Reshuffle

Feeling good. Not quite great, but definitely good.

A reshuffle: I'm sitting in a near-empty house, all my housemates have moved out already, all to various new living situations, and I've got a few days left here before I move into a new place. After a stressful slog of house hunting, I finally found a two bed place sharing with just one other person in a quieter, leafy part of town. Its a part of town that I've wanted to live for a while - a neck of the woods where I spent some time growing up as a kid, as I had some family members living there. I decided to up my budget and pay a bit more than I usually would. For the past few years I've managed to live in London for about as cheap as you can get short of squatting, guardianship properties, or living on a canal boat, but now is the time for a little bit more luxury. I justify the added expense by the fact that, as I'm now working from home as a result of the shift to remote working triggered by the C-19 pandemic, I'm making a decent monthly save on what used to be my commuter fare. I'm looking forward to the new place: I've got a massive room with a nice bay window overlooking the leafy street out front. I'll also have my own bathroom (the other tenant has an en suite). The other tenant seems pretty cool - she's a couple years older than me, pretty chill. She's been living on her own in the place for the best part of the year so I reckon she has maybe got used to the lone living situation and may be a bit apprehensive about sharing, but hopefully we'll strike an okay balance. I'm pretty chill.

More positives: I recently had to face head-on some stuff at work that was, in the run-up to it, causing me a fair deal of imposter syndrome - a bunch of stuff I hadn't done before and didn't feel fully confident taking on. I had a 'sink or swim' week where I basically just had to crack on with it all, and, as these things so often go, I swam. I swam the fuck out of imposter lake. Now I'm much more chilled about my work and I'm starting to enjoy some aspects of it as well.

Everything is in motion right now, with the house move and a bit more slickness at work. I also just booked another week for a wild camping trip similar to the one last year - we're going a bit later in the year so might not be as lucky with the weather. For some reason I'm feeling a bit more drawn to comforts lately so I might not go quite as rugged/wild as last time.

As for the SSRIs: I've pretty much 99.9999*% ruled those out at this stage. I'm waiting to get settled in my new place to hopefully kick-start an even healthier routine, but right now I'm sleeping well, eating well and generally looking after myself - and in good headspace because of it.

Did you ever listen to Lemon Jelly? I was pretty into their first album back in the early 2000s. One half of LJ, Fred Deakin, is a fav DJ of mine. His mixes can take a bit of listening to before you get totally on board with them, because he'll play some stuff that you may usually be inclined to skip through or change the station(!), but he's a master at blending together a great selection of tunes within a broader mix; he finds the love or magic in different pieces of music and threads it into a really great experience of a whole. I'd recommend this mix[1] from back in 2012 - particularly the second half.

~ flow

Fred Deakin BBC 6 Mix (May 2012)