It’s time for June’s recap! Every month, I will do a recap to note down what I have done, what I have accomplished, how I felt and how the big picture looks. My hope is that these recaps will encourage me to be productive during the month so that I will have many things to write here – but I’m also not taking them too seriously to the point of making myself feel bad if I don’t have much to write. As I said, it’s an encouragement and also a way to draw notes and reflect on things.

So without further ado, let’s talk about June!

How June Felt

June felt… like a weird month. I had a serious block for the first two weeks. I wanted to do things, but couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I wasn’t inspired or motivated and there was a block preventing me from working on my blog and my videos – I just couldn’t write and felt like I wouldn’t be satisfied with anything I wrote.

This block persisted for just over two weeks. I think it was caused by some fears and anxieties I was going through without realising them, and me putting some very high expectations upon myself subconsciously.

Around the 20th of the month, I was finally able to get over this block. I changed my scenery for a weekend by spending it at Peter’s house and suddenly inspiration struck, and tons of it. While there, I was able to finally start working on the script for my Wonder Woman video and ended up writing 4,500 words – about half of the video – in just a weekend. It was just incredible how a weekend in a place with some peace and quiet (as opposed to the flat I live in), which also put me in a relaxed state of mind, had such a great impact on my inspiration and productivity.

This also resulted in me in re-thinking how I approach my tasks and how I think of my productivity; and it made me reach the conclusion that traditional “discipline” doesn’t really work on me, but rather, I should be finding ways to trigger my inspiration, which results in me working better, longer and faster (when compared to when I force myself to work instead).

Reaching this realisation completely changed the way I work and think about my productivity, so I think there are more discoveries to be made in the coming months as I try different methods to “trigger” my inspiration. I feel like I’m finally onto something here and I hope to make more helpful discoveries. ?

One of these “triggers” seem to have to do with a change of scenery, possibly to a nicer, quieter place – basically the complete opposite of my current flat. I’ve felt for a good while now that my current flat was having a negative impact on my productivity (and my mood too, which also affected my productivity negatively) and I think if anything, this little June episode confirms it. It has never been a good place for my inspiration, creativity, productivity or mental wellbeing.

In the long-term, I can combat this problem by moving to a nicer place. I am already making preparations to move out of my current town to the city where I’ll be attending university and I can’t wait to find a nicer flat there. ?

Alright, now that I’ve talked about the importance that June played emotionally and mentally, and how most of the productive stuff was done in the last 10 days or so, let’s talk about what I achieved!

Lifestyle Habits

It saddens me to say it, but there have been no concrete changes in my lifestyle habits just yet. But! I am working on it! ?

Firstly, I am reading a book about mindfulness meditation called Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World. I have only read the introduction so far, which talks in-depth about the positive effects of mindfulness. I’ve practised mindfulness at different times in my life, but I’ve never kept it consistent, which is what I want to do now. Hopefully, by the next monthly recap, I’ll be halfway through this 8-week plan! ?

I haven’t made any progress towards minimalism or healthy eating yet. However, I did exercise this month! My online friends and I have a fitness group where we all post our progress, do the routines and cheer each other on. However, my terrible flat strikes again to break the eggs in my basket: my hard wooden floor makes it really hard to do any kind of exercise that requires lying down, which limits me when doing the exercise routines. I’m looking into getting a cheap but comfy yoga mat next month to exercise on so that I can do all the exercises and share my progress with my friends! This works out quite nicely (pun may be intended) to make exercise more palatable to my gym-hating self! ?

Hobbies

In terms of ?writing, I haven’t written any fiction this month, or reviews. However, I did write scripts and map out my future youtube videos, so I’m still counting that towards writing! Especially the 4,500 words I wrote for my Wonder Wonder movie analysis video! Also, I have written a lot of pages for my blog, which counts too!

In terms of ?reading, I’m still going strong. I took out two books from the library in June: Leap Year and No Problem Here, both of which I have started. I’m still making good progress on all my other books, namely How to do Everything and Be Happy which I am finding okay to get through (although the fact that the book was intended at 40-something British people who work 9-5 jobs shows through a lot, there are still good lessons which I’ll use regardless of my current position). I haven’t read much in terms of fiction (other than for my Cringelit series), but that should change soon once I’m done with my current reads.

