Splendidly Odd

Serena • just a wild feral thing trying not to fall over too many times • @felizardaaaa is my visual journal

[b1rd1e]

tmi doesn't exist to me. I love information

[thelastgoodcountry]

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

[sentimentalbeing2001]

bell hooks

[splendidly-odd]

Um hi, I’m having the absolute BEST bank holiday weekend after a few months of struggling to find my feet and it feels like such a relief. I wasn’t 100% looking forward to the hot hot weather but actually it’s been a godsend because the energy is very much ‘fuck it summer’s here let’s do it’ which leaves me no space for overthinking whether or not to do something. Tomorrow we’re going to the beach and I can’t wait to dive into the sea!

[splendidly-odd]

I’ve finally felt enough confidence in my ankle to start running again - very very baby steps with 4x 1min run/2min walk - and it is absurd how much this silly little sport does for my mental health. I’ve done two runs and both times within 20 seconds I’m grinning ear to ear, my brain feels truly joy-filled, my whole body just feels right again. I’ve always been convinced running was somehow a part of a former life and this week has cemented that for me - this is my sport, this is what I want my whole life to revolve around, this is how I want to spend every possible spare moment, etc—

[splendidly-odd]

Tw body image/weight

I’ve put on a fair bit of weight over the last 1-2 years for various reasons, and while it still sucks some days, and I have days I try not to look in the mirror, and while it does say something about how I look after myself, the last two months I’ve been able to allow myself to buy bigger clothes and WOW what a fucking difference it makes. They’re comfy! And I feel good in them!

And sure, there’s always going to be someone who looks at your body and assumes things about you, but no one knows what size clothes you’re wearing. No one. It’s scary, with the conditioning almost all of us have received, but it’s so worth it.

[splendidly-odd]

Two days camp supervising on D of E (read: spending the days eating lots of food and going on beautiful walks and making new friends) has completely drained me. I’m sitting at my desk trying to do useful things and my brain is having none of it!

Every time I supervise of D of E I’m this close to buying a van and becoming an outdoor instructor. Spending 48hrs (plus lots of time at the weekend) outside is so healing and I love seeing all the girls playing outside at the campsite with not a phone in sight.

[splendidly-odd]

Celebrating the last of my four (four!) dentist appts in 1.5 weeks with the very thing that had the hygienist sandblasting stains off my front teeth. Gotta give her something to do next time I guess?!

Very much been mentally ALL over the place recently. I had a gp appt for an adhd assessment referral yesterday which i think might have been to blame? My brain couldn’t get on board with the idea that she can’t diagnose and therefore can’t NOT diagnose, and was so worried about saying the right thing that I’m not entirely sure what came out of my mouth?

Anyway, she referred me which is great, but doesn’t change anything in the short term. Looking for any and every tactic in existence to get me to just do the things I want to do without being completely exhausted from making decisions and doing tasks that drain my brain of all its battery power.

Work continues, the weather improves, I’ve read some great books (Yesteryear and The Raven Scholar). I wait for summer; I dread the temperatures getting over 20c.

[splendidly-odd]

Did everyone else at some point get the memo that fizzy (carbonated) water was just as bad for your teeth as coke zero? Because I didn’t, and got to experience the acute embarrassment of finding this out at the dentist (my dentist was super nice about it, it’s my own shame).

[splendidly-odd]

Good morning, happy Sunday, I am EXHAUSTED. I have errands i need to run and I just cannot make myself get dressed - the thought of venturing outside is abhorrent! I want to stay in my sleepy little pillow cave and rest my eyes! Alas, I will feel like my weekend has been wasted if I do not Get Up And Get Out, so I’m going to bribe myself with multiple coffees and the excitement of styling my newly cut hair later on.

[splendidly-odd]

updates

- I have a new job! I hopefully start next Monday, I really think it’s one that I can settle into for the next five years without going insane.

- I now know how to reframe and rebuild a ceiling, which I assume correlates to walls. I could build a house (how hard can bricks be, right?)?

- The Rain™️ stopped. I’ve ventured out without a coat multiple times. The daffodils are growing and I have the urge to plant seeds.

[splendidly-odd]

This is a really great read. I’m trying to learn more about all of this - gestures angrily at western society - in order to at least be able to take part in what-next conversations that aren’t entirely hypothetical.

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Walking in Winter through Hyde Park. It might have rained every day since the 10th of Jan, but I truly enjoy the slow simplicity of Winter days—the inwardness, the isolation, the quiet—there’s no pressure to express outwardly, I exist in my mind and in the dusky corners of a candlelit dawn and in the contact between skin and hot mug of tea, in the rasp of a book being slid off the shelf and the tick of expanding metal as the heating comes on. Winter is the pause at the end of an outbreath, the total surrender to the universe, held safely with no need to know when the next breath is coming.

[splendidly-odd]

Does anyone here listen to the Diabolical Lies podcast? Because I am o b s e s s e d.

[splendidly-odd]

Also I’m at the BL today and I’m indulging in all my favourites—walk in the rain from Oxford Circus through Bloomsbury via a bakery (for a pie) and Le Cafe Cordon Bleu (an oat latte); buy a falafel wrap from the van around the side of St Pancras Church for lunch. I may go home past the LRB bookshop: although I’ve broken my book ban three times already, I plan to get two more to round out my classic dystopian tales collection.

[splendidly-odd]

Friends, I found The Power by Naomi Alderman for a mere five pounds! In an indie bookshop! It was fate.

[splendidly-odd]

Also I’m at the BL today and I’m indulging in all my favourites—walk in the rain from Oxford Circus through Bloomsbury via a bakery (for a pie) and Le Cafe Cordon Bleu (an oat latte); buy a falafel wrap from the van around the side of St Pancras Church for lunch. I may go home past the LRB bookshop: although I’ve broken my book ban three times already, I plan to get two more to round out my classic dystopian tales collection.

[splendidly-odd]

I saw Hamnet yesterday; while I have a lot of thoughts about it, the main things it’s done is reignite my obsession with intertextuality and adaptation theory. I’m meant to be applying for jobs and all I can do is sit here and dream about literary theory haha. I do actually think it would be interesting to look at Hamnet and “Wuthering Heights” through the lens of intertextuality with a popular fiction angle - I think the fact that there’s another Colleen Hoover film coming out would play into that.

Why?! Must I engage in the banalities of capitalism?! Let me be an academic, please.