In the Summer of '24

Would you believe that we are in the summer - the August - of 2024? 

Somehow, once again, time has flown away from me and I have left this blog unaccounted for - despite the fact that it is now over ten years old. Happy anniversary, blog. I'm glad you've stuck around, even if I didn't use you all the time.

I guess that means thanks to the Google-Gods for not shutting the site down, because I'd have no way of backing up these blog posts if they did so. I was thinking about that last night. This year, you see, I've had a physical book I've been trying to journal in before bed. It hasn't been every evening, nor every week, in truth, but it's been coming along okay. I think it's meant that I haven't felt the need to jump on here - there's only so many places I can relay the same information. 

However, it's been an interesting turn of events because while the book is physical and easy to reach, it also can be stored and looked back on more easily. I can look back at how far we've come just by flipping the pages - but once it's finished, once the book has been filled out and covered in my ink scrawls, it goes into a box and might not see the light of day again for several years. Or until I am feeling nostalgic.

Meanwhile, this blog is kinda forever. It's never going to run out of pages because I can just make a new post. It means that I can actually get to a 10 year anniversary because it's keeping track of when those posts are made and how far back I have been writing them. I can look at who I was, ten years ago, and learn from that. Reminisce in that. I can do that with the books too, I guess, but it's not really the same. There's a lot more hunting involved in that, in finding the right book amongst my horde of written pages. It means pulling a lot of junk out from under the bed, which I don't like doing very often because it just makes a mess (and makes me sneeze).

So here we are, bored at work (classic) and reminded that this blog exists to write in. I don't think I'll be doing it so often this year because of the physical one, but it's good to know that it's here when I need it - and when I need a good ten minutes away from the emails just to spit out some of my inner thoughts and thinking.

I'm tired. Happy, but tired.

Married, happy, tired. 

Married, happy, busy and tired. Probably the busy is causing the tired, but it doesn't look like it's going to end any time soon.

Married, happy, busy, tired and feeling rather fulfilled. Life is pretty good at the moment, lots of friends, lots of fun things to do - birthdays, weddings, you name it - and I think that's part of why the busy times aren't stopping quite yet. Maybe they will as the days grow darker and colder and we move into the winter. We'll see. I'm not sure yet.

Another Turn Around the Sun

Today is my 29th birthday. The last year of my 20s, before the big 3-0 creeps around and we are well and truly not a 'young person' anymore. Not that I feel like I'm a young person right now, really, but the speed of which life heads towards me only seems to get faster. 

I've lived 29 years on this Earth. With any luck there will be many more - two thirds more, for example, or who knows what kind of pill they may have invented by the time I'm a rickety old woman that means I can live even longer. If I want that, which I'm not sure I would.

Regardless, with 29 years under my belt I thought that maybe it was time for a Life (so far) in Review. It's so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day that we don't realise how much we have accomplished - it can often feel like we haven't accomplished much, like we're 'wasting time' or not living how we want to, or feeling like we've failed for one reason or another.

This year, I wanted to change that thought process. Remind myself of who I am, and the good and amazing things that I have done. Because I am worthy. I am loved. I am beautiful, clever, funny. I deserve great things. I deserve to be here. 

So. What have I done?

