Finding HopeMass Observation Day 2021
Posted on May 15, 2021
On the 12th of May every year, the Mass Observation Archive asks people to keep a diary for a day in order to capture the everyday lives of people all over the UK. There’s usually a suggested loose theme; for example, last year, it was suggested that diary entries not focus on exactly but highlight the pandemic and the effect it was having on our lives. This year, the website suggests that “diaries can record 12th May and reflect back over the past year and look forward to the future and life beyond this year.”
I’m a long time diary writer and have been for years so this project was an exciting discovery. I love the idea of so many people’s experiences stored in one place, the idea of collecting as many versions of one day as possible and trying to build the fullest picture of it. So, for the last couple of years, I’ve looked forward to this day, to writing about it, and to sending it off to the Mass Observation Archive. But I also like posting the day here too.
Some important things to know before reading this: I’m autistic and struggle with Treatment Resistant Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. I was also recently diagnosed with Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Inattentive Type). All of the symptoms get worse under stress; I’m beginning the homestretch of a Masters Degree in Songwriting and while things with the pandemic seem to be improving (the vaccines, the lockdown slowly lifting, etc), it’s hard to let go of so much ingrained fear and hard to know what the ‘right’ level of fear is. So I guess I’m still struggling with the pandemic, although not in the same way as I was struggling with it last year.
What I thought was going to be a relatively chilled out day spent at my laptop, working on stuff for the final Masters module, the Major Repertoire Project, and catching up on all the work I’d planned to do when I got hit with last week’s killer migraine (it lasted six days and involved paramedics being called to the house). But then, last night, I got an email from uni with the upcoming events and realised that the upcoming Song Sharing Session was today, this afternoon. I haven’t been back to uni since the first lockdown, working from home as an online student, so going back – and going into London – felt like a real big deal. But instead of spending hours ruminating on whether or not I should go, letting my anxiety make the decision, I decided that I wanted to go and so me and my Mum started making plans to make it possible. As things go, it felt as safe as anything can be right now: Mum had said she’d drive me there and back, I’ve had my first vaccine, and no one can enter the building unless they’ve tested negative. Mum ran out to get to COVID home tests and after that, all there was left to do was play through my songs to be as ready as possible.
Maybe because my subconscious was processing the idea of going to London, I didn’t sleep well and struggled up, later than I’d planned. And it was kind of chaos from that point on. I had a problem with my computer that sent me into a panic. I managed to sort it out but the anxiety of the situation wasn’t a great way to start the day. And then, before I could even make it to the shower, one of the cats got stuck in the attic and since we were going to be out for most of the day, we had to get her down before we left in case she couldn’t figure out how to do it herself or one of the others decided to climb up too. Even with treats, it took ages to get her down and then settle all five of them.
I did my Lateral Flow Home Test and had a shower, got dressed, and did my hair and make up while it did it’s testing thing. It came back negative, which was great obviously, but trying to register the result and get the confirmation email that would allow me to get into the uni building was overly complicated and much more time-consuming than described – particularly frustrating as I was trying to get out of the door. I’d wanted it to be as up to date as possible and suddenly it was making me really late. So that was just more stress on top of an already stressful morning.
The rush out of the house and the stress of going back to uni for the first time in so long made me nauseous and dizzy and I spent most of the drive breathing deeply and trying to keep my mind from spinning. My Mum had very kindly said she’d drive me to London since I’m still feeling very wary of public transport, especially the underground, so we talked and listened to music and by the time we pulled up outside the uni building, I was more excited than nervous. It felt so strange to be back, like it had only been a couple of days and a century at the same time since I’d last been there.
I’d expected to feel nervous there – I mean, I’ve been nervous everywhere but my house since the pandemic began – but given the strict safety procedures, I felt really safe and relaxed. It took me by complete surprise but it was so nice and being back there kind of felt like coming home; I have been studying there, on and off, for the last six years after all.
