(31) two months later

Just when I thought I’ll start posting at least once a month.

Hello hello,

I think it’s important to start with the fact that it’s not cause of anything unhappy that I didn’t post anything the last two months. It’s been a busy couple of months, although I think I’ve spent most of the last two months more stressed about not doing things than actually doing them. But that’s just how I live my life, so I’m just more mindful of accounting for time in this format these days. If something especially stressful is coming up, I just give myself a month of doing practically nothing.

I’m so forgiving to myself, that it’s a little too much I think. Maybe people who are a little harder on themselves get more things done. But do I really care about getting things done?

Life is good, friends.

At the very end of March, I sent a risky email, the outcome of which has been great, to say the least. I have (hopefully) successfully completed semester two, having submitted all my assignments (very badly and very late). Applied for many internships/part-time jobs for the next couple of months, gotten that sort of sorted out. Done a lot of adulting, logistics wise, so much emailing. Also went across almost the entire city for apartment viewings over the span of three days, got tired of it, and finalised a place. So the new internship will start Monday, and I’ll move to the new apartment in the middle of the June.

I made some new friends here, some people to get a pint with, to worry about having overshared to. Two old friends visited over the last couple of months, and brought a lot of life and joy to my weekends. Have finally also started working on my dissertation which is slowly starting to take some shape. Need to write so many words in the next couple of months, and I’m actually looking forward to that.

Tis all about pattern breaking, as the mental health experts put it. So it has just been a bit of time making sure I do sometimes literally the opposite of what my immediate instinct is. Mostly unintentionally, sometimes intentionally. That’s literally all we can do, is the conclusion I have arrived at. I cannot really change myself so drastically, and make myself a feeling sort of person, and be someone who I’d want to be, no matter how much I want to.

So all I can do really is just try to not give into the same patterns of doing things, and unreasonably expect different results. So life is currently in just experimentation mode, trying to do the different thing, and then hoping for a different result.

I have not figured out the hack to life, as much I’d like to think I have. I am still slightly stressed about the assignments I submitted being pulled up for being shit, very stressed about not actually being up to the task of doing well on this new internship and the dissertation, and extremely stressed on not being a good person generally in life. All of this stays the same, nothing has actually changed at the core of it.

But there’s sunlight for longer in rainy Glasgow these days, and I have people to talk to, and things to look forward to. I’m happier than I have been in a really long while, and no matter how scared I am about that, I’m still trying not to panic too much about it and lose it all, in some sense.

The fear of unravelling never really goes away, I think. There are still stretches of days when I cannot bring myself to take a shower, and weeks when I feel unable to physically pick up the literal trash that keeps accumulating around me. That’s a good reminder that sometimes the happy exterior and sunny weather doesn’t really fix everything in that fairy tale movie-esque way. There’s no song montage, no new beginnings.

But then on days like today, when I finally pick up the trash, and it’s four bags full, and only panic for a second about how I was living like this, before going downstairs and disposing it— I can’t help but feel like I’ve made some…progress?

With regards to the lack of posts in the last two months, causation-correlation can be drawn maybe to the fact that I have someone to talk to every day again, so we can blame it on him hehehe.

Anyway, this has been a short yet self-centred update, as usual. Hope you’re all doing well. I’ll write again soon.