Day Twenty One

Day Twenty One

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   It is another day on the endless carousel of waking up, completing the same list of limited activities, going to sleep and starting again. However, there was added excitement today when I realised that I forgot what the car looked like, so I stared out the window for five minutes whispering, "it's so blue". 

   I feel like 2020 is just one big swirling cloud of uncertainty, striking the ground with questions and dilemmas that I have never felt before. I feel grateful that I can stay at home to keep myself and my family safe. I also feel guilty and conscious that I am very priviledged to be in that position. I don't want to complain whatsoever because I am very lucky. However, I also feel deeply hurt that I am separated from my partner, and will be for the rest of the lockdown. I feel helpless because my family and I are all too frightened to leave the house because of underlying health conditions in the household. We are all lacking sunlight and fresh vegetables, the latter being something I never thought I would miss. I am stuck on a seesaw of ignoring the news completely and keeping an eye on the news far too much. I see posts both praising and criticising the goverment, and truthfully I have absolutely no idea how they're doing. I've never seen a pandemic. I've never thought about how I would deal with one. All I know is that one death is too many, and that all deaths should have been avoided if it was possible. I don't know anybody who would advocate for anything less, unless of course we're talking about our friends over in the Herd Immunity Camp. I don't know anything about Herd Immunity except it sounds like a fucking terrible idea. 

   In an oddly fitting way, I am teaching a module on Utopias and Dystopias this semester. We have covered technology, artificial intelligence and virtual reality, war, natural disaster and totalitarianism. Next week we are looking at Utopian and Dystopian Music, and I wonder how close we will feel to the desperation, anger and hopelessness we will hear. I wonder what music will be born from this time, and will it be remembered like all of the music we'll be studying next week. Some of us could have a little laugh at the idea of robots or animals taking over the world, but I'm not so sure how close to home we're going to hit in the coming weeks. Incidentally, I just finished reading Fahrenheit 451, and it felt very, very strange reading a dystopic novel in these circumstances. I can only imagine the terror of trying to make it through lockdown without books. I would have liked a little more from Millie and Faber, but I get this story was focused on Montag's transformation. I will probably read it again in the future when my ability to concentrate has returned. 

   I'm missing my partner. I'm missing my extended family. I'm missing my friends and colleagues. So what else is there to do but fill the void with fictional characters? I read something recently about how children who struggle to make friends tend to fix this problem with fictional characters, and I felt called out, and then I accepted it. Not only am I slowly making my way through Supernatural, but I am also watching Gravity Falls, one of my favourite animated tv shows. I'm also being kept company by my virtual villagers on my virutal island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I'm pretty proud of how my island is developing and I'm THIS close to making a YouTube video about it. However, online teaching has taught me that seeing my face and hearing my voice online is one of my least favourite activities. All you need to know is that my museum is surrounded by waterfalls and I love it. 

   Please do direct me to how you are dealing with this situation. Share your blogs, currently-reading, hobbies and Animal Crossing islands!

Stay safe saplings x

Day Thirteen

Day Thirteen of Staying Inside 

   In normal day-to-day life, the little progress I have made since the last time I was here would not be considered as very important by myself. However, I'm takin the small victories. 

   Working from home has been an experience that I did not expect for the last few months of my job. It feels like it's been cruelly cut short and if I had known the end of face-to-face contact was on the way, I would have brought the end-of-semester classroom party forward (which is really just a "let's eat biscuits whilst we sort out your essays session). I hope that when all of this is over, I will still be employed at my current workplace and I can experience a tiny bit of normality there before I move on. I am very tired of grappling with Zoom, because my computer cannot handle 20+ moving images at once and gives up altogether (it used to be a fancy gaming computer but it's pretty old now). I am going to spend some of this week trying to fix it so that my colleagues have the pleasure of seeing my Mickey Mouse wallpaper. If they didn't already see me as a child pretending to be an adult, they will by the time the next staff meeting rolls around. 

   Aside from Work Things, which has the added pleasure of letting me explore Pop Culture for educational purposes, I've been watching Supernatural, clay-modelling, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, crocheting a chunky cardigan and revisiting childhood books (let's not dive into the psychology of that). I am also exercising reguarly which is something I have never done. 

   I just finished the first season of Supernatural, and I truthfully didn't realise I was going to get so hooked on it. It helps that by "hooked" I mean that I also crochet my cardigan at the same time. It's become a hugely enjoyable combination of activities. Nothing to report on Supernatural yet except I'm enjoying it and that watching with the captions on sometimes makes it more amusing than intended. It is worth noting that the captions are normally at the bottom of the screen, but when I pause it, the pause menu pushes the captions up, which I only found more amusing. 

