There’s a blogging event called Blaugust going on – I first learned of it last year from divergentrays’ blog posts. I’m not *really* participating and I’m not officially signing up – too scary! – but I thought it could at least serve as a reason to write more on the blog than I usually would. To perhaps answer some Blaugust prompts or finally finish the posts I wanted to write. Who knows – if all goes well, I might actually try participating next August. If I don’t forget, that is!
I’ve actually been doing better mentally lately! It feels very precarious still, and I’m still quite anxious about things (understandably so – things are Obviously Awful Generally Speaking), but I went through my old posts where I mention my mental state at the time – and I definitely am not feeling that way anymore! Which is great and something to be grateful for. I’m still dealing with some mild health stuff, though, and my health anxiety has gotten worse in the last year, but I do remind myself all the time that it could have been much worse and I try not to listen to the anxiety.
The holiday
I went on holiday in July, which definitely contributed to my improved mental state! There was a pigeon nest on our balcony and I saw pigeon chicks for the first time in my life. They weren’t newly hatched – it looked like the older one was about three weeks old, if the internet is to be believed. There were two babies, and one was clearly the older sibling. I’d say that one was more of a teenager than a baby :D I actually thought there was only one chick, but then the older one left the nest and I discovered there were, in fact, two of them. Which checks out because apparently pigeons usually lay two eggs. Having birds living on one’s balcony is not ideal (I’m sure some people wouldn’t mind, but I prefer to be birdless and bird shit-free) and I’m actually really wary of pigeons and birds in general, but I checked on the pigeon babies every day to make sure they were okay. When their mom wasn’t home, that is.
I also went on a geology hike while on holiday – that was out of my comfort zone but really fun. I have to say the trail was a bit challenging for someone as out of shape as I am (it served as a harsh reminder that it’d been months since I last went to the rock climbing gym. Man, I need to start going again). Highlights include: various ancient burial sites; the trail itself and the ways the locals maintain it; discovering quartz inside rocks; waddling through the mountain river. Since this was a geology event, we were all provided with hammers to smash rocks and told how to spot certain things. Someone actually found an ammonite, but I wasn’t as eagle-eyed. I have to say, smashing rocks was really fun! It was cool to discover how common it is to find quartz inside an ordinary rock or how different rocks break differently based on their chemical structure.
Ancient burial mounds // Some quartz I found inside a rock after smashing it
The herbs
I started growing arugula and basil on my windowsill! I bought some seed packets in 2022 and forgot all about them until I found them a couple of months ago. They were long past the “best before” date, but I had a vague thought to actually plant them. It took me a couple more months to actually do that, lol. I went through all my hobby supplies, tried to categorize them in order to remember what I had and use it instead of buying more, and decided planting seeds counted as a hobby since it’s essentially gardening. I didn’t really do anything special, I just threw them in the soil, then threw a bit more soil on top of them and hoped for the best. The arugula is almost grown by now! The pot was definitely too small for all the seeds and they are growing a bit too close to each other, but I’m elated they are growing at all! I’ve already made salads with baby arugula. The basil is growing a bit slower and has the same problem as the arugula – the pot is too small – but it already smells wonderful.
I also bought a balcony flower mix and threw it in the biggest pot I had, all because I’d been influenced by the “chaos gardening” reels. The flowers are also growing like crazy! I don’t know if they’ll actually bloom but I’m optimistic.
The hobbies
I’ve been going to weekly collage meetings for almost a month. It’s an open collage club in my city that anyone can join at any time. I saw an announcement online, liked their July theme (medieval) and thought I’d try it. I loved it! I love gluing things down in good company. On the first meeting we talked about Widow’s Bay, how much we loved it and how great Patricia was :D I’ve run out of inspiration after three weeks in a row, but I’ll definitely be attending more meetings in the future. I want to add a collage page to the site, but I have so many other hyperfixations it may never happen...
Me hard at work
Speaking of hyperfixations – The Sims 2 page is now up. I tend to struggle with perfectionism in the sense that it’s hard for me to put out something I consider unfinished by my own nebulous standards, and I tried to challenge that. There’s some placeholder text on one of the pages and empty sections that I will fill later. The plan is to gradually add family pages and whatever else my heart desires – builds, maybe? I’m not a great builder, but I managed to build some lots I’m quite proud of. I’m having a blast with all this, to be honest! I hope my brain will let me catch a break soon, though, because I do, in fact, want and *need* to do things other than play TS2 or write about TS2 or think about TS2 whenever I’m at home.
Until recently, I hadn’t had the energy for Postcrossing (or any mail-related things) at all, and it had been going on for quite some time too. My account was even automatically set to inactive because I stopped visiting the website and didn’t send any new postcards. Well, nature is truly healing because I finally found myself wanting to send cards again – after, I wanna say, about a year? I think I just needed a break from that hobby. I’ve also been energized in a way by those collage meetings I mentioned. All paper arts and crafts that involve a glue stick are very much related, at least in my head, and when I first started off with collaging it was to decorate the back of a postcard. It’s all interconnected to me, so it’s no wonder I was so inspired. I better enjoy it while it lasts!