Small Changes I’ve Made To Reduce My Anxiety.

Little things that are helping my anxiety not be in control.

I have never been secretive about the fact that I suffer from Anxiety disorder. Nor am I oblivious to the fact that the older I get, and the more life experiences (and traumas) I face, the deeper and heavier the anxiety goes.

I found myself in a position where I was having major anxiety attacks more regularly. Over everything. It’s important to note that the ‘everything’ was also a series of nothing’s. And it got to a point where I had to stop myself and acknowledge that the damage I’m doing to my own health is becoming a problem. It was time I started to try out new things to start to eliminate the anxiety.

So, here are a few practices I’ve started doing which have actually started to produce much less anxiety outbursts (I just have to stick to them now).

The No Vaping Continues

If you read one of my recent posts, you’ll know I am currently in the early stages of eliminating nicotine from my life for good. I know addicts and fellow vapers hate the fact people keep saying it’s a real difference to your mental health when you stop but honestly, for me, it is. Am I still having moments where I pine for some flavoured air because I think it’ll soothe something? Sure. But every day that I don’t cave and go longer without I notice my mind become clearer and clearer. My asthmatic lungs are taking a while to heal, but I can’t magically solve everything at once can I?

I am focusing heavily on self-love.

I know there’ll probably be eye rolls at this. But it is true what they say, you become a magnet for all the energy you give out, if you don’t fall in love with yourself and be happy with who you are then how is anything going to be good enough for you? I am leaving this paragraph brief because I’m still ironing out some stuff and research on this which I will do a separate post in detail on. But what I will say is, self-love is always an ongoing journey. Whether you’re with someone or not. Read books that inspire you to love yourself, it will make a big difference to how you think about things.

Affirmations

Yeah, I know, I’m becoming that guy. I know there is a lot of judgement on manifesting and affirmations. But I have found that having those little talks with myself when I’m feeling a certain way and need to rewire myself to remember who the fuck I am. These have made a big difference. Especially if I start doing them when I feel a little shift in my emotion or like my anxiety is being triggered. It really helps bring you back in.

I am distancing myself from actively messaging

I think I may have touched on this before. But one thing that always made me heavily upset and anxious, was how I am always a person who messages quickly, replies and reassures heavily, but I have never had the same from other people. That’s okay, I’m not taking this opportunity to dig at others. But what I learned is, the only person who is feeling awkward about this is me. I am a people-pleaser. I shouldn’t be, but I am. I have recently decided to put myself first and have hours of screen time locks and on some days, I will remove notifications for a day. Sometimes, I’ll leave my phone at home or work for a day/night. I learned from doing all this that nothing disastrous happened. Breaking myself from the consistent need to be active on my phone has really worked wonders for my brain and made me a lot more relaxed in conversations.

(Obviously, I will still stress that communication is important and you should always express boundaries and meet people halfway if you can).

I’m doing things that are good for my mind and body

I’ve recently booked to have a massage. Which doesn’t sound like much, but I never have those. My body is tense AF and I made a decision that it is probably something my body really needs to have to feel better as a whole. It’s something I’m considering doing as a regular thing to take care of my body. I am also spending more time taking ‘mindful walks’. I don’t have headphones or any distractions, I just take a walk alone and acknowledge what’s present and around me. It does so many wonders for me and it also helps me think about events and situations more clearly when the algorithm isn’t manipulating me. Also, walking is good for your body too 😉

And lastly – I am slowly working on not caring about numbers of likes or attention. This is a work in progress, which I am sure I will blog about at some point .

There you have it. There’s a lil update on personal improvements I’m making. They might not work for everyone, but it’s definitely making a solid difference in my brain wiring. Anxiety doesn’t disappear, but it can be controlled.

Escaping A Nicotine Addiction 💨🚭

I quit smoking cigarettes about 4 years ago. I felt a relief that I no longer had that stale smokers smell, I wouldn’t be potentially destroying my asthmatic lungs further, and I could start to be healthy again. There was however, one big problem that tainted the joy of no longer touching cigarettes.

In order to stop cigarettes, I had taken on vaping.

Now, I know there are still lots of unknowns with vaping and there is an ongoing debate on if it is actually as bad or worse than cigarettes, but in a nut shell, vaping is not great for your body. Period. But when it comes to addiction, all vaping has done, is make things ten times worse than smoking.