   I am not quite ready yet to share my clay-modelling updates, but I am taking progress pictures. I've decided to have a go at modelling Legoshi from a recent anime called Beastars. Watching it made me extremely uncomfortable at times, and I'm not entirely sure I'm actually okay with how some of the subject matter is portrayed, but I watched it quite eagerly nonetheless, so there's a reason I wanted to finish it I haven't put my finger on yet. It's definitely a much darker telling of the prey vs. predator story we see in Zootropolis, which is one of my favourite films. I don't believe that stories like this are just for the furry fandom, but I have noticed recoil from non-furry watchers of Beastars. It's an understandable reaction. 

   Animal Crossing: New Horizons is getting me through the endless monotony of the days by providing something different each day. We're not going to talk about the horrifying personification of Easter by the name of Zipper, but I am looking forward to the 13th of April when he goes away. The 13th of April brings other joys though. It is the supposed "end of lockdown" marker. I have doubts that this will truly be the end of the lockdown, but if it is, I will very gladly reunite with my partner. It is his birthday today and I'm devestated that I'm not there, but I ensured that I took many virtual gifts over to his Island in Animal Crossing, to get my appreciation across. 

   When I'm not digging up virtual fossils, creating a cardigan, or working, I am reading and exercising.

   I know the reading is working, because it's the first time in weeks I have felt like reading anything. I re-read Varjak Paw and The Outlaw Varjak Paw by S.F. Said. These were my absolute favourite books growing up (I must have found them when I was about eight years old) and it was a joy to revisit them. I'm hoping to pick up reading again, but it all just feels a bit too overwhelming at the moment, so I won't pile the pressure on myself.

   I know the exercise is working because my muscles hurt if I crochet a bit too vigorously (clearly a scientifcally accurate way of testing results).

   I know my anxiety is working because beneath the aching muscles, working hands, and scrolling of emails, I'm still churning away. All of this is very much an effort to block out the outside world. All of us in this house are too frightened to go outside, and we have all stayed on one side of the front door. I am very much hoping that by the time the lockdown lifts, I will have regained the courage to Go Outside.

Stay safe saplings x

Lockdown Life

IMG (c) Myself - 2016

   Day 6 of Staying Inside. 

   

   During this time of personal and global panic, it appears that a part of my brain I have not met yet has jostled it's way to the front and taken control of the wheel. I don't want to insult your intelligence, but I'll go ahead and clarify that that metaphor was not informed by any sort of expert opinion. I have no clue what's going on in my brain. However, what I mean is that despite having my usual cauldron of anxiety bubbling beneath the surface, I've stopped catastrophising and my autopilot is keeping me occupied. My family and I are in a very privileged position in that we can all work from/stay at home so as time goes on and nobody is showing symptoms, I have been able to calm down a tiny bit. I'm still extremely anxious about my partner and extended family, but for now I am able to focus on tasks at home without too much dramatic pacing and fretting. 

   My days have mainly consisted of working on some online teaching, playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, watching Supernatural for the first time and a bit of crochet and clay modelling here and there. Getting used to this home routine has been really strange. I spent a very long period mostly at home a few years ago when my migraines were a lot worse and I was in a slightly different place in life. However, since then I've been much more active; I have a full-time job and I've been much more nomadic since meeting my partner. In case you're wondering, we do not like being apart but we are coping by sending each other daily gifts on Animal Crossing. 

   The image above is a self-portrait from 2016. I am wearing a hoodie that I still own, some cool jeans that sadly became too faded and shrunken to wear, and some unicorn slippers which also sadly fell apart (I loved them too much). I also had my bright red hair and side shave which I kept for a really long time, but I am now back to my untamed brown hair. Most of the time you can find me wandering the house in unicorn pyjamas, buried in a fluffy, grey housecoat, lugging an enormous mug of tea around with me at any hour of the day. However, one things remains the same. I am always carrying a little fire around with me. The self-portrait depicts Calcifer, a fire demon from one of my most beloved films, Howl's Moving Castle. I was inspired to draw it not only because it's one of my favourites, but because ever since I was quite young I've imagined fire in my hands. I can understand at this point you're thinking, what?. It's not as edgy and superhero-esque as you think. 

I just have really cold hands.

   For some reason, my hands are always freezing and one day they were so cold and they hurt so much that I was Googling how on earth I could warm them up. I saw a random post which described how imagining a little fire burning in your hands like magic would actually help them to feel warmer. So, Google had spoken and I was ready to give this a go. Long story short, I've been doing it ever since. 

   On the topic of Howl's Moving Castle, a friend recently asked me why it's one of my favourites, because theirs is Spirited Away (an excellent choice). I know why, but up until this point I never considered trying to articulate it any more than half-screaming at people to watch it. After she asked me, I've been really thinking about it and I think I've come to a conclusion. Howl's Moving Castle is special because it's familiarly unfamiliar. 