• Built houses in Cambodia for rural villagers (age 13)
• Ridden an elephant (age 12)
• White water rafting (age 12)
• Scuba diving (age 12 and again at 27)
• Sailed on a tall ship off the coast of Australia (age 14)
• Lived in two continents: Asia and Europe
• Made friends across four continents
• Been to private school, state school and boarding school
• Been on safari (age 28)
• Been on a seaplane / to the Maldives (age 28)
• Been a waitress / barista / shop assistant
• Worked as a design and travel journalist (5 years)
• Written multiple feature films (8 maybe?)
• Directed two feature films (we don't talk about the first two)
• Worked as a runner / AD
• Had David Beckham open a door for me
• Served Claire Foy pasta
• Had a poem published in an anthology and another in a magazine
• Went to university (twice - BA and MA)
• Been to Orlando Universal Studios / Disneyworld
• Travelled extensively: France, Spain, Italy, Norway, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Australia, Lord Howe Island, Canada, USA, Ireland, South Africa, Maldives, Hong Kong, (where else?)
• Met a boy. Fell in love (age 19).
• Bought a flat (age 25)
• Got engaged (age 27)
• Became a God(witchy) mother (age 28)
• Still friends with people I've known since I was 5 / 10 / 15 years old
• Written three novels (though one has been lost since 2007, still counts)
• Written a play. Had two 'scratch night' performances for it
• Learned to drive (age 18)
• Run a 10K (age 17)
• Got a tattoo (age 22) (and more to come)
• Shaved my head (age 17) and had it all grow back

All this to say... I've done a lot, because I don't think this list is even remotely finished yet. I've had a wonderful, weird, extraordinary life so far - and I think it's only going to stay that way. I can't wait.

Correlations

Is there a direct correlation between my level of boredom and how much I write blog posts? Or maybe it's a correlation between my level of happiness, of the balance of feeling like I don't need to write things because I am living them?

Maybe none of that is true, and I'm just trying to be better at writing on here because I know it's good for me - and because when I look back on them in who-knows-how-many-year's time, they'll mean something different to where I am then. They'll be a reminder of what was, where my journey has taken me.

It's not all bad, but it's not all good either. I'm struggling at the moment to be my usual positive self. Is that usual? Is that who I am?

I think so. I think I am the one usually reassuring others, who is vehemently determined for things to go right - or that they will work themselves out. I think in my soul I still believe that. I've often figured that if things aren't going right, it means it's not the end.

And anyway, there isn't really an end, is there? There's the end of the day, week, month, year - the end of the dictated word we have used to capture a certain amount of time - but there's no end to living until you die. It might sound morbid but I don't mean it to, if anything it's a good thing. It means that there is always a tomorrow, a next time. There is always the opportunity to turn things around if you try.

My problem is, I know that, but I am really tired. Too tired to try? Maybe. It feels that way when I wake up sometimes, that I just want to stay in bed and sleep the day away.

I don't think I'm depressed, maybe just sprinkled with a hint of despair at the moment... and it's very hard to always be the one trying to cheer yourself up.

I realised that today. That I'm usually the one cheering myself up, and cheering other people up. Like I'm always the one reassuring Ry that things are going to work out, that we'll get to where we need to go. 

But I'm so busy saving others from drowning - or at least I think I am, when they let me in and tell me the truth of how they're feeling - that I don't think I ever let anyone else help me? I'm so used to being a strong swimmer, I don't really notice myself slipping under. 

Again, I'm being overdramatic. I don't think I stay under for long... Just enough to feel a sense of helplessness for a few days before I take in oxygen again. Like when you were a kid, pretending to be dead in a pool to see who would notice, and then splutter and gasp for breath when you couldn't hold your breath any longer.

I'm not really sure where this blog post is going. Probably nowhere. The only thing I'm really thinking is, I hope I come out of this funk soon, cause it's not helpful to anyone.

This Is Not What You Think It Is. It's Worse.

I have been listening (an audiobook) to a book recently called Regrets of the Dying. It's very good, a collection of stories from people who are dying, experienced death close to them, or who have had near-death experiences and have a new lease for life.

Sometimes it makes me sad, for the stories I hear and the lives that have been wasted. Other times it makes me a bit confused, or I question the regret, because I can't really relate to it - often from people who wish they were more confident, or put themselves first, which I know I already do. But always, it makes me think.

It makes me think about my own life and my own future, which I'm hoping is still long and prosperous. It makes me think about the fact that maybe death could come - for anyone I love, not just me - at any point, and what that means.

