the summer list #2

Last year, this post was written on 17th June, when my days were spent working and partying, without responsibility or commitment. 17th June 2019 was spent surrounded by paper and files, at my seat in the silent library, gazing onto the quad, and dreaming of the end.

Things change, but there's still a lot I wanna achieve this summer. Especially after receiving a reading list longer than my arm, and an onslaught of essay titles that I will undoubtedly avoid until September. 

The first 2 weeks of this eternal 3 month break were consumed with 14 hour shifts, days of sleeping and recovering,  blissful moments under the Spanish sun. But now the real flow has begun, and I don't want to waste this delicious freedom.

(some magical moments ive already had this summer !!)

So here goes:

1) an art project (I don't know what this should be !! Maybe knitting? Sewing? Collaging? send ideas!)

2) draft ideas for our to-be feminist society (again, send thoughts!!!)

3) journal, try daily, because a challenge is good 

4) run 15 km 

5) read the books on my summer to-read

6) make ice-cream 

7) write poetry/fiction/essays (non-academic obvs)

8) begin drafting ideas for after 

9) more days napping on the beach in the sun with old friends 

10) play tennis 

11) swim once a week 

12) art galleries (both in places I'm travelling, but also local)

13) read in (new) cafes 

14) find new bars 

15) go to York/Edinburgh/Durham for the day 

16) wild swim somewhere 

17) go down to Oxford, to tick off all the things I couldn't do in term time 

18) have a bbq in the garden 

19) make bread 

20) drink wine in the garden 

21) make a lil film 

22) sign up for another race 

23) go on a day trip to the countryside 

24) lie in the sun 

25) fill up a disposable camera

I'll add more ideas to this as they evolve. 

Much of my summer is taken up travelling and working, the former blissful and idyllic, the latter necessary, if a little dull. I want to spend time with friends, and time alone, enjoy the peace, and, most importantly, breathe. 

Hope ur all feeling free and summery!!!

twenty

but now, right now, i know this is the happiest i have ever been. 
This was scrawled in indecipherable handwriting in my diary on Monday 8th July. It was an overwhelming sense of contentment. Balance, flow, peace.
I even wrote: i am so indestructibly content, my yin and yang are in balance, life is flowing, I am at peace.
Maybe its turning 20 (fuck MAN), maybe its the resumption of normality, maybe its coming home, but this buzz of fulfilment has diluted into an uncomfortable blur of confusion.
I feel lost, my identity in crisis, self confused. Who am I.
Through the wisdom of 5 days, I'm laughing at 19 year-old me, i think i gradually know what i want, what makes me happy, what keeps me sane, and perhaps slowly, who i am. 
Wrong! On this slow Sunday, busy with a need to be busy, this feels fabricated, false, feigned.
I feel quite lost.
Home is small and stuck in the past, a mix of comfort and familiarity, and claustrophobic nothingness. Busy but also empty, mundane work which is both blissfully easy and exhaustingly monotonous, friends who feel safe and bring total ease, but also who force the past, conversations consumed with stories of years gone. Where I feel different, lost.
Fuck man, its confusing.
I like home because its safe and its comfortable, but I also feel different and outgrown. It feels as though the people here exist in a world of similarity, relatable experience, and my sphere is so distorted, expanded, different.  It's scary, but also exciting and kind of lonely. Where do I belong?
Nothing feels quite right, as though I am forcing the entertainment, doing it because I knew it used to be fun. Maybe its because I haven't actually relaxed yet. I've worked, travelled, slept, but haven't had days of nothingness.
Or maybe its maturity, age. Maybe 20 prefers pubs, bars and slow conversations to drunken 4ams. Maybe it sees a shift in people and activities, a fundamental 'out-growing' of the world I used to occupy. This makes me sort of sad, and at this moment, feel a bit lost. Where is home? Who are the people with whom I belong? Does it matter that my life is so different to these people?
So, I'm 20.
I knew I'd struggle with the realisation, knew it'd feel uncomfortably old, that it'd mark a shift in worlds. That I can no longer be in an unnecessarily bad mood with my mum, that the £100 battels I forgot to pay are both my issue and my financial commitment, that I have to work to exist beyond basic function, and that some people don't, and that that is shit. That I have to wash my own clothes, fill my own time, make my own decisions.
Its a blissful independence, where I can drink wine at lunchtime, sleep in the afternoon, travel, work, grow. It is also the rudimentary reality of growing up, the shift and the change lonely and confusing!
So who am I? What do I want to do? Why do I (eventually) have to be thrown into the real world?