Slowly, the ten of us that had turned up to the session congregated and we were all just so excited, like a bunch of seven year olds at a birthday party. Some of us had never actually met each other in real life – as a fully online student, there was only one person I’d met before we went into lockdown – so it was very exciting to finally meet these people who I’d only ever seen on a screen. Having said that, it was somewhat weird to be saying, “It’s so nice to meet you!” to people I’ve had hours of classes, discussions, and laughs with.
We were all hanging out and chatting, catching up since most of us haven’t seen each other – even on a screen – for several weeks, when Sophie, our tutor and course leader, showed up to run the session. She was as excited to see us as we were to see her. It was so lovely to see her: I’ve known her for almost seven years and she’s been so supportive, both of my songwriting and of me as a person. So, yeah, I was super pleased to see her in real life again.
We got ourselves in a circle and had a bit more of an official catch up before taking turns playing songs and talking about our projects. I hadn’t heard music from most of the people there so that was really cool and inspiring and everyone’s working on such fascinating projects. I kept finding myself volunteering as a potential cowriter over and over, despite the voice in my head saying, “You already have so much to do!” The projects were just so fascinating.
I got to play two songs: the first was the song that really got my project rolling, a song I wrote a little over a year ago to a family friend who also has Autism; the second is a new song about my experience of OCD. The newer one was scary to perform but it seemed to go down well, which was reassuring. The whole session was just so fun and so good for me, for my mental health. I wanted to stay and hang out with everyone, even after the session was over, but since my Mum was driving me home, it wasn’t fair to ask her to wait any longer. So I said my goodbyes, made plans to meet up again, picked up my uni’s own facemasks (I mean, that’s the weirdest school merch I’m ever gonna get), and headed out to find my Mum.
On the drive home, I slowly came down from my adrenaline high until I was utterly exhausted. I did manage to catch up with my Mum and then two of my parents on the phone – they wanted to know how my first time back had gone – before I completely ran out of energy. It felt like a very long journey but we finally drove back into Brighton.
We stopped quickly to see one of my parents and her finally finished garden office. It was really nice to see her – we’ve all been incredibly busy (or dealing with an epic migraine) – and her new office looked gorgeous. It could be pretty cool to have a studio like that one day…
Mum and I finally got home, fed the hoard of hungry cats (who seemed to think they’d been abandoned), and crashed in the living room, continuing our rewatch of Grey’s Anatomy. I tried to work on a post for the blog but I was so tired and so drained that I barely managed a handful of sentences in the few hours I sat there. Eventually I just gave up and went to bed but it was still a struggle to sleep, just as it normally is; my thoughts started racing and I just couldn’t grab ahold of any of them long enough to settle. I don’t know how long it took to get to sleep but it was definitely after 1am, possibly even later.
So much has changed in the last three hundred and sixty five days. I look back at my last Mass Observation Day diary entry and my life is so different, in so many different ways. Last year, I was so scared, so terrified that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything because I was so scared. All I could do was sleep and bury myself in the familiar worlds of Fanfiction. I’m still scared but I’m also happy, at least some of the time. I have bad days but I also have good days, even really good days, and just that is a huge deal. I’m writing a lot, researching for my project, and facing my fears around the pandemic. Sometimes I can’t believe that the last fifteen months have happened but I only have to look at myself to see that they did: I’ve been through a lot and changed so much. And that’s just looking inwards. Looking outwards – at people I know, the communities I’m a part of, the world at large – is far too overwhelming to sum up right now in one day’s diary entry.
If you’ve been keeping a diary or still want to jot down some thoughts about the 12th, I would really encourage you to do so and send it to the archive. The page is here, in case you’d like to submit or learn more about this and their other projects.
Mental Health Update (May 2021)
Posted on May 9, 2021
Trigger Warning: This post contains mentions of self harm, but it’s simply a statement that it happened and there are no descriptions, graphic or otherwise. If this could upset or trigger you, please don’t read any further. Please always put your mental health and emotional state first.