What it means, is not to waste any time. I think that's an easy thing to say when you're in the moment, the whole 'live each day as if it was your last' thing, and very easy to forget - to let it slip away... But it's kind of true. So often we forget the small things, the tiny pleasures that make life exciting and interesting. Equally, when we are so bogged down in the small things or the monotony, we forget to live. 

To go out and experience things, to do things that make us happy or bring us joy in those fleeting moments. The truth is, no one lives in the past or the future. Life happens in the present, in the constant, in each breathing moment until the thing that you are currently doing isn't the thing you are doing anymore, and you're doing something else.

Maybe that's why meditation is so good for you, because it's the presence of mind that you need, the here and now and the reminder that these are the most important things.

For instance, my reality currently is writing this blog. But in half an hour this will be done, it will be in the past, and my present will be on the train on my journey home from work. This afternoon, it was (cheekily) applying for other jobs.

Last night, it was seeing the Sibs and Dad for Smiley's 24th birthday dinner (ahead of his actual birthday this weekend). Before that, on the weekend, it was seeing Bing and Z at their new flat and having champagne in Dad's little weird hotel room (in order to taste it before the wedding).

Before that, on Saturday, it was seeing Nothing but Thieves - and before that, the week before last, it was seeing FOB. Concerts really make me think about reality in that way... they are so overwhelming, lights and noise and bodies, and then when they are over you kind of just have these blurry memories of dancing and singing and... it's gone. 

Maybe that's why - when those things that we enjoy, that we feel such elation for, are so fleeting - it's so important that the time we are spending each and every day doing the same thing (aka a job, living, commuting, cooking, eating) is used wisely. That you love it, or at least like it, and wake up thinking that it's worth doing for another day. It's worth spending those precious hours, not knowing when it could all be over, on whatever day-to-day life task you find yourself doing at that present time, because it's something you enjoy.

Or at least, don't hate.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, listening to this book has helped me decide something.

I need a new job.

Oh, How the Years Have Flown. Part Three: 2023

Finally, we are beginning to catch up with ourselves. I kick myself every time I do this kind of thing, because writing these posts reminds me how cathartic it is and how good for my general stream of consciousness. So many things wouldn't be forgotten if I had a better sense of updating the blog - it's so interesting reading over my 10-year-ago thoughts and feelings, and being able to date things as and when they happened.

Times have changed, in so many ways, and yet here I am... At my core, still the very same person I have always been. Apart from now hopefully with a bit more sense and clarity. Who knows, give me another few years and that probably won't be true either.

But, we move on! To Part Three: 2023 (how apt)

January

The long process that I started B.J.M (aka actor name B.H) back in the summer of 2021 finally came to fruition - we filmed Monster. In a beautiful, freezing cold house in the final week and a half of January in Yorkshire. It was so utterly cold, but also one of the best experiences of my life so far. I hadn't originally been signed on as the Director (just the writer) but when the other director B.J.M was speaking to dropped out, she asked if I wanted to do it with her.

There was no other response apart from Yes. So we came up with the shot-list together and I helped her with producing it (kind of), choosing actors, props, costumes and the like. She produced with Papa Lui in truth, he was there the whole time, but while we were on set I took over as the main director and she was our Leading Actor. It was such a good shoot, one of the best I've ever done in my (relatively short) career, and I am so excited for it to be ready for people to see.

In fact, I'm expecting the final film to be ready any day now. I'll keep you posted (and actually, I promise that this time I will).

Our hope is to take it to festivals and do a friends / family screening of it. Fingers crossed those will be organised before the end of the year - it's been a process but I've enjoyed having it in the background while everything else goes on.

February

I worked at the Pasta place (started last October as an extra way to make some money alongside the freelance life) and also Ry and I made our wedding rings. Yippee!

March

This month was taken up mostly by the Cinder-Horror film, which I worked on with B.J.M again. She produced and asked me to come on as a PM to help her with all the production admin (it was a lot), especially as we had overseas execs coming. It was a bit of a wild one, with night shoots and rain shoots and lots of travelling. Even though I wasn't doing anything creative, I really enjoyed it.