In other news:
I'm back from a few days in Barcelona, which is perhaps where this existentialism began. I've got a week at home, of working and seeing friends, and then am going to Italy, for 10 days of swimming and travelling, and art. I've read crazy rich asians (pt 2!) which was deliciously trashy, and 'the new me', which got inside my head and made me feel uncomfortable, and question the purpose of life. It also made me fear the mundane, again perhaps the trigger for these emotions. Tonight I am going for a sauna, hoping to sweat out this existentialism and resume my peace. I hope it works. AHH!

summer books

I started writing this post in 6th week, sat in Waterstones, after hitting 'submit' on my final essay of term. The legacy of the Haitian Revolution. Interesting shit.
I grabbed 2 books on my way out, in an euphoric (and caffeine induced) flurry thinking i totally deserve this. 
4 weeks later, I apparently deserved a lot more reading material, and have since had to rearrange my shelves just to accommodate it all.
But I've got a long summer, an increased reading speed, and a substantial amount of travelling, so perhaps entertainment was required.
I'm well excited to sit down and read them, in snatched breaks between work and sleep (both of which have been occurring in borderline-ridiculous amounts), on trains and planes, and lying in the garden in the sun.

Here's what I want to read:
(conveniently not actually rlly the books pictured)

Circe, Madeleine Miller (see this post for an excerpt, which will make u want to cry)
Normal People, Sally Rooney (loved Conversations with Friends, apparently this is better)
Crazy Rich Girlfriend, Kevin Kwan (balance bitches!)
The Prophet, Kahil Gibran
How to build a girl, Caitlin Moran
The Girl Who Came Out of the Woods, Emily Barr
The Parisian Affair, Guy de Maupassant
The Waves, Virginia Woolf
A Spark of Light, Jodi Picoult

A nice mix of classics, trash, nd best sellers. Just what I like. I am pining for a day on the beach, under the caressing sun, drifting between reading and napping, feeling the sweetness of summer. I fully feel I've earned some relaxation, and thats an ace feeling.
Let me know what's on your reading list.

ethereal happiness

The blankness of this page intimidates me. How do I break a silence not previously endured, in a busy-ness not previously experienced.

How do I explain a happiness or a pining or an exhaustion, when even my brain cannot comprehend the emotions.
I am back.
I am lying on my bed, with the golden June light dappling against my walls. I'm so glad I've caught early summer evenings here, they are my favourite.
I've got a mountain of shit downstairs I need to sort, clothes to wash, things to put a way, a life to resume. But today I've napped endlessly, and next week I'm working (no rest 4 the wicked), so one day...
I came back home last night, sunburnt, exhausted, but filled with a bittersweet happiness. Happiness at finishing my exams, at knowing I will be returning to the most ethereal world in the autumn, at knowing I have months of reading and travelling and being, but sadness at leaving Oxford, my dearest friends, the most beautiful city.
I suppose I can't really comprehend it whist in the midst of its magic, other than knowing I belong and that these years will immeasurably be the best of my life. That it is a place like no other. Incomprehensible, unless lost in its madness. It ceaselessly demands everything, feels relentless, but stimulating, exciting, rewarding, motivating. I suppose all experiences are intangible and subjective, but the beauty and the madness of this world is unfathomable unless you are immersed in it. It does not make sense unless you live in it; in the tradition and the intensity, in the pretension, and the debunked stereotypes, in the intelligence. It is the most blessed privilege.

And, after 9 weeks of essays and revision and not much sleep and a few tears and lots of partying and love island, walking out of my last exam to my friends, who'd travelled just to celebrate (thank u exams after term has ended) to be trashed, swim in the river, drink and eat in the sun, man was it magical. I don't even want the shaving-foam scent to disappear from my hear, because I know that is the end.
And now I have 3 months, and a lot to achieve.
I want to read (reading list coming up), sleep, run, write, work, travel, lie in the sun, listen to normal music and just be.
I can't wait to write on here, resume my different worlds, and forget about academia for a bit.
Enjoy some pictures of the most magical place in the world.
Hope ur all well, v happy to be back nd writing nd thinking.

life

Circe, he says, it will be all right. 
It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child. I have heard him say them to our daughters, when he rocked them back to sleep from a nightmare, when he dressed their small cuts, soothed whatever stung. His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened.
Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

The past few weeks I have: done so much I could cry, actually cried, played netball, been to the botanic gardens, eaten cake, ran a race, got lost alone in buttercup fields, read and worked for innumerable hours, written innumerable essays, laid in the sun, cried into banana bread, cried into my friends arms as she read me the above passage from 'Circe' (which understandably made me want to cry more), read some short ghost stories, eaten a picnic in golden hour, rode my bike, been to a talk about vaginas, paid an extortionate amount to go home, drank cocktails, walked on the beach, felt immeasurably sad, and felt immeasurably happy.

