It’s half nine on a Saturday morning, and I’ve been relishing my first ‘free’ time of the week for two and a half hours.

In that time I’ve cuddled cats, listened to music, and re-read some more of The Longer Long Tail. It’s as periliously close to doing nothing as I feel comfortable with. I’m giving myself some ‘time off’ because over the past few weeks, I’ve hit a lot of fairly extreme highs and lows, and I want to establish more of a balance. The only time you fail is when you quit, right?

My week looked something like this, including working 7am to 3:30pm + a two hour daily commute:

Monday – Went to the cinema with Joe and a couple of friends to see Kubo, which was endlessly magical.

Tuesday – Met up with a group of friends for the monthly local 1 UP Gaming Quiz. This is something I rarely go to because it starts at 9:30pm, but this month it started at 7 because it was a special fifth birthday edition. I still suck, but it was fun.

Wednesday – Some friends had asked me if I wanted to go to The National Video Game Arcade with them and play board games (I know, ironic), but I couldn’t because I had a driving lesson. I had driving lessons yearsss ago but quit, so now I’m basically re-learning everything from scratch.

Thursday – I did a ton of revision for my driving theory test: I revised four sections of content and answered 190 questions. It was boring. Let’s hope I pass, so I don’t have to do it all again.

Friday – My friend Tony came over and we played 7 Wonders Duel (we won a game each) and watched a couple of episodes of Stranger Things.

Today there’s a board gaming day on at a local shop, but I’m tempted to spend the day trying to catch up on small tasks like laundry, food shopping, grabbing more pokeballs, and working on my Chernobyl photos. Work has been insanely busy and will only get busier, and I’m conscious that I need to work on food, sleep, and not trying to do all the things at once to try and flatten out my moods. My anxiety has been through the roof recently, and it’s been sticking around for longer periods. A lot of it I can deal with by reducing my thoughts to just the next step in the process (don’t think about failing your driving test, just think about having your next lesson), but some is caused by people and places and that’s harder to control.

I can’t believe how quickly the past few months have disappeared. It’s been pitch black when I get up in the morning for a good couple of weeks now. A lot has happened, and yet at the same time nothing has happened. Life is strange like that. As always, I’ve achieved a lot for other people, but not for me. And I’m beginning to get how important that is in determining my happiness and frustrations. Instead of battling against myself, I need to work with myself. It’s time to achieve some things and have some fun :)

Photography note: The mushroom image in the header of this post is one I took earlier this week. I’ve been posting more nature and journey themed images on Instagram recently since my new job takes me outside the city. You can check them out here.