Plus, it meant B.J.M and I only got closer, becoming very good friends. Love that.

April / May

Back to Pasta-land, plus a three week trip around the Isles to see Green Am. / Mum / Dad in their various locations. While visiting Dad we also went to see our wedding venue again and he came with us, which meant we got to show him around. It was nice seeing how involved he was getting with it (unusual to say the least).

June

This was a big one - The Action Film. Working as the 3rd for the month. Another great job and one that I would happily do it again even though it was incredibly chaotic and we had one dangerous moment. Haven't managed to work with that team again since but I'm hoping there will be something in the future. Depends if they think I'm worth bringing on again, it's all in other people's hands at this point... I can only be me.

Then again, the director did ask for me to come and 1st on a pick up day in October. Unfortunately the pick up day was cancelled (for multiple reasons) so I didn't get to step up and do that, but it was nice to be thought of.

July

More Action Film and then the Holiday - which started out Cursed but ended up being one of the best I've had. Ry and I went with Bob and Jye, and it was such a nice bonding experience for the four of us (two couples). I love them. I loved that holiday, even though for the first 48 hours it seemed that the world didn't want us to go.

Long story short, never miss your flight, and never travel from Luton Airport.

August

Another big one - The Comedy Romance. As the 1st, and the only member of my team out of a crew of 25. It was utterly exhausting, and there were a few people who just kept trying to drag the ship down and complain about everything. This one made me realise, maybe I don't want to AD for the rest of my life. No one wants to be the bad guy, and no one wants a 2nd AC screaming at them for half an hour, suggesting they're the devil / racist / brainwashed... 

It's a bit like Stolkholm Syndrome, this filming stuff. At the time, I was so assured that I wanted to get out - that I wanted my freedom, my weekends, my work / life balance and time with friends and family back. That I wanted stability.

Now that I have it, I'm bored senseless.

Surely there's got to be a middle ground?

September

A visit to Belly and her Mum (she was just born) to look after the two of them while Mum was recovering from the recent labour, plus a visit to my Mum and NT (NT who has been in the hospital since July and is still there after a broken knee and two mini strokes... we keep aware in case there are updates, but in a way no-news is good-news).

October

And that takes us to this month. Last month, barely. Where I started the new full-time Office Job, something that I didn't want to have to do but didn't really have a choice in... considering that it turned out three of our internal walls in the flat were basically made of rotten, mouldy cardboard. Que the silverfish and ant infestations.

One insurance claim and an eye-watering amount of money later, we have a new kitchen, new bathroom and new living room floor... but we've also depleted the wedding account so severely of funds that this full time, boring as anything job is the only thing I could do to keep us afloat. Despite not wanting it, I need this. We need to make some money, or the wedding we're planning to have will be a husk of its true self... So here I am. In the office again, looking at spreadsheets.

Although I have already started mooching about on the internet for WFH options... I don't mind doing the job, I just don't want to be in an office from 9-6 with a 1 hr commute each way. I'm done with that life.

Three weeks into the New Job, I also disappeared for a week to make a Kids Film with a Horse. That was fantastic. Another one I wrote and directed for B.J.M who produced and acted... I think we make a pretty good team. I fucking love directing, I can't lie about that. When it's my own words as well... it's everything I want.

It's what I need to start going after. Properly.

But soon. Not right now. One step at a time... for now, I'll steal moments in the office to write blog posts, and wait for Christmas.

Oh, How the Years Have Flown. Part Two: 2022

We move on, during another 5:30 PM sneak at the office, to PART TWO: 2022

Where to begin? You'll have to forgive the fact that my memory isn't great for some things.

This reminds me - November 2021 I worked as a film director for the first time, on the micro-budget film about flying Dinosaurs. I was then supposed to AD on the film that was shot on a a WW2 ship (in December) but instead the Dinosaurs film gave me COVID and I stayed home.

