I'm back!
So this is like a "life update new year's resolution roundup new year's
resolution setting kind of" video thing. So I haven't been around on YouTube much.
Uhh this year has been... [pause]
Just a big old nope for this year! There's been good
things you know, there's been some really amazing things I got to do or be part of
or go to and they've been great. Just that the bad things have been so so bad
they kind of like eclipse a lot of the good stuff. Some lowlights include I
basically had to take someone to court - it was their fault -
I had to go through the whole legal process, it took about six months. They
weren't cooperating so I had to escalate it and escalate it until I set a court
date, then finally he got settled out of court
like before we both had to appear (I won by the way). But that wasn't - that was not
fun to go through, that was really stressful and horrible and also I had to
deal with the thing that made me have to take them through the process and like
push them towards court anyway. I can't go into details because I don't have a
lawyer on retainer, so it's probably not smart for me to do so. That's kind of
kind of all I can say. There was some really bad people in my life, I'm still
upset thinking - just thinking about it and like, mentioning it because they were
so toxic and horrible and they had such a big role to play in my life at the
time because like they just had to and they were awful like I'm still - I'm still
recovering. I will probably need to find a therapist to deal with the
after-effects because it's been months and I'm still affected. They're now like
completely cut out of my life basically - took one of them to court!
As far as I'm aware I will never have to see them again or
speak to them again but it was really bad. Obviously that affected my mental health
a lot - a lot a lot! I had a couple of breakdowns, there was a really bad moment
but I have a support network, I'm okay I'm fine, honestly. I got so worn down
that my mental health was starting to affect my physical health as well, so
I've now started passing out on the tube which is not fun! I've also had like some
other symptoms as well so I'm gonna have a go to a GP soon get myself checked out.
I'm genuinely doing a lot better, I've got my support network my
mental health being a lot better, I'm out off a lot of toxic situations, I've got
my hoops on! So since we're kind of like reviewing this year I might as well
watch back my new year's resolution video and review my goals, most of which
I have failed! It's not looking pretty in my defence, I had a lot going on - a lot
- A LOT - too much! Also my priorities changed a lot throughout the year and just
watching this video in preparation to record this, I'm like a completely
different person now. So I've got the video here on my laptop-
same laptop, more stickers - so let's go!
Past me: I want to learn how to code
Present me: Did I learn how to code? I did not. I was doing it at the
beginning of the year but I found out it's really hard. Like, really hard to do and
it's a great skill to have, it's really super valuable to have which is why if I
ever had issues arising where I would need like fix or code something, I'mma
hire someone to do it rather than me being like "oh I've done a course online
and then having a tinker around a background that that will
probably not turn out well I wouldn't put me in charge or anywhere near any
code - why would anyone put me in charge of any code? I'm probably gonna
refresh the basics but I'm not gonna make it very high priority and I'm
not gonna be like putting it on my CV anytime soon.
Past me: I want to get better at maths
Present me: Again I tried with this one, I actually really tried I tried a couple
of websites, from the one the government issued to one my friends gave me
access to. None of them worked for me - I mean they were either really badly built
or they just weren't applicable maths. One of them I used - they kept trying me
to use the app that they built and I hated it, I just wanted about to like
learn how to do maths I can apply to my life and instead they were making me do this
stupid app thing that calculates for you and I was like I'm not into this!!
So it just frustrated me so much that I just kind of like gave up!
Trying another website soon though it's called Khan Academy which was
recommended to me so I will give that a go. Also! New discovery! So I've always
kind of struggled with maths and I was like "oh I'm just bad at it, I don't have
the head for it, I'm too *creative*" because that's kind of what you're taught in
school. That either some people have the gift for maths and some people don't -
which is bollocks because it's a skill. That's all. It's a skill you learn but
looking at how I react to having to do maths and thinking about
it as though they were symptoms, I think I have something which I can't pronounce
it's called dyscalculia. Essentially it's dyslexia but for maths. A lot of things
do check off like difficulty with mental maths, difficulty holding numbers in my
head, difficulty applying maths concepts to money,
I'm very easily lost when trying to do maths problems,
I have trouble understanding place value - so with like decimal points, it kind of doesn't quite
make sense what the number is where the decimal point is - I don't quite know how to explain it!
