I really want to start a diary again. This is the second time already this year. I can’t believe that it’s already February. Not even just February but most of the way through the month, too. When I tried this again a few weeks back I, as always, set myself up to abandon too big of a project. I put it in a google doc that I would likely never look at again; that was true.

This time I’m going to properly try. To write something just for me, to get my thoughts to the page and so that I can do something with my fingers on some evenings other than endlessly doomscroll TikTok or Instagram. I got my nails off this weekend just gone, and the rate at which I can type again is satisfying to me, and is part of the reason that I want to have something to write. I recently started this blog, originally intended to be only a science blog, which I still plan to release to slowly, but I’m finding it hard get the motivation to write anything sciency for it right now. As anyone who knows me knows, I really love pulsars, as I’m sure I will know re-reading this down the line, but I cannot for the life of me bring myself to continue re-writing the lab-script for the Crab-lab experiment which I had promised I would do for the other people doing experiment.

I’ve found myself able to indulge in my degree a lot more as of recent. Obviously, I’m not at a point where I can live and breathe it just yet (is that a point I even want to reach?), but it’s nice to see that there is a change. I have recently found myself thinking the thought: “in an ideal world, I would be writing about science right now, like I promised myself I would continue to do” and it makes me wonder why I want so badly to do something, something that I claim to enjoy, but cannot bring myself to do that exact activity. Am I telling myself that I enjoy doing it because I have deemed it more productive? Surely not; I like pulsars! I like astronomy! These are all things which are true, and I want to write. In fact, I am writing, right now, so why have I decided that this right now is more fun than the project about the thing that I know myself to enjoy. Very bizarre.

The last time I did this (the diary, that is), was the fantastic year of 2021, when we were all trapped inside. I can’t exactly remember all the reasons for starting it, but I know that I wanted to use it as a way to practice my touch typing before I came to university. It’s crazy to me that this was half a decade ago now. The year 2021 as a whole was probably a top tier year for me for a multitude of reasons. Some of the most important things that have ever happened to me happened that year, and I talk about them so casually but in great lengths at the end of my previous diary’s final entry. It’s so strange to think that everything I did that year is kept in this little time capsule on the internet. Realistically I need to try and download it in its entirety, and store it somewhere, just in case the server I stored it on ever goes down. I really wouldn’t want to lose everything I thought about such an important year. I suppose if I continue writing for this brand new diary, it will be stored on somewhere I have a little more trust in: github. Also, my own laptop which I write it on. I keep calling it a diary but I suppose that if I do indeed intend to release the entries then I must instead call it a blog. It also means that I shouldn’t write horrible things about people, at least not more so than I otherwise would be in their presence. I’ve heard that anything that you say about somebody on the internet always makes it back to the person that you say it about. Should I even change the names of people that I talk about, even if I say nice things? Something to dwell on.

Anyways. Whenever I talk about the diary I made in 2021, I end up going and reading a handful of entries from it. Reading them back is almost embarrassing? There’s really no reason for it to be, as I’d go as far as to say I am a completely different person back then. It’s quite interesting, it feels like peering into the life of somebody else. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I’m not that person anymore. I think overall I’m a lot more happy and confident with who I am now than I ever even could have considered myself being in the past. I’ve done so many things that I never thought I would be able to do and I’ve got an incredible support group of friends. But, as all do, I have wobbles. I think that when I was younger (nearly half a decade ago???), when I first came to university, I was so, for lack of better words emotionally dead? That is to say that I don’t really think that I had every truly been myself or even happy for that matter until I got here. Like, sure, I was happy but the contrast of how my base-level happiness improved once I started University, and then continued as I entered my second year, is astounding. I really did come out of my shell, and I felt more like myself than I ever had. Once I had a taste for it, the good of old just started feeling like the bad of today. I think that still rings true to an extent.

A humorous excerpt from my diary, June 24, 2021

Somewhat on-topic, I think that 2024 was a pretty rough year for me. It’s been interesting to think about, because for the last few years, as mentioned above, coming to university has always had a net positive effect on my life. I still think that my “bad year” is better than many of the years that came before I started my undergrad, but it was the first time that it wasn’t better than the previous years. A lot of good stuff happened, still; I can probably list some of the best things about my 2024 off the top of my head: I met a good portion of the people I am close friends with today; I hosted a really successful ball; I fell in love with Physics. The latter is probably the most important to the rest of my life. Another one of the reasons that I wanted to start blogging (a horrible word but maybe I should lean into it) was so that I could track my journey through academia, which could still be a pipe-dream; we won’t know until I hear back from some of my interviews. I’ll likely write a bit about this whole process in another entry sometime.

