* ! b a c k

SLOWLY YOU UNFOLD ME

SEPTEMBER 26, 2014 AT 7:36 PM

Mood: dizzy blehh.
Music: Radio 1

I’ve finally settled into my new home for second year at Lancaster; everything is unpacked and has a home, and I’ve gotten into a routine of making my own dinner and doing my food shopping again. Money is a bit tight though, I don’t get my student loan until about the 6th October, so I’ve got about £67 to live on until then (which is completely do able!) Apart from an electricity cut this morning we’ve had no problems either, which is great – I’ve heard about students getting taken advantage of with student houses, such as poor heating, old/un-working appliances and little support for when things do go wrong. So far so good though, touch wood :3
I got my results on the 8th September for my resit – I got a b+, bringing my first year grade up to an upper second! I totally wasn’t expecting a B+, although at least I now know what I need to do this year ahead in order to get better grades then last year. I’ll take photos of my project soon and post them here as well – I just need to get them back from my uni first haha. I’m really proud of the paintings I did, I loved the amount of detail which went into each tiny piece (basically, I painted realistic lips onto matchboxes!) and I can’t wait to share them here!
Despite the issue with money, I was looking at little things I could buy to reward myself of getting through first year, I’m leaning towards the leather bag by ASOS though, although £70 is a steep spend for me. I’ve set up a savings account to save up some cash this year, so at the end of this second year I will hopefully have a nice sum of money to spend on myself hehh. I’m aiming to put in a minimum of £40 a month, and whatever is left unspent from my monthly budget each month. I’ve also been handing out CV’s and job applications around Lancaster too to see if I can earn a bit extra over Christmas too, which would certainly help as Christmas is a crazy expensive time (train tickets to go home, presents, going out to xmas parties, need I say more?).
I’m working on Decadent MB every day now, and I’m still looking for people to help out with administation. I’ll send a few of you emails if I’d like you to be admins – it’s almost ready to be launched too – so a few inputs would be awesome I can’t wait!
I’m about to get ready to go out tonight anyway with my housemates, so peace out x

THE BEGINNINGS OF INSPIRATION

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014 AT 10:27 PM

Mood: dizzy blehh.
Music: Nothing.
My apologies for going AWOL a bit there. Things can get a little bit stressful with moving back to your parents I’ve found – I’ve felt a yearning for the independence I had whilst living with friends at uni, making my own dinners, doing a weekly shop, choosing when I do things and how. I kind of forgot how claustrophobic it can be when you’re nestled in the safety of your parent’s nest again. Not to say I’m completely dependent on them again – I am financially, but things like going out, what time I stay out, what I do etc is entirely up to me. In the literal sense, my bedroom at my parents is quite claustrophobic anyway because of all the boxes of stuff I have waiting to be moved to my house in Lancaster. Don’t get me wrong, it’s been awesome being so close to my boyfriend, friends and my family – but part of me would absolutely love to move in at Lancaster right now. I can’t wait to move in properly, have my stuff set up again, so I can throw myself head first into university work ahead and acheiveing some goals I’ve set for myself. On a personal note, I’m really thinking about coming off anti-depressents soon. I feel I’m in a good place again, but I’ll need to see my doctor before I start doing anything. It might be that I’m prescribed to a lower dose, a different method, or something. Hopefully it’ll work out in my favour!
I got my exam results a few weeks ago, and I was right about my art practical resit – but I didn’t need to resit my art theory. I did get a shitty grade however. :/ My Art Theory result was a D+, my Physics (yep, I took physics as a minor!!) result was a B. I did kind of expect it though, so it didn’t take me by suprise. I completed the art practical resit after a lot of procrastination, I really think the low grade and overall feeling of first year really knocked my confidence a lot, even though I couldn’t have helped it. I’ve set myself some strict goals for myself for second year, such as studying for at least an hour a day, and trying to squeeze in 8 hours at the art studio Monday – Friday! With a bit of discipline, I think I’ll be able to turn around my tutors expectations and impressions of me.
In advance of starting my second year at university, I’m trying to surround myself with as many sources of inspiration as I can possibly find. I’ve been visiting galleries, buying books (can anyone guess what my favourite exhibition is from the catalogues I’ve bought haha) and saving images on my Mac. I’m considering getting a tumblr too so I can have a ‘flow’ of inspiration. When I visited the BP Portrait Award exhibition, I found myself absolutely in love with everything there, I kept thinking to myself “I want to be here, I want to be exhibited here, I know I can do it”. Everything was so beautiful and awe-inspiring, I felt a certain energy I’d been lacking for the last year. Goddamn I want that feeling constantly with my own work, I want to look at it and know it’s awesome, that I’m going to get myself far, and that people are going to look at it and have the same feeling I got when going through that exhibition I was talking about. There are so many oppurtunities available to me, I just need to use them whilst I can.
Goals:
• Experience the amazing feeling that is having straight A’s again.
• Do assignments and essays as I get them, not 10 hours before the fucking deadline.
• Organise various work experience placements.
• Volunteer at a charity shop.
• Have 100% attendance at university.
• Complete my online and physical portfolio before the year is up.
• Run a successful art forum *
• Carry on blogging here.
• Better physical fitness.
* On a bit of a hiatus, but it’s coming soon! Would anyone be willing to help out with building and administration etc? Please only offer if I know you (and are lovely) ♥