Things really aren't sad, they're just a lot. Beautiful, but a lot.
My brain is drained, but stimulated beyond any conception. I know, come July, I will drift into a mindless sleep for days to allow my mind to catch up.
I am in a liminal space of craving fun, going out, dancing until the sun rises, swimming in the meadows, pursuing the love I am pining, laughing at mess and mistakes, and recognising the academic demand, the books that call me, the revision that needs to happen, but yet doesn't have time to be conceived. Realising that its 4 weeks. That this is the final push.
It is all sensationally beautiful. Golden fields and soothing sun and evenings talking about our pain or love, or privilege. Nights debating and coffees and runs in the park and the realisation that this is like nowhere else, this life like nothing else.
I don't want to leave, but also crave time to doze in the sun and read for pleasure and write and think and just breathe.

Fuck man! I need to sleep, but I needed to grace my presence, exams are imminent (but 3 deadlines first lol!), and then a summer of pining for the return, and adventures and processing this madness.
Update me, I'm a complete mess atm and can exist no where except in the present but try and ground me in some reality.

friends

I took today off, an announcement that elicited all forms of "what the fuck, you?" to "i'm proud of u", which perhaps embodies my approach to Oxford and to life.
But it's been bliss and I think, really, I just wished to document the beauty of friendship.
Friends that message you, bring you care packages of flowers, and dark chocolate, and tea, that take you out for cake, buy you cocktails, stroke your hair, hold you when you cry into your lunch because a petty misunderstanding triggered the descent.
I am blessed.
Last week, I walked into the kitchen sweating and announced that I had had a quasi-religious experience with nature. I had been on a run that had taken me along country lanes, through parks, through the city centre, along a canal. I'd seen ducklings, deer, sunsets.
And I just thought, the whole way round:
I am the luckiest person alive.
And there are moments when it feels ceaseless and relentless, and futile. When you realise its pointless, that 8 hours in the library isn't going to change the world.
That I'm paying £70,000 to read.
But there are moments, so many moments, when I am consumed by an inexplicable awe.
And really, I just feel so fucking lucky to have friends to catch you when you're falling, reach out when you're disappearing, who lessen the burden.
Who make you laugh, cry with you, hug you, give you reason and purpose, tell you it'll be okay, and that they're right there.
Next time I'm disappearing in my work, plugging the holes with work to make the internal voices a bit quieter, when I feel like I can't do it, feel so unbelievably stupid and academically inferior, I'll take myself to the meadows at sunset to be marvelled by nature, or think of candlelit cocktails, or tea with friends.

(i really feel like i can't fukin right at the moment, i have so many draft posts and nothing i write is!! right!! so this is really just something to ease me in!! peace!!)

spring

The soft golden light and the meadows of wild darts of colour and the sandstone that blends into the hues of the spring evening sky. Canals and rivers, and walks doused in the thick smell of warmth, and laughter and panes of rectangular sunset reflected on the walls. Old libraries flexing in the light, cloudy mornings of promise.
Oxford, in spring, is idyllic.

Its a monday night, the first of term. I am very tired, and quite overwhelmed, but also happy. I've had a magical weekend of pubs and pimms and singing and running and friends and warmth and reading, much needed after the brutal shock of 6 hours of exams.
But perhaps that explains the cold drag of today.
My brain is so tired I can't think of words. I've spent an obscenity of today reading and thinking and writing and, frankly, it has been too much.
But I also played football in the sun, and called my mum to rant about the laughable workload I have, which pains/stresses/scares/annoys me so much I've bored myself with thinking about it.
My friends cooked me tea, and went to Tesco for me and I practiced self-care by not cramming in any more.
Fun things are coming, and summer's on its way, even if I am yet to solidify plans. But that's okay. My existential angst has been quiet these past few days, for which I am grateful for, and attempting to maintain.

