So, surviving the first few months of parenthood. I started drafting this list in the wee hours in those first early weeks of motherhood and I'm finally returning to it now (as Ines is fast approaching the eight-month mark!) to polish it up for you and reflect on things I found useful during this hugely transitional time.

My memory is absolutely shocking; this is why my Notes app is absolutely full to the brim, why I always have multiple to-do lists on the go, and why I have to write the plot points of the books I read down because I will have forgotten them by next week. For this reason, I thought it might be nice to start doing monthly round-ups at the end of each month, partly so you guys can see what I've been doing/eating/watching that month but also to help me remember. All too often I find myself not only forgetting the mundanities of everyday life but the really good stuff, too!

Whilst I do love to read, one of my favourite things to do which I don't often talk about at length on here or on my channel, is binge-watch a good TV show. I go through phases of watching lots of films, but I'm almost always on the hunt for a new series to dive into.

Like many young people these days I have a hard time not working, further compounded by my being self-employed. That doesn’t mean I don’t have downtime, but it’s all too often guiltily snatched when I hit the burnout stage, which in turn can spiral into days of unproductivity. Or I’m spending it scrolling mindlessly through social media when an afternoon suddenly turns up out of nowhere.

Before last year every time January rolled around I would resolve to get fit and go to the gym more often. And every time I would be back to my usual lazy self come February, disheartened by the whole process. I've never been one for exercise; I loathed PE lessons at school, was the first to complain about walking somewhere and was always more inclined to curl up on the sofa with a good book (I mean who can blame me?)

Today I'm back again to talk habits - good and bad. In this post back in March, I talked you guys through a few of the habits I'd been trying to make and break since the new year, and I thought it was high time for an update.

Finally I’m back on the blog with a chatty post! I thought it was only fitting that we start with one of these diary posts to help me gather my thoughts and reintroduce myself to the blog. Way, way back in March I wrote about some new habits I was trying to form and whilst I want to update you guys on how I’m getting on with those soon, I figured I’d give you a little roundup of my last few weeks/months first (where is time going?? How is it November? I’m confused).

The first proper workout I did this year I bottled it 11 minutes and 15 seconds in. I was doing interval training on the bike: high resistance, 10 seconds pushing as hard as I could, 20 seconds going slow and steady, just lightly pushing the pedals round. This is something I did fairly regularly during my gym attempts before, and I’d never felt like this; I got tunnel vision and I thought I was going to throw up.

I have a pretty fraught relationship with the concept of productivity. I have that socially inculcated feeling that each and every day of my life should be productive, and if it isn't that I've failed somehow. If it's an unproductive week, even month, this can compound into a seriously real mental health dip. I've been trying to fix this over the past few months (though its bloody hard to unlearn some of this stuff) and to realise you don't always have to be busy, or working.

For much of February, I took a step back. I think I needed a little time to regroup in a month where nothing very urgent was happening, either with work or study, before the end of term madness started up again. I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about new healthy or helpful habits that I want to form to make life easier and more productive. 

I recently got a few more tattoos and piercings, and whilst I have done multiple videos going through them all on my channel over the years, I thought this time I might write a blogpost that I can update as I go along instead of making another video which might be outdated soonish. So, get ready to get up close and personal... 

I thought it might be nice to do a little post checking in with you guys now that the longest January ever is finally over and the year has truly begun! So I hung out on my stairwell with a cup of tea contemplating what I’ve been up to the past few weeks.

So I didn't really expect to launch my blog and then more or less disappear for a few weeks but alas, life (read: essays) got in the way. I feel like I'm finally getting into the swing of my year now that I have handed in my two 4,000 word essays, which I did last week on the 11th. I took a day or two off and then threw myself into the reading for this semester, so forgive me for only catching up with you guys now. I hope you all had a little bit of a rest over the festive period, and had a wonderful New Year. I went to Copenhagen with Zak and my family, and I have a few outfit pictures to share with you over the next couple weeks, including this one.

So, here we are. After many months of planning and writing posts in preparation, and of course asking the lovely Cat to design me a website, we are finally live, and I can’t explain to you all how excited I am about this new venture. If you don’t know me, you can read a little about me here, but for now you might be wondering where on earth this has come from.