Very slow, very anxious about maths and I still count
my fingers in order to work something else. I'm just there like [mimes counting on fingers]
Currently I'm not sure if I have this - I don't know how I would actually be diagnosed and I
don't know what value it would have bring to me if I was properly diagnosed
but there we go. Also there's not a huge amount of
research into this issue so I don't know what to do!
Past me: now the other language I'm
gonna learn is French.
Present me: I pushed at it on and off but ultimately it's going to
have to become a lower priority or just hit pause on that skill set because as
much as I like - I genuinely just love the language and I've always wanted to learn
it - but I don't need it in my day to day life. Learning French doesn't mean as
much personally to me as it would if I was better at Cantonese and Mandarin.
I only have so much energy and time and need to focus it on Cantonese and
Mandarin. I really sad to be giving up French but it's for the best.
Past me: Also gonna try and perform at more poetry night because spoken-word
scene in London is just beautiful.
Present me: I did perform at more poetry nights!
I did some really big stuff and cool stuff. Earlier on in the year I had my Barbican Young
Poets showcase, so my collective and I, it was essentially our final end of the
six-month program performance show thing and it was one of the most
beautiful experiences because all these wonderful people you've been
around for six months and you're all so close and you love each other so much
you're all there celebrating yourselves and each other and
it was just so beautiful. Another thing I did, which is one of my
most favourite memories ever, I did a show called A Change is Gonna Come. It was
a collaboration with Barbican Young Poets and Boy Blue Entertainment who is
this amazing hip hop dance group who are also based
in the Barbican Centre and we collaborated and we kind of like fused
our poetry and dance together and we performed at the pit theatre and it was
great! It was so amazing, seeing all our work meshed together in such a short
amount of time as well and created something really really beautiful and
really really special and I'm so proud of it everyone. I'm so happy I got to be
a part of it, and it like changed a lot of things for me for the better.
I also headlined a show called the Jazz Verse Jukebox - that is one of my
favourite nights in London! It's jazz music and it's poetry and if you perform poems you
can have the band on with you and they improvised music to go over your poems!
What happened was I went to one of the nights, I got pulled out of the box
for the open mic, got on the open mic and apparently did a really good job! So much so
that the host then came to me afterwards and said "I would love for you to
headline", and I was like "YES! YES! YES! I mean I think about it".
And of course I've been doing a
couple of open mics here and there. I'm now feeling much more confident and I've
been starting to ask people "are you looking for hea liners because I'd love
to headline your night" so that's been getting some positive responses so far!
I'm going to try and push more and talk to some friends
and see how they have managed to do it and maybe I'll be headlining more shows!
Life has been terrible, but poetry? Great!
Past me: I want to make 3 pieces of art this year
Present me:I did not make 3 pieces of art, I made one. Better than none! So I think
on New Year's day actually, I did some self-portrait photography - I'll put them here -
They were inspired by Robin Torkar (I believe that's how you pronounce his surname)
aka PixlPit who is this great animator and he's Jacksepticeye's video editor. He just
takes these gorgeous gorgeous photos and there was one that I was really inspired
by and I just really wanted to like create pieces inspired by that. Those are
sound like my favorite photos I've ever taken
I took maybe 300 - 400 photos across two sessions to get these shots but I think
they turned out reading really great and I'm really really proud of them!
I'd love to do more interesting shots like that but I will think about it and
get back to you!
Past me: I want to make more of a YouTube channel
Present me: Ah, YouTube. That's a thing, isn't it?
So as you have noticed I have been very
absent from YouTube. Sometimes two or three months pass between uploads.
Life got in the way, motivations disappeared and I just didn't!