And some things I've loved, or am loving.
Jane the Virgin, because its just ridiculous, but what I need.
Samuel Barber: An American Romantic (I'm not even gonna apologise for liking choral music. I've been mocked enough. But u know, this is really actually v good and I like it for working)
Sally Rooney Conversations with Friends, became almost painfully mental, I felt inside her torment, but so skilful and heartbreaking and easy to read
Dolly Alderton Everything I know about love, because its quick and its abrasive but wise and funny and very fuckin' apt and true and ridiculous
Jodi Picoult A Spark of Light because it made me think about abortion and women's rights and how ironic pro-life arguments can be but also so skilful in presenting unbiased, uninfluenced ideas, she's really good at this kind of book
Coconut yoghurt
Summer
Cream jeans
Evening walks

Stay sane peeps. We've got this (even when they throw 12 essays at u in 6 weeks then exams lol!)

What a liberation to realise that the 'voice in my head' is not who I am. 
'Who am I, then?'
The one who sees that. 

exam care

Checking in! Because who knows the next time I will!

My days are just disappearing and I don't know where they're going, I sit down to read, procrastinate and eat and then suddenly is 7pm and I've achieved zilch. 

I have done some fun things tho.

Caught up with my friends over spilled vodka lime sodas, a week in the place of my childhood dreams, joined a running club and ran a lot, anxious trains but a day of drinking and laughing with friends, and seeing Dalal and Libby.Also consumed some gud things (will expand) and made some sick cakes (will also expand).

Exam season is coming up, which I am a bit scared about but also not really thinking about. I feel remarkably chilled about work atm, which is in itself slightly stress-inducing. I have a fuck tonne to do but am of the mentality that doing it isn't going to reduce the amount I have.
Strange logic.
I've taken today off from workin', mostly because I'm nursing a bad hangover, traipsed to the foodbank to volunteer at 9am (without my car sad timez) and have really just had a fuckin' good day and don't want to spoil it!
I also know I will be back on the diligence tomorrow, because my brain just can't help itself.
This exam season is gonna b different. I'm a mess in exam/revision times lmao, in the 6 months up to A-levels I just cried as a coping mechanism and didn't really exist.
But you already know that.
This one is different for several reasons. 1) I'm away from home (which does induce some anxiety as my mum is my rock (in case u couldn't tell)), 2) I've got 6 double-essay weeks preceding exams, 3) they don't count, but sorta do, 4) I don't care that much, but sorta do (a lot), 5) I have to wear a twatty outfit (see here) and a specific flower lmao.
Anyway. You all seem to be working hard, I am too, and before the bliss of summer (see last post), we have to beat these exams.
SO. Here's how we're gonna get through.

1) Snacks (but with some health substance bcuz I'm gonna be sedentary nd need my brain to work) recommended: dried mango, dark chocolate, these cacao golden berries (but only when my mum posts them to be because ££££), choco leibniz, a lot of squash
2) coffee (black, with soya milk, with hot chocolate mixed in, anything)
3) sleep
4) trash reads (Harry Potter is gr8 for this)
5) fun things (I'm factoring in pubs, clubs, events, talks, netball)–I've got so many good things next term that exams physically can't consume
6) exercise (yes mum! We know!), walk around the block, or do some yoga–especially exercise in the morning to set up well for revision!
7) rant to other people, but avoid them when they make u stressed
8) take time off (my tutor drilled this into me when I turned up to a solo tutorial with a sub-standard essay and a very apologetic speech that I had "burned out" and spent "the past 3 days crying because I'm so tired" (the latter was implicit))–I'm gonna go home, go to my grandparents, take at least one evening off and stay in
9) surround urself with other people–it's great having people who are going through it, but its also great escaping it and living a normal life
10) cafes and cake
11) a nice working space
12) remember a life outside, do other things, don't let it become ur world (because when it disappears its very fucking difficult, see blogposts circa june 2017 for evidence)
13) do nice things for friends
14) timetable, for marginal stress reduction
15) pics of summer and sun
16) avoiding burn out, because we want to peak 9th week not 5th week
17) parks, for revision, for picnics, for headspace
18) letting some things go (for me its gonna be negative food thoughts, becuz they're just a hindrance)
19) treats–I'm thinking tulips, coconut yogurt, berries, new pants, a yoga class, a Frankie magazine–u know!
20) things to look forward to–the first thing I do when I get back to ox is book a fuckin holiday and that will be my drive !
21) drinking wine

So bitches, hopefully we will avoid burnout and achieve enough. Because being enough is enough. And exams aren't a measure of anything really, and education is only one aspect of life, and its just a step onto the next bit.
And let's hold each other accountable. Make sure we are surviving.
Peace!! and take tonight off!!