Life Update

I’ve not written in a couple of months and I don’t feel like I have the brain power to write anything particularly conceptual or structured. So this is just a life update, I guess.

Since I last wrote, the madness of Covid-19 swept the world – throughout which I was working full-time in pharmacy. I can’t be bothered to get into what that was like. But I will say I’m sick of wearing a mask – it makes me feel all sweaty and gives me spots. Which is obviously preferable to, you know, causing death; but it’s still annoying. Especially when most other key workers that don’t work in healthcare don’t wear them.

Also, since I last wrote, I had my first Spotify release. That was exciting, long-overdue and life-affirming. But I’m very much focused on what’s next – that track was in the vault for around 2 years and by the end of it I just wanted it out so I could go on to the next thing.

It’s been a bit weird being introduced to the industry side of things – how much of it is contrived. The sending of the new release to blogs so you can be seen to have a “buzz” around what you’re doing – when in reality it is all orchestrated by you. And the more renowned you get, the more that will just automatically happen I suppose. It’s crazy how much work is involved in the promotion of new music if you want to do it properly. It’s not enough to record and produce a song – it’s the sending to blogs, sending to radio, adding to PRS (which I still need to set up), the correspondence with the graphic designers and sound engineers and record label, sending to the distributor, changing the theme of your accounts to match the release; and then the social media posts, obviously.

I’m very grateful to be in a position where I can do all this but it’s certainly a departure from downloading an image from google, using that as cover art and just bunging it on Soundcloud. In the run up to the release, I was obviously still working full-time and almost every day I was doing something related to the release on my lunch break at work. There was always someone to email, something to chase up, something to post, something to do. I’m sure this is the reality for everyone who works full-time and is also trying to make music their job in the meantime. You have to be obsessed with it, which I am; you have to adore it, which I do.

Even the other day, I had the thought of wanting to take a week off of social media – but I have too much I need to do for the next couple of releases. I can’t take a week off. 😂 And because I have addictive tendencies when it comes to social media, it would take a lot for me to reduce my usage. I function a lot better when I can just throw away my phone completely for a week.

When I came back from my Buddhist retreat last September, I only used my phone between 6:30pm and 9pm. I might try and go back to that.

Other than that, I experienced a breakup of sorts a few weeks ago which was extremely painful and overwhelming. And now we have mercury retrograde in emotional cancer, which was got me ruminating and feeling quite sensitive.

Something which has been helping me greatly is the Mark Groves podcast. I talk about him a lot and in all honesty, despite the fact I have never met him, I consider him to be a mentor of mine. He does a lot of podcasts about relationships, trauma bonding, addiction, dating etc and time after time he just hits the nail on the head.

This one in particular helped me yesterday.

Also, around a week ago, I decided to download a couple of dating apps for the first time since last August. I know, I just got out of a toxic situation that I’m still healing from and I want to date already??? Well….not really. I want to exercise my new boundaries and put them into practice with others, basically. I want to for the first time CHOOSE the things I want and discard the rest. I want to be truthful with people, I want to put my money where my mouth is. So that’s what I’ve been doing, to the best of my ability.

It’s strange, I had a pattern repeat itself of someone appearing really keen and engaged and wanting to meet up and then drifting away. This happened to me over a year ago and at the time it really hurt. This time though, it was just like: “Ah okay, that again. He’s obviously failing to communicate here and his actions don’t match his words – that’s very clear messaging to me that he’s not what I’m looking for.” And I don’t feel nearly as upset as that first time. It’s just flakiness seeing itself out, trash taking itself out – the universe communicating clearly that I should sidestep this person. And you can have trash behaviour without being a trashy person per se, but until your words match your actions, you are not giving yourself the opportunity to show up as the best version of yourself; and share that with others. So you can’t expect to be received well if this is the case. 🤷

Also lately I’ve been comfort eating quite a lot. 😂 Lots of chocolate, pizza – lots of what my inner child likes. I started rewatching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia which is a show that makes me bust my gut laughing almost every episode. That’s been a major source of joy for me in all honesty!

Finally, I’ve been adjusting to my flatmate’s girlfriend moving in to our flat due to quarantine. I was quite anxious about it initially because prior to this I had been living alone for a good 8 weeks while my flatmate moved home to England for a bit. But after around a week, I got used to it and I actually love the flat dynamic now! I have lots in common with my flatmate’s girlfriend and it’s just a more jovial atmosphere in general. A nice blend of introversion, extroversion, girliness, practicality, fun, maturity and lightheartedness. Obviously, no living situation is ever perfect but right now I can say I’m happy with mine. And I’ve probably not felt like that since I had my own flat in Shetland over 2 years ago! I feel grateful. 🙂

If anyone wants to share what the last few weeks have been like for them, I’d love to read about it.

Thanks for reading!

– SMUT. ❤ xxxx