I CAN SEE THE SANDS ON THE HORIZON

JUNE 30, 2014 AT 3:18 PM

Mood: Smileyyyy.
Music: Mr. Probz – Waves

The past few days have been pretty samey, I’ve been doing lots of revision for my exam resit in August and gradually packing everything in order to move back to my parents on Friday. I still need to start researching and working on my art project re sit too, it is a bit annoying that I don’t know the deadline for the art project, however that gives me a better reason to get started on it incase it’s sooner than I’m thinking it is. It sucks that I have so much uni work to do over summer, but to actually pass first year it needs to be done heh ;_;. I know that second year is going to be a better year, I want to change my grades from Ds/Fs to Bs/As if possible because I know I can do it now. I’m glad I get the oppurtunity to resit too, as opposed to completely re-doing the whole of first year which sounds seriously daunting. :/
I’ve been working on the forum too still, which is coming along nicely! Tomorrow I’m going to get a seperate domain and hosting package for it now I’ve decided on its name; decadent mb. The comments in the last blog post seemed to lean towards Decadent, and the poll I put up on the sidebar favoured Decadent too. I’m not sure when there will be a release date where it will be up and ready to go, but it’ll be soooon! So keep an eye out, I’ll possibly put up a timer and a logo somewhere on the sidebar when I definitely know a time scale for when it’ll be finished and launched. Eeee so exciting! Get your username ideas and avatars at the ready guys.
This blogpost is a pretty short one, and since it’s the last day of June, I thought I’d start a monthly essentials feature on the blog! Where I talk about 4 things I couldn’t live without this month.
From left to right, starting at the top row:
1. My filofax. This thing has been keeping me pretty much in line this past month with all the revision and online projects going on. I recommend everyone having some sort of organisational method in their lives, whether it be their phones calendar or a notebook full of to do’s, it definitely helps when things start to get stressy.
2. Revision! I’m trying to do a bit of revision each day, and go over my notes at the end of every week to keep my brain on top of everything. I might dedicate a seperate post to go indepth about how I revise, but as someone who needs to resit a lot over summer, I’m not the best one to give advice about the subject haha.
3. My super cute Tamagotchi P’s! I have a soft spot for these little things and I got this on eBay a few weeks ago. I mean come on, look at it, how cute is it?! The language is entirely in Japanese, but if you’ve ever played with a Tamagotchi before, it’s pretty easy to figure out if you don’t speak the language. Plus it’s in COLOUR.
4. To help me brush up on my PHP skills, this textbook is coming in super handy for Decadent MB. I’d really like to get the most up to date version (which was just released – Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5 on Amazon) but this was the most recent one they had at the university’s library. There’s plenty of tutorials online I’m sure, but this is nice to read when I want to get away from the computer for a while.
Have a nice week guys! Stay tuned for more forum news…