People have taken on vaping who have never smoked a cigarette in their life. Everyone who was a smoker and took on vaping to ‘quit smoking’ is probably still vaping years later. The habit hasn’t broken and if anything, I’ve found that the luxury of the nice smells and tastes with vaping, makes the habit a lot harder to quit.

I have had years of on and off vaping. There have been periods where I did not vape for weeks and then jumped back on it. But, I realised that the reason it never stuck before was for a very clear reason: I had never quit for me.

I always quit in the past because it would be a situation where I was dating someone who was anti-smoking or vaping (I followed the same pattern when I was a smoker to be fair, I never learn). So I would stop so that they wouldn’t see me differently or go off me (hey, anxious attachment) so then inevitably, when we fell apart for other reasons, there I was in the shop again “Triple Mango please”.

In the last few months, I have been doing a lot of work on myself. It has been hard, trying to find effective ways to love myself more, achieve my goals and try and overcome my anxieties and insecurities. Vaping is something that I’ll be honest, hasn’t served a good purpose in a long time. It makes my anxiety worse sometimes, It can give me weird coughing moments and also.. it is costly AF.

There’s been months where I have spent £150 on vapes. The pattern and the addiction needed to stop, and I was finally in a position where I could do that, for myself.

It’s now been 2 weeks, and I have learned that your body and stress levels can be messed up a LOT when you suddenly lose an addictive habit that you’ve been with for 20+ years! My hormones and fatigue have been a bit all over the place, which I have learned through research can be normal when your body is overcoming nicotine withdrawals.

The issue is, it is an addiction. It doesn’t dissolve easily. At the moment, I am doing well and have had no nicotine in my system for just over 2 weeks. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have massive struggle moments.

I’ve brought a HUM stick, which is a new device where there’s no nicotines or toxins in it, but it’s basically just a spice stick you put in and you use it as a vape replacement to inhale.. flavoured air. It’s not ideal but it’s one way for me to try and slowly rid the desperate habit of my hands needing something to hold and something to inhale to calm me down.

It’s occurred to me that vaping never actually calmed me down or made me feel better, I just programmed my brain to believe that it did.

My days are very up and down at the moment, some days I can happily go a whole day distracting myself with no cravings, others the temptation is super strong. I’m mainly documenting this because I want to hopefully look back a year from now at some of the things I’ve written and see how much has changed or progressed. How cool would it be if I could acknowledge a year from now that I’ve had no nicotine for a year?

Watch this space I guess.

An 8 Day Social Media Detox

A little reflection on my social media break

In July, I made a decision that due to extreme over-stimulation, I was going to spend my holiday completely off of all social media app’s, including Whatsapp.

It may sound like a bizarre decision to make but it was something I thought I really needed to focus on. The last few months have been a complete whirlwind for me, I’m still struggling with certain things but I’ve been extremely active regularly on my social media pages with my reading updates and writing (even though, I struggle a lot with the latter lately).

It was brought to my attention that I was overstimulated, working 40(+) hours a week and then trying to keep up to date with being relevant online plus organising your own living space, trying to find the time to write anything etc. my phone was stitched to my hand pretty much. And I was doing that annoying thing I think most of us do with our phones – the looking at an app, coming out of it, only to jump back in 2 seconds later (honestly, what do we think is new at that point?).

My detox was from the Friday evening, right through to the following Saturday evening. I put screen limits on my phone so that all my apps were not accessible while I was away. As I was going on a family holiday I had to leave texts/calls open but other than that I restricted everything.

The initial goal I had was: have time away from the apps, use it to clear my head, spend some free time writing and doing some self-development work.

One of the bizarre things I felt when I started this was guilt. As someone who struggles a lot with anxiety, I can be the first to understand how much silence from another person can trigger someone. However, I am a bit on the fence with some areas of this, I think as a human race, we have become very dependent on immediacy, especially from others. We need to learn to slow down (I know, I am not one to talk on this) and also appreciate that not everyone is available 24/7. No-one should be.

I did respect others in my decision though by sending messages to the people I am likely to hear from to advise them I would be off grid for just over a week. So nobody panics. So once that good deed was done, I shut it all off and went ahead with my plan.

Did it all go to plan? Almost.

I did manage to go the whole time without opening any of the app’s. It was hard at first, but I never caved. The things that didn’t go to plan was the other bits. Turns out, when you’re holidaying with family and having to share a room with a younger family member, your personal plans and requirements go out the window a little bit.

