one of those weeks

well, to be honest, it has been one of those years. i'm sure you would agree.

the spring weather has hit auckland this week, entailing many thunderstorms followed by basking warm sunshine and blue skies. i rather like the unpredictability of clear skies one minute and torrential rain the next.

for the last couple of hours, i have been tossing and turning in bed trying to get to sleep before midnight. this week has been a what i like to call 'shitty brain week'. it's normally when symptoms of my low mood come to linger for a while, completely uninvited, just to ensure they aren't forgotten too quickly. it is never fun and it reminds me of some painful times. normally the first thing to go out of whack when this happens is my sleep. i just need to do a bit of a brain dump... so here we are. welcome to my stream of consciousness at 11:30pm on a thursday night!

this low dip for me has been a wonderful acknowledgement of my personal growth. wonderful?! yeah, i know.. odd right? i can safely say that for the first time ever that the tools that i have started compiling together in my 'mental wellness toolbox' are actually helping. i thought this was worth documenting as the toolbox is usually used to being filled with a bunch of random negative, toxic, destructive tools.

taking some time out to listen to my body (which involved eating pasta carbonara, drinking lots of tea, and watching documentaries about dolphins this time around), along with getting myself out of bed to do at least one thing has been a solid foundation. even if it is to get out of bed to splash my face and make tea & toast, i count that as an achievement. i may go back to bed, that could be it for the day, but i did that for me. and that's big.

this week's outcome for getting out of bed was a surprising result. i went down a youtube rabbit hole and watch a lot of photography videos over the past few weeks. i dug out my old canon camera, tried to make my room look half decent and just went with it. no makeup and my hair all weird from laying on my side for fourteen hours. the photos are now up on my new gallery page! i had no expectations but went in with the attitude of 'let's just give this a try'. i'm rather proud of my results and looking forward to experimenting with yet another new art medium. woo!

even though i am feeling a bit like the weather outside at the moment, the yelling on one side of my brain is that 0.01% quieter - which is a massive thing to be excited about in my books!

anyway, thank you for reading my rambles.

bridgette