January was slow, apart from the two night scratch show we did for SB (the one-woman-ish play) which was a lot of fun and something quite different to the usual.

Otherwise I think the most impactful thing I did in January and February was work on Ghost Film 2 (not its real title) as the Writer and Director - and also AD, which was not ideal but somehow apparently we made it work without burning everything to the ground. It also meant I got the practice in as a Director, which was fun, and I think I did a pretty good job.

Even though - after editing - the film came out pretty naff. Can't be helped, given the time frame.

March into April was taken over by the Worst of All Bad Productions, for which I was a PA making a measly £1000 for the whole month. 30 days. Incredible that I decided to take it, but I thought that I might end up making some good contacts and that it would be good for me.

It was not. The whole thing crashed and burned and I would never, ever work for them again. 

But April 17th - Easter Sunday - became one of the best days of my life (let alone the best day of the year) because after 8 long years of being together, Ry got down on one knee and proposed. That's right - we got engaged!

With a beautiful, gold ruby ring. I wept hard, for about five minutes. Genuinely. On the beach at 9pm with the world and the city looking down on us, when he got down on my knee I said out loud: "Are you joking?" (He was not). I don't remember a lot of his speech but I know it was amazing and instead, I started hyperventilating and then started to cry - and I sank to my knees in the sand so we were both kneeling in the sand - 

and I cried so long and so hard that I had to pull back off his shoulder and explain that I was happy, that this was the most amazing and wonderful thing, but that I genuinely could not believe it was happening. It felt like a dream, like a scene from a movie that was happening to someone else at some other time... It was something I had seen before, on screen, and something that I had imagined but never truly believed could happen to a person, let alone to me.

I managed to pull myself together after about five minutes; Ry asked "Is that a yes?" and that made me laugh. Like, yeah, sure I hadn't technically said Yes yet - but surely the explosion of snot and tears and the hyperventilating would have shown that this was the only thing I wanted in the whole world? But I said Yes anyway, because of course I did, and then I asked him what colour it was because it was so dark on the beach where we were that I couldn't see it properly.

After that, we strolled along for about an hour and went to a pub to celebrate. We stole the glasses our drinks came in. We told everyone the next morning - for that night, it was something just for ourselves.

To this day, a year and a half later, I look down at my ring and think it's the most unbelievably beautiful, shiny thing I've ever seen in my life. I find myself staring at it a lot - or holding it up into the sunlight to admire it.

We spent a lot of May wedding planning and the like. I worked on a film-video-game job where I met lots of people that I would now consider friends, and definitely good contacts.

It's difficult to remember exactly what happened over the summer of 2022. Nothing particularly big, after the beginning of the year. Probably lots more small jobs, potentially trips home and maybe one holiday... It's all a bit of a blur.

The biggest things I remember about the end of 2022 were my trip to SA in November - a safari trip unlike anything I have ever experienced, which I am dying to do again at some point in the future - and the fact that we had Christmas with Ry's family. Which was manic, and I got ripped to shreds by the cats, so wasn't exactly the 'restful' Christmas I was hoping it would be... but still, the kids had fun, and that's what counts.

Oh, How the Years Have Flown. Part One: 2021

 Sitting in an office, with 42 minutes on the clock. I figure now is as good a time as any to update this blog with the three years of events that have taken place since my last entry.

Just read that again. Three years. It's been three whole years since that last post - in January 2021. Well, technically it's been two years and ten months, if you consider that last post was published on the 5th January 2021 and it's the 16th October 2023.

But enough with the semantics.

Let's move on to the juice with Part One: 2021

What exactly happened in 2021?

January was a slow month, with not much happening that I can really remember. Working for ET and generally vibing in the 'new' house, as far as I can guess.

February, I believe, was much the same. We probably celebrated Ry's 26th birthday at the beginning of the month and then continued to be fairly chilled - working, settling in with Loki the cat, the usual day-to-day stuff.