Back to my shitty year. Maybe it wasn’t that bad. While living through it, I don’t actually think it was that bad and it’s only when looking at it through the lens of hindsight that I think “you know what that kind of sucked”. One famous (if you talk to me often you will already be aware) shortcoming of the year was my constant ill-luck with unreciprocated romantic feelings and failed “situationships”. Now, this particular theme was definitely frontloaded to the first half of the year - up until summer break, before it thankfully tapered off with the summer break between my third and fourth year of undergrad. Numbers wise alone I think I caught feelings for 4 different people during that time. I think if we’re talking records that’s got to be up there. Realistically, a good portion of my ill-fortune comes from several missteps and blunders made by myself in how I interpreted the actions of others BUT to be fair to me, I think in some cases I was justifiably confused by a good handful of mixed signals.

All in all, that specifically isn’t too big of a deal to me (though similarly, if you talk to me often you would be forgiven to thinking the contrary due to the regularity of my complaints. I’m a natural born gossip, what more can I say?), I like to think that I can bounce back from a lot of things like that pretty easily, but it did start to get to me and I was very glad to have a break at the end of the semester where I didn’t need to be perceived for a while. As it turns out, needing a break “where I’m not perceived for a while”, is the same thing that I thought during COVID when I was in a particularly poor headspace about my confidence. Last year in the summer I didn’t really see my friends as much as I should have; I binge ate and gained a lot of weight and I stayed in bed most days until 3pm. I hated that I felt so unproductive.

Before the summer began, just after my semester 6 exams, I created a plan of the things that I wanted to do over summer to try and keep my mind active, and to avoid staying in bed and doing nothing. To give myself some credit, I managed to study an entire physics module over the course of a few weeks, but I didn’t enjoy it. I set out also to write plenty of dungeons and dragons stuff, going as far as to allocate days for writing a campaign I had a cool idea for: Rot and Ruin, or to transcribe and eventually aim to publish a homebrew module for the second chapter of my home campaign. I did neither of those things: I only ran a single, session 0, for the campaign and to say I started properly re-writing up something I had already written would be an overstatement.

The icon I created for the campaign I was going to run. It depicts a weird bug hand holding a rock with gross slimy tentacles about.

Atop all the above, being at home generally sucks for me these days. My parents are somehow still particularly poor at recalling my name and preferred pronouns. For a very long time I gave them both the benefit of the doubt. I know that my mum does love me, so it must just take a while for her to grow used to them, right? Wrong. Gone are the days of benefit of the doubt. I think I have every right to be angry. Staying at home for months on end hearing a name that I literally never hear at any other time of the year is devastating. It’s difficult to deal with and I think it played a large part in my sub-par summer. I love my parents, but last year I said outright “please vote, there are people in/trying to get into government that, if given the opportunity, would have me killed” and they stood there and told me they weren’t going to vote. They truly boggle my mind sometimes, because anyone reading this who has met my parents wouldn’t think they’re capable of harm. There’s such a stark contrast sometimes between some of their actions that it’s beyond confusing.

Moving on, in another hindsight, it would have been much better to make the most of my final summer by simply doing nothing. I probably set myself too many tasks and projects and I think the prospect of being so close to finishing university scared (and still does) me last year. Back then, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to pursue a PhD and so D&D and worldbuilding was the only thing I really knew I was passionate about had going for me. Coming back to university was a good thing for me, and I’ve been a lot happier since getting back.

From September to December, 2024. I had my penultimate semester at University of Manchester. Compared to the first 3/4 of the year, things started to look up again, and mostly continued to do so through to the end of the year (redemption arc). I still found it difficult I think to get out of some of the habits I fell into over the summer, and my self confidence still hasn’t recovered, though it definitely is better. I was lucky to meet a small handful of new people, (though I would like to do better to meet and spend time with even more in my final semester), a few of whom I have become really close with and hold in very high regard. I made the decision to try and pursue a PhD with motivation from my academic advisor, who snapped me out of the mindset that I had where it was “already too late” or that I’m a “non-ideal candidate”. Not to toot my own horn but I’m pretty fucking solid at physics and any academic institution would be lucky to have me.

I capped the year off with a not-so-pleasant-but-better-than-expected visit back home for a few weeks for Christmas. There was a usual host of unpleasantries, but overall it could have been a lot worse. My actual Christmas day wasn’t phenomenal, but who can complain about free booze. It appears that I’m getting too old for blood-relative Christmas; we hosted a little flat Christmas at the house I’m currently living at and it felt a lot more like I was surrounded by people who really do love and care about me, and make every attempt to show it. Also the dinner was better.

The best Christmas dinner I’ve every had, at a student house in Manchester, on a stolen Wetherspoons plate.