So we’ve reached the last semester of the Master’s, with the big, final project that we’ve ultimately been working towards throughout this whole course. It’s a big deal, exciting and scary because – obviously – I want to do well and create a project that I’m proud of. But I am worried about my health, mental and physical, getting in the way and making it a difficult to both work hard and enjoy the process. So I thought, with all of this in mind, I’d write down where my head’s at and how I’m doing – I guess, so that I have a record of how I’m feeling right now, at the very beginning of the project.
At the moment, my biggest difficulties seem to be chronic fatigue and pain that are a result of my recently diagnosed Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I’m tired and sleepy all the time; some days, I can barely keep my eyes open during the day. While the physical tiredness is likely due to the hEDS, at least in part, we suspect the sleepiness is due to my antidepressant, Phenelzine. I want to switch to something else as soon as I can but mid-Master’s is not exactly a great time, given how long it generally takes for antidepressants to take effect and my track record of reacting badly to all but Phenelzine (so far, at least). So I’m having to just put up with that, with the dwindling help of Red Bull.
The pain has been really bad, particularly in my legs, arms, and back. For months, I’ve been taking painkillers daily but I feel like, over the last few weeks or so, it’s started to get slightly better. I’ve been doing the Occupational Therapy exercises for my wrists and hands and I’ve been able to start swimming again (yay!), both of which do cause pain of their own but it’s a very different pain and actually wears off pretty quickly while the hEDS pain tends to just get worse and worse unless I take painkillers. I’m getting better at figuring out where my limits are and stopping before I overdo it – most of the time. It’s hard but I do feel like I’m seeing progress.
My depression has been okay recently, much less of a problem than it has been in the past (she says while still on the ‘end’ of one, but I’ll get to that in a minute). I had one awful episode at the beginning of April, which did result in self harming. And then I had another episode last week, which I’m still feeling even if I’m not drowning in it anymore (it was kind of forced to the back burner by the worst migraine I’ve ever had). Both episodes were triggered by really upsetting news; they didn’t come out of nowhere like they sometimes do.
My anxiety has been a lot to deal with, but then there have been a lot of things to be anxious about: keeping up during the semester, the assessment and doing well in the module, all things COVID related (I’ve developed this weird house-separation-anxiety-like-thing whenever I’m out of the house too long, which is horrible), all of my health stuff, preparing for the new module and final project, trying to balance everything in my life, and so on. It’s exhausting and has a knock on effect; the rest of my mental health issues are all affected by my anxiety.
The two areas that are most tightly linked with my anxiety, I think, are my Trichotillomania and my OCD. My Trich hasn’t been too bad of late – not great but not unmanageable. But my OCD has been much more of a struggle lately than it sometimes is. I wrote about it in general here (so if you need a refresher on what my OCD is like, this is probably a useful read) but with everything going on recently, it seems to have kicked up a gear. I just can’t seem to do everything and then write all of it down; there aren’t enough hours in the day, which just leads me to getting more and more behind with everything, which just makes it worse and worse. Again, it’s just exhausting. I feel suffocated by it but I don’t know what to do about it; it feels like the walls are closing in around me and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.
As for autistic meltdowns, I haven’t had many of late. I think that’s because, despite my anxiety, I’ve had a really good few months. As I said in my previous post, this last university module and all the writing that came part and parcel with it was really good for me and I felt really good in myself so, in general, things didn’t build up to the point of meltdown. There were a number of occasions where something took me by surprise (for example, an unexpectedly triggering advert – I hadn’t even known that it was something that would trigger me so that was unfortunate for everyone) and I had a meltdown but as things go, it’s been better than it has been.
I’m not entirely sure how my ADHD manifests yet, having only received the diagnosis recently. If only it were as simple as getting the diagnosis and everything making sense… So I still have work to do in that regard. But I’m fairly certain – as certain as I can be at this point – that my issues concentrating and the feeling of my brain working against me are part of this picture. For the moment though, I’m in the dark about all of this. I’m in an impossible position medication-wise (I’m going to write about this in more detail at some point – it’s just that I’m still processing it all) so I’m stuck and unsure how to manage these problems. It’s frustrating and tiring and I wish there was an easy answer. Or even an easier one than I’m currently faced with. But there doesn’t seem to be. So I’m not sure where to go from here.
