It’s the 12th of May again, which means it’s Mass Observation Day! Every year, the Mass Observation Archive asks people to keep a diary for a day to record the everyday lives of those in the UK. I’ve written diaries for most of my life and I love the idea of pulling together all of these accounts in order to get a picture of an ordinary day in the life, whatever that might look like, for people in the UK. It’s like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. So here is my piece.

Some important things to know before reading: I’m autistic and live with Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder. More recently, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Inattentive Type), Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. I’m currently in between things: I finished my Masters Degree in Songwriting and am currently working on my next project for release but, at the same time, I’m trying to get my health (physical and mental) into a more stable place.

It wasn’t (and wasn’t ever going to be) a busy day. I’m halfway through getting off Moclobemide, my most recent antidepressant, so I’m trying to be gentle with myself; I’m trying not to push myself too hard. I’m also trying not to give myself a hard time for not doing more – with varying degrees of success. There’s just a lot going on at the moment, health-wise.

I had a bad start to the day in that I slept really badly, which has been the not so new normal ever since I tried taking medication for my ADHD. Even though I stopped taking them months ago, my sleep still hasn’t recovered fully. Between that, my chronic pain, and the crying baby next door, I didn’t get to sleep for a long time and woke up repeatedly. I didn’t really feel like I’d ever really gone to sleep, to be honest. I woke up around half ten (which is actually pretty good for me at the moment, what with the off kilter sleep schedule) because next door were having their deck worked on and the noise was too much to ignore.

There’s so much pain when I wake up in the morning at the moment. It’s awful. I can’t do anything until painkillers have kicked in and after feeling all of that, I’m generally pretty exhausted. I lay in bed for a while, reading until I felt like I could manage a shower, something that’s especially difficult at the moment as the pain is worst in my arms.

By midday, I was settled in the living room with my laptop. I had a couple of hours before a Zoom session with Richard (one of my best friends, my writing partner, my producer, and more) so I got to work. There were a couple of tracks that I needed to sign off on before they went to be mixed and mastered so I listened to those and did sign off. That done, I worked on a couple of upcoming blog posts until it was time for the Zoom session.

We caught up a bit since it’s been a little while since we last saw each other (although we frequently text each other silly jokes and pictures) and then we got down to business. [While I will be including the details in the version of this that I send in to the Mass Observation Archive, I don’t want to give away the details of new music. I will say that we worked on two tracks that I plan to release soon and discussed another bigger project that will be coming, hopefully, in the not too distant future.] All in all, it was a productive session.

I took a break after that. I put Harrow on (it’s been added to Disney+ so I’ve been rewatching it over the last few days) before having a quick check in with social media and then spending a bit of time reading.

It took a while to reel my focus back in but then I spent a couple of hours working on a couple of different upcoming blog posts. For some reason, my Mental Health Awareness Week blog post has been a struggle right from the start and I still haven’t finished it. I think I’m anxious about getting the balance right, of writing about the loneliness (the theme this year) without sounding ungrateful for the people I do have because I really am so grateful for them. I also just find Mental Health Awareness Week hard, with social media overflowing with vague, trite advice – advice that was vague and trite five years ago. I know it’s Mental HEALTH Awareness Week and not Mental ILLNESS Awareness Week but mental illness is part of mental health and I just feel like this should be a week (and don’t get me started on the fact that so many people and organisations only talk about mental health during this one week of the year) where every part of mental health and mental illness can be talked about, not just the ‘socially acceptable’ parts. But it isn’t. It doesn’t feel safe to do that. Loneliness isn’t a bad theme: loneliness and isolation are real obstacles to staying mentally healthy, to the point where it can be considered trauma. I guess I just feel like Mental Health Awareness Week isn’t enough when you’re trying to stay afloat in the ocean that is mental illness.

I had to stop working on that post after a while. I was just getting too frustrated. And then it wasn’t long before I was interrupted by the announcement of dinner. For those of you who don’t know, I live with my Mum but I have three other parents that I don’t live with. Anyway, one of them came over for dinner – something we do roughly once a week – and we had a good hang out and catch up. Sometimes we watch a movie but since neither she nor I were feeling great, we didn’t this time.

When she left, my Mum and I continued watching Harrow (she loved the show too) and I did another hour or so of work on blog posts – I’ve got a couple that I’ve been pulling together for a long time that I’ll hopefully be able to post soon – before moving over to my diary. Which brings us back to this post.

It wasn’t the most interesting day but I guess that’s kind of the point. It’s a normal day. And this is what normal looks like for me, this week at least. Who knows what next week will look like.

If you keep a diary or want to write down some thoughts about what your 12th May looked like, the website is here, where you can submit your diary entry and learn more about this and their other projects.