https://www.instagram.com/p/CBIWOaXJcnr/

Last year I took part in Every Damn Day in June. I won’t be doing that this year, but I joined OCA‘s The Big Draw. Hopefully it’ll inspire me to post more collage here, but I’ll probably forget.

Here’s my latest piece

Landscape collage

A few people I know in the care leaver community have started a project called Care in the time of COVID. It’s a diary project, and one of the prompts is to write about your Saturday. I started writing, and then I deleted my entries because I felt like it was boring/sad. But then I decided to restore the entries because they are a reflection of the time (though they are very dry reading).

I have to declare that these entries are not part of the project, but they have been inspired by the project.

This is a follow up to COVID diary 1, COVID diary 2, COVID diary 3 and COVID diary 4.

Saturday 30 May

What a glorious day. I woke up at just after 4:00. In my dreams I was dating Niall Horan, which is really odd. I am not a fan, but he must’ve got into my mind at some point – probably after watching him in the Niall Horan and James Corden would walk 500 miles video. That song always puts me in a good mood. I rarely remember my dreams nowadays anyway. I think I woke up laughing.

I went back to sleep for four hours and when my partner awoke I started chatting about my music IQ quiz results. I took the quiz earlier this week, and it was very interesting. My result was 99. Normally, I don’t do IQ quizzes because I try to avoid measuring myself but I was curious. I was good at spotting when tunes were out of beat – which made me feel like I could revisit my teenage dream of becoming a mathcore drummer. But I was rubbish at recognising differences between melodies and when vocals were out of tune. That makes sense because I am self-declared tone deaf.

Music is frequently in the background of my life but I had never broken it down when I listened before now. I get my swept up in the emotion; particularly lyrics (which I guess makes sense as I like writing/poetry). This is kinda odd because when it come to visual art I am very analytical. However, as an anarchist I think there is no right or wrong way to do art – I like the lack of rules there. It occurred to me after the music IQ test that my favourite forms of music are punk (for the lyrics and speed, mostly), music with political messages, and industrial noise. I enjoy music where there is no apparent melody. My go-to solution for anxiety is white noise. Since doing this quiz I try to listen to music differently, and it has given my mind something to do during times of stress. It feels good.

It made me wonder if I could use this method in other areas of my life. I dislike preparing food and cooking because I get so upset when things don’t turn out the way I want. But what if I started thinking of food as a series of ingredients? And stopped caring about the end result. I doubt I’d make anything delicious but I might start having fun.

After breakfast and a crossword I video called my family for half an hour. It was the happiest I felt in a long time. I spoke about my upcoming job interview and how excited I am. I don’t know why I feel so excited – I should be nervous. I checked my emails and say I had an email from Nic. It’s so good hearing from my Brighton friends right now. I loved working with Nic and she always lifted my mood.

Shortly after that I got readty to go to the post office and my favourite catbag broke. I cut off the front cat face area (to use as a clutch bag) and then went downstairs to throw the rest away. By the bins I walked into my landlord. My neighbours in the basement flat have moved out so the landlord was viewing the property. We chatted for ten minutes then I went to the post office.

I was hoping to pick up some Halo Top at the corner shop but the only flavour they had was birthday cake, so I left empty handed.

I spent the afternoon with my partner at his mother’s house. We chatted on the patio for hours. I got so hot that I had to have a shower as soon as I got home. I logged into Youtube as I was drying off in my bedroom. I watched a couple of recommended videos. One video was bleach tie-dying, which I did a couple of years ago. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing it and liked the end product. So I might give that a go tomorrow. I also watched a video about Myka Stauffer returning her adopted child!!! I shouldn’t have watched it.

I then went into my bedroom to research a little on change management, and write this post. Then I went to sleep.

I woke up thinking about pastoral support. I’ve been researching good practice across the sector.