Also I really fell out love doing BookTube videos - that is a topic for a
different video - but I just really wasn't enjoying it. I remember I filmed a video,
I was bored filming it, I started editing it and I was bored editing it and I was
like "why am I doing this? Why am I making this video, why I'm making these kinds of
videos?" and I just stopped. I don't mean BookTube videos overall, I
mean stuff like you know TBR's, Wrap Ups etc. They're easy videos to film but they're
not fun for me to make, so I stopped as you can tell. That's a topic for another
video. If you have questions or thoughts on that, please let me know in
the comment,s I will read all of them.
Past me: I want to actually exercise this yeah
Present me: I kind of exercised! So back in my old place I joined a gym and that was actually really
good, I was like "I don't hate it!" I was terrified of the weights all the
time, I went on it like five or six times because, I don't if you've noticed, but
I'm very small and just tiny me in this massive machine?! I look ridiculous
and I feel ridiculous and I'm just there like pulling at the littlest weights!
We're now near a 24-hour gym, I've got a membership so I'll be going to that
Past me: I want to travel more.
Present me: So this was a resolution I thought I'd fail but this
is the resolution I completely smashed. I, myself and some people close to me, we
went to Bristol, I've been to Exeter, I've been to Brighton this year. I only needed
to travel to three places this year to achieve my goal and I already did that
just UK-based and then I also got a job that involved a lot of travel.
So this year I've been to Boston America, Singapore and Hong Kong which was pretty
awesome. It was for work and it had its own... issues. But it's been amazing to go
abroad because I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. But I got the
opportunity to, so that was a perk. I still haven't made it to
Scotland but I really really hope I will in like spring or summer so Marta, I'm still coming for you!
AJ: I'm going for a hefty chonk
[Marta dies laughing]
Marta: Do you see what I mean?? It's endless comedy!!
Marta: I'm so tired!
[Christy clicks light switch]
Christy: That was the wrong light!
[Marta laughs]
Marta: oh my god that's going to be so smooth!
Past me: I've written down "call home more, you little shit!" [laughs]
Present me: I did call home more! So what I did was I set a calendar reminder every Sunday, 8pm.
It would go off and I would have to call home. I didn't call home every
single week because, as mentioned before, sometimes when I wasn't doing very well
mentally, I was just like "I don't want to talk to my parents, I don't want to call home
I don't wanna talk to anyone" but generally I have been calling home more, which has been nice.
Past me: I will fix my sleep this year
Present me: GUESS WHO DID NOT FIX THEIR SLEEP THIS YEAR?? (points to self)
I went through a bit where I thought I fixed it, so I was going
to sleep at midnight and waking up at 6:00 and I was like "oh I need six hours
sleep then, that works out, that works out with like the REM cycles and whatnot" and
I felt fine and I thought "oh, I finally cracked it!" And then after a while my body started
saying like "noooooo" and then it turned out I needed 7.5 hours sleep actually.
Also sleep patterns are so delicate, they're so easy to break, they're so fragile and
you can just snap 'em like a glow stick. I've also been having a lot of anxiety this year, when
l'm going to sleep and when waking up. It's just - you just wake up and you're
like "OHHHH THE ANXIETY IS HERE" and you go to sleep and "OHH THE ANXIETY IS BACK".
A big symptom was like, feeling this awful tightness and pressure
in your chest, so the only thing that really resolved it was - let me make an introduction.
This is Dog. So I got this cuddly toy when I was
maybe 12 or so and he's been in the wardrobe for a long time. Even though I'm
in my early twenties, I need to sleep with a cuddly toy. Also this toy dog is
named Dog because - this is the kind of child I was okay - I just thought it was
ridiculous to name your cuddly toys and give him like a real human name so I
just didn't, I just refused to name it. He's been across the world with me and
has been helping me sleep and has been providing a lot of comfort!
Past me: I will be posting a mid-year update in August to reassess all these resolutions.
