Finding HopeThings I’d Tell My Younger Self
Posted on September 29, 2018
Have you seen the book where various different celebrities or famous people write letters to their younger selves? Some of them write pages and pages and some of them write a sentence, maybe two. But the majority of them reveal very little about their lives because they believe that the journey to the major events is as important as those major events. I don’t disagree with that but considering my levels of anxiety, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world for my younger self to have a little more certainty. Most of my stresses, then and now, are about the future so this would’ve been the perfect thing to calm younger me. Obviously this is a hypothetical exercise since we haven’t actually invented time travel and therefore don’t have to worry about causing a paradox that dramatically alters human history. We’ve all seen enough sci fi to know that that always ends badly.
- Your grades are only important for the next step. I know everyone keeps talking about how universities and jobs all look at your GCSE results and maybe in some fields – like medicine or if you wanted to be an astronaut (yes, I know, there’s a little bit of you that really does want to be an astronaut but, spoiler alert, that hasn’t happened yet) – that’s true but for the most part, your GCSEs only matter until you have A Levels and then your A Levels only matter until you’ve got a degree. Hopefully, you get my point. Try not to stress too much. If you get a grade that wasn’t as good as you wanted, feel it, process it, and let it go. Move on to the next thing. It will be okay. There’s always more than one way to get somewhere.
- Try not to worry about fitting in. I know you wish that you could be like the beautiful girls who all seem to have it so together but it won’t always be like that. The years will pass and you’ll be glad that you have your life and not theirs, not because there’s anything wrong with their lives but because you are where you’re supposed to be. I hope.
- You will get to Nashville. I know how much you want it. I’m not going to tell you how it happens because that journey is important but I promise you that you’ll get there and it will be worth the wait and the effort. I know it’s stressful and you’re terrified that you’ll never get there but you will. And it will be magical. Take it from someone who knows.
- Don’t let people treat you badly. You don’t deserve to be treated that way. There will always be people who think it makes them superior (*cough* or a better teacher *cough*) but it doesn’t. I know it’s really emotionally overwhelming but you are strong enough to stand up for yourself. I promise you, you are.
- It’s okay if you feel like you’re never going to get through something or if you feel like things are never going to get better. People will tell you that you will and you won’t believe them but that’s okay. There are things in life that you can’t know until you’ve experienced them. You can’t take pathways in your brain that you haven’t forged yet. So, when people tell you that time heals everything, try not to despair. They can say that because they have had that experience. It’s okay that you don’t yet. So keep going, keep living, and try to remember that everything you do and everything you experience is shaping you into the person you have the potential to be. And, chances are, a person who knows that time heals and a person who will annoy the shit out of a younger person by saying that time heals.
- You are so much stronger and can endure so much more than you think you can. I know that that’s not always a blessing but we have to believe it is, you and me. You’re gonna go through the wringer and it will feel really unfair but you’ll get through it. At the very least you’ll make it to twenty-four.
- There’s a reason you’re feeling the way you are. This is the point I’ve thought about most, about whether or not I should include it, but my gut says that I should. You’re autistic. I know that seems like a weird idea but you’ve always felt like your brain works differently to everyone else’s and this is why. Your only experience of Autism is the boy who was always being told off for being disruptive in primary school and most of the time, it’s really different for girls. You’ll figure it out, you’ll create a relationship with it, and what you learn will help other people.
Ultimately, there’s not much to be gained from wishing you could change the past and while there are things I wish had been different, I don’t think I’d change almost any of the things I had control over: the people, the pursuits, the loves… I’d choose them all over again.
A First Attempt at Bullet Journalling
Posted on September 15, 2018
As you guys have probably guessed, I’m a stationary enthusiast and over the years, I’ve gone through many, many notebooks and diaries and planners. I’m pretty picky about the kind of books I like and that’s probably why I’ve never found a planner that really works for me. The layout didn’t work or the writing spaces weren’t big enough and so on. So I was always on the lookout for the right one.
I started looking into bullet journaling after seeing photos and videos of bullet journal ‘spreads’ on social media: pages to track spending, sleep, mood… As well as monthly and weekly logs to keep track of what they were doing. It seemed to be a way of creating a very personal, tailored planner and that appealed to me, although I’m definitely not artistic enough to compete with the ones I’ve seen on Instagram and YouTube. But since it seemed to work for so many people, I thought I’d give it a try.
