if i can dream

tomorrow is week 4 of term 6. i'm curled up on the sofa in a big pink sweatshirt, drinking a green tea and under a blanket. term is intense - we're in six days a week, the workload is a lot and i feel fucking exhausted today. but it's going really really well and i feel really good. exhausted but good. it's only 2.30 but so far i've already:

• done two loads of laundry and hung it up to dry
• washed and changed my bed sheets finally
• tidied my room
• taken rubbish bins out 
• taken stuff to the charity 
• cleaned out my fridge
• vacuumed my room and hallway and living room
• watered my plants
• got a hair mask in 

so feeling good and productive. for the rest of the day i'm going to meal prep with chloe, go food shopping, wash my hair and shower, do a facemask and a little full moon ritual tonight. and hopefully get a well deserved early night before rehearsals tomorrow. 

summer read n watch list

• we had to remove this post
• machine - susan steinberg
• savage appetites  
• breasts and eggs 
• lit - mary karr
• elvis & me 
• elvis & the memphis mafia
• elvis: what happened?
• i'm glad my mom died

• mean creek
• bully
• naopleon dynamite 
• king jack
• miss stevens
• kings of summer
• the sandlot

updated august 24th 

the art of being alone

 

practising the art of being alone without being lonely. i was a regularly little artist in my teens, even my early twenties. i was alone but i was with myself all the time. i had time to waste in between my starbucks shifts. i was making up stories in my head, i was writing them down, putting songs into playlists, cutting up magazines, pasting them onto my bedroom walls like the walls of my heart. i was staying up til 3am listening to music, falling down rabbit holes to find out Elvis’ favourite sandwiches and sexual appetites, the nutshell miniature dioramas of unexplained murders. all that alone time is good for the soul when you fill it with yourself and all the things you love to fall into, to dream about, to explore, to listen to over and over. here’s to alone time, spent with yourself 💌

summer evenings in north london

 here i am sat on the balcony in our north london flat share, it's nearly nine at night and the sunset is really bright and brilliant and mashmallow fluffy over the tall trees and above the 'jesus is life' church sign that hangs over us. and the air is so balmy, like every paragraph of prose i used to write on my blog and in my journal. it's balmy and warm and the wind doesn't chill. it rustles the leaves and messed up my bleached blond curls. but it doesn't chill. 

london town is at 40 degrees right now - a record breaking heatwave. yesterday we spent the day driving in chloe's yellow car with no AC to the shops, so we could walk down air conditioned isles and buy household cleaning products. we ate inside a mcdonalds and then i went to eat mexican food with other friends and then to see a horror film in the AC'd cinema to escape the heat. we've done a lot of balcony bathing, a lot of angling of fans. 

and it's tuesday and i have the whole summer ahead of me - no plans, just space and time to do whatever it is i want.  and for the first time in my life, the lack of plans, the time time time doesn't terrify me. time to rest before i go back to the place i belong. and i belong here too. and i'm tan and happy. and happy and happy and happy happy. and the world feels like a perfect piece of writing that i wrote as a teenager when i got the vibes just right. it's warm and real and bright. and i never dreamed it would be this solid, this tangible, this fantastical. and i am so grateful. with every beat of my heart i am so grateful. 

performing is disregulating - the high before the show, the other worldly experience during the show, the high after the show. and then you're so high and disregulated and your nervous system is crying out for regulation and so you run for a few glasses of wine or a bag of coke and then you do it over and over again. i can't do that. i know i can't. and last night i saw that, i realised why i was always jumping into addiction behaviours whenever i was up or down - because i was trying to regulate. 

so i woke up this morning (after regulating with a take out burrito) feeling deflated, a little sad, disappointed. it's been a longggg week. so i let myself do what i wanted to do today, which was very little. i picked up my meds from the pharmacy in the village, got an iced coffee, came home and spent the afternoon tidying and cleaning my room. folded laundry. listened to podcasts and true crime on youtube and did some journalling this evening. i have the flat to myself so i plan to watch something on tv, eat a good dinner and keep on regulating myself without running away. without chemicals. without shame. just feeling it, being kind, doing what i feel,