Still Alive
It’s been 7 years since I last posted something on here, and going through all these snapshots of my life has been a strange trip down memory lane. It brings up a tangle of feelings that I’m not sure how to unpack, if I even want to unpack them at all, so I think I’ll just put that to one side for the time being. Suffice to say, a lot has changed since 2018. This place has been collecting digital cobwebs as I worked through a bunch of mental and physical health struggles, but things have been slowly shifting to a more positive place and that creative urge has been building under my skin to the point where I am feeling brave enough to dust things off and start this back up. These particular muscles have atrophied, so I’m pretty rusty, but I’ll be trying! Even though it’ll take longer to make anything for a while, I’m going to try and keep an open mind and not be overly critical; especially seeing this is a way for me to stop things from rattling around my brain constantly and I’m not expecting anyone to actually look at what I write.
So let’s do this. I’m probably not going to overshare my personal details on here as much as I used to, but here’s a crash course in what has happened to me over the past 7 years to get you up to speed.
2018 was actually a pretty big year for me, marking some very big changes. I ended the year freshly out of an almost 12-year relationship, living in a little apartment with my 3 idiot children and learning to navigate being single and doing all the things my partner had at least partly looked after for so long. Early 2019 had me going on a holiday to Disney World, and I was excited to settle into my new place and take on all the challenges and new experiences that this new stage of my life would bring. The future was full of potential, and I was feeling optimistic.
Then the pandemic hit, and COVID lockdowns were rough. I spent the next… year? existing entirely within the 4 rooms of my apartment. I woke up one morning to find my sweet boy Ned had passed during the night, and a friend risked a $10,000 fine to come and help me through that nightmare. As the lockdowns continued I barely moved, barely ate, and was barely alive. When lockdown ended, I struggled to get through the days because I had to rebuild the muscles I had lost from my body needing to consume itself to stay functional. The last time I was this frail was after major back surgery as a teenager. It was really quite confronting.
But I got through it! It took time, but I worked on getting healthy, and finally started getting more settled in who I am as an individual and not part of a duo. At the end of 2023 I did a very scary thing and left my job I’d been at for almost 8 years without having any idea where I’d go from there. I got a new job last year and I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s a place I’m proud to say I work at, the people are nice, and it’s not a scramble to put a dent in an ever-increasing workload so I’m not constantly burning myself out. I think I’m actually… happy?
So yeah, I’m still alive. And while at times it feels like nothing has changed in the past 7 years, I’m at least in a position to rediscover all the things I had been putting in the too hard basket for far too long. I’m moving all my old stuff over to this new site, so it might be a bit sparse at the moment but will fill back out over time as I make sure everything displays properly and links still work; I will probably also edit some of the rougher posts (and let’s be realistic, some of the really rough ones might just stay in the archives). I’m trying to keep things simple and not overthink everything, but I feel like there needs to be some sort of plan for what I want to put on this site. I might be shouting into the void, but it can at least be organised and structured shouting. I believe that’s what people call “character development” right there.
How do people finish things like this these days? Stick around if you want to read about my opinions on stuff? Do whatever you want; I’ll be posting here even if no one is reading it.