Hello new year! Though, by the time I’m writing this we’re almost three months deep into it- a whole quarter of a year. Anyway, I haven’t been up to anything too exciting, but I still thought I’d share both the highs and lows of the first three months of my year, as I hate the way social media glamorises lives, it can make people feel alone. So my goal is to show that everyone has lows, you’re not alone.

January

This was my first purchase in 2026! Well, it was more of an investment. These things are £15 each on Amazon! But they’re to replace the single-use plastic freezer baggies that I hate. The main thing I freeze is bread, as I live alone and I don’t get through a whole bag of it before it expires. But I also freeze all fruits- berries and citrus, to add to my drinks, and I can confirm these are great for both of those things! They’re also a B Corp & I think, 1% for the planet.

At the end of last year I started reselling on Vinted (a second-hand selling platform). Last year I made enough money that paid for my holiday to Spain with my mother as well as spending money for said holiday. So it’s something I’ve carried into this year too, but, I’m still a socially awkward mess so I’ll only use the delivery service where you can post the stuff in lockers (a bit like Amazon lockers) and my closest locker is a 30 minute bus ride. So, the majority of my evenings are spent like this. On the bus. I got all of my Archive series written while sat on those busses! And I’m even writing this waiting for that exact bus! I am making good use of my free bus pass haha.

I got these diamond art coaster sets around Christmas time last year and I spend a good chunk of January hunched over my coffee table, meticulously placing each bead one by one. One set was a nature theme and the other was a Monet inspired theme!

On the theme of crafts, I crafted a craft with this box! The first picture were the many circles I drew and then cut from some brown paper, which was the lining of the inside of the box. The outside was covered in similar sized circles cut from old paper that my Who Gives A Crap toilet paper came in. I hate throwing things away, as you can tell. I fear I inherited that trait from my dad. How un-minimalist of me indeed, haha!

Early on in January I was diagnosed with a form of Bipolar Disorder ‘with psychotic features’, whatever that is meant to mean. I did cry for about four full days after my diagnosis. While in my psychiatrist’s office, my face went white and my mind started racing.

All the things I have put off for so many years for “when I’m better”.

You know, one day. When I’m not unwell anymore. My mind suddenly went back to exactly eleven years prior, to January 2015, when my speech and language consultant uttered the words:

You meet the criteria for a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. That was the quietest drive home in the world. I didn’t understand why my mum and dad seemed so… sad.

But in that moment, eleven years later, I understood. They just wanted me to be… okay. And now, I feel that same heart-aching feeling. I just wanted to be okay.

“We’ll need to give you frequent blood monitoring and ECGs… once we start you on an antipsychotic medication”… Wait… what?

But after my four days of crying, I realised this wasn’t the end of any journey. This was just the start of a new journey, just… not in the direction I expected to go… or necessarily wanted to go.

I’m petrified of blood tests so… I bought Elma numbing cream! And my nurse Gaynor was lovely. I had a panic attack and she sat with me for so long. She let me lay down and told me to “think of sexy men on the beach… or women if that’s my preference” I still giggle about that. The chart is a mood chart I have to fill in every single month, which is actually less cumbersome than I expected.

That afternoon after my blood test, and my ECG, I was super proud of myself so I treated myself to a McDonald’s! I don’t really eat fast food much, as I now have to watch my cholesterol because my my medication (which you’ll hear more about later) so any junk food is a treat, these days.

I got this new hoodie at some point this month… I late last month. I cannot remember. Also, this was a sunset taken on my street… or the street behind my street… I don’t know, it’s kind of complicated.

These are the sponges I get for my kitchen! I don’t know if I have ever shown them here, but they’re from Smol, which is a B Corp and they come in completely recyclable packaging. They also post it through my letterbox, which is big. I hate the mail people, they really scare me, I don’t know why… they just do. They’re made from some sort of sea sponge or something, I’m not sure. The sponges, not the mail people. I think that would make them a little less scary though.

I may hate cooking, but I have found a love for baking. Specifically brownies. It started with buying box kits and now I have started experimenting with different ingredients, and it’s very fun indeed. And I love making them for my family and my neighbours too!

