Rhythms of Joy

 Hello, everyone!

I hope everyone's doing well!

CU Getaway 2024!! (Yeah, Word Alive got cancelled, so we improvised)

So, this blog's been in the works for a while, for a deeply personal reason.

Brace yourselves...

I couldn't come up with a good title. That's it. (That, and I wanted to wait till the end of term for a more succinct blog.)

So yeah, the last year or so's been pretty turbulent. A lot of the time, when a blog's been delayed recently it's been because of mental health issues, or because the blog in question addresses something I'm not ready to talk about. So the blog being delayed for a stupidly mundane reason like titles is just a really nice change.

The title, as it happens, is based off the Stormlight Archive - there's a species of sapient humanoids in the book called Singers, who communicate by humming rhythms in tune to what they're feeling - so humming to rhythms of joy, anger, distaste, amusement, and so on. (They do also communicate verbally!) And, well, I'm generally feeling pretty good at the moment! The journey isn't over, not by a long way, but I'm making progress - and in the great journey of life, the journey is important.

This is what they look like, by the way

Overall I've had a pretty good year so far! 

I returned to Reading for the start of term at the beginning, refreshed and rejuvenated. I then had a shift at work on the very first day of term. It was a good shift, though!

So, January, for the most part, was fairly calm - I had MA work and job work, and it was fairly chill. I did get two assignments back - one was upper second class, and the other was first class! 

One of my highlights of January was visiting my cousins - Uncle Will was in a pantomime performance of Sleeping Beauty that weekend, and I went to watch. The performance was on Saturday, but I arrived a couple of days earlier. I got to surprise Neve and Huw by meeting them after school on Thursday! The panto was also very good, a very fun performance! We also celebrated a family birthday on Friday - Neve and Huw's eldest cousin, on Helen's side, turned eleven. It was a good party! We had Harry Potter on in the background for much of the party, which was both amusing and enjoyable.

I also started counselling in January!! It's been very fruitful, and my counselor is a very lovely person!

Another big event in January was that I got to treat my wonderful mother for her 52nd birthday - I took her out for a meal at Bella Italia. The rest of the family also came - and in fact, my parents joined me at church, which was nice.

I love my parents, they're great.

(Karys is lovely as well...!)

Old picture

I also made a smidge of progress with finding housing for next year! I met up with a group of first-years who had an unexpected vacancy appear, to see if we'd be a good fit. (Well, three of them were out, so...) It was good fun, and we got on well. Though their prospective house is a long way away from church and from most of my Reading-based friends, so not sure if I'd decide to live with them.

I actually spent a fair portion of the beginning of February at home! My dad was abroad in Nigeria from 29th January to 11th February; great-aunt Sally visited during dad's first weekend away. I am not one to pass up opportunities to spend time with Sally (or Pippa), so I came home for the weekend, then went back to Reading. The following weekend was both the first weekend of reading week and when my dad came back, so I came back home again to see my dad, which was very nice.

I came back to Reading on Valentine's Day, which is still just the average day for me. I did get to meet up with various friends over the next couple of days, which was very enjoyable! Three of my friends, who all live together, have recently adopted an adorable kitten called Gloves; I got to meet him! (And learned that he's very intelligent and knows how to climb onto people's shoulders...which I find incredibly nerve-wracking, because he's such a small baby right now.)

Such a gorgeous kitty!

The (second) Saturday of reading week ended up being astonishingly action-packed. I had a shift at work, which was four hours long in the afternoon. Then, at about 5, I headed into London with a group of friends to go to a Rend Collective concert. The concert was loud, but pretty fun. We also stopped for a bite at Nando's first. One of my friends accidentally stole my order, because apparently he usually has that order. He felt awful when he realised, but I found it pretty funny.

I spent much of February reading a fantasy series called Realm Breaker, by Victoria Aveyard - it's very good, I highly recommend it! (If you're a fan of Lord of the Rings, that is. It has a very similar style and pace to LOTR, so those who don't enjoy LOTR might not enjoy Realm Breaker either.)
The final book came out at the end of February. I read through it in about...a week or so? I really enjoyed it - a fitting end to the series!

Tis a good book.

One of my personal highlights of the start to this year was celebrating a friend's birthday - we went out for brunch with several of his closest friends. It was really great to celebrate him - he's a wonderful person and a brilliant friend, and a very wise human being. Also, he's doing a PhD in meteorology, which automatically makes him one of the smartest people I know. (I mean, all my friends are very, very clever. But doing an actual Doctorate is very impressive to me.) He's also officially a published author - he wrote a scientific article recently! 

We (me and Caleb) went to the Natural History Museum in London towards the end of March as well, which was lots of fun! He's been to the museum a lot (about ten times), so he's a very good tour guide!

I also met up with Josh for a catch-up at the beginning of March, which was really fun! It was initially going to be a coffee date, but scheduling conflicts pushed it to a lunchtime; it was really nice to spend time with him! 

I went home again for Mother's Day; this time, I cooked a meal for my mum! I did roast chicken, and it came out very good! Funnily enough, in addition to the family, we had one of my mum's gym friends round as well. (I also took the time to have an eye test done. No change there, still effectively blind in one eye and slightly less blind in the other.)