like heroes in the rain

june 24, 2014 at 12:25 am

Mood: Chilled.
Music: DyE – Fantasy
First off, thank you for all the lovely words about my situation in the last blog, they mean so much to me and gave me so much more confidence for finding my loves for subjects again. It was interesting to see how many of you had been through a similar situation to mine, unfortunate it may be though. WE CAN PULL THROUGH IT TOGETHER GUYS WOO
The past few days I’ve had loads of free time to get on with online projects, my art portfolio which I’m building has about 50% of it’s pages completed now, I just need to structure its layout a bit better and reshoot some images which I wasn’t entirely happy with when it came to editing them. I’ve also organised a photo shoot with a photographer to get some nice portrait photos done of myself for the ‘About’ page! I’m so excited as I’ve never been involved with something like that before, plus as I’m friends with her daughter, it’s a bit cheaper too heheh. ♥ The other online project I was secretive about during my last post is coming along nicely too, and I can finally say that i’m working on building a forum! – it’s using the XMB Forum Software, which I’m liking so far, and I’m finishing off some tweaks to it already which are making me learn more about PHP which is one of the goals I wanted to accomplish by running a forum. There is one issue though, i cannot think of a name for it :/ I was initially thinking of something like “NostalgiaMB” or “DecadentMB” simply because I was nostalgic for the feeling that being in a close community such as a forum brings, and it reminds me of the times when everyone and their mother had a forum years ago (anyone remember DisasterMB or GhostMB?). As well as being a general forum about online and offline life, I want it to be a place where people can post their art, whether it be paintings, literature, poetry, or graphic design. I have such big hopes for this project, I’m hoping it works out well.
Things are pretty stressful right now. My Great-Aunt Peggy passed away yesterday afternoon after recently being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was the grand old age of 91 and was one of the dearest, sweetest women I’ve known in my life. I’ll forever remember her in her flat with my late Great-Uncle Bernard, with doilies on her radiator and above her TV, photos of family on the walls and a huge puzzle on the table. How she always gave me and my sister £1 each when we visited, and her welcoming warm smile. I’m pretty worried about my Nanna right now, Aunt Peggy was her sister and her death means that my Nanna is the last of her generation in our family. She also loved, loved, loved her sister dearly, so the emotions she’s probably going through right now are unthinkable. 🙁
I’m also moving out of my university flat next Friday (4th July), and packing and moving away from a place I’ve grown to love so much is hard. Even though I’m moving into a house in Lancaster with a group of my friends for second year (we get the keys on the 8th July, but I don’t think I’ll move in ’til mid September), I love this lovely little flat and standard university accommodation. It’s strange which environments you begin to call home after a while.
For now, to avoid the stress (and avoid packing heheheheh) I’m going to pour my energy and effort into university re-sit studies over summer and online work. Also, please let me know of any ideas for the forum name below!

