Finding HopeA Week In My Life (December 2020)
Posted on December 12, 2020
Since my last week-in-my-life post didn’t include any time ‘at’ university, I thought I’d write another one this semester, one that included uni time and all that that entails.
After three really bad mental health days, I was a bit wary about the week ahead – starting it feeling so depleted. It ended up being a very mixed week, as they’ve all been recently. Maybe it’s an end of term thing: I start off strong but then I hit a wall somewhere in the middle and it doesn’t always take much. I’ve worked hard this semester so hopefully I’ll be able to finish all of my assessment stuff fairly quickly – it’s mostly just polishing now – and get some proper holiday time. Last year, I had to work every day of the Christmas break, only taking Christmas Day off. So some time off would be really nice.
The week in this post began on Monday 30th November and ended on Sunday 6th December 2020.
MONDAY
I slept badly so I took my time getting up and having a shower. I had some breakfast (and ALL of my pills – there’s so many at the moment, what with my normal medication, extra supplements, and some antibiotics) and then I got myself sorted for my session with Richard.
We spent about three hours on the call, working on the production for a new song I’d written, and then just chilling out together, chatting about our uni work, the various projects we’re working on, the tv shows we’re watching, and so on… We’re always texting and we have our Zoom sessions but we haven’t hung out together in months and I really miss that.
When we finally hung up, I was exhausted and what started as an episode of The Split while I recovered turned into finishing the second series. It was really, really good – even better than the first series. Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan were particularly fantastic. I love Nicola Walker; she was incredible in Spooks, Scott & Bailey, River, and now in Unforgotten and The Split. Her performances throughout this second series have been breathtaking and the ending had me in floods of tears. She blows me away every time.
I spent what was left of the afternoon and early evening working on my assessment essay. Then Mum and I had dinner together before starting a rewatch of Unforgotten (yes, we’re on a bit of a Nicola Walker kick at the moment), while I did some diary writing. I’m so far behind, what with everything I’ve been dealing with healthwise and doing for uni. My anxiety over it is so high but so is my anxiety over my uni work so the two are constantly pushing against one another. I never have any respite from it and it’s exhausting.
I managed to go to bed reasonably early, which was an achievement, especially since I had to get up early the next morning for uni.
TUESDAY
Again, I slept restlessly but with disturbing dreams that I couldn’t quite remember when I woke up; it just left me feeling kind of uneasy for most of the day, which wasn’t fun. I swear, I’ve had as many nightmares or disturbing dreams since the pandemic began than in my whole life up to that point. It’s horrible; I really feel for anyone who deals with this generally, independent of the pandemic.
I got up, got showered and dressed, had breakfast and pills before logging into my first class of the day. I could only stay an hour of the two (pre-arranged with my tutor) but we spent that hour identifying and discussing different kinds of hooks and how they’re used in songs. Then I had to sign off for a call about my rheumatology referral. It seriously cannot come quickly enough; the pain in my arm, hand, back and legs is only getting worse as time passes.
Before I got down to work, I checked my Spotify stats and saw that the Honest EP has surpassed 30,000 streams. It’s a weird feeling, knowing that so many people have heard these songs. A good feeling, but a weird feeling. I can’t really describe it.
I spent several hours working on my essay, all but finishing the first draft. So that was a good bit of work done – more than I can usually manage between classes. I had some lunch, some time to dedicate to my diary writing, and then I was signing back into class.
The afternoon’s workshop was a productive one. We got through a lot of songs and we had some really good discussions, despite only having an hour. Everyone was really lovely about my song, which meant a lot since it was such a personal one. I also had questions about the grading criteria and learning outcomes because I find the language very unclear and that lead to a good conversation about the assessment as well as inclusivity and accessibility of the course. So it felt like a really positive class, in all sorts of ways.
When my class finished, my Mum and I FaceTimed with my Granny for her birthday and I also got to see my aunt (they’re in a bubble together), which was really lovely. I don’t think I’ve seen either of them in person since Christmas, which has been hard, even knowing that it’s the right, responsible thing to do. It a weird world – a difficult world – when the best way to love someone is to stay away from them.
I also FaceTimed with one of my parents who’d had a particularly rough day. So it was a very social day! It was good to do but I definitely felt drained afterwards.
I was having some downtime, doing some blog writing and watching TV, when another of my other parents called me and told me to change channel to a very cute programme about puppies. It was indeed very cute and it did make me wish for a puppy again, not that we intend to get one in the foreseeable future – we don’t have enough time to properly devote to one so it wouldn’t be fair. But I’m always up for any puppy time I can get.
But the best bit was how one of my cats, Mouse, reacted to it. She was fascinated by the puppies, even patting the screen, trying to touch them. It was utterly adorable. She sat patiently through the advert break and was just as absorbed by the puppies when they returned to the screen. She watched intently for the rest of the programme and then, when the credits rolled, she got up and walked away. It was the funniest thing.
So that was very adorable.
Mum and I had dinner with another few episodes of Unforgotten and I finished my essay. Well, the first draft anyway. It needed a read through and a tidy up before I sent it off but what I’d wanted done for my tutorial session was essentially done. A productive day’s work and in bed before eleven: not bad at all.
WEDNESDAY
So Lockdown 2.0 has ended, not that it felt like much of a lockdown. If you’re going to call it a lockdown, then you have to do what you did in the first lockdown and shut everything down. Otherwise it’s not going to make a difference, people are going to have even less faith in it as a safety measure, and they’ll flaunt the rules because they don’t think it matters. It’s been driving me up the wall. I’m so frustrated: with the government, with the people ignoring the rules (and boasting about it), anyone who is putting casual convenience over the safety of others… Yes, that’s a generalised statement. I’m aware that there are important and necessary reasons to go out but there just seem to be so many people who just don’t care that we’re still in a pandemic and I find that incredibly distressing.
I woke up at eight and intended to get up but then suddenly it was quarter past nine so I must’ve accidentally gone back to sleep. I did manage to get up then and headed straight for my desk to record the vocals for the song I’d been working on with Richard. Even though I love it, for some reason, I find it really hard to motivate myself to start recording so it seems that the easiest way is to just get up and do it before I can get into a procrastinating mindset.
That done, I had breakfast and a shower, leaving me with just enough time to tidy up my essay and send it to my tutor before heading out to have a blood test. I had one a month or so ago and it showed dangerously low Vitamin D levels so I’ve been on a high dose Vitamin D supplement to try and build them up again. This blood test should tell us whether they’ve helped and what the next steps are.