Towards the end of January I bought myself the new Switch 2 controller, this is me playing on my Forever World on Minecraft one evening. Then in the last week of January, I got a very late Christmas card! It made me giggle a lot.

I stopped going to my theatre thing and my choir for a while. I was kind of just… waiting… to be better. But towards the end of the month, I realised I might not get ‘better’ in the way I was hoping for many years, but it’s about learning to adjust to a new normal. So I started going back to my extracurricular groups. My choir especially is for people who struggle mentally, but this is the front cover I drew for my theatre script. We’re doing a… scouse version of Grease lmao. I didn’t get the spine done so I took it to class and finished it there while I ate a KitKat.

I go to my parents for dinner every other Sunday, and most times I go to the store and I get one of my favourite hot chocolates! I still think Starbucks is better though! The cups were still Christmas themed on January 28th haha.

This was the last picture of Indie Boon I took before she left, my dad says she’s gone back to her old home now that the kittens have grown and been rehoused. I miss her everyday.

February

February started with a news that my choir would be performing on A Stage Full Of Stars next month! I have a list of new years… not resolutions per se, it’s called “Alex’s Surviving & Thriving Manifesto” and one of the things on that list is “do one thing this year that past Alex would lose her mind over” and this. This was it! The first picture is me in my lift going to choir with my Stanley haha.

And then I started my medication. I had a long phone consultation with my psychiatrist, as he told me we were starting on 25mg and… doubling it every week until we get to 600mg on week five or six. But, for now, one at 8:00am and another at 8:00pm each day. I still don’t know how such a little pill made me feel so.. terrible.

During that phone consultation my psychiatrist informed me that my blood tests indicates that my cholesterol was “higher than he would like” especially for that specific medication so told me to eat a diet low in cholesterol.

Challenge accepted.

That very next day, me and mother went to Tesco, which is my favourite out the food stores, and spent a grand total of £109 on foods that are either low in cholesterol or specifically lower it. I did make a haul video on YouTube, that you can watch HERE! My fridge looked very satisfying after that shop!

Every Friday I allow myself a ‘day off’ from my new-found rigid diet. That’s because I have lunch with my theatre group. It’s only on once a week, and we don’t get to choose the food but we get lunch, a dessert and drink for £4! It may not seem like a big deal but one of my biggest anxieties has always been eating in front of lots of people, something I guess stemmed from school- but here I sit on a big table with many other people, in a hall with even more people. It’s anxiety inducing sure, but the Alex from 5 years ago would not believe I can do this!

Ah yes, green tea. the new bane of my existence. I have watched a plethora of YouTube videos and nearly every one of them said that green tea is good for, well, everything. But I have only just got myself liking the standard British tea, so I wasn’t going to drink the plain green tea. The best I could do was get flavoured green teas.

At some point earlier this year I bought these cute little wooden letters, I had many ideas for what I wanted to do with them… but all my ideas required multiples of at least one letter to which I didn’t have, so I deduced to firstly, trace over each letter and save the copies to the files in my MacBook for any future ideas. For the actually wooden things, I painted them all black and stored them under my bed for a future project!

I got this sticker book around Christmas time, it’s the same kind of book I’ve completed on my YouTube channel a year or two ago, but I find them really fun and therapeutic. This one is all full of kitties! I spend a lot of my mornings doing one of these until the sleepy effects of my meds wears off.

Some of my February purchases! The first picture is a set of posters that I wanted for some frames for my living room, but they ended up being about a centimetre too small, so I have to get some new posters for my living room. I also got some New Balances, a new journal and a hair wrap towel now my hair is getting longer.

The first picture was a meal I made that is apparently low is cholesterol. I watched a YouTube video that said the skins of potatoes is where most of the cholesterol-lowering… stuff is, the same with grapes! Around the same time I made a YouTube video where I was deep cleaning all my clothes, which is a video I usually make at the start of every year.

These photos are from on afternoon, the first picture is a sneak peek of a board game that I am making, and then the second picture was a part of a YouTube video that I was making, the first of three videos I made at the start of the year, spring cleaning each room of my house!