Present me: [snorting and sarcastic laughter] mid-year update! [more laughing] That did not happen!
Ok, so 2018: bonfire, trash fire, multiple fires but hey 2019 is happening!
I mean it's just a date, it's just a year
but you know what? I need hope, okay?? I need it.
I've set myself some new goals. I think two - three - big issues I had with my resolutions was
that I knew what I wanted but I didn't put work in. I didn't know how to, I
didn't put the systems in place except etc etc.
2: my mental health played
a big factor in 2018 [clicks tongue] thank you! and also I need to just simplify, really simplify
my resolutions and goals so I actually focus on what I want
and know that it's okay if my priorities change. Anyway - goals for 2019 - here we go!
Learn the phonetic alphabet for realsies this time! I'm actually gonna make it my
screensaver on my phone.
Maths! Might actually get better at maths
in 2019! I don't know, we'll find out! I'm gonna go through the Khan Academy
website and figure out if there are like modules and whatnot and set a
concrete goal of "complete certain amount of modules by what time etc.
Improve my Cantonese and Mandarin! I don't know how to set concrete goals on this but
I'm just gonna like hack at it a few hours per week and see how that goes!
I wanna do more poetry nights! Not just open mic but headlining as well! I'm
gonna be bold and brave and knock on some more doors.
I'm gonna get back into
my side Instagram for TwiggedBeauty. I want to hit 2,000 followers - I know numbers
are just numbers and following counts doesn't matter and all that stuff but I
just want to set a goal for myself so 2,000 followers it will be!
Make more art
So I finally kind of figured out what kind of art I want to do now. Basically I
painted this back in 2016/2017? I don't know? But I painted this - you might
recognise this from my "My Difficult Relationship with Art" video that's but I
just really love cityscapes and I love this kind of like floating city on a
rock kind of concept thing, so I just want to stick with this style and
obviously make it better and a bit more interesting. Also a big thing
was that I didn't want to make art and then just have nothing to
do with the art afterwards like I'm not going to hang it up because I don't feel
like that's something I'm uncomfortable doing, just painting and then hanging my own
artworks everywhere, it feels a bit obnoxious for me to do - no shade artists
who do do that because your art is amazing -
I just don't want to do that for my own art pieces. I want to start putting prints up on
Etsy because that's something I've never done and it would give me a
purpose to like push the artwork, like the art would have a place to go afterwards
I've got some amazing friends who do do art and make prints of them
and put it up on Etsy so I'm gonna message them and see what I can do.
And if it sells, it sells. If doesn't sell - [shrugs]
Probably will also do something like
painting time lapses as well to put a channel
YouTube! I'm gonna try and get
back into it a bit more because I do love filming videos, I do love anything I
do love putting them out there and just like interacting with responses and
things like that, that's a huge thing for me, I love interacting with responses so
please do comment, that's kind of why I'm here
I've also got some
collaborations coming up which is really exciting for me.
I want to bake a cake. Just the one cake -one cake and then my resolution is done. What kind of cake?
I don't know, I just really want to bake a cake and do the frosting and stuff and
just make a cake! I'm such a domestic goddess!
Get 7.5 hours of sleep a night
because that is what my body needs so might as well actually listen to it and then
maybe finally my sleep will be fixed!!
I'm gonna try and go to the gym twice a week
I wanna get as healthy as I can now because it will pay off in the future.
The final big resolution: I've always wanted to start a podcast. I've been thinking
about it like all of this year. It's time to actually do it because there's not
actually a huge amount stopping me it's just me
fussing out being like: "I don't know when a good time to start
would be" - just do it. So, podcast - it's coming.
Thank you all very much for watching, I'm sorry I've been away, but you know I have to take
care of myself. Please send me good thoughts and wishes for 2019 because I
can't have another year like 2017 or 2018 - I don't - it's just - I can't!!
Thank you all so much for watching I wish you all a very very happy New Year and all the
best to you.
Take care, byeeee!
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