SELF ISOLATION | Things I Wanna Do After Lock-down

Hello my lovelies I hope you’re all doing well and are some how still coping in lock-down. We’re on week nine now, as if! For me it’s been so long but at the same time I can’t believe it has been that long. Anyone else or just me?

For many of us this period has been a time of realisations and discoveries of how we want to live our lives after we go back to “normal.” Not only on the grand scheme of how we’re treating the world but also how we want to personally make changes in our lives directly. Personally during this time I have had my eyes open to what and who is important in life and that we all really have no time to waste. If we want something we simply have to just go and get it. I think we’re all thinking of things we’d like to do after lock-down is over, so I thought I’d share with you what is on my list.

The first one on my agenda and on many of yours I suspect is to see my family, friends, and Jake (boyf/ fiance), and his family. Apart from being at uni this might be the longest period of living at home that I haven’t seen any of them. But the crazier thing is how much we actually took that for granted without evening giving it a second thought. So I am incredibly excited for when I can actually see and spend time with them closer than a 2M distance. I know now in the UK the lock-down has been lifted slightly and you can go out and see someone from another household but again remaining at a 2M distance. And whilst I miss all of my family, friends, and Jake and his family for me personally I am so used to not seeing them now that if I was to go and see them and not be able to be close to them all and hug them and just be how we normally are together it would just damage my mental health and break my heart to be honest. So I’m ecstatic for when I can see them all and hug them and just be normal with them again.

I think you can all guess what the second thing I am most looking forward to is. Going to Costa, even if it’s just a drive through. Now of course I am not desperate, I have fortunately been able to enjoy my iced lattes at home with actual Costa coffee because the supermarkets sell Costa coffee pods and they also sell ground coffee bags as well. So there’s a great variety for all the Costa needs! But I am looking forward to going back to my second home with a delicious iced latte and my fave chocolate brownie! Right let’s settle the debate in the comments, are you a Starbuck stan or a Costa stan? Costa all the way for me.

Something else I would like to start to do is plan more trips. I’ve never been that much of a traveller, I feel like a lot of young people; one of their main goals is to travel to loads of places and go on loads of trips. But I’ve never really had that urge to travel. I have a few places I’d like to visit if I’m lucky enough to in my lifetime but if I don’t do an insane amount of travelling I don’t feel like I’ll have missed out. Is that just me or does anyone else feel like this? I honestly feel like it’s just me. It could be because when I was younger my parents never really took me on holidays to places like Spain or Portugal or just anywhere with all inclusive resorts and 30+ degrees basically. We were mainly holidaying in places around the UK such as Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth, Devon etc. Speaking of travelling I really wanna go back to Devon for a few days soon, it’s been a long time since I last visited.

Although I’ve never had a desperate urge to travel all over the world I have few places that I definitely want to visit in my lifetime and then I have another handful that I wouldn’t mind visiting, I wouldn’t say no if the opportunity arises. If you’re also not really a major traveller or you kind of struggle with it perhaps, I do find it’s easier to start travelling around your home country before you branch out to a different country.

In the UK I really want to visit Brighton and not just because of Zoe Sugg’s vlogs! It just seems like such a wonderful place to explore as they seem to have so many lovely independent shopping areas, lovely lanes and buildings, the gorgeous beach as well as the countryside areas. There just seems to be so much to explore in Brighton and it has a bit of everything so it’s quite a versatile area.

Plus I have a friend who lives in Brighton and for all this time we’ve chatted on Insta we’ve never actually met, so when Covid is all over it is definitely on both of our agendas.

Another area in the UK I am desperate to see is Edinburgh, and this is partly because of all of Zoe Sugg’s vlogs around Christmas time. Edinburgh all lit up in lights and festivities and the markets it all looks absolutely magical! Even this illustration looks magical! I’d adore to come here in the first week of December and just take it all in as you all know Christmas time is my favourite time of the year. It’s a magical and special time for me so I know I’m going to absolutely love it when I finally get the chance to see this gorgeous city.

Another place I’ve wanted to visit for a while is Bath. Zoe Sugg has also been here and shown it in a vlog but that is not the reason I wanna visit. Of course it’s a roman town/ city and all of the buildings in Roman areas of the UK are so beautifully structured and such an iconic piece of history. Plus the whole vibe of Bath still feels very old town esk and it has the same vibes as my home town, my closest city which is Oxford, and has the same vibes as Chester does as that’s also a Roman city. So I feel like it will feel like another home away from home for me. I already know I’m going to love the whole vibe and feel. I think it would be really lovely for Heather, Chloe, and I all to visit here together and have a girly weekend away.

In terms of actually going out of the UK, this is definitely a place that every young person has visited for a long weekend and my need to go here is no different. Amsterdam is such a gorgeous place. The pictures you see almost don’t even look real. It looks like an artist moulded the buildings out of clay and painted them in beautiful colours and finer details.

