Take some time for yourself

I truly think that a healthy dose of pampering now and again can be incredibly beneficial. Whether that be taking an extra few minutes to paint your nails, having a cosy movie night for one, or doing a face mask in the evening while re-reading Order of the Phoenix and sipping on a steaming cup of honey rooibos, some pampering and self-care can go a long way.

I make sure to have at least 20 minutes of silence everyday which I enjoy with a cup of tea. During this time, I don’t interact with my phone or any digital media, but instead read, draw or even just think. My mind tends to wander a lot which can make me feel very stressed and anxious so having this time to really just focus on my thoughts is very important for me. I also just thoroughly enjoy solitude – I honestly think it’s a state in which I thrive the most.

I’d be very interested to know how you pamper yourself or what you do when you take some time for yourself. Do you browse through a magazine or use one of those adult colouring-in books? Do you take time for yourself everyday? I’d love to know.

Disclaimer: that’s a phone in my hand in the featured image, not a cigarette. I will not be confused with a person who actively chooses to destroy their lungs lmao!! 

I wrote a short film…

Earlier this year, I was presented with the incredible opportunity to make a short film with a group of fellow students. I ended up writing a script at the last minute and was so surprised that it got chosen within the smaller group of scripts to be made into actual films. The day after I found out that my script was selected, I had to pitch it to the rest of the Film Society at my university so that members could get a feel of what my vision was and decide whether they wanted to work with me on the film. Luckily, I managed to get a team (an entire crew and most of the cast) together that same day!

The Film Soc gave us a couple of themes and lines of inspiration for our scripts. The themes were Empathy and Moral Ambiguity and the lines of inspo were:

• “I never considered that.”
• “It doesn’t matter – we’re doing the right thing.”
• “It’s in the little things.”

For my script, I kind of combined all of the lines and themes into one and tried to come up with something different. I knew that I wanted to explore something out of my comfort zone – something chilling and mysterious, with warm light and candles. (Dreamy, right?). I had recently read Donna Tartt’s “A Secret History” and was feeling very inspired by that kind of dark academia vibe where a group of friends band together and, whether planned or not, commit a crime. I knew that in a situation like that, emotions would be running rampant. So, I wrote each friend, each character, as a separate emotion from Book Two of Aristotle’s “Rhetoric”. Then, I threw aaalll of that together into a dinner-party setting and VOILA! I wrote something!

If that whole gedoente was a bit too longwinded for ya, here’s a brief synopsis of what Rhetoric at Dinner entails:

A group of friends have committed a crime. At dinner, tension rises and emotions are at a high when we finally find out just what they have done. And it involves murder.

I’m so glad that it all came together in the end thanks to our wonderful team of hardworking creative students. The film is far from perfect but it’s my first one and I’m proud of what we’ve managed to create in such a short space of time (and with pretty much no cash).

This experience has really whet my appetite for filmmaking (especially screenwriting) and I hope to be doing it a lot more in the future. I’d also like to encourage you, reader, whoever and wherever you are, to go ahead to try your hand at something that you’ve always wanted to do. It doesn’t need to be perfect – you just need to try!