It was also a difficult process because I also decided to quit vaping cold turkey at the same time (a separate post on nicotine withdrawal to come later), and still coming to terms with my thyroid medication being a bit all over the place and the nonstop heat. So there were times I could have done with distracting myself on social media, but I still was determined and didn’t cave 🙂

(I would also like to randomly push in here that in case you weren’t aware… you can get sunburn on your feet. It’s not comfortable. Cream up).

But all my little obstacles and dilemmas aside, here are the positive things I have taken away from my detox:

A change of plan with some writing – Although I got zero writing done due to distractions, I did have a lot of time to think about why I was struggling a bit with my novel I’m trying to write. It occurred to me that there was an underlying issue with my general idea, so I am now taking it on from a whole new plot point, but I feel more confident about where this one is going now. It also gave me time to come up with some other novel draft ideas. (Yes, this does mean I am starting my novel again a little bit. But I am still going with the wing it plan and am hoping to get a massive chunk of it done by September).

I had fresher ideas and perspectives without social media influence – I cannot begin to tell you how much clearer my brain felt after being completely ignorant to social media for a while. There was no algorithm suggestions making me rethink things or influencing my ideas. I just had time to adjust to and think the way I wanted to.

I now know that although it’s a necessity these days, I don’t have to be on it all the time – Spoiler alert – the detox and not using apps for a week did not kill me. I didn’t miss anything life threatening or critical. The world carried on without me, and I caught up in my own time. I think this is an important factor for me to focus on, especially now that I’m back online and trying to regularly post again.

Yes, it’s good to stay in the know and updated on everyone and everything, but we let FOMO hit us way too much I think. After doing this detox, I am now trying to be a bit more disciplined with my usage… I have screen time locks at night now, I put it on dnd whenever I am out or about to work or do something that needs my attention, I turned my notifications off – so I only go into the apps when I want to.

I am hoping I can stick to these routines now (it would really help my writing motivation if I could) but I am not only proud of myself for managing that whole time without it, but I’m confident that I am another big step closer to not letting my anxiety overcome me when it comes to phones and communication, and maybe I will be able to achieve my 2026 goals after all?

The ‘Men Written By Women’ Craze

As a very big bookish girlie, I read all sorts of genres. Mood dependent as to which genre I dive into, but we could argue that the romance genre is probably the easiest genre to jump in on (if the writers done it right).

Romance is cute, chilled, most of the time it isn’t toooo overdramatised or twisted, that obviously depends on the sub-genre. There’s nothing I love more than a little escapism to a world of fictional romantic men.

Men written by women has taken the world by storm a little bit. There’s a lot of interesting opinions and videos about it if you doom scroll long enough, but why is it such a big craze and has it ruined any single man’s chance in the future of winning over a book girlie?

I think the reason that fictional men are so much more appealing to me, is nothing to do with the narrative of ‘single straight men in this generation are rubbish’ (although in some cases, this is true), it’s because when women write men, they are doing all the things that we wish the men we want would do, but we never tell them.

One thing I’ve learned growing up is women are naturally very overanalysing, overthinking, empathetic beings… it doesn’t mean that men aren’t by the way, stick with me here, women think a little too much about how they’re coming across, we’ve spent decades being told ‘don’t chase him’, ‘play hard to get’, ‘tell him what you want’, ‘don’t be too obvious’, that it gets to the point that we are too scared to be completely blunt with a man.

For me, there is nothing scarier than me actually asking a man how he feels about me. Or if he’s happy with what we are doing or who I am. So, instead, I do what a lot of my other girlfriends do and make little comments and hints about the answer I want.

In my mind, I have been pretty obvious about what I was trying to get as an answer. Do I get the answer or response I hoped for? Never. Because we make the assumption that men are psychic or overanalyse as much as we do, but it’s not even a man/woman thing.. this is a human thing. We make assumptions that whoever we are speaking to is tuned into our thoughts and will do or say the exact thing we want. We’re all just too afraid to be open and real.

I went on a bit of a side tangent there. I’m not even sure what my point was supposed to be anymore. That happens sometimes.

I think the long and short of it for me is, men written by women is a great escapism into what we want from a guy we’re interested in. But we also need to be mindful that although 100% yes, we all deserve to have a romantic partner who makes us feel amazing, fights for us, gets jealous in a minor cute way when someone else shows an interest, we also need to remember that as with anything in the dating world, we need to be clear and open about what we want someone to do for us or how to make us feel at certain points.