Chloe and I chatted on the phone today about the potential of getting a big group of us to go as a friend and couples holiday etc. So honestly that would be loads of fun I reckon so we shall see what the future holds and what our future bank accounts can afford.

At the moment the final place on the agenda and my main travel goal is to see the Northern Lights. If you’ve read my twenty three questions post, if not check it out here, then you will already know this is the main place I wanna travel.

I’ve always been a huge fan of nighttime, I still am, and the beauty of space and the stars, and constellations. Everything to do with sky is so beautiful and it reminds me how much more there is out there and how big our world really is. I find it so interesting that you and someone across the globe can be looking up at the same sky but be completely seeing different things and experiencing different emotions/ reactions.

Honestly this trip would be one of my biggest dreams, especially to go and stay in the igloos made of glass and you just lay on the bed and watch the colours merge and dance around the sky. Wow, a dream.

Also throughout my life I would never say no to going and visiting another country if I had the opportunity to go. Such as France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and also Australia and America. If I had an opportunity to go of course I would but I don’t like have that feeling of need or longing to travel to all of these places. Like I’m not desperate to travel but I wouldn’t say no. Anyone else feel the same as me or am I just in the minority category, haha. But do let me know what some of your travel dreams are/ what’s on your travel bucket list?

There will be a few of you who don’t actually know this and that’s mainly because I’ve only made the decision recently. Not to toot my own horn but I am really good at doing my nails and creating designs and just painting them and shaping them in general etc. Throughout my teens and young adult life I always have people ask me about them and many people are shocked when I say to them that they’re my real nails. I’m very fortunate that they grow very quickly and when my nails are looking good it makes me feel fierce. My family and friends always say I should consider doing nails as a career because I’d be so good at it so at last I’m finally going to listen and stop waiting around and take action.

In this past year I’ve of course been working but aside from that I haven’t been doing much else and I’m gonna be straight with you all. Have I missed my job? Not in the slightest. I’ve missed seeing my work friends but apart from that I have not missed my job one bit. Which I think proves that I need to take action and stop waiting around for the “right opportunity” to arise. I don’t think there ever really is a “right opportunity”, you can only really go off the right energies that you feel around a situation at the time. You can also only feel the “right time” inside yourself, if you don’t feel the push in yourself to do something when that energy rises then it’s not the time for you. But if you do feel that want and that need to push yourself then you’re mentally preparing for that next jump when the energy is there for you to grab. I feel that energy for me right now.

Lock-down has made me realise that the only person who can push me is me and I am the only one who can get myself from A to B. If there is something I want I’ve got to go out and get it and stop overthinking about it. I don’t know if this is just me but I graduated university two years ago this November. In the first year of leaving uni the majority of people from my year and friendship group of course moved home and got a job because we had no other option at the time. And now we’re here just over a year later still working in that same job we don’t really wanna be in but we recognise we need to earn our own money, as it’s actually more rewarding having your own money and doing what you want with it, rather than having to ask other people to help you out. But here we are over a year later in that same job still trying to figure out what to do and where to start. Which is absolutely fine, you don’t have to have it all figure out, but I feel like so many of us are just waiting for something to come along. Which again is fine as it does take time to figure life out especially when you’re out here swimming on your own.

But I have personally felt worried about straying away from what I studied. I don’t know if others of you feel the same but the performing and drama based industries, mostly for being a performer, it’s always been so competitive which is hard and I think it is why a lot of people despite loving it almost feel like they can’t do it even though they know how amazing they are and talented they are. As I personally feel like that and my friends and a couple of other people I have spoke to recently feel the same about the industry we studied in. Which is a shame that there is so much pressure to be amazing to perform and just work in the industry which is really hard. One thing that performers share is that we’ve all gone through periods of not feeling enough or going through mental health issues and body issues etc. Of course that isn’t just performers but judging from my uni course alone, many of us struggled with personal issues within ourselves, and of course when you perform you get to take yourself away from who you are. You can perform as who and what ever you want to be. Which is one reason why performing is so liberating. But when you end your studies and lose that net of being caught by people when you’ve done something wrong or have gotten a lower grade than expected. Of course it’s going to feel harder to pick yourself up because it’s only you who can push you, there isn’t always loads of people around you to help pick you back up again when it comes to learning and figuring out careers in your twenties.

