On Making the Most of Winter

December 18, 2023 by kkamilah Leave a comment

Despite the incessant moaning and groaning of English Folk (read: Londoners, mostly) on the odd super cold day, I actually feel like winter has been quite forgiving so far this year. In fact, I admit I’ve woken up some mornings saying ‘Hey. You know what? I could go for a walk today because it’s so crisp and delicious outside!’ And, though my nose feels like an ice cube, I am content. I seem to have foregone the usual bout of SAD this year, though I’m unsure if that’s partly because of my recovery time off work.

Nevertheless, winter, to me, is a time for doing almost nothing outdoors except the bare minimum. Yes, the Christmas markets are up and running, enticing us to leave our cosy homes for promises of a bustling, vibrant atmosphere that includes Mariah Carey playing much too loudly on a speaker nobody can locate and a £7 hot chocolate that we could have made at home without being sardine-packed on the Piccadilly Line. But what else is there to do outside this cute, expensive little activity?

There is many a festive menu across all restaurants, and enough limited martinis that now have a generous sprinkling of icing sugar snow dusted on the side of the glass. We’re being reminded that, actually, there is a lot to leave your house for, guilted into staying indoors instead of venturing into the cold. It’s December and I haven’t even been to any Christmas markets! Or the outdoor ice-rink! I haven’t been to see a single flashing light and I’ve missed Winter Wonderland, a heaving extortionate waste of time that I now have to pay and queue up for!

So anyway, I’ve thought about the winter goals I have that don’t necessarily mean doing festive things because, truly, I very much enjoy the weather that forces me to stay indoors. What a shame, I can’t go outside, it’s raining. Damn it. Actually, I’m blissfully happy laying in bed with the lightbulb red, asking Alexa to play metal while I write, so I can really feel like I’m in a dungeon. Can’t do that when it’s sunny at 8pm.

I would, on a normal day, like to have some mulled wine and chestnuts, but it’s not something I’m going to pen down and venture into the crap weather and ginormous crowds for; don’t get me started on Christmas crowds because I’m exhausted just thinking about them. There are plenty of indoor and introspective goals to be achieved in Winter, especially for an introverted dopamine-chasing hermit who absolutely loves their own company and will look for any excuse to stay indoors.

Here are my five winter goals. Let me know if you have any of your own that I can draw inspiration from!

The definitive guide to becoming burnt out

October 10, 2023 by kkamilah Leave a comment

Is the relentless rat-race becoming too easy for you? Do you need to shake things up a bit, take things up a notch, show that you really love to face challenges? If full blown exhaustion is your goal, follow these eight steps to make sure you really empty the tank of all it has!

Set aside some time to plan your work week on Sunday

What better way to make sure you’re ready for the work week than to go through all of your work tasks before you actually start? If you say no to spending time with family on Sunday, you can use your free, unpaid time off (of which you have two days – plenty!) to get a head start and make sure you’re raring to go at 9am the next day! Surely you can’t expect that planning for work would be part of your work hours?

Say yes to absolutely everything

Can you take on this task? And that task? And this task is too much for your co-worker, can you help, even though you are drowning under the weight of your own task list? Of course you can! If you don’t have time to do it, simply find the time. If you want to be a good employee, you must say yes to everything before someone else does. You might not be compensated, but at least you can look in the mirror and say you did it! Read more

The Artist’s Dilemma

April 27, 2022 by kkamilah Leave a comment

I sat down to start this post in my usual fashion; with misery, cynicism, and a little self-loathing. But then I remembered that negativity begets negativity, and the last thing I need is another reason to beat myself up. So, I’ve picked the next closest thing: honesty.

I took yet another break from writing in general. People have told me and continue to tell me they love my blog posts, my copy, my short stories — whatever it may be — but I just… don’t believe them. Imposter syndrome, I believe they call it. Feelings of inadequacy that block us from ever proving to ourselves that we are better than we think we are. It’s a vicious cycle that I often struggle to break out of.
We create art to express ourselves and resonate with people, so when they tell us they want to see us or hear us, why can’t we deliver? Why do we feel like frauds in our field –surely I’m not meant to be in this club? You’ll find that this club is filled almost exclusively with people who are, in fact, very good at what they do. Conversely, there are a lot of people who produce ridiculously sub-par work, but because they believe they can get to the top with it, they soar. Right to the very top. Read more

I think I’m here, therefore I’m here(?)

