Hello! It’s been a hot minute hasn’t it? Last time I posted the world hadn’t quite descended into chaos just yet and we could all go outside and see our friends. I could take good outfit photos when I could be bothered to get dressed up nice (which I will be doing every day after this) and I was ready to make 2020 my bitch.
Well. So much for that.
So, what have I been doing with all of this free time? Where have I been? Why have I been so absent from blogging, Instagram and basically all social media platforms?
Okay, so, I’m in my third year of university. Well, I guess I’ve just finished it? Or I hopefully
have – I’ve got to actually pass yet. Unlike the GSCE’s and A-levels, universities have not wavered any coursework or examinations for university students, especially not third years doing their final year projects and dissertations. This means, on top of my 10,000-word essay, which I had reduced support for anyway, I also had two other assignments to complete which added another 4000 words to my workload. So that’s where I’ve been. Locked up in my bedroom tearing my hair out and crying over quantitative analysis with paper everywhere, my APA manual open for 2 months straight to make sure I’m referencing properly, highlighters and pens on hand at all times with my greasy hair that I haven’t washed in a week on top of my head in a bun, not getting out of my pj’s for 95% of this time with my leg hair making me look like an ape. As you can imagine, I was neither in any state to be taking photos of myself nor did I care to or have time to make myself presentable. Google scholar and word’s synonym function had become my best friends and they didn’t care if I didn’t shower for 6 days.
In between sleeping and wanting to throw my laptop out the window I – like most people during quarantine – have been playing a serious amount of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I purchased myself a Nintendo Switch pre-quarantine as an early 21st birthday present and under the guise that a lockdown was likely on its way. That happened the next week, so I was lucky to have got my hands on a relatively cheap second-hand console before everyone suddenly bought them all up. I’ve finally reached a point now (because I’m not time travelling) where I’m beginning to design my island properly and start to fall in love with everything, rather than it just be a series of houses and rivers. It’s pseudo going outside – if I can’t do it in real life then I can do it in Animal Crossing instead.
During quarantine I also turned 21! A quarantine birthday was… odd. I still haven’t seen my boyfriend or friends either. I spent the day sat in my garden drinking gin and lemonade and playing animal crossing. It made a nice change to be outside in the sun instead of under my bedcovers with a laptop on my lap in the dark typing furiously like a madwoman. I’d finished my dissertation by this point as I’d originally planned for so that I had time to celebrate my birthday, but I still had the other 4000 words worth of essays to do. My family were great at trying their hardest to make it as special as they could and got me a whole hoard of balloons which I had to have a small photoshoot with. My Mum also made me a cake that we spent the next week finishing off and honestly I still crave it all the time – it was that good.
Because it was my birthday and I’ve not been spending on everyday things like travel or lunch, I’ve made many an excuse to spend lots of money that I probably wouldn’t have spent otherwise. I’ve single-handedly been keeping Nasty Gal and LoveTooTrue in business as well as spending £150 on two pairs of Demonia shoes as both a birthday and graduation present to myself. I’ve not spent money on stuff like train tickets or petrol in two months and so why not spend it on stuff to make me feel good instead of letting it sit in my savings like a good adult would?? Exactly. You get it.
Now I’m officially free from uni work, I plan to spend the rest of lockdown as everyone else seems to have been – working on ways to better myself. I want to create some healthy habits that I carry on with even after lockdown. One of those is exercising more. I want to set myself a little at-home routine to tone up and lose a few pounds, starting with trying Chloe Ting’s 2 week ab challenge. I’ve heard good things about this particular workout so I’m excited to push myself and hopefully see a healthy difference in my body for once. Another thing I’m excited about is getting back to writing creatively. I’ve got several posts ready to be written and uploaded that I’m excited about. I didn’t have the capacity to be creative while I was putting all my effort into my uni work, but since finishing my creativity is already bubbling away and that’s something that I haven’t felt in months.
Other than that, I plan on watching crap telly and playing even more Animal Crossing.
What have you been doing during quarantine? Let me know in a comment!
Thanks for reading! You can follow my Instagrams here @cerys.taylorx & @ct.x.photos to keep updated with me, my work and when I upload my blog posts!
Cerys x