A 2020 Life Update

Between the months of March - May, I felt like I was on a roll with blog posts and ideas and had a fairly consistent (for me😄) posting schedule. Blogging definitely really helped during the strange times we've been living in. There's just something about blogging that I really enjoy. It's like keeping a kind of journal; taking notes of thoughts and feelings on a variety of topics, it gives me a little corner to keep everything all together. I love sharing all my little thoughts with whoever stumbles across my blog and reads my posts, but I also just love creating these posts for myself, where I can easily look back on things I have written and think back on events/feelings and maybe even see some growth within myself. 

However, recently I've felt a distinct lack of motivation for blogging. I've got a few ideas as well as beginnings of posts and even a couple drafts of completed posts that I just haven't been bothered to  actually post yet.

As it's been a little while since I last updated my blog, I thought I'd just give an update on life in general at the moment and on how I've been feeling recently. Nothing like a good ol' thoughts and feelings blog post to get stuck into😄

What I've Been Up To - Out and About

Since my last post, the Covid lockdown has eased up a lot more where I am. This has meant that more things have been slowly opening up. There's a lot of new restrictions and rules put into place, which is completely understandable and I'm quite glad about it because we obviously can't just go back to normal as the pandemic is still not over. It was a little strange at first going to places and I even felt guilty about it in the beginning. After being home for so long, I've felt that it's been so weird going back out into the real world. The main places I've been are the local garden centres and Costa - the places I missed the most during the lockdown😄. I've been out for breakfast a handful of times with my brother which has been lovely. We recently bought flowers for the garden to try and brighten up the front a little and I wanted to try my hand at growing some fruit so I've started with some strawberry plants, lets just hope I manage to look after them well enough for some strawberries to grow!

I've also been driving out to a lot more places (towing my brother along for the journey's to keep me company - bribing him with the coffee and breakfast😄) within nature so that I can use the new camera I got for my birthday to take some pretty nature/wildlife shots.

I've been able to meet up with friends a little more often which, if I'm being completely honest, has been so good for my mental health. I  met up with some girls from uni who I had been having weekly zoom quizzes with and we went to 'Bread Meats Bread' for dinner which was so nice, but it was a little odd in the beginning to be seeing them in real life and not just from behind a screen😄. 

I had a movie night/catch up night at my house with a few of my closest friends which was so long overdue! We also climbed a local hill - something we'd been saying for over two years that we were going to do. 2020 really made it the year that we decided to just go for it and stop putting it off!😄 I've also been on various walks and picnics which have all been so lovely. I feel like I'm the kind of person who really needs to spend a good amount of time each week with friends, not only for the fact that I've missed them and I feel like this year stopped so many of our plans, but also for the social aspect; of talking to people other than those in immediate family.

Speaking of family, I've also been able to see my grandparents more (although still not as often as I now feel I should be). This lockdown really made me realise that I want/need to make more of an effort with my grandparents and visit them more often than I did in the past. 

What I've Been Up To - At Home

My mum went back to work near the middle of August which leaves myself, my brother and dad still at home to find ways to entertain ourselves. The weather hasn't been the best recently which has meant yet more time spent indoors😄. I've been keeping busy by working on some uni work. As I'm going into my last year (post on this soon) I've got a dissertation to write so over these past couple of weeks, I've started reading and making notes for it. I've got the basic idea for what I want to write and my chosen topic was approved but I'm still not entirely sure on what my full dissertation will consist of so I've just been doing some reading on my chosen topic and I'll see where it takes me. I'm hoping that once I get the chance to talk to my dissertation supervisor, I'll have a better/clearer idea of what I'm doing.

Aside from uni work, I've been doing a lot of novel reading. I've been taking a note of every book I've read this year because I was curious as to how many books I would read in a year (although I don't think this year will actually be representative of how many books I would read in a usual year since this year has been far from usual😄). I signed up for Goodreads which was fun because it lets you track what you're reading as well as gives you recommendations of books you might like and you can rate everything you read. On it, you can set yourself yearly reading challenges and I'm currently on book 45 of 50 on the challenge I set myself. I genuinely can't believe that I've read that many books so far this year, and we still have four months left of 2020!😄I'll have a blog post out at the end of the year on all the books I've read. I've just really gotten back into reading these past few years so it's been great to have an excuse to just spend whole days reading.

I've also been watching TV a lot more recently - especially in the mornings with my guinea pig😄. My two main go-to shows at the moment have been 'Shadowhunters' and 'New Girl', both of which I've really been enjoying. I've also got a long list of movies I'd like to watch at some point too. I recently watched Netflix's new dance movie 'Work It' and loved it despite the fact that dance movies aren't ones I usually choose to watch. 

How I've Been Feeling 

Overall I've been feeling not too bad each day; in fact, honestly most days I've been doing pretty good. However, of course not every day is going to be great. There have been those days where I'm just feeling really down or anxious or unmotivated. Which I think, even in general, is absolutely okay; not every day will be great. But I think also, during the times we've been living in recently, it's still just as important to remember that you will have down days, even for no particular reason and that it's okay to feel however you're feeling. 

With things opening up again, and getting back out into the world, I've found this a little difficult at times. I've mentioned in a number of posts about how I often struggle socially, and going back out to places and seeing different people has been a little hard. Being told to stay at home all those months seemed like a socially anxious person's dream but the only way to really properly deal with feelings of social anxiety, is going out and facing those feelings head on. My brother's been so great during it all though. He's the person who's encouraged me to go out and he's with me a lot of the times and has definitely been a huge help. I am, however, a little worried about when I need to go to more places without him as I've definitely been relying on him far too much, but at the moment this seems like something I'll worry more about whenever I do need to get back out on my own more often.

My part time job also informed me that they were planning on opening again in September and that's a thought that has also caused some anxiety. I work in a children's soft-play at weekends - a job which, at the start of the year, I had been planning on leaving in June but when everything went into Lockdown, I felt that it would be insensitive to leave during an already stressful time. I'm now planning on staying until the end of December because in the new year I want to focus my attention more on uni/placement work. The thought of going back to work is one which is not fun to think about. Don't get me wrong, as far as part-time jobs go, this one is really pretty good. It's just that round about the time of planned opening, uni will also be starting back up so I'll have all of that to think about too. It just feels like everything will be happening at once after having so much free time to do whatever whenever.

University starting back is also another worry, although not as big a worry as I had been expecting it to be which was a pleasant surprise. My main worry regarding uni starting back up (at the moment) is actually about the 45 minute train commute back into the big city. After having not done it for so long, it's going to feel so odd getting back into it all. However, as this wont be until the end of September, all of my uni/commuting worries are lower down on my list of things to think about right now.

So, like I said - overall I've been doing/feeling good, but there have been a few down days and there are definitely things on my mind that have been causing me some worry/anxiety but I think the same applies to so many people so it's quite reassuring to know that I'm not alone in what I'm feeling.

How have you been doing recently?

Bye for now, xo