But, if you’re still not quite finding a man to give you that chance to be in that happy romantic space, then by all means dive into every fictional hot romantic male realm possible 🙂

☀️ Surviving The ‘Summer SAD’ ☀️

I don’t know about you, but I am pretty confident that I am severely allergic to heatwaves. I’ll be honest, lately I have had a really tough time handling the excessive heat and lack of rain.

It’s no secret that the UK is not prepared for over 30 degree heat, public transport struggles, we live in heavy brick homes with no decent air source and the climate crisis is becoming super real.

People are always talking about seasonal depression, particularly in winter, where their mood drops massively and they feel depressed and low. I on the other hand, thrive on Autumn/Winter stages.. but Summer and heat have always massively influenced my mood. In a rather negative way.

It doesn’t help that I’ve recently had my thyroxine medication increased so my hormones are adjusting a lot lately, and I have recently found out through an NHS health check that my blood pressure is super low (guess that explains the consistent dizziness and light headedness), but over the last few weeks I have found myself struggling massively to even function like a normal human.

I had various days where all I could do is lay down with USB fans on me. I barely ate most days because my appetite was non existent, and I have spent many evenings crying my eyes out over everything and nothing. The problem was, the heat doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon, and this past weekend I decided that I need to pull my finger out and push myself a tiny bit.

Obviously, being in a dark place mentally makes you overthink and rethink a lot of things, I have been spiralling hard over various things. So in order to not push myself to a point of a breakdown, I have made a few little adjustments to how I try and survive this heatwave and my mini breakdowns that go with it;

Firstly – Pushing myself to eat more. It’s not helping me at all just eating a bit of toast or some ice cream (duh) so I’m pushing myself to keep my body functioning with light meals throughout the day instead.

Second, I’m trying this whole affirmations and manifestations routine again. I always suck at sticking to things (thank you ADHD), so I’m trying to push myself to do some youtube affirmations every evening before I sleep to try and trigger my subconscious into more positive thinking, they say you have to stick to it for 21 days to really see a change.. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Third, I am putting less pressure on myself. I’ve been very expressive about what I’m going through lately, including writing pressures. I keep beating myself up over how little I am getting done. So I have made a decision that as the things I really want to focus on are working on my novels and blogging, I am taking a little break from poetry writing. As much as I love poetry and expressing my feelings into words, I think I have to be clear with myself on what my priorities are and let certain things take a back seat for now.

I am also limiting my time on my phone as much as I can. I’ve always been open about working on my anxieties and how I feel about trying to keep up with messages etc. so I’ve implemented limited screen time on my phone for the next couple of weeks while I get my head into a more comfortable space.

I have always stressed about not being ‘involved’ or not hearing from people etc but I have also learned that a lot of the time everyone else around me always has periods where they don’t reply to me or are busy, and any genuine people in my life will understand my decision to just slow down a bit and not be as ‘active’ with conversations. My brain just needs a little break!

I’m hoping at some point over the coming weeks I find a way to focus a bit better and not be worried about how heavy my emotions get. But for the time being, I’m resting when my body tells me to, and trying to stay positive about overcoming this sodding heatwave!

Finding myself as a Writer with ADHD.

This year I set myself the goal of really focusing on my writing more and getting myself into a position where my novel draft (or drafts) are done and I am in a position to publish some poetry in 2027 as well as start being in an editing/publishing mindset that year for my novel(s).

Ambitious, right? It especially is when you have ADHD. I thought I’d write a little post (because you know, that’s how I express myself) about the different things I have learned in my writing stages while also tackling my extremely overactive hyper brain!

ADHD is a blessing when it comes to writing, having an overactive mind can be amazing because I am full of ideas every single day. The trick is, to plan it out constructively and not overwhelm myself with too many ideas at once.

How do I do this? Well, instead of giving up on novel 1 and diverting to something different every other day. I started a ‘writing jar’. When I have an idea for a plot or a story, I jot it down on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. That way I won’t forget the story idea (because my brain be forgetful) but I’m not losing focus on what I want to currently work on.

There’s a lot of good classes and workshops out there to progress in writing. But they’re not all for me.

One common issue with ADHD, is the impulsiveness we’re pre-wired with. It’s easy to see something advertised and jump on it (much to my bank balances dismay). Trying to get myself into a good position as a writer, means I found myself very easily attracted to any kind of advice book or workshop that involved writing. However, every writer and their writing style is different.

