new years resolutions (whipping sound)

I deeply respect New Years resolutions. I love a bit of discipline. It’s disgusting. A few years ago, I gave up purchasing any clothes + shoes + makeup for the year. A few years before that, I made a list of 12 classic books and read one a month. This is why I have read some really boring books, like Emma. Because of this, I enjoy knowing what other people are going to inflict upon themselves and that’s why I’m going to share my 2023 moves:

1. I am going to stop taking thousands of photos on my phone that I never look at ever again and I am going to film my life instead
2. I am going to attempt to WORK OUTSIDE on WEDNESDAYS
3. Make myself like peanut butter through SHEER WILL

🍽

I’m writing this in Leaf on Smithdown on a rainy Wednesday. I’ve been here for hours. I’ve had carrot cake, 1 coke, 2 massive glasses of water, and a bowl of king prawns in garlic, ginger and chilli butter with a nice salad. I just had a matcha latte as well and now I’m writing this to round off my day; my jacket doesn’t have a hood on it and I’m not in a rush to walk home in the rain. I am having a nice time. When I arrived, the table next to me had three guide dogs in training with them and we had a nice chat because my Mum used to foster them. The guide dog trainers were then replaced with a school girl and an adult. I overheard the kid say she should get to have dessert because she’s a growing girl. The adult said she wasn’t growing anymore. The kid said ‘my hair is.’ They also ordered carrot cake.

I am going to have to pay the bill now. I could have stayed home and ate what was in the fridge and the cupboards. Drank water all day. Stayed in my pyjamas. But I have done that for the 2 years I’ve been sick, and the 2020 lockdown before that. I accept now that it is worth spending money once a week to go outside. It’s worth it for my head. I’ve done loads of writing and editing today, and when I do go home, it will feel like the evening has begun, not an invisible continuation of the working day. A man has just started playing a guitar. Also the prawns were great.

📸

When 2023 began, I opened Image Capture and move twelve thousand photos off my phone and onto a hard drive. I have barely looked at any of those pictures. I do that thing when I take a photo where I do in fact take 10. I had a meme folder full of shit. Screenshots I didn’t need as much as I thought I did. I don’t know. Or I do. I don’t like looking at photos as much as I like watching videos. I am a YouTube fiend, I always have been. A friend put me on her YouTube Premium family plan because this is apparently a core part of my personality. When I was in art school, I made small films that mashed real life with found footage and a tonne of transparent PNGs. I stopped doing that and I wish I hadn’t; I wish the 12K photos on my phone were videos instead. This year, I want to make an effort to record my life and then stitch memories, places, people, and the sounds of our voices into small films. Not even with the intent of making the videos public. Maybe if I do some stuff with Zarina, I’ll put them on our YouTube channel but the rest will just be for me — for posterity. (I’ve already started this, and it already feels good).

🥜

Not liking foods embarrasses me. There’s not much I don’t like. Olives, coffee. Mostly nuts. Hazelnuts, praline. The only nut I actually like is a cashew. The easiest nut of them all. But I’ve been thinking a lot about my health recently and how a diet change might help. I don’t know anything about food. It’s not interested me in the slightest. The word ‘diet’ makes me cringe. Who needs to know these things. Just eat food. But… I am about two weeks into eating a low GI diet in an attempt to regulate my dumb disabled blood and I haven’t had a major mid-day hot-body dead-head crash after eating a meal the entire time. I’ve crashed after walking too far (I carried a half-bag of cat litter home from Tesco and died) but I haven’t crashed from food. So, I am now looking more seriously at what I eat because ffs maybe it actually matters.

I’ve never, ever enjoyed the taste of peanut butter. Or peanuts. Gross. But in the process of cutting out high GI foods (white bread, white rice, potatoes), I massively feel the need to balance the scales. One in, one out kinda thing. The problem with POTS is that I have less blood in me and I need to eat small, regular bits of food otherwise I feel like I’m on death’s door. So, now is the time. I am about two weeks into eating peanut butter every single day and I am literally not going to stop until I actually enjoy it. I already like it more than I did at the start. On day one, I put a spoon of Meridian no sugar peanut butter into my naive mouth and I nearly gagged. It was so fuckin DRY. But it was so bad — pure deep-end body-shock — that the next day, when I spread the same pb on a banana, it tasted … fine. A few days later, an apple. A few days after that, peanut butter on a strawberry. And then, on one of my WORK OUTSIDE WEDNESDAYS, there was a peanut butter chocolate chip blondie/brownie thing. It wasn’t sugar-free like the intense one I’ve been training myself on, because of that I ENJOYED IT. I am close. I did not enjoy putting it in my porridge but I am amazed at the progress so far. NEXT, OLIVES. God! I am so brave