Oof, it’s been a while! There are imminent life changes ahead for me; honestly, it’s been messing with my mind a lot. When I’m struggling I shut down, so I’ve been either asleep or escaping life through games, shows and films. If that’s what it takes to let my brain rest while I get back on track, then that’s fine(ish) by me. Gone are the days of carrying on regardless and ending up with a TOTAL MELTDOWN.

The downside is that my creativity has been non-existent. As for those life changes, I found out that in the next couple of years I’m going to be losing my job. I don’t even know exactly when, because the company I work for doesn’t know exactly when. Uncertainty sucks, but it makes financial sense for me to stay there as long as I can.

I decided that it would be really cool to someday be my own boss and make money from my creations. My sensible side decided to up the making of stuff and to post regularly on social media, which seems reasonable, right? Worst case scenario, I have a bit of fun and perhaps supplement my income a little.

What actually happened is that my brain started telling me that I’d never be able to do it and I ended up not really making anything despite having an absolute ton of ideas. Instead of forcing myself to get going, I went into something like system shutdown.

Brains are so dumb.

Every time I sit down to do something, mine tells me that I’m worthless and there’s no point. So when I’m doing something, there’s not only the task of doing the actual thing, but I also have to be fighting against these negative thoughts the whole damn time. It’s really tiring.

On top of that, I need to get my health on track because it has been thoroughly neglected. I’ve been trying since the end of 2020, and so far all I’ve done is make things worse for myself rather than better. I can’t seem to focus on more than one thing at a time right now, so for the next three months, my main goal is to GET IT TOGETHER in that respect.

I’ve set myself a little challenge of eating well for 100 days. I have 91 days to go and already I’m feeling much improved. I had a feeling that if I could just get through one week then things would be a little easier. Well, I was right.

What I’m telling myself at the moment is that if I need to drop everything else to stay on track, then I’m going to let myself do just that.

Once I’ve got a bit more momentum, then I’m going to make a game plan for the creative stuff and stick to it in the same way. Along with actually improving the health of my body, I think my current healthy venture also has a lot with rebuilding trust in myself – as in doing the things I say I’m going to do.

You know what’s going to help? If spring actually arrives this year. Spring is JUST NOT SPRINGING in the way that it should.

Having said that, the tulips are indeed tuliping, but I haven’t been able to cut the grass yet because it’s soggy as hell out there. And also, y’know, I’ve been hibernating like my life depended on it.

Don’t be deceived – I have cleverly taken these photos so that you can’t see all the crappy bits of the garden. And yes, I absolutely did run out there in my pyjamas to take a photo before the clouds covered the sun again.

It’s taking its time, but proper spring has to come eventually, so what can I do but wait it out?

I guess what I’m trying to say after all that is that yes, things have been a bit poo, but actually, it’s going to be ok.

Thanks for reading,

Hayley x