And of course, there were multiple trips on the busses… I took these photos roughly the same time each evening to show the nights slowly starting to get lighter each week, which I find so very poetic. Like the darkest days are finally, slowly but surely, coming to an end.

This was when I went to my theatre group on one random Friday. I always fill my Stanley cup full of vitamin water, a whole bottle of that fits perfectly in my cup haha! Then the second picture is our script, a new and updated one though that changed it from being 57 pages long to… 53!

Just a few out my outings- the first was a (very high cholesterol) meal at Burger King… as we can all see, my low cholesterol diet didn’t last very long. The second picture is when I was shopping in my hometown and I got a costa!

Just a few of the achievements I got this month of my website. The first is getting a total of 100 likes and the second was reaching 20 subscribers. It may not seem like much but we all start from somewhere!

I get packages delivered to my parents, recommended by the police after a series of my packages at my house were stolen from the entrance. I was ordering new frames for some posters I wanted to get, and I waited in all day for them but the second me and my mum went out… they arrived. My poor dad didn’t know what was happened when the Amazon guy rocked up with… all these.

This photo was a sunset that I took next to the place where I post my things I sell on Vinted. See that buss stop in the bottom right? I sit there a lot. Watching everyone go about their life in their cars. Waiting. For busses.

These are my new nightstands!! I have the matching dressers in my room, I got two of them and I waited about SIXTEEN WEEKS for my nightstands to be delivered. I loved them! But then, when me and my mum took my old nightstands downstairs, we took one, and when we were gone for no more than FIVE MINUTES boring the second table down from my apartment, and by the time we got downstairs…

POOF! Table? Gone.

So I put a very polite notice up, as you all can see in the first picture. After over a day, my neighbour, whose friend apparently saw someone in the second floor (the floor above mine) carry the table to their apartment.

My neighbour’s friend didn’t know at the time of seeing them, that it wasn’t their table, if they’d have known, they would have said something. So me and my neighbour wrote a slightly firmer note, letting the thief know that someone did see them. We then put the second note, pictured on the right, up the following night when we went down for a smoke haha.

Then the most wonderful thing happened!! Just as I was conjuring up some rather numerous missing posters, which I was going to plaster all over the second floor, my neighbour text me like “you know your table is outside your door right?”

Oh my!! They returned it!! When I looked in my mail box the next day, they had written a note on the back of the second note I left. They made it out it was unattended for days.. weeks even. No, less than FIVE MINUTES. How else was I meant to get two heavy tables down?? People just need to be kind. It’s free, you know.

Another dosage increase, obviously. It started getting confusing around this time. He was putting me on 200mg but instead of giving me 200mg tablets he gave me double the amount of 100mg but then he did give me 200mg so I don’t know. All personal details have been removed from the photo using that cute new feature on iPhones haha.

Photos from when I went to play bingo (yes I am 94 okay) at my local bingo. When you stand in the smoking terrace you can literally see my front door to my apartment building! The photo on the right is my favourite meal to get from there… well, it was… until they swapped the popadoms for stale naan bread. Not a fan.

As my meds started to increase more and more, I started to feel a lot more… lousy. But that wasn’t going to stop me from filming my project that I’m correctly working on. I stayed on my bed (the meds make me very dizzy and nauseous) and filmed from there while watching a 5 hour long stream of Stardew Valley from my comfort YouTube channel, James Turner!

I finally was eligible for a blue badge in my new county! I was eligible in my old county when I still lived with my parents but my new county’s restrictions were more strict I guess. Again, all detailed have been removed, but aids like this really really help me and my independence.

If “I give up already on my low-cholesterol diet already even though it’s been like, two weeks” could be summed up in two images, it would indeed be these two images. Just some Burger King and a whole tub of Ben & Jerry’s while watching James again, obviously.

I went to my parents house one afternoon to help my mum list her clothes she doesn’t wear anymore on Vinted. I put them all in a pile, then went one by one hanging them on the back of the living room door, taking many pictures and them putting them in a mailing bag- and so my mum knows what item is which, I added little post-it notes onto each item so all she has to do is take the package and post it.