As an example, one thing I have learned for me personally.. all-day online workshops are not for me. It’s nothing against those workshops, it’s a me thing. If I attend a day workshop in person I’m fine. There’s just something about being online watching something for a consecutive number of hours sitting in my flat alone, I find myself too distracted and I can’t engage. I’m not going to beat myself up about it. It’s a learning curve and I now know that sticking to certain workshops that are a maximum of 2.5-3 hours an evening are the one’s I can stick with.

I also found myself diving in to too many various types of writing courses. Truthfully, I am fascinated by a wide variety of genres, I read pretty much anything. I’d love to be able to write novels that are not always exactly the same type of trope or genre. But what I have had to learn is, focus on one at a time. The novel I am working on currently is enough, any other ideas can go into the jar for now.

Also, as cheesy as it sounds.. if something is meant to be, it’ll find me at the right time. I shouldn’t push myself to do more beforehand.

The most difficult thing I find with ADHD and trying to write, is I am hyper-fixated on ideas and plots every day when I am not at my desk or with a notepad in hand. When it comes to the times I want to write it all out, my brain is fried and the motivation seems to have dug its own coffin deep underground. How I try to navigate around this? I have started doing things in ‘small doses’ rather than pushing myself to do large chunks, I’ll give myself small timeframes to just work on something. Whether it is jotting down a poem, working on my novel draft or general writing my feelings in a prose piece, I set small time schedules e.g. 30 minutes a night. Then, if I manage to feel inspired to do longer, fabulous. If I don’t, at least that’s half hour done on something. It’s better than nothing after all.

Little poem I recently wrote 🙂

Now to my next point. And probably most importantly, the biggest struggle with ADHD is a lovely little side condition called RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria). I struggle with this in general day to day life, but with writing it is ten times harder. I might still be working on novel writing, but my blog posts and poetry pieces are shared on social media often. Whether it’s algorithms playing up a bit so people aren’t engaging enough, or people don’t like what I’m sharing (which is allowed, we all have opinions), I overwhelm myself too much with the lack of likes or engagements that my posts get.

I try hard not to, and as part of trying to change my mindset into a more positive one (like my writing, it’s a work in progress), I am trying not to use the number of likes (or lack of) as an indication of who I am as a writer. I need to remember why I am writing and how much I have progressed as a writer in recent times. This should be my mindset, not upset myself over thinking that social media is an indication of what my talents are.

Like with everything I write and do. It is all a learning curve, a work in progress. I’m hoping that this post makes a bit of sense – it is another typical Zoë waffling random rubbish thing so apologies if it’s all just a mess and doesn’t really give any good answers.

Just remember that having ADHD (or any condition that might make you work a bit differently for that matter) isn’t always a curse.

Everyone works in their own ways and own pace, there’s no right or wrong way to proceed.

A Look Back On My 100 Happy Days Challenge..

Back in March this year, on my personal/private Insta, I decided when things were a little rough for me that I would start a personal challenge of ‘100 Happy Days’.

This was something that was a trend many years back, where you’d post 100 days in a row a picture of something that made you happy each day. Why did I decide to bring that back? Truthfully, 2026 didn’t have the best start for me. I was in an extremely low rut and pretty much everything in my life was going wrong and overwhelming me. I figured that maybe if I tried hard to look for a positive in each day, this would help change my mindset.

You’ll be pleased to know, I did complete 100 Happy Days in a row (a few images will be splattered across this post from what I shared) on 27th June. But there was a few interesting things I learned about other people and myself throughout this process…

I initially was not seeking happiness in the right way… what I mean by this, is I spent quite a lot of time in the first few weeks, thinking about what I would post as a happy point in advance. Completely missing the point of what I was trying to achieve. The idea was, I would find a positive thing throughout the day that made me happy. But instead I spent a lot of time going into panic mode about what would I post today? Would it be considered ridiculous or boring? Which brings me to the next learning curve.

I wasn’t entirely doing it for myself. One thing I really need to try and activate more when using social media, is doing it for myself. I was still struggling a lot with other peoples perceptions and views of me and what I was posting. Rather than just taking the day as my own and being happy and content myself in what I was posting.

Other people didn’t like what I was doing – but that shouldn’t bother me. I had a lot of banter and abuse from people over the time that I was doing this process. Although I don’t think it was ill intended, it can be quite hurtful when people make jokes about you doing a 100 happy days, particularly when it is something that you’re doing for your own mental health and wellbeing. It bothered me more than it should have, and I then kept trying to be more productive and post less boring things as a result. Again, not doing it for myself.

