2016 - 2018 Where Have I Been?

Hello my peeps! It's been so long since I've written on this blog. In fact, it's almost been a year! And a lot has happened. Prior to my last blog in 2017, I hadn't posted since 2015. Hence why I'm writing this blog to update you all on what has happened in the past two years and also hopefully what I'll be writing about in the future, and why I'm picking up writing again.
So let's just jump into it!

1. University - Work Placement 

First of all - my education, since I last talked to you I have moved into my third and penultimate university year *very exciting. It’s been so fun for so many reasons. I’m now on a work placement,  working as a full time Economic analyst in the Government Economic service. I enjoy the work as it can be varied and interesting, although it can also be very stressful at times! I get to write, which has always been the dream. I have learnt how to code …… to some extent. Well it’s a work in progress. 

But it means I’ve got the opportunity to learn of the existence of languages such as VBA Excel, Java, HTML, Stata, R (Shiny) and Python! 

I can’t learn them all, but now I know of the power they hold - it’s now more than just a work upskilling task, it’s a hobby that will drive me up the wall and hopefully into a brighter future.

They say words hold power, they certainly do if they’re being typed into a do file. 

The best part of it all is that I get to meet so many amazing people. The thing about students on  placement, is that they all realise this is their penultimate year, and they know the clock is ticking. 

It lights a fire under you as you run to catch up with those around you. You learn about the different trials people have had to tackle and the trials that you share, as you revel in the misery and awesomeness of being a 20 year old who just entered the workplace. 

I say misery because the workplace is never ever perfect, I’ve had to deal with so many stereotypical issues that no doubt I will convert into a blog at some point. But don’t let my words mislead you, if we were calculating the net added value that this placement year has given me, I’m in a head deep surplus.  

I also have taken to the working lifestyle like a duck to water, it’s refreshing being able to leave the work in the workplace as opposed to revising on the constant, even after having slunked back from the university library at 1 in the morning. It’s an unexpected benefit that I never really considered till I actually had it. 

It means my weekends are now for me alone, and it means I’ve been able to pursue a number of fun hobbies that had either been long forgotten, or I have just picked up cause, well… I can!

My second year was incredibly rough for a number of reasons, and by the end I felt emotionally and physically drained My motivation to strive to be a better version of myself took a major nose dive. I was in a huge slump where I was going round in circles about what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go.  This year when I got to meet my fellow peers, either students or people in my field I was suddenly forced to take a hard look in the mirror and really ask: “This is where second year left you, is this where you really want to stay? Or do you want to go forward?” 

It was time for me to hustle and boy was I going to try. Or rather I did - more on that later. 

2. Summer School and the Experience

Of course I can’t attribute this improvement in personality to just my placement year. It’s also cause I spent a summer in London studying! Haha yes, I’m a nerd through and through. Second year at my uni had left me craving to learn more about certain fields and when the opportunity to get to study at the prestigious London School of Economics came up, well how could I refuse?

A summer living away from home - and not doing another soul sucking summer job in a fast food joint, living in the city I had craved to live in since I was single digits, learning about the things that interested me the most - it was honestly a life changing decision. 

I got a chance to live the dream life that I had wanted for a short three months, I met funny and inspiring people as fellow students, I engaged in debates with passionate teachers (I mean they were teaching in the Summer for heaven’s sake!) who were well versed in their areas, and I reconnected with my extended family. This Summer I spent it living at my relatives, who I had talked to, maybe 4 times in the last six years. I was suddenly confronted with the very real situation that I would have to do six years’ worth of catching up in 3 months. I had a taste of what I wanted for my future and I realised I was going to have to make some changes in my life to get there. 

It was one of the most fun summers I’ve had the privilege of experiencing, and it helped stoke the fires of motivation that would propel me into my full time placement.

 

3. What am I writing about?

What else has changed? I used to write a lot about books on this blog, and then I moved from this platform to a new platform called Anime Amino. And that is where I have been for much of the time when I was away from here, I never stopped writing. I just moved where and what I was writing. I started reviewing anime series and films instead of books. Which meant I had less time for books, but when you’re in uni and you’re reading three papers a week, writing for days - the last thing you want to do is pick up a 600 page book and try to comprehend it. 

So, instead I turned to anime. As a long term fan of cartoons, I had consumed all the series in all the genres that had interested me, so I looked to abroad for a new form of media that would enrapture me. I was still reading the occasional book, but the reality was - I had found a new obsession to irrationally invest all my emotions in.  

By the time I had moved to uni I was full blown anime fan, with dreams of cosplaying my favourite characters (yes I was one of those), intensely debating the philosophical implications of series like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and anything else that comes with being a little too obsessed anime fan. By second year, you would never have known I used to be the biggest bookworm in my class, I’m fairly certain everyone in my year knew I was an anime geek, mainly because I unabashedly wore it in on my sleeve. Well actually it was more like my back - I had just bought an Attack on Titan jacket with the Wings of Freedom on my back so everyone who was in the know could instantly recognise me as their fellow people. 

That intense love for anime meant I was constantly looking for someone, or somewhere to share all my opinions. The anime society at university was just a little too exclusive for me, whilst I appreciated their dedication - I craved some variation in opinion - instead I got 10 people who spoke only to each other recirculating the same ideas - preaching to the choir on the constant. So I left. And in these hard times, I did what any normal person would.
I turned to the internet, and there, I found Anime amino. Amino was a small community on an app that allowed users to chat about anime, but also post blogs about their favourite series, create polls and metaphorically help feed our desires for discussion. It was a community that excited me!