It was almost dark by the time we got home so we settled down in the living room, lit a fire (one of my favourite things about this time of year and about this house – the fireplace) and continued watching Unforgotten. I also kept working on my Lockdown 2.0 blog post. I’d been keeping the list updated throughout the lockdown so it was just a case of tidying it up, adding all the right links, and writing an introduction and conclusion.
I had to stop in the middle to sign in to my tutorial. I had a really good session with my tutor. He was complimentary about what I’d already done and had some really good feedback so I feel pretty good about my next steps. I know what I need to do and now I just need to do it. Then I get one more tutorial before the holidays for any final feedback or guidance. The deadline is in sight, which is more than a bit scary. I just really, really want to do well.
I was exhausted afterwards but I still managed to finish and post the Lockdown 2.0 blog. So I guess it was a pretty productive day.
That done, I had a quick scroll through social media and saw that people had started to post their Spotify stats of the year, both as listeners and as artists. I always find this difficult, regardless of any rational talking to I give myself, regardless of whatever I’ve personally gone through or achieved that year; it just taps into my lifelong insecurity of not doing well enough, not being ‘good enough.’ So it’s not easy. This year should’ve been different, with four of the five tracks from my EP being released since January, but Spotify doesn’t count anything after 31st October and with ‘Honest‘ coming out on 30th October, only one day of its streams were counted. So my most successful song wasn’t a part of my Spotify Wrapped, making it completely inaccurate. So I haven’t shared it – haven’t wanted to – and I feel a little bit robbed of that. I have included the percentage increases here but in reality, they’re a good bit higher since ‘Honest’ did so well.
Hopefully next year, or whenever it is that I release more music, the figures will be more accurate and I’ll feel confident in sharing them. This ‘comparison anxiety,’ as my friend called it, was something I really wanted to work on in therapy this year but even when I’ve felt able to ‘go’ to therapy, it’s been difficult to get much further than damage control around the pandemic. That’s been really difficult – a real frustration – this year. I’ve just felt completely stuck at therapy: while I want to move forward, I’ve only felt able to maintain the fragile balancing act I’ve managed to create. And I haven’t even been able to do that a lot of the time.
Early evening, my Mum and I FaceTimed with my Granny before having fish and chips with one of my other parents. We watched the new episode of His Dark Materials (Series 2 Episode 4) and it was so good. Oh my god, that cliffhanger!
I was just getting ready for bed when I felt the pain in my back. It had been aching all afternoon but that’s not unusual right now but then it started to get worse, sharper and higher. It came on so suddenly that I couldn’t get from the bathroom to the bedroom without Mum’s help and then, when I collapsed on the bed, I couldn’t move because the pain was so bad. It seems to come in waves: there’s the pain and then it surges like a series of electric shocks before finally (FINALLY) receding back to the original pain level. And I never know how long it will go on for; sometimes painkillers seem to make a difference and sometimes it seems to go on for ages regardless. I’m not entirely sure how long this one went on for but it was at least half an hour. And then it always takes quite a long time for me to get my body to relax afterwards, my muscles having been so tense while the electric shock pain was so bad. So even though I was exhausted, it took me a long time to get comfortable and drift off.
THURSDAY
It took me a long time to get up because I was so stiff and sore. The rheumatology appointment can’t come soon enough. I struggled through breakfast and a shower and then had a Zoom production session with Richard, continuing to work on the song we’d started on the Monday. Considering how out of our normal styles the song was, I think we did a good job, especially for a demo and I’m definitely interested to hear what my class have to say when they hear it.
We also had some chill time, just chatting and hanging out, almost like we would if we were actually together, which was really nice. We’re coping with remote sessions but I cannot wait to hang out again properly, have face-to-face writing sessions, and actually do things together. Or not do things together but do that together in the same room, if you know what I mean.
When we finished, I did a couple of FaceTime calls with family and then collapsed on the sofa. I was completely exhausted. Me and Mum watched the last episode of Unforgotten Series 3 and oh my god, it gets me every time (if you know, you know – I’m not going to spoil it but the acting is incredible). Nicola Walker does not get the credit she deserves, although from what I’ve read in interviews, she seems to be pretty happy just buckling down on great projects and not doing the whole spotlight thing. (I’m so annoyed with myself that I missed seeing her in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – I would love to see her on stage and it’s such a great book.)
Mum and I were having a relatively chilled evening until I asked her about her call with my doctor. There had been multiple things to update her on and ask about but some of the advice she’d given was just really triggering and upsetting. I will talk about it at some point because I think it’s an important thing to have conversations about but it’s not something I’m personally ready to talk about yet. But it really upset me and just killed the warm, cozy mood of the evening.
And then, to make matters worse, Mouse (the cat) brought in a dead mouse, which is something that almost always sets off a meltdown (fortunately Mum understands this and is okay with dealing with it while I do my best to avoid said meltdown). I managed to remove myself quickly enough that I didn’t have one but it was just the final straw on what I could handle that evening so even though it was still quite early, I went to bed. It was all just too much.
FRIDAY
I slept for about twelve hours but I still woke up feeling exhausted, depressed, and miserable. I feel like I spent most of the first lockdown working really hard to get my mental health into some sort of box so I felt like I wasn’t constantly overwhelmed but most days, it still feels like I’m walking on a tightrope and it takes so little to knock me off and back into that suffocating depression. And that’s exactly what the night before did.
I really struggled all day. I just felt completely unmotivated and so, so tired. I was also having to deal with side effects of my antibiotics – they left me with a disgusting taste in my mouth all the time – which was just an extra strain. I only had one day left so I tried to focus on that but it just felt so much harder than it would’ve had I not already been feeling so awful. I did manage to finish and post the blog post about What’s Next for the Honest EP so that was good to do and helpful for my mental state – ticking stuff off my list always gives me at least a bit of a boost.