(Snippet from a DR novel by Sheridan Anne and a cute bookmark from a clothing company ‘New Chapters’)

The final point I came to learn from this challenge, is this:

It’s not about every single day being happy throughout. There are always going to be struggles and obstacles that we face each day. There were some days I ended posting some cute positive happy days post where I’d actually spent 3 hours of that day crying my eyes out over something. But the important part of this process that I started using (after around day 6/7 when I realised not every day would be this perfect happy Disney-themed kind of say) was remembering that I can be raw and honest about my progress, and not every day was going to be amazing.

The point was I was finding at least one small thing out of every day, that made me happy.

It’s not about making all day everyday the happiest best day (although, that would be nice). It’s about acknowledging that your days might not be perfect. But you’re still finding the positives from each day, even the harder ones.

My 100 happy days might be over, yet one thing I am aiming to do going forward is, try and use the same mentality in everyday and look for the good parts, and hopefully making this a regular routine will change my outlook on life for the better.

Despite the tough moments (and probably some cringey pics and captions) I am very glad I did and completed 100 Happy Days. It’s definitely made me feel better mentally, and that’s all that matters.

Modern Common Phrases We Need To Stop Using

We go through life learning many little quotes and phrases, some more famous than others e.g. ‘everything happens for a reason’ – but there’s a lot of quotes that have become regularly used and influenced in recent years that have started to bug me, and I really wish would stop being the narrative people use for various situations. So not that anyone asked for it, but here are my bug bear common phrases that I think we need to eliminate and why…

“If they wanted to they would” – I’m beyond sick of hearing/reading this all over the place. I don’t think it’s really that simple, at all. I may get a bit of backlash on this one because a lot of people feel very passionately about this however, my stance on this is, it is never that simple. We are now living in a world where we are beyond overstimulated all of the time. Our brains are acting non-stop against us. From my own personal experience, I have had situations where I really want to reach out and do something, but there are so many other things that get in the way. Not to mention the fear of how it would be received. Everyone is stuck in their own internal bubble and sometimes people back away for their own personal reasons, maybe it’s too much right now, but it doesn’t mean they didn’t ‘want to’.

Not to mention, as a heavy reader – I have read so many books where the main trope of the book consists of one of the main characters being in love with the other one and the other, has no clue (until later in the book obviously), which just goes to show how common it is that people will struggle with what to say or hide away from what they want through fear. I am not saying everyone who doesn’t appear to ‘make an effort’ cares or is in love with you, but what I am saying is that it is genuinely not that simple. Period.

“That’s just how I am” – I will keep this short and sweet. This narrative is generally used when someone is trying to justify their own poor behaviours or personalities when they refuse to accept someone else’s boundaries or needs. Self-awareness is important. You don’t have to change your entire personality to suit someone else, but you DO need to look more into “I need to work on that” then expecting everyone to cater to you when you would not do the same as them. It’s about balance.

“Other people have it worse” – Why are we always in a competition to see who has the worst time of things, seriously? We seem to forget that everyone has their own boundaries, their own traits and habits, different things will hurt people. I think the problem is that people who have been through trauma, can’t understand how someone who is going through something ‘minor’ to them is so down and hurting. But life is not a competition. In any way. We can’t compare our levels of sadness or success to someone else, as it will always be perceived differently per person. It is okay for anyone to feel however they want to feel about a situation, and they shouldn’t be victimised into feeling like their sadness or their problems do not matter just because someone else ‘had it worse’.

I think I’m done with my little night time vent now about annoying phrases, obviously these are just my own views on things and some people might not like it or think very differently to it but thanks for reading my vent anyway if you made it this far 🙂

Choosing To Be Alone: A Prose Piece

They’re always making comments, asking me with that pitiful voice if I found somebody yet. Feeling sorry for me for never finding someone. Truth be told, I found many people, all with the same shameful narrative.

I grew tired of the same chapters of the story. Every man I meet bringing my guard down and taking my trust like a toy. Letting me feel a certain way until they shut me down and disappear. Every one happily losing me and enjoying the new artistic picture that I don’t exist.

Eventually, I grew tired of the ache I feel every time they happily move on from knowing me. Like I was a temporary disease they were cured from. So just know this, I’m not alone because I can’t find somebody. I choose to be alone because at least I can grow to love and trust myself completely.

