It’s been a really long time since I last sat down and wrote a blog post. I promised myself I’d be more consistent with blogging when this website went live but once again, I let it slip. It’s surprising because, since we’ve all been forced to stay at home and spend more time in solitude for the past few months, you’d have thought I would have had more time to focus on my blogging. But, it’s been quite the opposite!
I’m not complaining, to be honest, as the months have flown by since we first initially went into lockdown in the UK. I’ve had so much to do that I luckily haven’t felt the time pass! I think it was at the beginning of April when things got really serious here and I have to say I feel like a completely different person 6 months later.
I’ve never really felt so much growth within myself as I have the past few months, it’s been pretty surreal. I guess with all the time I’ve had spare and with life literally coming to a halt, I’ve had a chance to evaluate my situation and life as a whole which has been really eye-opening. I feel like quarantine has given me the room I needed to actually take a step back, question things and grow.
I’m probably not making much sense at all and this post is likely to be one big ramble, but hey, isn’t that what blogs are really? One big ramble. There’s just something so therapeutic about getting all your thoughts down on paper (or should I say, a computer screen lol) so I will continue.
Basically, at the start of lockdown, I was an absolute mess. Actually, even before that, I was slightly less of a mess, but still a mess. I was so stuck in my routine of commuting to work, spending all day at work, coming home, eating dinner, going to sleep and repeating this the next day. My weekends had a similar routine, although the work was social media related instead. I wouldn’t say I was happy in my routine, I was mostly exhausted from everything I had going on, but I was COMFORTABLE in my exhaustion and the habits I’d created. But as someone who has never been a homebody and has always loved being out and about, to suddenly not be able to go outside at all for weeks on end, it was kinda traumatising actually.
I felt restricted, claustrophobic, trapped, all these words mean the same thing but I felt all of them even still!!
It took me at least the 3 months before I actually stopped having mental breakdowns about the whole situation and the fact that I couldn’t be “free” like I used to be.
After 3 months of essentially being in a semi-depressive state, I started to realise that being at home isn’t as bad as I initially thought and I can actually get a lot more done because of little timesavers like working from home rather than having to commute to an office every morning and evening. The more I started to focus on the positive aspects of the entire situation, the more productive and energetic I became – I began filming more content, I was more productive in my 9-5 job, I got my website up and running finally, I started working with more brands and everything started to fit into place.
That’s just an extremely condensed version of what the past 6 months have been like and I guess the moral of the story is, bad situations are always going to crop up but there is always a positive side if you look hard enough.
It took me a good 3 or 4 months to finally find the good side of this whole situation and although it’s still farrrrr from ideal, I’ve learnt so much about myself as a person and also achieved so much in a short period of time which may not have happened had things carried on as normal.
I’ve also GROWN so much. I’ve like actually become an adult. Now maybe that’s because it’s about bloody time lol, I mean I am turning 24 a week from today. But I do think the whole quarantine situation did play a huge part in my growth. I feel more confident in myself as a person and I feel like for once in my life I actually have control over my mind and understand it so much better than before. That might sound crazy, cos duh it’s my mind so of course, I have control – but I honestly never felt like I did. I was constantly on ‘react’ mode and never really understood how powerful my own thoughts and emotions were.
I’d love to talk more about my experience with manifestation another time but for now, I just want to end with one message. The strangest, craziest, most terrible things can happen in life. I mean, who would have thought in our lifetime a pandemic would break out and cause the entire world to shut down?? Definitely not me! But even in the midst of all the madness, there’s always something positive you can eventually take from the situation. Maybe not immediately, maybe not a month later. If you’re anything like me, it may take you 4 months of wallowing to reach the positive side but the point is IT’S THERE. The positive side exists, you just have to look for it. The fact that you’re reading this right now and have survived essentially the modern-day plague, is a huge positive. So celebrate whatever big or little wins you can, because they are all important and that’s literally the key to thriving in life.
Anyways, that’s my TEDTalk over. I’ve just had a lot on my mind recently and thought it might be a good idea to document my thoughts on this huge life-changing event we’re all experiencing right now. I also hope you’re all well and keeping safe.
Hope to see you in another blog post, in the not too distant future (fingers crossed).
Much love,