And the newest problem – because I really needed more problems… – are these migraines that I’ve been having over the last month. In the past, I’d have a migraine every few months or so but recently they’ve been different. They’ve been completely debilitating, painful to the point that I’ve ended up in A&E and had to have an ambulance called to the house because they’ve been so bad. They’ve also gone on for days when previously I could sleep them off and they’d be gone in twenty four hours. I’ve yet to find pain relief that does a decent job and I find that very scary. Calling 111 and them sending an ambulance because I was in so much pain but so light sensitive that even a darkened room felt too bright is a big deal and I’m scared of what’s next, of how it could get worse. I don’t know what’s causing them and no one else seems to either.
And finally… I’ve been the most consistent with therapy I’ve been since the pandemic began, even if I still find it hard and less productive when doing it over Zoom. But it’s looking like we’ll be back to face-to-face soon, which is exciting if scary – as I said, I’m finding it quite stressful to be out of my house. But hopefully, therapy will go back to being as helpful as it was pre-COVID, when it was face-to-face all the time. I don’t know exactly why it doesn’t feel the same over Zoom – maybe I find it harder to connect and talk about the hard stuff when I’m not in the same room as my therapist – but it just doesn’t, so I’m looking forward to getting back to the room.
So that’s it, I guess. This is my mental health (and I suppose, physical health update) before I start the final module of my Master’s, The Major Repertoire Project. Everything feels very messy and complicated right now, which isn’t exactly reassuring. I want to do well in the module, of course, but I also want to really enjoy it and really get the best out of it. The module doesn’t officially start until tomorrow but I’ve already started working on my project. I’m so excited. I just hope I can manage it with all of this other stuff going on.
The Fourth Semester of My Masters
Posted on May 8, 2021
And that’s another semester, another module done. The time is positively flying by and now there’s only one module left. But, before I move into that one, I wanted to reflect on this last module. The Writer’s Voice has been my favourite module so far (as I thought it would be) and I wrote more songs than I did in any of the others so far. I also think I wrote my best – and favourite – songs.
We were in lockdown when the module started so all classes were online. When lockdown started to lift, universities being one of the first things to open up, some of my uni’s courses started having in person classes but my course didn’t as we could continue to function online while other courses, like the performance or production courses, couldn’t. I have to admit I was relieved: I didn’t feel up to handling a big change, especially after having worked so hard to build a good rhythm with the online classes and writing sessions, and I really didn’t feel confident about commuting to London, meaning I probably would’ve stayed in online classes while many of my friends would’ve been onsite. I would’ve barely seen them. I really felt for everyone struggling with online learning (and that’s not to say I love it) but I was really grateful not to have to make a big adjustment in the middle of the semester. So we stayed online.
It was a really great semester and I’m really sad that it’s over – I’m not sure I can do it justice in a simple blog post – even if I’m really excited for what’s next.
We spent the twelve-week module looking at various different techniques related to lyric writing, from song maps and types of rhyme to sensory imagery and ekphrasis. Some of it was difficult, some of it was easy; all of it was an exciting challenge. The first half of the semester was focussed on the more technical, structural side of things, what my tutor (who is just awesome) called ‘thought architecture.’ And then the second half of the semester was focussed on the content of the lyrics and how that content is expressed. We had lectures on the techniques and then we’d get a week to write a song using that technique. I loved it: lyrics have always been my favourite part of songwriting and I’d been looking forward to it since I began the Master’s.
While the lecture group was big, my workshop group was small, made up of just the Part Time Second Years; there were about ten of us and they are all really, really lovely, thoughtful, creative people. I’ve had some great groups throughout this course but this one has felt extra special (although my first group was super special too). I feel like we were a really close-knit group: we shared a lot of stuff, both through our discussions and our songs, and we all cowrote extensively together in various combinations. I actually wrote with everyone in the group, an unintentional achievement that I’m quite proud of.