Look at this badge holder I got for my new badge! Yes, I much would have rather it been seagulls, but we can’t have everything… I love pigeons though. Lots of people call them flying rats… but they are creatures on this earth just like you and I… just trying to eat and exist alongside us. They never hurt us or cause violence, bless.

As we can see, my medication has gotten a lot bigger. I cannot remember what dosage this was at, I’m guessing 400mg ish, as he pretty much doubled it after this, which made m, well, not a happy Alex at all!

This was my next ‘big shop’ and… you can see vegetables still, so not all is lost! but then after my busy shopping trip, I had to stop at… KFC, obviously. also, the length of my receipts made me giggle, so I just had to take a picture of it once I’ve finished packing up the shopping haha!

Another sneak peek from a project I’m working on, this time I’d actually made it out of bed, I was colouring some things while watching YouTube sat at my dining room table, which also doubles as a desk!

This was the best day of my year! Granted the year is only a quarter away through, but one of my New Year’s resolutions was to do something this year that would make younger Alex lose her mind over, and I believe this is that. I performed on a stage in front of almost 1000 people with my choir. My mum and dad were super proud of me and I’m super proud of myself and I even got a medal!

I have blurred everybody else for the sake of their privacy, but this is me and my choir backstage and also on stage! I’m the youngest one there by at least two decades, we’re all so different, but we can all unite as one when we sing, it’s kind of beautiful actually.

Bit random, but I got this new backpack which I ended up really hating. Like it’s so big and so bulky and I’m sure I almost give people black eyes when I swing around on buses to sit down. Unintentionally, obviously but it does match the seats on this very empty bus. It’s a lot lighter outside now but this is indeed the same time. If not later then the times I got the bus earlier on in this post it’s always so eerie seeing it’s so empty.

This was when my Duolingo was super proud of me for being among the first 0% learning on Duolingo that day, or because I somehow stayed up until midnight and did my Duolingo then. Duolingo is one of those things that I forget about for three months and then get a three month streak and the cycle continues around and around.

The first picture here was the last lunch I had with my theatre troop before I decided to leave, which you could see in the second picture when I ripped up my script. Not out of anger, more out of being upset with how uncomfortable I felt there. You are telling me that I was able to get on a stage with my choir, but I’m still shy with my theatre group even though I’ve been with them both at the same amount of time? I was feeling frustrated and so I’ve decided to take a break from that for awhile. And then randomly I got a new notebooks and a new pencil case there will be a YouTube video about it because I’ve not made an unboxing video yet.

The trouble I had getting these to my house was unreal. I ordered the majors ago and they said they’d be delivered within 3 to 4 days and after 12 days at past and I’d still not received them. I went to look on the tracking information when it said they’ve been delivered two days prior which they hadn’t so I contacted customer service, and they said it was returned back to them. I did originally get a jigsaw to go with all of this stuff as I really enjoy the artwork and I also enjoy jigsaw puzzles but between the time it arrived back to the shop and them sending me the order out again the jigsaw puzzle sold out. But these are the pictures that are going on my living room wall.

This was when I started taking 350 in the morning and 350 at night I think this pill was the bigger one… so the one earlier under the post would’ve been the 150mg and this one would’ve been the 200mg. Also, the first picture was taken when I started crying over how confusing my charts were getting, the ones I have to fill in for my psychiatrist. I sat back and started getting upset thinking “is this my life now?” and it was a bit like an existential crisis.

Some other things that are going to be in my unboxing video the first pictures really intrigues me because the mechanical coloured pencils with a specific type of sharpener the only sharpens the lead and creates a lot less waste than when you sharpen traditional pencils. The last picture is a binder I got for some magazines I collect. I took this picture not because of the binder, but because I was proud of myself for answering the door to the mailman for the first time in nearly 2 years. Answering the door has always been a big fear of mine, for reasons that most people think are not based in reality. So I really think the medication is starting to help. But I can only hope.

Here is how some of my evenings were spent. Yes, I do always have a camera pointed at my face. Or at the craft projects I’m working on. It just becomes a part of the furniture at some point after awhile. I also started re-watching the Netflix version of a series of unfortunate events. The last time I watched it all the way through was when I still lived with my parents so it had been nearly 4 years!! Those little cards for my project, yes, it is tedious to have to cut them all out.