Pretty sure that around this time, I was starting to get the inclination that Hermes was trying to talk to me - you know, the clever, charming trickster Greek God, Hermes. This had all been brewing from the Samhain meet up that I did with the AC - now retitled the Witchlets - where M had led us in a God-finding mediation and Hermes had spoken to me. From then I'd been getting signs, moments of clarity or questions and thoughts of what to do...

So in March, when I went to visit Dad on the coast - working from his 'home' for two weeks - I reached out to a low-budget film producer I had been following on Instagram for a while, and told him that I was a writer fresh out of my Masters and on the hunt for scripts to write.

Within three weeks, I was writing my first feature film... an erotic thriller, which isn't exactly my genre of choice and I will not be repeating the title here, but nevertheless it was something! 

That was what I was doing in April - working full time at ET while plotting and writing GoL. I finished it around the Easter bank holiday weekend, because I was home at Mum's at the time. Then it turned out that they were actually planning to film the whole thing in May... and I thought, what the hell, maybe I'll ask if I can come and watch it turn from script to screen.

Which is how I found myself working as an Art Director on a micro-budget film set in the month of May. It was only a week (a full 7 days) of non-stop shooting; terrifying, exhausting and exhilarating. I would later learn that this was not the speed that one was supposed to shoot a film at, for multiple reasons, but at the time it was like Playing Pretend come to adult life - everything I'd dreamed about, watching these actors become my characters. I was enthralled.

It didn't stop there. The producer - Jeffries, I'll name him here - wanted other scripts from me. Horror films, mainly. One about a Ghost. Another about a Bunny. A third about an Earthquake.

It started getting a bit much, especially with the quick turn around time... and at the same time I had invited Hermes in, pledged my allegiance to him as my Patron God - and he kept sending me messages. Mostly through tarot. Quit your job.

I grappled with all of this through June - I was burning out from writing scripts into the late hour, then writing for ET during the day (even with my Mondays off). My life had gone greyscale after coming back to work from the GoL set - the set where it felt like everything was in technicolour, and the office job by comparison just so boring. 

Which is saying something, when you consider that for a lot of people ET is like the best job ever, perks including luxury stays in hotels and resorts and fancy dinners out... 

In July, I sat down with my ET manager and asked about the idea of going even more part time... He asked Big Boss and she said that it would mean that the money that I would no longer earn would be stripped from the budget - they wouldn't be able to use it for a second part timer. So it was either stay as things were, or leave.

I handed in my notice, and finished working for ET at the end of August. It was hard, I'm not going to lie, and a very heart-felt goodbye. I didn't realise how much I liked working there, working with that team, until I wasn't doing it anymore. 

But now I was a freelancer, and I had many low-budget projects that I ended up working on. I'm pretty sure that there were about twelve Jeffrey productions that I worked across those next few months - in a range of job roles.

I was the assistant director for a bunch of them. I wrote another erotic thriller, Twins. I was a production assistant on what remains, to this day, one of the most hellish shoots I've ever worked on. I drove my car to Scotland and back (twice), to Norfolk and Devon and Birmingham. 

I also had a few days work with Jarvis on an actual ITV shoot in Brighton, this was a highlight of that time. It also takes us to October. 

Somewhere in there - could have been as early as May - Matthews got in touch and said she wanted to write a horror film around a basement. So we started working on that, too... slowly, in the background of everything else.

By Christmas, I was burning out again - but in a different way. I was loving what I was doing, but I was away from home all the time. I also was not making that much money, as is the nature with continuously working in the micr0-budget world. You almost need at least two a month to make any decent kind of dough (and that means putting a real strain on every other aspect of your life, including your sanity).

I was also getting kind of sick of being exploited by Jeffrey. But that's a story for Part Two: 2022.

Instead, I'll finish with this. We had my Clan's Christmas at Dad's house, by the Coast, and it was utterly spectacular.