So I also want to work out how to take a break without completely breaking the habit.
WORK ON MY CORE – For hypermobile people, the core muscles are particularly weak, which can cause referred fatigue and pain throughout the body. When I was diagnosed, the specialist asked what exercise I did and I talked about how much I loved swimming, how good it feels to exercise without having to bear the weight of my body. She said that swimming is the best possible exercise for a hypermobile person, especially someone actively dealing with pain and fatigue. I certainly didn’t need the encouragement to swim more. Where possible (in the context of the pandemic and lockdowns), I want to keep swimming as much as I can, as well as practicing the basic hydrotherapy exercises I’ve been given. I don’t know when my referral for hydrotherapy will actually go through, when I’ll actually get sessions, but hopefully it won’t be too long and hopefully that will help with the fatigue and pain.
COMPLETE MY MAJOR REPERTOIRE PROJECT – The final module of the Masters is dedicated to researching, writing songs, and creating a body of work around a particular subject. I’ve been really looking forward to this module, and hearing about the subject matter investigated by my course mates from last year (familial connections, identity, and gender transition, for example) and the work they created has only inspired me more. I have multiple ideas that I’d love to work on, although there are two that stand out more than the others. So I’ll have to choose at some point but we’re encouraged to remain open until just before the module starts. I’m so looking forward to really diving into a project and hopefully I can use my enthusiasm to help me get the best grade possible.
FINISH MY MASTERS DEGREE – By the end of September, I will have finished all of the modules and assessments of the Masters, all being well. With everything that’s happened since the start of the Masters, just finishing it will be an achievement in its own right but I really, really, really want to do well. It would be incredible to get a Distinction (that would be my ideal scenario) but, as I said, with everything that’s happened and how much I’ve had to deal with, that may not be on the cards. It might be initially disappointing to end up with a Merit but I know that, given some processing time, I could get my head around it and be proud of it.
MAKE SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS IN CATCHING UP WITH MY DIARY – Due to my university work and the ups and downs of my mental health, I’m majorly behind with my diary (although I do keep rough notes) and while I’m not sure how I’m going to manage this, I want to get the situation more under control. Being behind just causes me so much anxiety. The university work isn’t going anywhere though and I want to do my best there so I obviously need to find a solution to this problem before I can start implementing it. I’m hoping therapy can be useful here.
WORK ON NOT COMPARING MYSELF TO OTHERS, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO MUSIC – This was a goal last year but between the pandemic disrupting the entire music industry and my sporadic therapy attendance (in which I’d planned to work on this issue), I didn’t make nearly as much progress as I would’ve liked. This is what I wrote last year and I think it’s still fairly accurate:
“This is probably the hardest one and a lot of the time, it feels unbearable to even think about. While I need to work on not comparing myself to others in general – in all situations – I figure that’s too big a task for such a difficult feeling so I just picked one area. Music has always been my happy place and I want it to stay (or go back to being or something) my happy place and it’s not, when I look at other artists and feel lost and sad and lonely and angry and bitter. So I want to work out – probably with therapy – how to focus on me and not worry about other artists beyond a practical, objective sense. This feels really, really hard so I don’t know if I’ll manage it in a year or whether I’ll even manage to start but I want to so I’m trying to think about it and figure out a place to start because I don’t want to feel all of these things. I want my happy place back.“
Having released more music and received good feedback over the last twelve months, I think my self-esteem and confidence is a bit higher but it doesn’t take much to tip me into that black hole. I really, really want that to stop happening so whatever it takes to avoid those feelings (for the majority of the time, at least), I’m willing to do it and do it for as long as necessary. I want music to be a positive part of my life, not something that’s draining.
FIND MY NEXT PROJECT – As I’ve previously said, there is more content coming that’s part of the Honest project but now that all of the tracks and music videos have been released, I want to work out what my next project is going to be, what the next creative goal I want to work towards is. I may find it during my last two Masters module, I might find it after, or it might find me. I’ve got a lot of ideas I want to explore so I guess it’s just about figuring out which one is the best fit for me in this particular period of time. Whatever it turns out to be, I’m excited. The Honest EP has been such a gift, such a wide and wonderful experience, that I can’t wait to see what the next project has in store for me.
As I said, we have no idea how this year is going to unfold so I don’t know what I will or won’t be able to achieve (in terms of what’s possible with the pandemic and my personal health – physical and mental – in the mix) but these are the areas of my life that I want to work at. If nothing else, last year showed us how strong and adaptable we can be, so who knows: maybe I’ll make progress in all of them or maybe I’ll make progress in entirely different things. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
Finding Hope 