The good news of the day was that Kalie Shorr had re-released (I guess) her debut album, Open Book (which I wrote about here), but as Open Book: Unabridged, the original album plus four more songs. ‘My Voice’ and ‘Lying To Myself’ had already been released as singles and she’d played ‘Eighteen’ during her livestream concert but ‘Out Of It’ was completely new, which was really cool. They’re all stunning songs and all in their own way. ‘My Voice’ is empowering and unapologetic, as well as a very effective middle finger at the Country labels in Nashville. ‘Lying To Myself’ paints an aching authentic picture of insecurity after a break up with incredible lyrics like, “I picked out all my favourite things you said, then like a delusional architect, I built you up like a house of cards” and “You liked it up on that pedestal ’cause damn, you looked incredible, but coming down’s inevitable.” ‘Eighteen’ is a brutally honest, heartbreaking song about looking back at a relationship that really wasn’t okay, where you were all in but you were only ever treated badly. And ‘Out Of It’ is similar to a previous Kalie song, ‘Awake,’ but this time, she’s saying ‘no’ and isn’t going to get pulled into the bullshit; this time, she’s cutting the cord between herself and the other person. And because I’m a lyric nerd, here is my favourite (or one of my favourites) from each song:
My Voice: “Too rock for country, too country for punk / But who said I had to pick either one / Tattoos at the Opry / I could cover em up but it’s not me”
Lying To Myself: “I’m a little out of touch with reality, it’s never been that nice to me / I like the pictures I paint the best”
Eighteen: “I see you out with younger versions of me / While I’m trying to find who I used to be / I’m terrified that you and I will always be chasing eighteen”
Out Of It: “Your mom and dad put you through hell / You tell your secrets ’til you scare yourself / It’s a big dramatic entrance then you leave / And now I’m the girl I said I’d never be”
Late afternoon saw me dragging myself through some preparation for a mental health assessment that I have coming up, which was another thing I needed to do. But I was so tired that it took forever and I spent a lot of the time it took with my head on my arms, just trying to think. It was just a really bad mental health day. There was no way around it so I just tried to get through it. I was too tired to do anything really but I still tried to write my blog post about the UniversitiesUK Conference. I find it so hard to just do nothing; it causes me a lot of anxiety so even when I’m exhausted, I’m still desperately trying to do something.
By necessity, it was a quiet evening and I went to bed early, all too aware of how soon I had to wake up again to watch Maren Morris’ livestream concert.
SATURDAY
After MANY alarms, I struggled up at 2am to watch Maren Morris’ livestream concert. It felt very strange to not be a part of the crowd, singing (or screaming) along with her but it was so good to see her perform and hear her gorgeous voice again. It was very comforting, like a reminder that some things don’t change. The world might’ve turned upside down but Maren Morris is still Maren Morris, an exceptional songwriter, singer, and performer. So I was really grateful that she and her team put together this show for us.
I didn’t get back to sleep until about five and couldn’t be roused for anything. I eventually woke up at twelve and then I felt so tired and heavy that I could barely get out of bed. I spent several hours unable to do anything but lie on the sofa and watch TV. Disrupting my sleep patterns always throws me for six and with the depressive feelings still very overwhelming, I was really struggling.
Eventually I managed a shower, which completely exhausted me. It also makes me feel sick and dizzy to stand up for the amount of time it takes to sort the shower, have the shower, and then get dried and dressed. One more thing on the list of things being investigated.
Back in the living room, I put on Lucifer and attempted to do something productive. Mostly I ended up jumping between this and my diary, writing a few sentences here and there before switching back, just too tired to think enough to write anything decent. So that was frustrating, plus I had the nerve pain in my leg again – not the electric shock version but the bit that always comes before that (even if it doesn’t turn into said electric shock feeling) where it aches deeper than feels physically possible. So that didn’t help.
Mum and I had an early dinner and then she went for a swim. I really wanted to go and felt like I should – I’d been looking forward to it ever since the pool closed for lockdown – but I just had absolutely no energy. So she went and hopefully I’ll feel able to go next time. I got some good writing done though, so at least the time didn’t go to waste.
Having gotten up so late, I ended up going to bed too late, which was a bit of a pain. My sleep schedule is so easily knocked off course and then so difficult to correct. It was worth it though. Seeing Maren Morris perform is always good for my soul.
SUNDAY
I slept restlessly and struggled up around ten. I still felt incredibly depressed and it took a huge amount of effort to just get out of bed, into the shower, and up into the living room. I had a quiet day, not that that I think I could’ve managed anything else. I managed to finish and post my blog post about speaking at the UniversitiesUK Conference. I also finished all the paperwork for the upcoming mental health assessment and worked on the interview questions my university had sent me about doing the conference (that interview has since been posted). So, considering how awful I felt, I did manage to get something out of the way and check some things off the ongoing list, which – as I think I’ve said – at least helps me to keep my mental state from sinking lower. Having said that, I don’t want to promote the idea that being constantly productive is essential for your mental health; I’ve just found that, if I can tick something off of my to do list, even if it’s something tiny, then that can help me to keep moving forward, help me not to get stuck in my depression. It doesn’t always work; sometimes I just have to surrender to a bad day and hope that the next one will be better. But trying , even if not succeeding, does seem to do something positive.
In the evening, one of my parents came over and the three of us had a chilled evening, eating dinner in front of the fire and continuing our rewatch of Lucifer. It was gentle and undemanding and I did feel better for it. I often simplify my mood into two levels: surface and deep. And in this case, even though my deep mood was still very depressed and twisted up, my surface mood was a bit lighter. Calling it a surface mood doesn’t, to me at least, make it any less important than the deeper mood; it just means that it’s the mood that deals with the day to day stuff while the deeper mood is the one that you carry inside you and the one that sits with all the big, important stuff in your head and in your life. I guess, I see this mood as the one that’s so intricately intertwined with a person’s overall mental health. For example, in the previous few days, I was depressed on both levels (I’m not sure how good a job I’ve done of illustrating that but it’s the truth) but after the Sunday evening, my surface mood started to lift out of that depressed place. My deeper mood was still there though (and still is as I post this). But the lightening of my surface mood did make it a bit easier to face Monday and the coming week.
I tried to go to bed early but as usual, failed. I swear, I’m desperate to sleep all day and then, at about seven o’clock in the evening, my brain snaps on and starts firing wildly, almost too fast for me to keep up with my own thoughts. It’s so frustrating. It’s almost as if my brain has got day and night confused.
So there you have it: another week completely different from the last. I think I’m grateful for that – it must be better than feeling like you’re stuck in a hamster wheel surely – but it’s not without it’s difficulties. When planning is the thing that makes life easier to bear, it can be hard when each new week seems to bring something unexpected.
You guys seem to like these posts so I’ll be sure to do another one soon but probably not until the new year. Touch wood, I can get all of my coursework done in the next ten days and then I can have some time off (although I’m not exactly sure whether it will feel like time off – my brain already has an anxiety fuelled to-do list waiting for me – but I’m going to try my best.) Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope to see you in the next post.
