Coming home

Recently, I left Winchester to move back home to South Gloucestershire. Since then, I've been thinking about my future and what I'd like to do. It's been really tough in some respects; it's meant a lot of soul searching and it's meant a lot of trying to fix bits of myself- before I moved I was hugely burned out. I had two jobs to get by, both of which I found quite unhealthy, that coupled with a few other things meant that my mental health was suffering hugely and to be honest, it still isn't great.

Since I've been home its not been an easy ride: I've had the terrifying creeping anxiety of being unemployed with no idea how to organise or facilitate my future and sometimes its been tough living so closely with my family (sometimes it be perfect though). Also, in Winchester I lived with my best friend, who I'd lived with for years and years and I miss him a lot.

But, without two jobs I have found myself with much more time on my hands. This means time to think and time to look for something new. Time to pick my mum up from her job everyday and time to try to slowly mend myself. I'm not sure how well that's going, but its been good to have time to try anyway. It also means time to go for lots of long walks in the woods with my dogs. 

This is one of my favourite things to do. I just put my headphones in and walk up the huge hill by my house and into the woods. Once I'm in there, I don't really know any of the paths so we usually wander around for a couple of hours looking up through the trees and finding mushrooms and wild flowers. It is such a huge contrast to my life in Winchester- I barely did any exercise, which I know didn't do much for my mental or physical health, I didn't spend much time out in nature experiencing the weather and the world and getting wet or muddy or sunburned or out of breath. I didn't get to hang out with my funny, disgusting, affectionate lovely dogs.

I'm working really hard at trying to be positive and not freak out about the future too much. It's really tough and I'm not very good at it to be honest. But, this helps.