I’m alone because I choose peace over the heartache that comes with every man I’ve met.

Facing the doom of Writers Block

So I have been experiencing a major slump lately. Which to be honest, is quite typical considering I started up my blog and writing page a couple of months ago with the intent of being super productive and having poems, novel drafts, blog posts overflowing.

As you can probably tell from my not-so-regular blog posts, this has not gone as I planned.

I have spent a lot of time recently beating myself up over it. Imposter syndrome has been mega heavy, and the novel that I had been planning in my head for months has got no further than chapter 2, because I keep deleting and rewriting… and of course, beating myself up because who do I think I am that my novel or poetry is going to be good enough for anyone to read?!

A lot of this is medical also, I have hypothyroidism, and sadly it’s at the stage where my dose is being reviewed again because my thyroid doesn’t wanna thyroid. So this has made my hormones, fatigue and low mood at it’s peak level, which is slowly being fixed, but it’ll take a little bit of time.

To give some context on what my vision or dream as it were is, I write a lot of poetry and I’m also full of novel ideas I want to get out there – so my initial plan was by the end of the year to potentially have at minimum a draft of my first poetry book ready to release to the world, and also have at minimum my first drafts ready for 2 novels underway. But we’re now in June and I feel like I’m going backwards.

(A little poem I scribbled about writers block)

But it isn’t all doom and gloom in this post. Since I started my blog and a new Insta page for all my writing and bookish related stuff, engaging with other writers etc. I have come to learn a few things:

I’m comparing myself to people who have a completely different lifestyle or routine to my own – it’s easy to feel envious when a lot of people out there that I engage with, have published pieces of work, double the followings that I have and a lot more attention. But some of these people I compare myself to, have either been playing this game a lot longer than I have, or they’re people who are fortunately at a stage in their life where they can write full-time or have a lot more time/capacity to do it all.

I work 40+ hours a week and live alone, so I have to plan out things super well in order to really focus my time on writing. Not everybody has the same routines and lifestyles, as with most things in life, everyone’s journey is different to yours. So I have to stop comparing.

I am not alone in my struggles – one benefit I have found from the people I’ve met through blogging/my Insta/TikTok, is that there are so many people who are having the same ideas and dreams and struggling to overcome them. I actually had a writer tell me recently, that it took them four years to finally complete their first draft of their novel. Now, I’m hoping I will get mine done faster than that (I’m not getting any younger after all), but it just goes to show that I keep living in this mindset where everything fixes itself or comes together immediately or overnight, and that is just not how the world works. Be it in writing or anything else.

Lastly, You can’t rush perfection. I’m not implying that what I write or publish in the future is going to be perfect, I’m a raw unfiltered human, so my writing will probably reflect that in some ways, but it’s actually a good thing that I’m not rushing the process, I’m taking my time to rewrite or draft things out, it is a slow and painful process, but I am trying to imagine how amazing the end result will be when I do finally get there.

So… I am starting a few things now to try and help battle the blockages in the meantime.

1 – Setting myself 30 minutes to write every evening a bit of my novel, no rewrites or deletes, just keep going and write whatever I can to add to the story. I can edit later when I have completed it, but even just that small amount of time focusing will help me reach my goal without pressurising too much. Of course, some evenings I may write longer, some I might not manage – but that is the goal.

2 – Engage in as many writing related events that I can. I find writing workshops extremely helpful for writers block, even if it doesn’t help me complete what I’m currently working on, just having that fresh opportunity for new ideas, whether it be a novel idea or poems, can really make a difference.

3 – Schedule some posts on social media so that I don’t spend too much time doomscrolling when I should be being creative in my free time.

4 – Have a short period each day where I write whatever is in my head, whether it be in my journal or for a blog post, or random poems. Even if it’s a complete mess, just keeping myself productive with regularly writing.

5 – Spend more time engaging with other people who are on the same journey. I love that there’s platforms out there for writers to make friends and talk/vent about whatever they’re going through. It can sometimes be quite humbling to know we’re all facing the same dilemmas and it doesn’t have to be a competition.

6 – Last one, if I slip or fail at the above points, don’t beat myself up over it or let the inner voices take over. Remind myself that the fact that I have even got to this stage is still progression over all the previous years when I just daydreamed and did nothing!

Apologies for the long essay on this, but I really wanted to reflect on this. And also, if anyone is reading this who is on the same page, you’re not alone. Remember you have got this. We will get there 🙂