A Day In My Life (University With Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Posted on November 28, 2020
As opposed to my usual week-in-the-life posts, I thought I’d do something slightly different this time and zoom in on what it’s like to be an autistic student at university (one doing an MA in COVID-19 times anyway). This is obviously just my experience – as the saying goes, ‘if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person’ – but I thought it might be an interesting post to write. I feel like it’s so important to share our experiences as autistic people, especially when media is being created that can be harmful to us (i.e. everything that’s been going on with Sia’s new film – I feel like I should be writing about that but I still don’t know how to; it makes me so upset that I can’t really write anything that feels articulate enough to represent the significance of the issue). So I hope this is an interesting read.
THE NIGHT BEFORE
Monday was hugely busy, with a production session, two doctors appointments, and working on the essay of the module in the spaces between. I’ve been working on it somewhat steadily but since I have a feedback session coming up, I’ve been a bit more random in my approach to writing it – fitting writing time in wherever I can or just writing about certain things as they occur to me – so that I can get as much out of that session as possible.
So it was one of those days where I barely had time to think.
On Monday evenings, the Masters course have a song sharing session between 7.30pm and 9.30pm. I’ve been a couple of times but I tend to find it too much. I’m most creative at night and so filling my head with new songs and song analysis right before I try to sleep really messes up my ability to sleep, which I have to try to do relatively early with my first class on a Tuesday at 9am. And if I don’t get enough sleep on a Monday night, I’m useless in every class on the one day I have classes. So, unless there’s a really good reason, I can’t really prioritise them.
I also find them quite hard socially: as much as doing the Masters course part time was the right thing for me, it has meant that for both years, I’ve never quite felt part of the group. There’s a handful of us in the same position and I can’t speak for them but it’s always left me feeling a bit ‘other,’ like I don’t really fit anywhere – not quite part of the group in the first year and even less part of the group in this second year. Everyone on the course is lovely but it does have a pretty big impact on the social side of the course. And when you struggle with feeling like you don’t fit in, it’s hard to feel it in yet another area of your life. So sometimes that factor just makes it too hard on my mental health. Maybe it will feel easier when one of my best friends rejoins the course in January.
So, instead, I used the time to do some more work on my essay before emailing everything required for the feedback session to my tutor (I wanted to make sure he had enough time to go through it all before we met on Wednesday afternoon). Then I tried to unwind a bit. Somehow I still ended up going to bed too late – not that 11pm is hugely late but for me, the night before a class, it’s on the border of being dangerously late.
I have a prescription for sleeping pills because my anti-depressants can cause problems with my sleep but I try to avoid them where I can. Having said that, knowing how exhausting a uni day can be, I usually take one the night before to make sure I’ve had enough sleep to give me the best chance of getting through said long uni day.
THE DAY ITSELF
I wouldn’t say I slept well and I struggled to get up but I’ve had worse nights so I just tried to push through the fatigue. I got dressed and made up and then collapsed on the sofa for a rest. Standing for the time it takes to shower, get dressed, and do my make up makes me feel weak, and lightheaded, and sick – something we’re still investigating with, unfortunately, very little progress – but getting up as early as I had meant that I did have enough time for some recovery time. It’s all down to planning. My life is dependent on planning. I also managed to eat some breakfast and take all of my pills. I’m taking quite a few at the moment – more than the ‘normal’ ones that help me maintain my mental health – because of a Vitamin D deficiency and horrible nerve pain down my left side (I’ve been waiting for a hospital appointment for the latter since about April or May, which may be my personal record for appointment waiting times).
My seminar started at nine (if you’ve read my previous university posts, you’ll remember that I’m doing all of my classes online this semester). My normal tutor (who is legitimately one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met) started the class before handing us over to a guest tutor who gave us a two hour class on arranging strings and horns. He was incredibly knowledgeable and engaging and so it was really interesting. Plus, Tiger came and sat with me for most of it, which was very nice. University with cats is a definite advantage of online lectures.
I was struggling to concentrate by the end of the class so I was relieved when we wrapped up. It was a lot of knowledge and sensory information to try to process and sort through and digest. I felt more than a bit dazed. Fortunately, the session was recorded so I can either go back and listen to it in shorter sections or go back and search for something specific.
My next class wasn’t until five so I had rather a lot of time to fill. Pre-pandemic, I’d hang out at uni and do cowrites, go to the favourite local coffee shop with friends, or work on whatever was on the list at the time but I’m finding it much harder to use this time effectively, whether that’s due to having my classes online or down to the pandemic just really screwing with my brain. Stuff that wasn’t hard before is now and the only thing I can put it down to is the pandemic, even if I don’t know precisely why. All I know is that it’s a weird time and so it shouldn’t be surprising that certain things aren’t the same as they were before. But it’s still frustrating to have such a big block of time that I could be using productively and not have my brain cooperate. Early in the semester, I ended up staring at my laptop screen, desperately trying to work on stuff and just not being able to. I got more and more frustrated and demoralised and eventually I just had to accept that this is not productive time. So I’ve been trying to come up with ways to fill it that aren’t too demanding but still feel like there’s a point to them; I don’t want to feel like I’ve wasted it by just staring at my phone or mindlessly jumping between the open windows on my laptop because that’s just not good for my general mental health. So I’ve been trying things like reading or watching new movies or TV shows – these have been good sources of inspiration in a time where I’ve struggled to find inspiration – or having a nap if I need one… Things that don’t require a lot of energy but still feel worthwhile (most of the time).
I did a quick scroll through my social medias to see if there was anything that needed replying to and then did some admin work: replying to emails, updating my bullet journal, and so on. Just as I was about to move onto something else, I got a load of notifications from social media, all Taylor Swift announcing her acoustic concert film going up on Disney+, folklore: the long pond studio sessions. That was so exciting that it temporarily scrambled my brain, in both a good and a bad way. As an autistic person, I’m really not a fan of surprise drops because I just get hit by a tidal wave of emotions and I feel so overwhelmed that I actually feel sick. I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the film because I am so, so grateful for all that Taylor has been putting out during the pandemic (her work really has been one of the things that’s helped me during this time) but the suddenness with which she’s been announcing things has been difficult because that doesn’t give me enough time to do the emotional processing that I need to do. So although I eventually settled into being really excited, I spent a lot of the day feeling painfully twisted up and anxious over the mess of emotion I was experiencing.
That did leave me floundering quite a bit, I have to confess. So, to try and take my mind off of everything I was feeling, my Mum and I caught up with the latest episode of His Dark Materials. It did help a bit. It’s such a great show; the casting, the acting, the sets, the interwoven storylines, etc are all so beautifully done. I loved the first series and I’m really enjoying the second one. I love Dafne Keen as Lyra (I so related to Lyra’s reaction to popcorn – it was freaking hilarious) and Amir Wilson as Will but I think it was Ruth Wilson as Marissa Coulter and Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby who really stole the show this week (pun actually not intended – if you know me, you’ll know I love a good pun). Their big scene together was just so powerful and how Ruth Wilson played the aftermath was particularly emotive.
