Weeknotes #13: Getting through it
So, as anyone who noticed me adding the dog memorial page recently may have surmised... I have not been having the best time. In fact, I would go so far as to say shit sucks!!! I feel very sad, a lot!!! I have mostly been able to distract myself when I get out of the house and actively engage my brain with something fun, but sitting around at home or trying to work has been rough. I have just accepted that I am probably going to cry a lot for a while and I will not always feel this bad. That's the way it goes with grief. The time will pass.
Of course it does not help that the world is a fuck, or that there has been a near-constant deluge of rain where I live for practically all of 2026. But me doomspiralling on here helps no one and that's not really what I want to do with this site.
So. Onwards!
Distraction #1: Music
I had a previously-planned overnight trip into London to visit my oldest and dearest friend and to see Magdalena Bay (more on that here). I almost fobbed this off but I'm glad I didn't, because it was a nice visit and helped me get out of my head for a bit.
I had some spare time before meeting my friend, so I decided to go to Music & Video Exchange, which is a used record shop in Notting Hill that I'd never been to before. This was a great choice for indulging my CD habit and keeping my brain preoccupied. MVE has everything from the rare, expensive Japanese imports to the 50p bargain troughs. Naturally I went straight for the latter and just zoned out for an hour while flipping through everything they had. I got like ten CDs for £14, which is a much better deal than I'd get at most of my local charity shops or on eBay. And for 50p I'm very willing to take a shot on something I've never heard of before just because it looks intriguing. If I lived in London, I would probably end up living in this shop. Thank you, MVE!
The CD thing is getting out of hand. After a far more disciplined January, the first half of February was just an explosion of emotional spending. I feel kind of gross about it, because even if I'm getting a sizeable majority of them secondhand, constantly posting about them does feel like conspicuous overconsumption. I don't want to be the equivalent of some jerk posting ostentatious haul videos on Tiktok or something, and it becomes very easy to imagine people seeing this and being like "oh she bought more CDs again??? this motherfucker, this capitalistic swine" etc etc. But listening to them does bring me a lot of happiness, and also 99% of the time my brain goes, "But what will [completely hypothetical] people think???" it's just my anxiety making trouble for no reason. And really, who cares?
Distraction #2: Book
I started reading The Count of Monte Cristo. I thought this would take me ages to get through because it is very long (many copies clock in well over 1,200 pages). But now I'm actually glad it's so long because it turns out it's very more-ish and I am excited to have so much of it to read. I started it on Wednesday and I'm almost a third of the way in already.
I was very amused by this cover art from 1846 though:
Alexandre Dumas: "You get that cover art of Edmond Dantès?"
François-Louis Français: "Sure did boss, real wet and glistening just like you asked"
Alexandre Dumas: "what."
Distraction #3: Neocities
I like it here! I've made more of an effort recently to interact with other Neocitizens and honestly a lot of you all are really cool. I'm a bit wary of treating this place too much like social media, so I'm trying not to pressure myself to constantly like and comment and Engage etc etc, but exploring all the weird and wonderful websites on here is a fun way to pass the time and can be really inspiring. I definitely need to improve my links page to share some of them (UPDATE: I just scratched that off my to-do list!).
Yesterday I successfully occupied myself for hours writing my massive page about the Belgian Antarctic Expedition. I don't know if anyone will read it, but it was fun to make, and I have lots of ideas for improvements too. I would love to add a "Which Belgian Antarctic Expedition member are you?" quiz, for example.
I have not felt up for working on my books at all, so it is nice to have some other sort of creative project ticking along. And while I put a lot of pressure on myself while writing fiction, here I feel like I can just kind of do whatever. Get a little silly with it.
⬅️ Back