A lot of thought went into the bullet journal format (the official website is very informative) but in short, it’s a flexible system to “track the past, organise the present, and plan for the future.” Most people seem to use dotted notebooks (like the ones that Leuchtturm make) and dedicate pages to calendars (future log, monthly log, daily log) and trackers (habits, sleep patterns). I’ve found this incredibly helpful so I thought I’d share how I use it. Maybe this would be more easily done in video format but here we are.
At the beginning of the year, I bought a Leuchtturm notebook (dotted, navy blue, A5 – available here) and got to work. I looked at photos on Instagram and watched a tonne of videos on YouTube (AmandaRachLee is my favourite) and that really helped me to figure out what bullet journalling could be for me. I set up the index at the front and created several general spreads, including my new years resolutions, all the birthdays in the year, books to read, and things to watch. Carrying all of this around is so helpful and it has definitely made me more organised. And motivated.
One of my favourite spreads is the one for blog post ideas (and it actually spilled over into a second spread because I ran out of space). I find it so inspiring and motivating to look at. I’ve always been a list maker and I LOVE being able to tick things off a list; I’m always more motivated and productive when I’m working from a list. Having all of these ideas in one place has made blog writing much more efficient.
Many people do a monthly mood tracker but I did one for the whole year because I thought it would be easier to detect any trends in my mood and compare month to month. If I could do it again, there would be less categories. It took a while to figure out how broad each emotion had to be and as someone who feels emotions (and their subtleties) very strongly, it was very easy to create more categories than I necessarily needed. And I think a smaller spectrum of colours would make the whole thing clearer.
I found this particularly helpful when trying to judge my reaction to a medication: I could literally track my mood through each dose increase and assess how helpful it was. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost in one side effect or judge it based on the most recent feelings rather than the overall experience. So it was really helpful in regards to that.
Now to the month-to-month, week-to-week stuff.
It’s pretty standard to do a monthly log: a month at a glance of sorts so that you can see everything you’re doing during that period of time.
One thing that I love about bullet journalling is that you can refine your style and system as you go, to make it more useful to you. I went through several different layouts before I found the one that really works for me, at the moment at least. And you can be as creative as you want or feel capable of being. I’m not very artistic – in the drawing/painting sense of the word – but it’s been fun (and oddly empowering) to try my hand at something I don’t usually do.
Again, it took me a while to find a weekly set up that I liked. But I really like the one I’m using at the moment. It’s simple and quick to fill out and not overwhelming to look at.
The official bullet journalling style involves a system of categorising all the information (tasks, events, appointments, etc), checking off tasks, ‘migrating’ them to a later date… Personally I found it overcomplicated and just not necessary. I know that there are people who like it, people who don’t, and people who have either simplified the official key or created their own version. But this is what’s great about this whole format: you can tailor it to what you need.
And lastly, I’ve recently started using trackers as part of my monthly set up. I kept the list of tracked things short so that it was actually doable and I ended up finding it really useful. Having that list of things written down made it easier to remember to do them and to build the habit. And as I said, I love ticking things off a list so the idea of filling in the boxes at the end of the day was really motivating.
So I hope this was interesting. If any of you guys use bullet journalling or any other system for organising your life, let me know what works for you!
Life Goes On (Even When You Don’t Want It To)
Posted on August 11, 2018
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about how things change with time, how emotions change with time.
When I was nineteen, someone really important to me abandoned me without a word. I was already really struggling and it was completely devastating. For days afterwards, I just sat numbly in front of the TV with the volume up so loud that I couldn’t think. I couldn’t imagine a time when I wouldn’t feel so heartbroken. I couldn’t imagine how I would ever recover.
That was four years ago.
For a long time, that experience defined me. I wrote songs about it. I talked about it in therapy. It was part of every decision I made. It was the lens through which I saw the world. But slowly, it had less and less of a hold on me and then, about two years after everything fell apart, I realised that I’d completely let it go. That was amazing and so freeing.
And so I went on with my life, feeling lighter than I had in years. I felt like it had been taking up space in my body and with that gone, I had so much more space to engage and create and just live. I even got a little bit of closure (something I’d never really believed in as a concept): we met and talked and it was oddly satisfying to find that there wasn’t a good reason behind it – I’d never been able to think of one. So it was messy and intense but worth it. I didn’t need that experience to let it go but it was very satisfying to finally have all the pieces.