I digress, but basically for the past year I have sort of been waiting around to figure out what to do with my degree and I still don’t 100% know. Who really does after they’ve graduated. I have a lot of areas I enjoy and want to explore that aren’t all just performing based. But lately I have been thinking about exploring other avenues that I am interested in. Avenues that I can do whilst I am living at home and figuring out where I wanna live and also I cannot drive yet so I can’t do anything that requires me to travel ridiculously far. So, I have been painting my nails since I was 13/14 and it was around the age of 15 that I really started to develop that further with nail art. I remember I’d come home from school on Friday and I would spend like 2-3 hours doing my nails ready for the weekend because when I was younger we weren’t allowed nail polish on at school. So I wanted to make the most of it, so it’s always been something that has been apart of me. I was actually doing nail art long before I’d ever properly touched makeup and started to discover how to do my makeup better. But I just didn’t do any nail art for a while as at uni I didn’t always find the time and I fell out of love with how it looked for a little while. But during lock-down I have completely fallen back in love and rediscovered my craft with it which is awesome. Lock-down has made me fall completely back in love with so many different elements that used to be a part of me, I know afterwards I can’t go back to what I was like before. I’ve got to keep my focus and keep up all these hobbies and interests that I just let go before. God this has been a ramble but basically I wanna do a nail course and get qualified so I can go and work in a salon as there is many in my town and also so I could do some freelance work around my town. Ideally I’d like for it to be like you go somewhere for a week or a couple of weeks to learn and do your assessments or you do part of online etc. But of course I wont be able to do this for a while because of the 2M social distancing rule as you can’t really social distance when you’re doing people’s nails. I’ve got a lot of research to do as I have the skills to paint the nails and do the designs etc, but as of right now I don’t know much of like the background of nail health and products and whatever else it entails. But this is definitely something I want to get into to open a new door for myself. Life is all about creating yourself and developing new skills after all. What job do you guys currently have and is it one you’ve been working towards or is it something you’re doing to pass the time as you’re working towards something you want to do etc.

Fifth on our agenda is to consistently keep a balance after lock-down on all of my social medias and my blog. The main reason I find that hard is because my job right now is always hit and miss. For example one week I could be working 15 hours and then the next week I could be working 35 hours. You just don’t know in my job which is the joy and a curse of a zero hour contract. You would think when I’m working less hours that there would actually be more time for me to blog and do socials. But the reality is because my weeks are so unstructured I sometimes find even in a week when I am doing less hours I can’t seem to find the motivation because I don’t have that creative flow. Probably because my job isn’t very creative and it’s pretty unfulfilling. I sometimes think would it be better for me to have a more structured week. For example Tuesday-Friday working 10am-5pm and then having 3 days off to see friends and Jake, have a day to chill, and then have a day to work on my blog. The only reason I can’t really do that in my current job is because nothing is ever set. You can have set working days but not always those set working hours as it depends what our company give us and what we have to fill. Which is obviously expected with a zero hour contract, it’s always here there and everywhere. But perhaps I do need to get out of that structure in order to focus more on what I wanna do as we move forward. So if I can figure out a schedule when I do go back to work and get further with that, hopefully when I move on from my job to a more structured environment it should be a lot easier to transition.

The final thing I wanna do and need to do after this lock-down ends is to just be fearless and confident with everything I wanna do. In myself in general I do have confidence. You know I’m past the point of carrying about what other people think of me with the majority of the things I do and wear etc. But I think the fear is actually more inside of me not being good enough and “failing.” Even though you never actually fail you only learn and grow but I think it’s something inside my own head with certain elements that I can’t always shake off. I’ve always been someone that is scared to not be as good as everyone else is. I think it’s partly because when I was younger I was always told you’re not good enough to do this and you’re never gonna do that etc. So that definitely has affected me more (mentally) than I think I’ve ever realised until this past year. Of course you can be nervous and have that butterfly feeling with things you’re going for but I think I’ve let my internal fear of “failing” and not keeping consistent with things that keep me happy such as blogging and performing and continuing meditation and mindfulness and learning more etc.

I think I’ve let my mind get to a place of being scared to go for what I want. Which really isn’t a good place to be mentally, I know I’m more than capable of anything I put my mind to but I think physically doing whatever it is has become scary for me. I also think as well when you see so many other people your age figuring it out or looking at what they’ve achieved and then comparing what you’ve achieved when you work in similar areas or have similar interests etc. It can be a bit hard as I guess you think why are they doing so well and I’m not? Even though they’ve probably felt the same at some point in their life. So if you’re feeling like that I also feel the same sometimes, so you’re not alone! I guess it’s just remembering that we all work at different rates and things come our way at different times and we take jumps at different moments we feel. I guess it’s just reminding yourself that just because you have not yet done or aren’t doing what that person has done doesn’t mean you’re not successful and it doesn’t mean you don’t work really hard and that you’re not capable. We can all probably be our own worst critics sometimes, I know I am, so I need to stop allowing myself to think I am not capable of all I want accomplish. You guys are probably shocked that I think this way as you know me I am very positive and uplifting and I always support and encourage other people to just do whatever they wanna do. But sometimes I need to remind myself that I am also amazing and I am going to do amazing things wherever I go in my life. Trust the process and the timing of the universe as they say.

That’s me done for today lovelies, I hope you enjoyed. Let me know in the comments what do you wanna do after lock-down. I hope you’re all staying safe and are well, sending you lots of love as always. See you very very soon!