   In one scene, Howl and Sophie prepare eggs and bacon for breakfast and sit at the table to eat it with Markl. These seemingly normal events are interrupted firstly by Calcifer loudly eating the eggshells, then by the lack of clean cutlery in such a large castle, and the sudden appearance of a curse, burning itself into the table. Even Howl, an irritatingly lovable character who plays what appears to be a love interest at first, is punctuated with quite serious political significance, childish reversion, and mysterious legends of heart-eating and star-swallowing. There's no all-encompassing way to describe why the film is so important. However, it's important to me for many personal reasons. 

- The scene where Howl takes Sophie's hand and they walk through the sky.

- The unbelievable soundtrack which, when it builds, is phenomenal. 

- The immersive way that you feel aged alongside Sophie.

- Howl's grey and salmon coat. 

- Howl's bedroom. 

- When the castle opens it's mouth and the tongue sticks out. 

- Turnip head.

- The perfect casting for the voices.

- The way Sophie eats the block of cheese from her little hankerchief hammock. 

- The ever-so-slight character progression. You could argue that both Howl and Sophie are the same person they were when the film started, but after watching it a few times, the subtle ways their characters are tested and forced to grow is inspiring. 

- The very idea of the flower shop. 

- Howl's gooey tantrum.

   I'm hoping in the future that I can write more extensively about Howl's Moving Castle. I read the book last year, and they are very much seperate entities, but I highly recommend both. I don't want to rush writing about it, but I am also eager to go to bed, knowing that we are going to lose an hour in the night. 

   

   Another thing I've been doing a lot the last few days is listening to music so I will leave you with my Lockdown Playlist, which is really just a bunch of songs I've been listening to a lot during my time Staying Inside.

Lockdown Playlist

Take care saplings x

Hibernating

IMG (C) Jinifur

About this time last Sunday, I started to write a post that went like this:

"I'm writing this post because I don't know what to write about. It's 9:54pm on a Sunday evening. I've done some work, watched the final episode of Doctor Who, stared into space, and procrastinated doing anything productive. I have more work to do, blankets to knit, personal fictions to write and I also happen to be halfway through a volume of Transformers, recommended by a friend. I truthfully did not expect to enjoy it as much as I have done, but the concentration needed to read is not here tonight. 

I even took a break from writing this for a moment to check Twitter and became distratced by an app that lets you design your perfect island on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This semester I am teaching a module on Utopias and Dystopias, and I have to tell you that writing content specifically tailored to Animal Crossing has crossed my mind more than once."

   Last weekend, I was actually feeling pretty depressed, but I styled it out with "hey I'm just procrastinating and having some "me time", it's okay. I'm doing this on purpose!". 

Narrator: but she wasn't doing it on purpose.

   However, despite the state of things, I'm in better spirits than I was, most likely due to being able to see my therapist this week. I think it's important to talk about attending therapy in blatant terms, a bit like saying I'm visiting the doctors or the dentist. Sometimes I can't do self-care for my emotions and I need a bit of professional help, and I think the human race would be better company if we all did that from time to time. So if you're reading this, and you're struggling on your own, please reach out for help. If you're in the UK, Healthy Minds is a great place to start. 

   I have a slight feeling that my elevated mood is somewhat due to adrenaline, because if you haven't noticed

the world is weird atm

   If you've found your way to this blog post, then it's very unlikely that you are unaware of what's going on in the world at the moment. Despite the relentless notifications that remind me of the situation every 60 seconds, it's been really important for me to shut myself off from it this weekend. I may have been on Twitter, and have been reading scary things, but I do not want to contribute to the mass panic of tweets when I'm already having my own mini panic. As someone with anxiety disorder(s), hand washing and hand sanitiser are very familiar concepts to me, and I do not wish to discuss them at length. Thus, I have dedicated most of my online presence to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which is joining us on the 20th of March (five days from now!). 

   The metaphorical ball of stress, not to be confused with a stress ball, is a tangled mess, yes. I've been dealing with a lot of Personal Stuff™, and pushing existential crisis to the back of my mind whilst I focus on work, feeding myself three times a day and planning what my town is gonna look like on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, PRESSING, pressing things.

   It looks like others around me are starting to smell the fear and they are very sweetly comforting me, and hopefully themselves in the process. My partner decided to set up a co-op Stardew Valley farm because they know how much I love this game, and they also know how much I've been struggling recently and that waiting for Animal Crossing is physically and emotionally killing me. So I spent most of this weekend harvesting crops and mining copper ore. When I got back home to my parents, I found my dad had set up the Wii U and had found all of our old games. I started with Wii Sports and worked my way through (spending a bit too much time on Smooth Moves) and settling on Twilight Princess. All was well until the low frame rate gave me motion sickness, and now here I am writing to you. 

   In truth, this post is probably just a form of comfort for me and I commend you if you're still here. If you're feeling the stress at the moment, like me, remember to take some time out. Disconnect from the world for a little while, and stay indoors and relax if you're able to. 