A couple of days ago, I realised that I hadn’t thought about it in months. I’d almost forgotten it had happened. That was a shock. And an epiphany.
It’s an oft-repeated saying that time heals everything and it always irritated the hell out of me, especially when I was a teenager. Everything felt (and still feels) so intense – every experience, every emotion – and I couldn’t imagine a time when it wouldn’t. But over time, I’ve watched the cycle of emotions play out and that’s been a revelation.
It seems that there are some things that you just have to learn for yourself and no amount of being told by someone else is the same as experiencing it first hand. And you have to live long enough for that cycle of emotion to actually take place. It’s only now that I can look back and truly know that time is the only thing that can lessen the intensity of those feelings (although it’s not unlikely that I’ll deny this the next time I’m overwhelmed with similar emotions). Every stage – from holding on to it, to letting it go, to really moving on – was a new experience and it was all ridiculously intense. But now I’m free of it, which is such an achievement. I had a lot of help but that’s something that I did and I’m really proud of that. For a long time, I needed to feel it and needed to hold onto it to make sense of it. But now I’m done. There are bigger, more important things in my life, good and bad.
10 Lessons I Learned at 22
Posted on September 30, 2017
Yesterday, I turned 23. That feels very strange to write and even stranger to say out loud. For some reason, 22 to 23 feels like a bigger jump than 21 to 22. I don’t know why. It just does. And so I’ve been thinking about this a lot, about this last year and the next one. A lot has happened, good and bad. So here is a post about what I learnt this year, what I learnt while I was 22.
1. You do get over things you never thought you would – I learned this last year but I really learned it this year. Last summer, I received a piece of news that felt pretty devastating but now, a year later, I seem to have adjusted to it. It’s strange how our emotions, how our brains work on things in the background. I didn’t do anything to work through this issue (it felt too upsetting to even talk about); I just slowly got used to it.
2. If you don’t ask, you don’t get – This doesn’t really need an explanation but I have learned to be a bit more forward this year. I’ve always hated asking for things and I still do but I am learning to do it. And sometimes, amazing things happen.
3. Sometimes things come full circle – I never really believed in closure. In my experience, things just end, leaving jagged edges. But this year, I got the opportunity to talk to someone who had really hurt me and ask her why she did what she did. It was a stressful and upsetting experience in itself but I am glad it happened. I had already let go of what happened but I appreciate the full stop on the whole thing.
4. Remember to tell your friends you really love them – A lot has happened in the last year, a lot of emotional ups and downs, and my friends have always been there for me. I’m so, so grateful for that.
5. You can let go of something without forgiving the perpetrator – I’ve always struggled with the idea of forgiveness because it just feels like I’m saying that whatever they did is okay when it isn’t. But I’ve learnt this year that you don’t have to forgive to let go. You can just leave it where it is and move on. I don’t know how I did it but it’s nice to know that it’s possible.
6. Procrastination reinforces procrastination – I learned in therapy that every time I put something off, I was making that habit stronger and therefore making it harder for myself. I learned that, even if I only did five minutes on whatever I was avoiding, I was breaking that pattern and that really helped with my motivation, regardless of the task. Plus, that was five minutes more than I would’ve done otherwise.
7. Crying in public is not that big of a deal – I have now cried in public so many times that I just don’t care. It doesn’t matter. There are more important things to worry about.
8. Having an item of clothing that makes you feel like you can conquer the world is really worth having – A couple of months ago I bought a pair of boots that kind of changed my life. It sounds silly but when I wear them, I feel like a superhero. I stand up straighter, I carry my body differently, and I feel better about myself. I wish I’d found them sooner.
9. Trust your feelings but also give them time to settle – I can tell if something is right or not because of how it feels. But having said that, I feel things so strongly that sometimes I need to sit with them for a bit, especially if whatever has caused those emotions was a shock. It’s like flood waters going down: it’s all about survival when they’re high but once they recede, I can figure out what the new normal is.
10. Find something that makes you feel like you’re making a difference – I’ve started volunteering for Autism research projects which has not only been pretty fun (I got to see my own brain waves!) but has helped me process my diagnosis of ASD. I still struggle with it and struggle with what it means for my life but being able to use it in a positive way has improved that.
Oh, and you don’t play ‘22’ by Taylor Swift as much as you think you will.