I spent an hour or so working on a new blog post but after a while, I was just getting slower and slower and eventually I gave up and had a nap. I slept for about two hours before struggling up for my second class at five. I could’ve easily slept longer but I did my best to shake it off and concentrate on the workshop. This is where we (in this case, all of the 100% online students – the rest are blended and do the workshop in person onsite) share the songs we’ve been working on over the week and get feedback from the rest of the group. For most of the semester, we’ve had briefs each week but now we’re just working on whatever’s right for us. So, for example, I didn’t have a song to present because I’ve been working on the feedback for previous songs and the essay, rather than a new song (although I did recently write a rap, although I’m not sure whether I ever want anyone to hear it). Everyone else had songs to play though so I could still participate and give feedback, although I’m not sure how helpful I was because of how tired I was. But I tried. Some days I was just have less energy to work with than others.
I had an hour break before the evening session, which runs from seven to nine; they’re technically extra-curricular but I try to attend them when I can, especially now that they’re online and therefore more accessible. I don’t want to miss out on anything I don’t have to.
During my break, I had a quick dinner and catch up with my parents. The Grammy nominations had also been announced so I went through those. I’m super pleased for Taylor Swift: folklore is such a great album. Six nominations – Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, Best Pop Vocal Album, Best Song Written For Visual Media – is incredible and I’m really excited for her. Personally, I think she deserves at least several of those, especially considering the other nominees. I’m absolutely psyched for Ingrid Andress and her three nominations: Best New Artist, Best Country Song, and Best Country Album. I’ve been following her for years, having met her in Nashville at least a couple of years before her album was released. She’s an amazing writer and it would be just so awesome for her to win even one Grammy award this early in her career. But I’m concerned about her chances; she has some serious competition in all of those categories. The Best Country Song category, for example, is incredible, full of so many amazing songwriters that I love so much: Natalie Hemby (‘Bluebird’ by Miranda Lambert and ‘Crowded Table’ by The Highwomen, a group of which she’s a member), Maren Morris (‘The Bones’), and then Ingrid, of course. I want them all to win it. I was disappointed that Halsey still hasn’t been nominated. Manic is such an incredible album, as is Badlands (Live from Webster Hall), and it’s so frustrating that she doesn’t get the industry recognition she deserves. Especially given how popular ‘Without Me’ was, I’m really shocked that she’s never been nominated.
I just made it in time for the late session, which involved two of last years graduates presenting their final projects, one about using songwriting to explore different aspects of personality and the other about the experience of their gender transitioning and how sharing that story has the potential to increase understanding and empathy and break down barriers. They were both really cool projects but it was also massively helpful to see their processes, how they’d developed their ideas and researched them and how that research had lead them to writing the songs they wrote. It was fascinating and I definitely feel more prepared for my own project. I’ve got several ideas I’ve been turning over and the presentations have been helpful in my decision making process too. So I got a lot out of it, even if I was completely exhausted by the time the session finished.
It was about half nine and I probably could’ve gone straight to bed but I went and spent some time with my Mum, watching some TV together as we both wound down from the day. But it wasn’t long before we were both falling asleep so we put the cats to bed (they sleep in the kitchen so that we’re not woken up at five – the time they start demanding breakfast) and headed to bed ourselves.
THE NEXT MORNING
I’m not one of sleeping in so I always set an alarm. Then I can get up and start doing things (I have a real problem with needing to be productive) but usually, the day after a uni day, I sleep through the alarms I set. It doesn’t seem to change anything though. I keep setting alarms and sleeping through them. But that morning was special. I dragged myself out of bed at eight to watch folklore: the long pond studio sessions, as soon as it was available. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable to get up when I was so exhausted but it was absolutely worth it. The film was amazing, so amazing that I still haven’t figured out how to put all my feelings into words yet.
Since this post is just about my day at uni, I won’t write much more but just as I wrote about the Monday night, I thought I’d write about the Wednesday morning. Usually there isn’t a brand new Taylor Swift film to watch so I try to rest and recover my energy – physical, mental, and emotional – from the day before. As I said, I’m struggling with this need to be productive all of the time so with that in mind, I try to schedule undemanding tasks for Wednesdays. That particular day, I had a couple of half hour tutorials with tutors, so I spent the morning making sure I was ready for those. I’d already made notes of what I want to ask and discuss so I spent the rest of the morning going through those to make sure I felt as prepared as possible.
So, as you can probably tell, it takes a lot of planning and prioritising and rationing of energy to make it possible for me to go (or at the moment, ‘go’) to university, to make it possible to live my life in the most positive and productive (to a healthy extent) way. This isn’t an unusual day for me. While stuff like big Taylor Swift announcements and the Grammy nominations don’t happen every day, there’s often something that can cause emotional reactions like the ones described and I deal with fatigue and anxiety everyday. It’s one big juggling act. Every day. One enormous, exhausting juggling act every day.
A Week In My Life (Going Back To University In A Pandemic)
Posted on September 29, 2020
So, I’m officially back at university, which feels very weird to say after six months of unstructured time in lockdown. With the ongoing pandemic and my mental health issues, it may be overly ambitious but, as I said in a recent post, I really needed to try. So I thought I’d write a blog about the first week back as it was bound to be an ‘interesting’ experience. I’m only ‘in’ one day a week but that doesn’t account for extra work and assignments, as well as trying to balance extra theory lessons, therapy, and so on. So, unsurprisingly, I was pretty anxious going in.
The week in this post started on Tuesday 22nd September and ended on Monday 28th September 2020. It begins on a Tuesday as my academic week begins on Tuesdays this semester and I thought the week’s activities would make more sense in that context.
TUESDAY
I’d tried to go to bed earlier than usual the night before, which I had managed to a certain extent, but getting up was still a struggle. It’s been so long since I’ve been required to get up for something relatively early in the day and finding the motivation to get out of bed was a problem I’d long thought I’d conquered. It was very tempting to roll out of bed at five to nine and attend my lecture as I was. But I really didn’t want to look like a befuddled, just unfurled hedgehog so I eventually managed to drag myself up and into the shower. That was fine but apparently my makeup skills have drastically deteriorated since lockdown began; getting my eyeliner to match was practically impossible – I’d decided to wear makeup in the hope that it would make me feel more motivated, more normal, more in a university mindset, since I always wore make up to university. I got dressed – smarter than my usual lockdown attire but still comfortable – and put on jewellery for the first time in ages. Then, as the day’s classes were on the whole more introductory than anything else, I set myself up on the sofa with my collapsible desk and laptop and logged into the online class, ready for the nine am lecture.
