August Wrap Up: Personal blog

The relentless flow of time never fails to punch me in the face. I am unable to believe it's already September! S E P T E M B E R ! I came back home due to COVID in March and that feels like it was three months ago.

Anyway.

Welcome to my first monthly wrap up! I plan to have a personal wrap up (like this) and a wrap up for the books I read each month. But I’ve been really bad with reading new material this last month so no book wraps up for this month I’m afraid. That being said, let's talk about August! I’ll try to break my little life into chunks. August was a weird month for me. June and July were the peaks of my lowest point, and towards the end of July, I made the decision to be happy. I was sitting in the sun in my back garden and the wind braided my hair and the sun-kissed me so sweetly, and after so many groggy months I experienced a moment of happiness. A free drop of joy. At that moment I decided to make a change and take control and responsibility for myself and my happiness.

This wasn’t as easy as I hoped, and I had to do a lot of self-reflection and kind, logical self-criticism. I identified aspects of myself that were adding to this long negative feedback loop I was experiencing and wrote down goals and mantras I wanted to achieve. August was a month of growth and many, many, many tests of that growth along the way. I am happy to say, that looking back on August I have definitely grown and had a good month of releasing anger and resentment.

Theres still a lot I have to work on, and I'm excited to get to it.

University

After so many months home I finally get to go back to University! I’m not as excited as I thought I would be, but glad to be back. There’s been a lot of stress and anxiety surrounding my university life, not so much around University itself but the surrounding elements around it. For example, over the quarantine period, I had fallen out with almost all my university friends, which included half of my housemates. Due to contract issues I’ve had to pay rent and bills for my shared home since July, which has definitely stressed me out. As the pound goes up and my source of income goes down, it’s been a genuinely horrible experience trying to pay people on time. The cost of living is becoming absurd and at this moment I’ve been applying for as many jobs as I can. So hopefully I snag one!

I’ve also been trying to alter my double major to drop Literature for Psychology and it’s been absolute hell. I’m awaiting a decision that should come out in the next two weeks, which is stressful. I say this because Literature has mountains of prep work before semester starts and I'm not sure if I should start it now or wait for a decison.

University friends have really acted as tests of my resolve and new mindsets. Several times this month I've had messages of housemates bullying me, admiting to bullying me behind my back or starting a message with "apparently I owe you an apology." Usually these events would send me into a downward spiral and lead to tears and anger and hour long rants, but I actually didn't care! At all! And I responded with kindness and compusre, and it felt so much better to let go of petty conversations and feelings and move on with my life without second thought.

Projects

August was the month I launched this little blog and I’m so proud! I’ve gotten so much support for so many people. I’ve been working on the blog for two months and having it up in the public is exciting and scary. I have a lot of plans for the blog, and hopefully, as it grows, I’ll be able to add more elements like an online shop, paid subscriptions, guest authors, and so on. I really want to work on publishing my own work as well, though I am a little nervous. I have a tendency to have a million ideas but implement none of them, so I’m proud of myself for having this up. That being said, I’ve been having intense desires to start painting, embroidery, sticker making, and pottery, and a whole bunch of other creative projects but alas, all those require money for supplies. August was my month of implementation, but September definitely feels like the month of ideas.