Take now for instance. 

Breathe in through your nose for five seconds, and out through your mouth for five seconds. Forcefully push the air out of your lungs and feel them filling back up again. 

If switching off electronic devices is difficult, even just for the night, I recommend Sleep Stories. Even if you're not going to sleep just yet, they're comforting all the same. 

Stay safe, saplings. 

   

The Second Summer: what now?

Good afternoon wallflowers and wildflowers,

 To be frank, toddling out of second year and wandering, dazed, into third has felt a bit like this;

Hercules. (1997). [film] Directed by J. Musker and R. Clements. USA: Walt Disney Pictures.

I've started to hear the word "dissertation" spoken aloud as though it is now an impending reality. Those of you who already have their degree, and may even be brandishing a Masters or a PHD, will likely look back on your dissertation as comparably easy to the work you tackled from then on. However, that does not take away the knock-kneed, trembling-lip, nervous-stutter approach I'm going to take to mine (though that is my general demeanour when I approach anything remotely new). I'm sure I'll let you know in the coming weeks when I have finally decided on a topic, though I imagine it will definitely reside in the field of stylistics. I must make sure that, before I leave, I thank one of my lecturers for the infinite amount of confidence and reassurance she has given to me throughout my two years at university so far. I began by regretting the aspect of language in my degree and was thinking about changing course, but her enthusiasm and excellent teaching style has meant that, not only do I love studying language now, but I am opting to do an independent study in it. Then again, the entire English department at my university are nothing short of wonderful, in my humble opinion. 

Anywho, aside from work-related business, I will admit that my summer is still very much in full-swing, despite some wobbles in trying to pin down a specific study topic for next year. 

  A while ago, I made a Summer books list for what I wanted to read this year and in accordance with this I have started reading The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. This is long awaited and I will likely make slow progress on it, but reading it I am. In an exciting turn of events, I am also attending one of the book signings that Matt Haig is holding this summer! I don't think I could possibly explain my excitement for this, but if I tried it would be that my boyfriend observed that when I hear the word "author" said on the tv I always look to see if it's Matt Haig, however unlikely. As far as other reading goes, and I know I said I'd stop talking about this, I think the majority of it is going to be about research methodology and stylistics, which I'm weirdly looking forward to planning and making some notes on. 

   Also on the agenda; video games. I will admit, with only a hint of shame, that my teenage years were spent mostly playing video games. After starting university, naturally, they took a back seat and I very rarely make time for the lengthy gaming sessions that I used to (all of my waking hours). However, as it's the summer now, I am very happily slotting back into Stardew Valley. This is easily one of my favourite games and is a welcome substitute for gems such as Harvest Moon which I used to play on my battered baby-pink Nintendo DS. Though I haven't quite found a suitable exchange on PC for Animal Crossing, games like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon have always been appealing because they aren't based on real-time, whereas Animal Crossing requires that you are logging in regularly to ensure that your neighbors don't start to hate you or, at the very least, you don't end up with bed hair or a weed-infested town. Although I was able to take on Stardew' in the place of 'Moon, I don't think I could replace Animal Crossing quite so easily, as it's a staple of my childhood in gaming. 

  Additionally, I have also managed to one-hundred-percent Grim Fandango on Steam. For those of you who don't know, Grim Fandango is my favourite video game of all time. This masterpiece by Tim Schafer, who also gave us the Monkey Island series (good ol' Guybrush Threepwood), was genuinely my favourite game to play since I was old enough to use a computer. My uncle Rob used to let me and my brother play it on his Windows 95 PC and had never-ending patience with us as we tried to work out the pretty obscure puzzles. Now I can, quite proudly, say that I have completed all of the in-game achievements, one of which included completing the entire game in the original tank controls. Strangely, I preferred the tank controls as it was what I was used to playing the game with as a child, though I did enjoy the smoother graphics that the remaster offered. I could not have been more thrilled that such a classic, that happened to be so close to my heart, was given a full remaster and put on Steam. 

  Finally, in terms of gaming, I am half-way through Alice: Madness Returns. Now, I'm not a huge fan of EA Games, but ever since I saw the teaser trailers for this I felt compelled to purchase it. I love Alice in Wonderland and fully intend to complete this game and it's individual take on the story and upload a review at one point or another. 

  Books and games aside, I'm hoping to complete some art and series I've been meaning to watch for a long time now. Art takes a lot of time, motivation and enthusiasm, so I imagine I will begin churning it out when my plans for my dissertation have been submitted. Series, on the other hand, will have their own post in the form of anime - my favourites and must-watches. Hopefully my blog posts will consist of less catching up and more specific themes from now on, I have some as work-in-progress pieces.

 Be green, 

 Lauren Newman a.k.a shr-Inking violet