we can make some plans instead

june 18, 2014 at 1:12 pm

Mood: Nervous.
Music: Kimya Dawson – Loose Lips

Hello, it’s me again. I feel that I have some serious explaining to do about where I’ve been, where my passion for the site had gone, and why I’ve been neglecting this site and the wonderful community of bloggers I’m so thankful to be a part of. I’m going to say that this post may be triggering for a few, so trigger warning: discussion of mental health issues raised & suicide. If you’re sensitive to those issues, please skip this post!
Triggering Section Begins:
In early 2013, shortly after the car accident I’d talked about a couple of blog posts ago, me and my ex (Chris) broke up. It was a natural thing, for a while we had both been feeling that we had fallen out of love with each other, and although the break up wasn’t mutual, it was the best thing for both of us. As with any break up, I was left feeling pretty shit, feeling that I’d lost my best friend, questioning where I’d gone wrong etc. That wasn’t the reason I’d been neglecting the site, it was the fact that the sadness caused by that break up just wouldn’t go away, although I felt I was over Chris about July of last year, I was just in a constant state of depression, which really affected my love for, well pretty much everything. Webdesign, art, even the want I had to go out and see friends on a Saturday night out in twitch had completely gone. It was heartbreaking to see myself fall out of love with the things I’d been passionate about from a young age, I was in a constant battle of wanting to do these things but not ‘feeling it’, making me hate myself for not wanting to do these things I really actually did love once upon a time. And so, I neglected the website, my other online projects (more of which I’ll go into further on in this post) and my relationships with my friends, and myself. Hating to sound over dramatic, but I really, really didn’t like myself for several months because of just this, and in that time, the depression worsened.
It was early August when I first had the thoughts of y’know, the ‘s’ word. At this point I’d dabbled in self injury, something which still affects my confidence with wearing bikini bottoms and shorts, and probably will for a long time. Every waking moment plagued me with these thoughts which I didn’t want to have, I remember being in a mental war with myself on a train to London, one side shouting “But I have my whole life ahead of me! It’ll get better!” and the other side being “But it’s been pretty shit up to now!”. That day will always stick with me, as I had to grip my fingers onto the bench at the train station waiting for my train back, restraining me from flinging myself in front of it.
In a stroke of genius shortly after these thoughts began, I went to my doctors about it. They suggested putting me on Anti-Depressants at first, which really didn’t sit well with me at first knowing some of my friends experiences with the drugs, but at my second appointment I just wanted to try anything to get my love for life, for web design, for art, for anything back. They gave me a weeks supply of them to see how I’d get on, and I started feeling the side affects almost immediately. I couldn’t sleep well at night for the first 3 weeks of being on them (after I’d continued the weeks trial) due to constantly feeling the urge to move around in bed. The ‘s’ thoughts got worse, and I was hoping that with every tablet I took, it’d get better instead of getting worse. After about a month of being on them, thankfully, things began to get a lot easier for me. I was no longer having these horrible thoughts about myself and my life, and although it took a lot of self-discipline to not allow myself to slip back into thinking that way, I was ‘at peace’. At that point I’d began my first year at University, talk about being thrown in at the deep end huh – Fighting depression, moving away from family for the first time, in a new environment you’re unaware of, making new friends and a whole new level of work to do! Gehhh. Despite this, I was getting better, slowly, but getting better nonetheless.
University early on was incredibly difficult, the whole first term I pretty much had 60% attendance and had a few emails sent to me about having to improve it. Second term was no different, although it was much easier to be on top of my work and my mental state. At this point I suppose you could say I was back to my old self mental wise. I think being thrown into a new environment was a fresh start I really needed. I’ve made a lot of friends, my flat mates are absolutely wonderful, and I’m so thankful that I’ve had this opportunity, I think it pretty much ‘saved’ me. My grades haven’t been great this year, and my exams haven’t gone too well either now I’ve completed the first year. I’m resitting an art project module over summer as well as resetting one exam in August, so I can actually pass first year! :/ That is if my department at uni can get their act together and email me the details of resits and deadlines.
Triggering Section Ends.
Right now, I can confidently confirm that i am happy again. I’m still on anti-depressants. Despite doing absolutely awful for my first year of university, heh. I think I have my excuses for it – being ill mentally can be absolutely exhausting. I’ve met a wonderful guy, we’ll call him ‘B’ for now, and we’ve been together a little over 4 months. 🙂 My life is getting back on track, I’ve found my love back for web design as you can see – which reminds me, please let me know what you think about the new layout! 🙂 and I’m gradually dipping my toes into art again. I’ve missed you all, this community, visiting your websites and blogs every day, and I’m looking to bring that back.
That brings me to one of my online projects I’m planning, let’s just say ‘community’ is a key word in what I’m building. 😉 The other is an online portfolio of my artwork which is pretty empty right now, but hopefully in my spare time between numerous art projects and revision over summer, I’ll get working on it.
I’ve missed you all, and I only hope that you’ll take me back. x