**if you are able to, please donate to my birthday fundraiser here**
September has just flown by! The last few weeks have been very busy for me. I’ve decided to switch gears career-wise and thankfully, it has turned out to be one of my better decisions. One of my closest cousins just got married and I had the privilege of being a bridesmaid. My mum turned 50 just over two weeks ago and my sister started her graduate job at Willis Towers Watson. And in the midst of it all, the blog has just…taken a backseat.
This was, heartbreakingly, always the plan. I love this website with every bit of my heart and will never abandon it completely, but the Sunday blog posts, I’m afraid, are a thing of the past. I am however active on Instagram every single day, so please follow me on there if you haven’t already. I wish I could keep up weekly posting but with the direction my life is going, it just isn’t a possibility. My priorities are very different to what they were 18 months ago, as are I’m sure a lot of yours are too. This website is not going anywhere, though; Train of Thought is only in its beginning stages. I have many more tricks up my sleeves and more articles to write in the foreseeable future.
September is always a poignant month for me personally, not because of the romanticism I find in the falling leaves and colder weather. It’s my birthday month, and on the day this gets published, I’ll be twenty-four. What a year it has been. Last year, I did the birthday tag to celebrate turning twenty-three. You can read that article here.
I am so proud of myself for starting this blog when I did and for growing my audience. You all mean so much to me and I hope to do you all proud and feed you with my best-written work. The Instagram comments, DM’s and emails you send me mean everything; you readers have left me feeling like the luckiest girl in the world. As a writer, I feel it's my responsibility to be vulnerable and honest with my feelings. I struggle so much to articulate my emotions in the real world and yet I can so easily do it on a webpage. I wish I could go as far as attaching the scents of my perfume and coffee to my posts, just so you could fully experience what I'm enduring. In doing so, I want readers to feel safe to open up to each other. It has been a year full of ups and downs, and there was a point just before the summer when I felt as though I couldn’t carry on at all. I’ve referred to the ‘apocalyptic summer’ a few times, a period in which a domino line of things kept going wrong. I’ve glued myself back together, just about. I’m finally starting to feel better after falling out with friends; I’m no longer in a friendship group in which I was always the least favourite friend and the bond I have with my other friends is stronger than ever. You can only be so sad over people who didn’t return the loyalty you’ve offered to them so consistently over the years. My nani mum heartbreakingly remains very unwell, but I’m staying positive and persevering. I’ve always been the girl that got on with things.
Speaking of persevering, I left a job back in May which day by day was destroying my life. I worked for nine months at a firm in which my mental health was completely disregarded. I can only liken the office to an Orwellian surveillance state, every moment I spent making coffee or using the toilet was monitored. I hated the sector and the job itself but carried on in the hopes of saving money. By the end, I was the most depressed and helpless I'd ever felt. My sweetheart colleagues did everything to help, as did my family.
Thankfully, that chapter ended. More so than ever I remind myself of how temporary everything in life is, even the life itself. Nothing lasts forever, including pain. I've been asked a lot in the last year why my poetry is as sad as it is, and to be honest, it's because I feel sad most days. And that's okay. But with life being as temporary as it is, I choose to make my goals a priority.
Thank you for all the birthday love. If you are able to, please donate to my birthday fundraiser here <3
Best wishes,
Karisma xxx