November 13, 2021 by kkamilah Leave a comment

Or whatever Descartes said.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted anything on this blog. I have found myself drawn more to the throwaway simplicity of Substack; my creative (?) thoughts are sporadic and I have a very short attention span, even when it’s for myself. When I lay down at night, I jump from memory, to thought, to scene two in that same thought, to scene three, back to scene one to find out how else it could have played out, to a different thought altogether, to a horrible scenario that I hope will never happen but I’m now prepared for in case it does. Long blog posts don’t really do it for me, and I know they don’t really do it for anyone else, either. I talk about things succinctly (but often), I think about things forever and then write about them succinctly (I hope) (but often). Other times, there is waffle.

This is one of those times.

I’m ashamed to admit that I haven’t been writing anything over the past couple of weeks because I’ve had fake nails on. I don’t know how you were expecting that sentence to end, but I know it wasn’t like that – maybe you expected simple writer’s block, being bogged down with work, a crisis in the family. And all of those things are true, but, for a writer, not nearly as debilitating as having long nails that prevent you from typing efficiently on the horrible flat butterfly keys of a 2015 Macbook that just won’t die. Let’s not tempt fate now, though, because, being older and closer to real adult life, I can’t afford my Macbook to die on me the same way I could when I was 19 and didn’t want to think about the future. I used to look into the future and see a black screen because, as far as I was concerned, I should have been dead already and anything that was to happen after that is a miracle in itself. Maybe miracle is the wrong word. Now, I look into the future and I panic because I wasted so much time being dead inside that I now have so much catching up to do; now, I look into the future and it’s not just about me – now, I see the white picket fence. Not really a white picket fence because, living in London, I know a small Tesco lorry will probably back into it and ruin everything. Maybe a big, strong, robust wall. And some barbed wire. And lots of CCTV and gates and deadlocks. Maybe a rottweiler.

I digress. But it’s also a nice illustration of how my thought process works. I get antsy, I can’t sit still. I get anxious, I get frustrated, I don’t know how to be calm. I am, quite simply, all over the place, all the time.

But sometimes, all the chaos must come to a stop and I am nowhere.

Who are you, really?

January 5, 2021 by kkamilah 4 Comments

Okay. Hold tight, because we’re venturing into my favourite topic.

Who are we?

I do love a bit of psychoanalysis. It’s the question we will explore… forever.

It will never end, and we like to try and exhaust all avenues for as long as we live. There are questions we’ll ask ourselves for the rest of our lives; after all, what is there to do once we’ve found the answers? Self-sabotage, perhaps, so we can start again. Or, more sensibly, create more questions. Find more unexplored areas.

What is the meaning of life? What’s the recipe for success? What is true happiness? How do you heal from heartbreak and trauma? How do you know when it’s love? How do we even define all of these things?

I think most of the difficulty in answering these questions lies in a lack of awareness about the self.

Unless we really know who we are, we can’t truly know where we stand in relation to topics that require introspection and deep understanding of ourselves … and questions like the above do not have universal answers. There is no right or wrong. As the world evolves, the answers change. For some, success is living so comfortably that you never have to shop price low to high. For others, it’s being able to comfortably cry whilst staring into your lover’s eyes; it’s being unable to find the words to truly tell them how much you love them in that moment and that’s the only way your body will let you. And for a handful, it’s living carefree and alone in an art studio with a Wholefoods around the corner.

[Love.] // Where it all begins

November 28, 2020 by kkamilah Leave a comment

Our perception of love begins when we’re kids, only we don’t know it.

Love is normal, the standard against which we’ll later measure every act ever committed; anything anybody does is measured in terms of where it exists on the Love meter. If it makes you happy, it’s a 10. If it hurts, it’s a 1. Burning down trees and using products with palm oil is a lack of love for the Earth and orangutans. Giving to charity is empathy materialised, and empathy is a form of love. Not necessarily for the individual with whom you’re empathising, but a love and understanding for other human beings in general. Or maybe it’s simply a love for your religion; maybe even just no love for Hell.

This is how the meter works in theory, anyway. As you get older, it becomes a lot more complicated and it makes no sense when you love someone who makes you want to shoot your own brains out.