I made these novel chapter workbook using ChatGPT and printed off 10 of them for the next 10 chapters of my book. They are not to write the full chapters in but to instead to make mind maps and plans and bullet points. Because I usually get so many ideas about different parts of my book all in different chapters by the time I get round to writing it, I’ve forgotten half of it so I’m thinking if I can write everything down then when it comes to writing the actual chapter, I’ll be less overwhelmed and I won’t forget as much!

So it was finally time to get a frame for that big Coke bottle picture that I had worked on a couple of years ago, there is a post about it on here somewhere. I had to measure the length and width of the painting and then times it by 2 to work out the perimeter and then I had to give the exact measurements, all in all this frame cost me £75 so I just hoped I did the measurements correct!

The frame really didn’t take too long to arrive, and I had to cut down my painting ever so slightly and I have to do a few repairs on the bottom right corner, but for the most parts it fitted like a glove. I stuck it up with no more nails tape and it stayed up perfectly.

On the same day, I put up my other posters, they are the frames that my dad got in from the Amazon man that day. They’re pretty big frames and they do want to wallpaper the wall that they’re on at some point. I want like a white wallpaper with black doodles of houses and towns or something like that. I did a lot of measurements to make sure that there was equal spaces between the wall and the pictures and also between the pictures themselves. It was rather stressful indeed!

Later on in the week I finally got time to sit down and edit the clips for that video, the one where I’m putting up the Coke bottle picture and the other pictures in the living room. That video won’t be done for a while though because it’s also going to include wallpapering the hallway, which I don’t plan on doing for a while, as I think I will need help with it, as I have never put up wallpaper before.

More pictures from one of my nightly bus rides. Despite having the Switch 2, a part of me still prefers my Nintendo 3DS. And there is something weirdly nostalgic about sitting waiting for a bus, or a train, playing Animal Crossing New Leaf. I’m about to turn 27, but ten years ago, just before I turned 17, I would also find myself, waiting in the dark for a train or bus to take me home, and in my hand would be this exact game. It reminds me when times were simpler, I guess.

This was from the night before my birthday. I stayed overnight at my parent’s house as I didn’t want to “wake up alone” on the morning of my birthday. So that night I got to choose what we had for dinner. I chose Indian food, and I took my UNO cards with me so me and my mum ad dad played a few games before they went to bed. I however found it rather hard to sleep on my old bed, it was very small and… lumpy, I guess? I have no idea.

Just some photos from my birthday morning. My mum got me a badge that I wore all day! The birthday card they chose made me laughs much. Friday Night Dinner is one of my favourite shows, simply from that character alone. Shalom! The third picture is a cushion I got for my birthday, but it will stay at my parent’s house. It’s from one of mine and my mums favourite shows, The Big Bang Theory, because my mum “sees so much of me in Sheldon”, take that as you will, haha! The fourth picture was what was said inside my birthday card, how cute.

A few snapshots from my first ever time going to IKEA! I had a wonderful time, I got a blanket and a basket for my books! I got some elderflower juice from the restaurant and then on our way to find the place where you pay, I found this!! Drawers that have the same name as me! This made me smile lots!

All my local Pizza Hut’s have closed down, a place that had always been mine and my mums tradition to go to every year. So you eat believe the happy dance I did when I noticed one was still open in the town I went clothes shopping in, after the IKEA trip! I got my favourite pizza and the cookie dough with ice cream. after that I went to the bingo where I got a waffle, and ice cream again!

This was the stuff I bought. I am still even today, mindful of the stuff I bring into my home. I got the basket which I needed for my books and a yellow blanket for my bedroom. I then got a pair go grey joggers as mine got too big and I had sold then weeks prior on Vinted, the same with the jeans- I had a pair that I could no longer fit into, so I sold them and was actively looking for a replacement. Lastly I got some sandals and a quirky little outfit for my trip to Greece later on in the year!

Thank you so much if you read through all my babbling, I can’t imagine the next quarters post (April – June) be as long, but ill try and make other posts in the mean time! I am trying to be more active on here, and so far I have kept it up!

Have a safe April

Alex 🙂 xx