?Photography has been pretty abysmal this month. I was coordinating a fashion photoshoot with friends, but when my block hit, I let that fall to the wayside. I think I was just a bit burned out after taking gig photos at two gigs within the same month for the music magazine. I’m going to get that photoshoot done this month if possible! Also, I should get back to updating my Instagram accounts more!

As for ??languages, they also fell by the wayside. I’m actually thinking that it might be time to move beyond Duolingo, at least with my French and Norwegian, and find some more resources that go a bit deeper into learning grammar and so on and just keep Duolingo for vocabulary. I have an online friend who is studying French so we’ll have to plan something together! ?

As for my current lists (the ones on the sidebar), not much has changed. I haven’t watched much or made progress with TV shows and movies (for most of them, I need to wait for my flatmates to be willing to watch them together, too). As for ?tabletop RPGs, the “second season” of our Mortal Kombat campaign has officially started and I can’t wait for the second session! I’ve got another Warhammer Fantasy campaign to play in too, GMed by my flatmate and I hope we can start it in July since everything for it is ready. As for ?video games, I have been playing Tekken 7 quite a lot and finished the main story recently. I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at it in the past week, but I’m still not great at it. I’m also now officially addicted to Morrowind. The game finally clicked with me and now I want to play it day and night! I’ve made a Paladin type character and am enjoying it a lot! ✨ I am currently level 2!! It’s so exciting! ? And finally, I have restarted playing Mass Effect (the first one). My goal is to finish it by the end of July!

Projects

My ?Youtube channel kind of stalled this month, at least publicly (and the two weeks+ block didn’t help, either), but I’ve been doing a lot behind the scenes! Here is a neat list:

1. I wrote 4,500 words, which is about half the script for my Wonder Woman movie analysis video! I don’t think this video will be ready in a month, it will probably take longer as I also work on other content. This does show, however, that if my inspiration is triggered, I can write quite a lot in the span of a couple of days! So I’m gonna try and trigger my inspiration again to work on this and do lots of research for the first part of the video (yeah, I want to cite sources and stuff. It’s quite a serious video). I’m pretty proud of what I’ve written so far though! ?
2. I recorded my first GIRLHAMMER video! Now that the recording is done, I need to sift through it, note down what lines need to be re-recorded and then gather some images for the visuals. I am about a third of the way through making this and I was pretty happy with the third take overall! I really want to put this online in July.
3. I re-structured my first Cringelit video! The script was already finished, so it is now ready for filming! I’m also reading my third book for Cringelit! I hope to finish it in July and jot down some ideas for the script.
4. I wrote down the main points of Episode 1 of TableTalk! I’m so excited about this one! Now it needs to be recorded.

Yes, I am a bit crazy for working on 4 videos at the same time, but really I worked on what inspired me the most in the moment. I’ll be focusing on releasing GILRHAMMER episode 1 and TableTalk episode 1, while making progress on Cringelit and Wonder Woman in the background.

As for my other project, my blog, well… you’re looking at it! ? I officially started my blog and shared it with people, which was a huge milestone for me! I’m still super happy about it. ? I managed to publish only two posts in June, but given my block, I’d say I’m counting this as a success! Plus, there are all my other pages too! Totally a success. ?

Thoughts on June

My block in June limited quite a bit how much stuff I was able to get done this month, but overall I’m happy with what I was able to do in the last 10 days! ??

I also feel like this entry was needed to give an “overview” of where I am starting at just now and to give a clearer context. Hopefully, as time goes by, I can look back at this recap and go, “Hey, that’s where I started and now I’ve come so far! Good job self!”

Plans for July

1. Upload a couple of videos to my Youtube channel and record a couple more.
2. Finish the non-fiction books I’m currently reading and start reading some classic fiction.
3. Finish Mass Effect and make more progress on my currently watching TV shows.
4. Get back into photography and writing fiction!
5. Do exercise and meditation!
6. Blog a bit more in July!