My lecture class is online and we spent two hours going over the new module, Musical Language in Songwriting. We went through the learning outcomes, the details of the assessment, and listened to a selection of songs, hearing some of the musical concepts we’ll be learning about to then try out in our own music. I’ll admit to being anxious about this module: it relies on music theory more heavily than the other modules do and that’s not an area I feel super confident in. So while my tutors are really nice (I’ve met them both before) and I know I could go to them if I needed help, I am still nervous about not being able to do what is asked of me.
We had a two hour break where basically all I managed to do was eat some lunch. I’d forgotten how exhausting it is to go back into education when you’ve had a significant break, how exhausting university can be in general (especially when you’re dealing with issues like anxiety, for example), and how exhausting it is to study/work in an entirely new format. I’ve used Zoom and FaceTime and so on to socialise but I haven’t used it in this context before and it definitely felt like new territory. So I watched some TV and made sure I had a track ready to play in the Workshop.
The Workshop was much more of a challenge than the lecture. This was the onsite class but as I’ve already discussed, I’ve opted to do the whole module online. I felt that feeling safe and being safe was worth a little added difficulty in class. But it was a lot of added difficulty. I was one of two online students – and the other will usually be onsite – and I just felt very removed from the class. The position of the camera meant I couldn’t see any of my classmates and I couldn’t really hear what they were saying or the songs they were playing. That made it very hard to engage as part of the group and anyway, my only way to do that was to type into the chat box that showed up on the tutor’s laptop. Not exactly a great system in group discussions. I spoke to my tutor about the problems and made a note to speak to my student support person. It did make the class a struggle but hopefully, with some feedback, the situation will get better.
I don’t really know what I expected it to feel like. There had been so much administrative drama beforehand that I hadn’t really thought beyond the actual day ‘at’ university. But then it was over and I felt restless, anxious, and depressed. I don’t know what I expected it to feel like (or what I would’ve expected if I’d thought about it) but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that. So that was a bit upsetting.
Given that my lectures finished at three, I’d planned to log out of uni and get on with stuff: work on some blog posts, write in my diary, or even work on my songwriting assignment for the week. But I was so exhausted and so drained that I couldn’t concentrate on anything – staying awake took all the energy I had. I know I watched a Harry Potter movie (they’ve always been comfortable and familiar background noise) but I don’t really remember watching any of it. I made several attempts at blog writing but suddenly it was the evening and I hadn’t really done anything. I know that going back to uni and going to classes, even undemanding ones, is a big deal and that we shouldn’t base our self worth on our productivity but I felt really frustrated that I hadn’t managed to do anything. I feel like I have so much to do all the time – too much to do – and it just feels impossible to keep up. It’s exhausting, mentally and emotionally.
In the end, I just went to bed early but, of course, I couldn’t sleep. After a while, I was getting so frustrated that I got up for a bit and tried out Dare Me on Netflix. I watched a couple of episodes and although it felt pretty exaggerated and over the top, I found the characters and their motivations interesting and I found it visually appealing: the styling, the settings, the colouring. I don’t know if I’ll keep watching but it helped distract me from everything and eventually I was able to get to sleep.
First day back at university since late March: attempting to navigate online classes, trying to remember how to talk to people rather than cats, and desperately hoping not to make an idiot of myself on camera. (x)
WEDNESDAY
After such a disturbed night, I really, really struggled to get up. I just wanted to sleep all day. But eventually I dragged myself out of bed, got ready, and managed to eat something just in time for my Zoom session with Richard at eleven thirty.
Despite only officially receiving the first assignment the day before, the goal of the session was to work on this first song: a song with a modulation (a key change, for those of you unfamiliar with music theory) and the title ‘Little Pieces.’ I had, in fact, already written a song for this brief. I’ve been speaking to one of my tutors on and off over the summer to make sure I was as prepared as I could be for the module (hence my music theory lessons), especially considering how nervous I was about it and at one point, he mentioned what the first assignment was going to be. Knowing that I really struggle with modulations, I spent some time experimenting with them in various songs, in different moments of songs. And then recently, a concept matching the ‘Little Pieces’ idea popped into my head and I had to write it down before it disappeared. I tried out multiple possibilities for a key change and finally landed on one that felt like it matched the song rather than feeling like it had been shoe-horned in. Since the homework hadn’t been assigned yet, I didn’t do any more – I just emptied the ideas out of my head.
Once the task had been assigned, I looked at it again (I decided it was okay to use my song since it had been explicitly stated that we could use an older song if we did happen to have one called ‘Little Pieces’), made some tweaks, and sent it to Richard. We’re supposed to write the songs ourselves but we can bring in producers or session players as long as we’re making the artistic decisions. Richard and I usually produce very collaboratively but this time it was really on me to choose the arrangement, the specific instruments and effects, and give direction, if not exact instructions, on how instruments that I don’t know or have great experience in, should be played. So, to give you some examples: the track was based around my piano recording; I chose the electric guitar sounds, sometimes from a reference and sometimes from hearing a plugin, and in some cases, I sang a riff that Richard then interpreted (but made them better as he’s a much better guitarist than me, which was fine as they were sketches I was suggesting rather than exactly what I wanted); I directed how the song built and where that began; I suggested dropping beat one after the chord change to emphasise it as I was trying to make it a moment in the song rather than move smoothly over it. Having said all of that, I did use the opportunity to learn from Richard as a more knowledgeable and experienced arranger and producer. He told me about specific things that he would do, explained why certain things made sense musically, and suggested effects (like creating a pulse within a bass pad) that I didn’t even know existed. It was all my call but being so new to being in the production driving seat, it was very helpful to have someone point those sorts of things out to me. I definitely learned A LOT.
We worked for almost four hours and I was absolutely exhausted by the time we closed the video call. I was also weirdly emotional. I just felt really raw and anxious and overwhelmed. I felt like I had too much to do but time was passing too quickly to do it all and I could already see myself getting behind in everything; the thought made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. I did take some Diazepam but it didn’t shift the feeling completely.
I spent most of the rest of the day trying to work on blog posts but ultimately just flipping from one screen to another. I think I was just too tired to concentrate. Nothing could really hold my attention so it felt like I’d wasted the afternoon and evening, which just made me feel frustrated and even more overwhelmed.