I quickly discovered the output rate of blogs there though was overwhelming. People would complete blogs daily, these blogs were in-depth and fairly well written dives into characters - series and Japanese culture. At this point I desperately wanted to prove my allegiance to the community and set out to match that pace. Now one thing most people should know about me, is that I have an obsessive personality. It's both one of my best strengths and weaknesses. 

My obsessive personality means I easily go from 1 to 100 on many hobbies, and it's why I quickly ended up blogging daily,  planning blogs constantly and reviewing frequently.  This had two adverse affects. It meant I burnt out as an anime fan faster than a flame on a wet wick. It got to the point where I wasn't leaving my room to go out with friends, because I'd rather finish a show so I could type out my review of it. I gained an obscene amount of weight, got increasingly more sickly looking and found my blog turning into a black hole of all social interactions.
It wasn't great, however there was a silver lining to that particularly dark cloud - this constant typing and redrafting of blogs helped me to hone my skills as a critical watcher. 

What does this mean? 

Not much, it just means that when I’m consuming a form of media , more than just enjoying it, I’m also considering the themes it’s about, the characters and how they interact with each, how the story develops and the overall composition of all these elements. It’s given consuming media a new level of engagement that I never had - I feel like a much more active viewer than just passive. Personally, I think it has made me a much more critical reviewer, 

These days I’ve moved into a comfortable zone where I balance watching the occasional anime series, with a healthy dosage of TV shows, films and books. 

Yes! 

I’m back to my roots and am actively trying to read. This uptick in reading does mean I’ll be putting together more blogs on the books, so readers can look forward to that!

4. A Mentality Change

Finally: I picked up another new hobby. Well it’s less hobby, and more a change of mentality. The first inklings of change had started to seep through whilst I was in the Summer. My Uncle who is in his mid 40s was easily crushing 10k runs on the regular, whilst I struggled to jog even 3. By no means was he jacked, I mean the man spent his days sitting in an office fixing systems. But it was a drastic wake up call seeing the differences in our diets, our physical abilities and general attitudes to life.

Where I had lost the drive to keep myself physically fit in my final year of sixth form, he had continued for over a decade. 

Something needed to change: I started prepping my lunches, and swimming once a week. This desire to get better would only increase more when I encountered a dear friend at school who ran daily for the sake of her health, even when she was in a foreign country she was staying on top of her exercise! Even when she was studying on a course where the maths would make you want to hurl, the amount of papers we were fed to read would make your brain hurt and the amount of information you were forced to processed made you really questions whether this was the best idea. 

She was still finding the time to fit in an hour of running on the daily, eating healthy and being positive about it

And here I was. Sitting on my butt for hours day in day out - eating the unhealthiest food I could get my hands on and thinking nothing of it. 

I had always been aware that I was a chubby kind of girl, but this image of myself seemed immovable and I had never even considered trying to change it. I was the funny, if slightly weird chubby friend, the kind of girl who you said had a “great personality”. 

But being thrown into the line up, I saw that I did’t shape up to my peers, (pun intended) and I realised I didn’t just want to be the girl with a “great personality”. 

I wanted to be the girl who had it all - looks, drive and a personality. 

I left summer school with this attitude, and went straight into placement where suddenly I had the money to sign up to a gym, the empty evenings where I was forced to confront this feeling of inadequacy and the right time frame to set up a long term goal. It was a 12 month placement, and by the end of it I wanted to be in a position where I could complete my third year, walk up on that stage and feel a genuine sense of pride in how I looked, in what I had achieved in my four years at uni and just be ready to face the world. 

I’m six months into my placement, I’ve got four more to go and it’s about the right time for me to be sending in assignments back to my uni reflecting on how the year has gone. And reflection is what I’m going to do, both on the essay that’s due in a month’s time, but also on this blog.

So here it comes: finally: 

Why I decided to come back to this platform. 

1. The Coding - I'm currently volunteering on a project at work that requires me to learn HTML. As "Blogger" allows writers to access and edit the HTML code, it means this platform is the perfect opportunity for me to go from books and learning to application. And, I have the motivation to do it! I really want to upgrade this blog to better reflect the vision I have for it. 

2. I have Changed - As mentioned I've started reading once more, I've got more experience working and having awkward encounters with bosses, and I've started working out pretty regularly. This is all considered new material and I'm ready to share some of this with the world! 

3. I haven't Changed - My love for writing has never truly dwindled, there have been months where I've not touched the jotter pad but ideas for stories and blogs have been constant. I have always found myself working best when I project my opinions and ideas to the world - this is both verbal and by pen. And I have finally find myself in a position where I want to do that again, on this platform. 

I’m going to use this space to (hopefully) regularly write up mementos of my time in uni, whether it be the rough times or the fun ones. I’m going to contemplate the books I’m reading, the podcasts I’m listening to, the OTHER blogs I’m reading! And I’m going to continue reviewing whatever I feel may be fun reviewing.  I’m aiming to write blogs on all aspects of my life: University, Lifestyle and Media. 

As the Blog is titled ‘The World of Lillian’, I feel it only right I finally inject some of that back into my blogging. 

Here concludes this update, I hope any readers out there has enjoyed this little read. Leave a comment on what you thought of my experiences in this past year, or whether you’ve had any big changes that really made you rethink how you were living!

Lillian
XOXO