I think my favourite thing about this module was that the whole point of it was ‘learn things and then write as many songs as possible, learn more things and then write as many songs as possible, and so on, and so on.’ To a degree that’s what most of the other modules wanted you to do too but something felt different about this module; maybe it was because we were focussed on lyrics and that’s my favourite part, maybe it’s because of how much we’ve learned since starting the course and getting to this module, maybe it was because I was in a much better place mentally than I had been in a long time, despite everything going on outside of uni stuff… I don’t know. But something felt different. I was invigorated by the challenge of writing, of just writing all the time. It was awesome. It was so much fun. And I wrote so many songs that I’m so, so proud of:
- I wrote a song called ‘A Thousand Cuts,’ about the slow death of a friendship.
- I wrote a song that I actually really needed to hear myself called ‘One More Time’ as a reminder to always keep going.
- I wrote a song called ‘Astronaut,’ which is something I’ve wanted to do for ages.
- I wrote multiple songs from various fictional characters’ points of view, which I’ve completely fallen in love (I used to really hate it).
- I wrote a song about grief called ‘Incomplete.’
- And so many more…
And that doesn’t include the songs I wrote with others for their projects (I wouldn’t want to give anything away if they decide to release those songs). I love cowriting and I did so much of it this semester, sometimes four in a week, although I admit that that was stupid and completely draining. But it was just so fun and I loved every second of it, even when my brain was exhausted and moving slower than a snail. I loved learning their songwriting languages – each one different, of course – and I loved the challenge trying create the perfect song for them (and I still love both of these things, obviously). I made some really great creative relationships and some really great friends (or strengthened existing friendships) and that’s been the other wonderful thing about this module. These people are just so wonderful and I love writing with them and I sincerely hope that that continues for a long time.
The assessment for this module was a portfolio of four songs and an analysis of some of the techniques used. The song choice was pretty straightforward (at least it felt straightforward – I guess we’ll find out when the grades come out) but the analysis was harder. With the Masters in general, it’s felt harder to understand what they want from us, especially in the written work. I don’t know if that’s just part of Master’s level work or whether the difficulty is something to do with me and my Autism or ADHD. Either way, the constant uncertainty is exhausting. And even explained to me, I’ve still rarely felt confident about what I need to do to get a good grade. So assessment time is always a stressful time. But I worked hard and got through it with the support of my tutor and my friends and my Mum and now all that’s left is waiting for the results.
I also had some really exciting and fun opportunities come up during this module. They’re not over just because the module is but it would be remiss not to at least mention them when talking about the module. First of all I was chosen to be part of the judging panel for a songwriting competition, which has definitely been an experience and a half so far. I’ve learned a lot and, for the most part, it’s been really interesting and really fun.
The other exciting opportunity is a more academic one. There’s going to be a musicology conference in July focussed on starting to build a body of research on Taylor Swift as she’s such a phenomenon (in music, in pop culture, in business, etc) and there is very little research so far. We were invited to attend this (online) conference but also invited to submit research proposals, which, if accepted, meant speaking at the conference. As a major Taylor Swift fan, this seemed like a dream. So I got to work, wrote a proposal, and submitted it. And a few weeks later, I found out it was accepted so I will be speaking about Taylor Swift at an academic conference! I’m so excited, even if the idea of presenting alongside established and accomplished academics is more than a bit nerve-wracking.
Despite all of the changes going on in my life over the last three-ish months (managing my mental health, managing my chronic fatigue and pain, getting the ADHD and hEDS diagnoses, and just coping with all the stress of the pandemic), this is the most I’ve felt like myself in months – in over a year, I think. All the writing has been really good for my mental health and I feel like that and the classes were a very stable thing in my life, like a rock to cling onto in a really wild ocean. Somehow, everything about this module was exactly what I needed exactly when I needed it (apart from a few mishaps here and there). I learned so much and had so much fun; it was really good for my soul after a really hard year so I’m really grateful for these last three months.
Finding Hope 