Although my posts around here appear consistent thanks to my activity elsewhere which ends up here, it is true that I've landed in a bit of a slump of writer's block. September has come and gone, and I'd like to recount some of the things that have been going on in the meantime.
September is a time of changes, and this year is no different. This year seemed to have a lack of a proper summer, with excessive heat, beach visits, and lots of social moments in the newly-freed time everyone is supposed to have at some point during the season. Then September came and threw the beginnings of fall at us, and without warning, the cozy routine of the past year seemed to disintegrate almost immediately. Most of my closest friends in Lisbon are leaving the city in pursuit of work or study, and there seem to be new opportunities around every corner.
The most visible change around here is that I stopped writing as much, and I'm still unsure of when I'll pick up the steam again despite my goals to write twice a week. I happened upon a bit of writer's block while becoming more creative in other areas, which has led to me designing more graphics, working on a
podcast with Casey, making more videos, and other fun and creative projects that end up taking the wind out of my writing. I'm still around and still doing things, what's changed is that I'm more dynamic about it.
Singer, video maker, and all-around fabulous human being
Meghan Tonjes created an idea and a hashtag
#30daytodo starting in September as a way to focus on taking your life and shaking it up one thing at a time. With an average of 30 days each month, one small thing taken off a list becomes more manageable than the lofty resolutions we tend to set for ourselves and forget about as quickly as we set them. I didn't create a list of 30 things to do in September, but did take inspiration from the idea to do some cleaning house and figure out what my priorities are for how I want to live my life now and not just in the ambiguous future. Sort of like Pinterest, but for life habits and not creating a dream wedding. And in the same spirit, I have an actual cork board with some of those things pinned to it, because I'm nothing if not literal:
All of these changes combined to make me reevaluate my current living situation as well. The apartment I live in is fine, in the sense that on paper all of the conditions are great. I have a lot of space, very few roommates, an abundance of privacy. As with anything, cracks have appeared over the course of these months, and I now find the flights of stairs a tedious impediment to my desire to leave the house much of the time, the noise from the street is so loud and constant as to interrupt my creative endeavors, the ceilings too high to avoid echo, and so on. The little things that I chose to overlook because of the on paper conditions are now liabilities that were bound to pop up. Yet instead of moving house to another place in Lisbon and plodding along, September brought with it much bigger changes, and I'll be moving to Barcelona at the end of this month instead, taking a leap and seeing what comes of things.
It's time. It was time. I'll write a proper post about moving soon (I don't want to jinx the innumerable layers of bureaucracy I have to get through), but in the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for an October filled with more things I make, from videos to graphics, and beyond.