Me and Mum had dinner with Friends – mainly because I was feeling too overwhelmed to choose something else (nothing felt right) and because we knew we were both too tired to watch something new, that we’d both just fall asleep and end up rewatching it. We do have a list of new things to watch though and I don’t want to give up my progress in consuming new media just because I’m back at uni. Having said that, it will probably be less, just because I have more things to fit into a week now.
Eventually we just abandoned the day, gave the cats their before-bed snack (otherwise they wake us up at five, demanding breakfast), and went to bed. I was completely exhausted and although it did take me a while to relax, it didn’t take too long to get to sleep.
THURSDAY
I slept better than the night before but still not hugely well and it was a struggle to get up. I keep making plans to dedicate a day to a massive sleep in but it always seems to get pushed down the list of priorities. There’s always something to do, something I feel I need to do more. I never wake up feeling particularly refreshed so it’s difficult not to think of sleeping in as a waste of time. Why do something that’s supposed to be enjoyable if you don’t actually enjoy it?
I spent the morning working on various different blog posts. I honestly love writing for this blog, even when it’s difficult. Putting my thoughts or experiences into words – turning them into something tangible – just makes the world feel a little more manageable. And I really needed that. I was feeling really quite fragile and overwhelmed. I felt like I might start crying at any moment.
The list of the semester’s assignments had been added to the module resources so I looked through them and identified which ones felt more difficult than others, which ones I might need help with the theory of before working on the actual song. When my theory lesson rolled around at one thirty, we worked on different time signatures and how to play them on the piano, as well as different modes. That particular assignment involves multiple time signatures, a mode other than the most commonly used (the Ionian), extended chords, and an example of chromaticism – basically, my worst nightmare. I’m not going to achieve all of that in a week so I thought getting a head start on how to actually put those ideas into practice might help for when the assignment comes around.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working – very slowly – on blog posts and my diary. Again, I was just exhausted. I think this week is just A LOT and hopefully it will get at least a bit better as I establish a rhythm and better organise myself around my classes and assignments. I’m learning that booking in sessions and appointments in the morning just knocks me out for the day so I’m going to try, moving forward, to move them to the afternoon so that I can at least get some stuff done in the mornings while I still feel awake(ish) and capable.
I also finished Dare Me. It was definitely interesting. I think it did try to juggle too much in too short a season, making certain moments pretty blunt when they could’ve been more subtle and nuanced, but I loved that it predominantly revolved around female relationships: Beth and Addy, Addy and Coach French, Beth and Coach French, the spiderweb of connections within the cheer squad… I also found the characters themselves, especially the central three, really interesting and I liked that my opinions and feelings for them evolved throughout the season, according to the choices they made and so on. Originally, Addy was my favourite and I definitely related to the magnetic pull of a powerful, female authority figure in her life but over time her naivety began to grate on me as Coach French became more and more obviously manipulative. My first impression of Beth was that she was vicious purely because she got a kick out of it and because she liked being in control but the more I learned about her, the more I felt for her; she was so much more complicated than she seemed on the surface and she definitely ended up my favourite. I’ve been turning it all over in my head ever since I finished it and although I initially wasn’t that bothered about whether there was a second season, I do want one now, having done all this thinking about the characters. I want to know more about them and see how their stories continue to unfold.
FRIDAY
I woke up in the middle of the night, wide awake, but my cat, Lucy, came for cuddles so it wasn’t all bad. Eventually I managed to get back to sleep but then I was so tired that it was a really effort to wake up in time to be ready for my therapy session at eleven. But then, after much stressful back and forth, it was put off until next week. I hate it when plans change suddenly on the day. It just throws me for a loop and I think that, if I hadn’t already taken a Diazepam, I would’ve been having a serious anxiety triggered freak out.
It took a while to settle again, to be able to focus again and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on blog posts. With this week being relatively light in terms of uni work, it made sense to create a buffer of posts so that, if things get really stressful down the line, I can focus on other things with the reassurance that I can continue posting on the blog even though I haven’t been able to write.
In the afternoon, one of my parents – who is in a bubble with us – came over for a visit. We did some catching up and I gave her the recording equipment she’d asked if she could borrow. Then she and Mum went out to get fish and chips for dinner so that they could both have a break from cooking and we ate together, watching Lucifer. I did some diary writing and it was just a really nice, chilled evening. After two episodes, we had a hug – based on one of those ‘how to safely hug during a pandemic’ guides – and said goodnight. Me and Mum (and Lucy) watched some Agents of Shield (we’ve almost reached the end, which is very sad) before going to bed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get to sleep. No matter what I tried – and I have many techniques for getting to sleep – I just couldn’t drift off. At about one am, I got up and read for a bit – just because I was so bored and frustrated, which probably wasn’t helping – and then eventually, I managed to go to sleep around three.
SATURDAY
Despite plans for a lie in (my Mum had actually forbidden me from setting an alarm), I woke up at half past nine, not much later than usual. My sleep did recover a bit after the initial few months of restless, nightmare filled nights but apparently that’s over and we’re back to this mess of a sleep schedule.
Eventually I managed to drag myself out of bed and spent a couple of hours writing up my diary, before having a shower and getting myself put together (ish – as much as I ever do in lockdown) for the day. Then I went back to my laptop and did some admin. Facebook recently charged me a big amount for no reason that I can figure out and looking through my bank statements, there are some things that don’t add up (oops – maths pun) so we’re trying to get that sorted out. I also set up my bullet journal for the month of October and filled in all the dates I have so far. I’m trying to juggle a lot and for the sake of my mental health, I really need to not let stuff get on top of me, overwhelm me. And the only way I know how to do that is to plan as much as possible.
In the afternoon, I got hit with a wave of anxiety. I’m not sure what was behind it. It’s probably just everything: ongoing pandemic anxiety, a big change in my routine with starting uni, uni assignments that stretch my abilities, lack of sleep, and so on. But I don’t know what exactly triggered it in the moment. I had thought I’d try going for a swim but all the anxiety was just too much so I stayed home and worked on a couple of things. I all but finished a track I’ve been working on with Richard, finalising the arrangement and mixing the levels, and I worked on an upcoming blog post. So even though I didn’t get to swim – I’d really been looking forward to it – I did get some good stuff done so I felt good about that.
I also started watching Blood & Water on Netflix. I didn’t get very far before needing to go to bed but I’m definitely intrigued. The missing person concept has always interested me (in fiction – I don’t think I can think of anything worse in real life) so whatever happens, I’ll probably HAVE to watch it through to the end, just to know what happens. And on a more personal note, listening to the South African accents was quite soothing: one of my best friends is from South Africa and I haven’t seen her (apart from video calls) since mid March when she had to fly home. Obviously not every South African accent is the same, just like with any accent, but every now and then, I hear a word or sentence that really reminds me of how she speaks and I can’t help but smile.
