2018 was a pretty stressful year for me as far as it goes. However, it was still filled with highlights, some very bright highlights! This post is going to take you through my 2018, ups and downs alike.
January
I welcomed in the new year as I do every year, at home with my family watching the BBC coverage of the countdown and occasionally grooving to whatever is on Jules Holland downstairs, which my dad has on every year without fail. This year was the first time I ever got a new year’s kiss. Despite being with Jonny for 4 years, we’d never spent new year’s together, only ever skyped or facetimed for the night.
January as a month was very slow, it always is. It was cold, and funds were low after Christmas, so it wasn’t overly exciting. I dyed my hair dark after being ginger for 3 months and felt bomb, and also got what I consider my first real tattoo. I already had a tattoo on the back of my neck, but this was the first one I had designed, the first one I had coloured and also a lot bigger than the one before. Also the first one I could see. It took 2 ½ hours at Tattoos at 58 by @charleedarwintattoo and I fell in love with it.
February
Basically, nothing happened in February at all. It was snowing again in February and I was back at university. With a holiday booked for March, it was mainly spent saving money and preparing for that. For valentines we kept it simple, we went to a Higher Power show on the 13th and out for dinner on the 14th. Since there’s nothing to write about I’ll add a few more photos to this section.
March
In March it was still snowing and I topped up my dark purple hair dye again. We saw Milk Teeth at Mama Roux’s and Jonny’s band Fullshore played at the O2 academy 3. On the 26th me and Jonny got on a plane to Mallorca for our first ever holiday abroad together. It was also my first time on a plane since I was four. I wrote a whole blog post about it with all of the photos which you can read here. It was definitely the best 5 days of my 2018, hands down, 100%. With the snow not long disappearing back in the UK we were loving the 17C heat in Spain in March wearing shorts and dresses while the locals wrapped up in coats and scarves and swimming in the rooftop pool. We flew back to East Midlands airport on 31st to end March.
April
April is my birth month, so I’m always pretty excited for this month. The heat began to turn up mid-April, after the snow in March it was very nice to not need a jumper again. I shot a music video in April (still pending release) for Danny Taylor. It was a gorgeous day and helped continue the blue, sunny vibe my Instagram had going on after being by the sea in Mallorca in March. I was also told I needed driving glasses in April, shortly after my birthday. I loved picking mine from Glasses Direct and was very excited to add these to my accessory repertoire.
My birthday fell on a Monday, so me and Jonny bunked off of uni to go shopping. The weekend before was meant to be full of celebrations, but all of my plans got cancelled and none of it happened, so I wasn’t in the best of moods, but Jonny is literally the best person and we had a great day shopping. We also tried Turtle Bay for the first time – turns out picky Jonny likes Caribbean food! Me, not so much – I’m not very good at spicy.
May
May turned out to be a strange month. I had my car MOT’d and found out it needed a lot of repairs. It was going to cost me more to repair it than it was to buy the car in the first place, so I had to say goodbye to my first car before I could ever drive it and was suddenly left with no car. Two days later I had my first driving test. If I were to pass, I had no car to come home to now, but at least I would have a licence. Alas, I didn’t pass. In 3 days, I went from owning a car and being so close to driving it independently to having no car, no licence and not a lot of money. I had saved enough to insure my car, but not enough to buy another one and insure it. I had a bit of a breakdown for a few days. I’d waited 2 years to have enough money to get to this position and suddenly I didn’t have enough again. After a few days I found a solution with the help from those closest to me. I’m very grateful for the support I received from my family over that week.
May also saw (what has now turned out to be) the last Slam Dunk Midlands – at least for now. I also wrote a blog post on this day which you can read here.
I also started my blog in May! On 27th I posted my first blog post. Starting my blog has to be one of the best decisions that I made this year. It’s given me a huge creative outlet and also something to put decent effort into. It’s given me something that I want to do rather than something that I have to do.
June
In June I took my second driving test – this time I passed! I still had no car, but now I had a licence all I had to do was find one. This was the beginning of me coming back out of that negative space and believing in myself again. I was ready to get back on it and get what I wanted.
