So yeah, I guess it's been a while. I'm not gonna lie though, these last few months have been the worst I've experienced in a long time - my mental health took a massive turn for the worst and I just ended up forgetting who I was: I forgot how to love myself, I forgot how to enjoy my own company, and I forgot what it felt like to enjoy doing something that I love.

I'll admit, it doesn't help that I moved to a brand new part of the country by myself at the end of May, and although it's definitely a positive thing, it became quite lonely when it finally dawned on me that I was quite literally by myself in a place where everyone knew each other from school or from just generally living there. Speaking with a colleague who went through the same thing, I know that I'm not alone in my thinking, but sometimes it's hard to think about things logically when you're not in a great place mentally.

Social media has been a welcome distraction but has also added another layer to my problems; a ridiculous addiction that has probably amplified my anxiety issues rather than quelled them. I would find myself day in day out repetitively scrolling, refreshing, checking who's online, checking who hasn't responded to my messages and therefore getting myself worked up over things that just don't matter in the grand scheme of things. I was forgetting to live, and consequently wasn't living - I was living a life consisting of the four walls of my bedroom and my thoughts; I wasn't allowing myself to enjoy anything as I was too consumed by everything "wrong" with my life and the vices of social media.

I've drafted the post for now because in hindsight of this whole situation it was quite ironic, but the last post before my unplanned hiatus was about how I wanted to change my life in a year (a la #tryingchange). I'm still very much behind this, but right now I'm in the process of getting my mental health back on track, and that's my main priority for the time being.

Right now I'm focussing on 5 things that I'm trying to implement daily:
‣ Gratitude
‣ Journaling
‣ Mood tracking
‣ Meditation
‣ Doing something that I enjoy

I plan to elaborate on these things in future blog posts, but I'm going to take things slow, figure myself out, and bring you along on the journey with me.