SUNDAY
I finally had a halfway decent night’s sleep, even though I wanted to go straight back to sleep as soon as I woke up. I stayed snuggled up under my duvet for a while, reluctant to leave my warm nest, but eventually I dragged myself out and got straight to work. I recorded some extra vocals on my current track and did all of the editing and mixing for them. I’m not very good at it yet but I think I did an okay job.
I went on to work on an upcoming assignment that involves a lot of complicated elements – multiple uncommon time signatures, an uncommon mode, extended chords, and an example of chromaticism – but that just turned me into a frustrated, teary mess. It’s so hard and I can’t figure out how on earth I’m going to manage it, hence why I’m starting it now because there’s no way I could do it in a week. I’m struggling with just the time signatures; I haven’t even attempted to tackle the rest. In the end, I had to give up because I just felt so overwhelmed and incapable. And it doesn’t help that I’m worried that if I don’t submit this song (with all of its examples of different musical techniques), I won’t get a good grade. So it wasn’t a particularly good start to the day: feeling stressed and anxious and stupid because I can’t figure out how to do this one assignment.
After a bit of chill time (Netflix and blog post writing), I headed for the bathroom and Mum helped me dye my hair. I usually refresh it before a semester starts but I just ran out of time last week so we decided that doing it for the second week (and my birthday, which is on the 29th) was good enough. It’s not the most thrilling of things to do but it gives me such a confidence boost that the amount of time and all the faff it takes is worth it.
Mum and I spent a couple of hours watching Agents of Shield while I did some blog writing and then my brother and his Mum came for a visit to celebrate my birthday. We’ve all been super careful around going out and everyone (apart from me as I’ve barely left the house) has recently had a Covid test so we figured we were safe, or as safe as possible. We caught up, had dinner together, and then put a candle in a lemon meringue pie. I got a deliberately out of tune ‘Happy Birthday’ and I blew out the candle; I think we can probably all guess what I wished for.
It was a really nice evening and a really, really lovely way to start my birthday celebrations. I love my family so freaking much and not seeing them has been so hard. So getting to see them, even just for a short visit was so special.
When they left, it was a bit too early to go to bed so me and Mum watched another episode of Agents of Shield, quite possibly my favourite episode of Season 7: ‘As I Have Always Been.’ It’s an amazing episode and it just has everything: incredible acting, high jinks and hilarity, gorgeous character moments, and emotion in spades. It’s one of the best episodes I think they’ve ever done. So that was a good way to end the day.
Despite almost falling asleep on the sofa, I couldn’t sleep when I got to bed. After trying various tricks – running stories through my head, writing stories in my head, listening to a movie on my laptop (with the screen off), listening to music – for about three hours, I took half a sleeping pill and eventually fell asleep.
MONDAY
I woke up suddenly from vivid, disturbing dreams at seven thirty but didn’t get up straight away. I needed a little while to straighten out my thoughts, separate the dreams from reality. They’d had a weird, almost video-game-like quality. I can’t really describe it; it was just unlike any other dream I’ve had before and it really threw me.
I had a gentle morning, catching up with my diary a bit and writing some stuff for the blog. I was aiming for a quiet day, considering that I had uni the next day plus an extracurricular class late afternoon but then it all went wrong. I got the opportunity to get some help on what I’m currently calling ‘the nightmare assignment’ (which I mentioned on Sunday) but I just ended up feeling even more anxious about it. It feels like an impossible task. I haven’t even managed to improvise a melody over these new time signatures; I guess I’m so used to 4/4 (we probably all are as a huge chunk of mainstream music uses that key signature) that trying to sing over 5/4 and 7/4 feels both completely unnatural and unmusical. I ended up in tears because I’m finding it so stressful and although I did recover enough to continue with my day, I felt very low and tired. My eyes in particular felt weird and sore, even hours after crying. So it wasn’t the best day.
I spent the afternoon jumping from one task to another, getting bits and pieces done but not really fully engaging with anything. I just felt like a switch had flipped and I wasn’t quite as ‘there’ as usual. I was anxious about the next day as well, which didn’t help, even though I’d put everything in place to be as ready as possible. And I did get an email from my Workshop tutor, saying that they were going to try out a couple of different things to see if that made the class easier – easier to hear, easier to participate in, and so on.
Mum and I had an evening of Agents of Shield while I tried to finish up this post. We had dinner, I FaceTimed with some of my parents, and then tried to go to bed early. I achieved that – it was better than usual anyway – but then I couldn’t sleep and after three hours, I took half a sleeping pill since I had to get up early for uni.
It was also my birthday the next day, which I had a lot of feelings about. I don’t think I dislike my birthdays but I do sometimes find them difficult in the context of my mental health and ‘how far I’ve come (or not).’ But not only was there that this year, I also feel extremely unready to be twenty six, like I only got to have six months of being twenty five. And I think it’s pretty safe to say that that’s to do with the pandemic and the lockdown. I feel like everything I should’ve or would’ve learned, experienced in that year has been cut in half and so I’m not ‘ready’ to be twenty six, as if people are going to expect me to be capable of things a twenty six year old could do (all mental health and Autism stuff aside) that I won’t be able to do because I didn’t get the full experience of twenty five. I feel like this all sounds ridiculous but hey, feelings are weird and then don’t always make sense.
It’s been a long week.
So that was my first week back at university, my first week of a hundred percent online study, as well as balancing the other areas of my life such as my energy levels and my mental health. It’s been emotional and intense and exhausting. I’m not sure how I feel about it all yet, just that it’s a big adjustment. I’m still finding it very stressful and exhausting. Hopefully it’ll get easier and less emotionally taxing with time.
I’ve been thinking about what I’ve learned from this week and what I can do to manage everything better going forward and this is what I’ve come up with:
- Scheduling appointments later in the day is better for my productivity – If possible, having meetings or writing sessions in the afternoon seems to work better as a system. They tend to wear me out and if they’re in the morning, I don’t get as much done in the afternoon. So working in the morning and having appointments in the afternoon is more efficient as someone who has to ration their energy so carefully.
- This is going to take a lot of energy – While I knew this from last year, my body kind of forgot in the six months since I last had to manage a university schedule. It takes a lot out of me. I’m not sure if I’ll adjust over time and find it less tiring or if it will just be something I have to manage day-to-day, week-to-week.
I’m sure there’s more but this is all I can come up with for now. I’m sure I’ll learn more as I go.
Finding Hope 