We also took a trip to Barmouth in June, which you can read about here. It was the heatwave that made Britain happy. Everyone was sipping cocktails and eating ice cream and wearing their summer clothes. Much less grumpy people in the summer. We had both finished with uni for the summer, but I hadn’t gone back to work full time again yet. It was the point in the year where we were pretending we didn’t need jobs, we could still be happy with just our student loans. The weather was great, life was looking good, I was very happy.
July
On July 2nd I bought my car. I was ecstatic. I finally had my freedom. You can read about all my feelings for that in this post. I love my little car to pieces. We drove all the way to Manchester for it - family road trip! On that trip I also discovered elderflower and lemon Fanta which is peng.
In July we also visited Bakewell, which I wrote this post on. It was sweaty that day. On that day we found a pink Monster energy drink which was also peng. It was tropical punch flavoured. Apparently, July was the month of new drinks.
August
August brought Jonny’s 20th. We had a very chill day, that’s his vibe. The day after, as part of his presents from me, we drove to Manchester for Friends Fest at heaton park. I wrote a post on that too, which is here. After getting over his initial camera shyness, we spent the day taking photos with the sets from his favourite TV show. He also discovered that he likes New York cheese cake, another surprise for this picky eater.
In August I got the opportunity to work with my first brand on a collaboration. I got gifted an umbrella to advertise and made sure I put my best into getting the right shots for my Instagram story. Since then I’ve also had the chance to work with another brand and learned a lot from that interaction.
At the end of august I started watching YouTube videos again. I started watching James Charles, Shane Dawson and Jeffree Starr – all 3 of which I’d never watched before hand. They got me re-interested in makeup and I bought my first Morphe palette and started wearing more daring makeup on a day to day basis.
September
On 2nd of September me and Jonny celebrated 5 years together! We were still waiting for our loans to come in so we just went to Nando’s to celebrate this one.
September also means back to school for everyone. Lucky for me it wasn’t until the very end of the month. We saw Boston Manor at Mama Roux’s on 23rd, and on 24th I found a bird in my bathroom. It had flown in the open window and got trapped! We spent the next 20 minutes trying to catch it and put it outside, chasing it from one end of the house to the other. At one point it got stuck behind a wardrobe, but we managed to free it eventually!
October
In October I decided my bland hair had to go. I’d let the purple from earlier in the year fade out a long time ago and I’d had brownish coloured hair ever since. I get bored of natural colours so easily, and so I book in an appointment to get it done. And so, I came back out of the salon 5 hours later with blue hair! And it’s still blue! Well, greener, but I haven’t re-dyed at all and it’s still fading. It’s just got into that green stage at me roots, but my ends are still rather blue!
October turned out to be a great month for gigs – we saw Citizen and The Story so Far, Astroid Boys and Turnstile!
At the end of the month I got another tattoo. I love this one, it’s so vibrant and pretty and my favourite colours too! It is my first leg tattoo and healed up so so well! I will be doing a tattoo update in the new year to show off my two newly healed tattoos.
November
November started with bonfire weekend festivities! I saw lots of fireworks that weekend, and everything started feeling more like winter finally. The weather finally started getting colder and I got to wear my new coats. On 19th I got my other tattoo, again by @danibugxo. I’ve wanted this one for a while, but not had the guts to book it in. I thought, since I was going to have my other one touched up anyway, why didn’t I get that at the same time?
Over the whole of November I was ill with the same infection. It left me not wanting to leave the house a lot and I missed quite a few days of uni because of it. It left me not feeling like I wanted to create content and I ended up just staying in bed not doing much, which hurt my mental health quite a bit. I ended up missing two weeks of blog pots because I’d ran out of pre-created content and couldn’t think of something that wouldn’t require much effort to write about, so I just didn’t bother. By the end of the month though, I was back on the writing game again and I haven’t missed a week since.
December
December has been a month for reflection, which was a big inspiration for me to write this post. I’ve been re-evaluating a lot in my life and deciding what’s worth my effort and what isn’t, what makes me happy and what doesn’t. I got my shit together and cancelled my gym membership (that’s £15 more for me every month) and apart from spending all my money on Christmas presents, I’m doing fantastic. I’m ready for 2019 to bring on what it’s got coming for me.
Let me know what part of your 2018 was the best in the comments below!
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