Me at the Natural History Museum!

Most of the rest of March was taken up with work on my MA, which has been growing steadily more intense. I have two portfolios due for the beginning of next term - one is 5,000 words, the other is 6,000. Which is why I'm writing this blog late on a rainy April evening.

I also had basically my last day at work, a few weeks ago. Whenever I try to select new shifts, the shift request gets denied, and I was planning to stop anyway April/May. So I decided I'd take whatever I could in March, and then that would be it. I've enjoyed work, though it's also been very hard! I am looking forward to new horizons! Speaking of which, in January, I had a meeting/interview with the director of a small charity based in Reading (his mum and mine are good friends, so we were put in touch through them!) We agreed that, come September, I could start a three-month internship with his charity, though he emphasised that, because the charity's too small to pay its employees, the internship would be about giving me experience and helping me to find other charities to work at. 

I also started rediscovering my love of reading multiple books at once in March! Part of that is re-reading the collected works of Brandon Sanderson - specifically, all those which occupy the same shared universe, known as the Cosmere. It's a long list. It's in preparation for the release of the fifth book in the Stormlight Archive series (in December!!) In fairness to me, there's a lot to read, so I kinda need to start as early as possible. I also read Babel, by R. F. Kuang, which was very good, and very thought-provoking. I recommend it!

I also visited my godfather and his family, with Karys and my mum and dad. It was nice to catch up with them! We went on a walk initially, which both of James' daughters dipped on - one was ill, the other busy. Then we came back to their house, ate supper and played a couple of games - a casual day with them. (James and my mum grew up together - they were childhood best friends, until my dad replaced James as my mum's best friend! Still very close friends, of course.)

Me and Karys on the way home!

Tragically, Word Alive was cancelled this year. However, our enterprising CU Committee improvised - we had a CU getaway instead! The getaway was in Essex, near the coast - so, kinda on the opposite end of the UK from WA! It was very fun! I found the seminars interesting - they were all about our identity in God and His plans for us. We also had activities like climbing and archery. The climbing wasn't great for me...I'm not good with heights, especially when balancing on small ledges. I did get to be a photographer for the others, which was good fun. Archery was much more fun for me - I'm surprisingly good at it, considering that I have multiple different conditions which would make firing an arrow difficult. We also had a karaoke night on the final night. I did OK...but I'm really regretting that I only did one song, and that I was quiet in that song. It was very fun, though, and lots of people had a go - including a few I didn't think would have the confidence for it! Worth noting that all involved, myself included, were very good! 

After the getaway, I came home for a few days, then came down to Devon to see Granny. On Easter Sunday, we ate roast lamb at lunch, and Sally joined us for the roast and for games after - it was lovely!

Campfire night at the getaway!

So, yeah - it's been a pretty good year so far! I really do feel like I'm finally starting to do better. It's not all perfect. I went without antidepressants for a bit just before the getaway, which resulted in me being a wet blanket and generally not fun the first couple of days. And I don't want to be like that, with or without antidepressants. It's an incentive to continue trying to improve mentally, to continue trying to do better. Strength before weakness.

I am still anxious about the future, what lies ahead - I'm scared of uncertainty. But right now...reflecting on the past couple of months, listening to the rain and Tessa whuffling in her sleep, anticipating the next couple of weeks, that fear feels distant, as remote as the stars in the sky. I feel content right now. And it doesn't matter what happens next, it doesn't matter how long that lasts, what matters is that moment was there. There's no taking away loved.

And I do have some fun stuff happening over the next few weeks - I shall keep you updated in the next blog!
Until then, I invite you guys to consider - what's been good in your lives recently? And what are you looking forward to?

And also with adorable dogs, cause why not?

Random stats

-Fun fact: I was planning to write a blog about the Cosmere! But I decided that it really would not be interesting to most people. (Also, it got so long and complex it made my head spin...which sealed the deal.)

-Progress on the Cosmere readathon: Have read Tress of the Emerald Sea, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter, and The Sunlit Man - all released 2023, very good books, I recommend them all! Am now reading the short story Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell. Honestly, you should read that for the title alone (and it's a good story as well! Can be found in the anthology collection Arcanum Unbounded!)

-Books read: See above, and also Why Didn't They Ask Evans, Babel, and the Realm Breaker series. I also read the Red Queen series and re-read the The Locked Tomb series, both of which are very good!

-Dogs walked: a lot, over the year so far. Pippin, naturally, and Tessa, Pippa, and Marvin. Also cousin Emily's dog Lyra, and Emily's partner's dog. I've also walked with the Braggs' dog George (Alby, sadly, died a while ago), and Rodney and Coral, a rottweiler and a lurcher who belong to one of my mum's friends.

-Easter Eggs consumed: One, and assorted chocolates :D

-Climbing walls climbed: One and three-quarters, which is pretty impressive, for me.

-Kitties petted: three! There was Gloves, and there's a friendly cat near where I live. I also saw Oreo the other day - he's quite hefty now! Still not overweight, just large.

-Here is the future Dr. Miller's first article! Go read it!

https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.4680