Hello and Happy New Year Everyone!! 🙂
It’s been awhile since my last post I know. It’s not to say I haven’t been up to much because I have! However, I felt that since it’s the new year, I wanted to make this a little special, because of it being a new decade I thought I’ll share with you my journey from 2010-2020 (well 2019 technically) including everything that’s happened with ups and downs the fun times the inexpected times, everything! So let’s beging my journey from this time a decade ago…
Note: This is going to be significant things that I remember of that year and not everything. This is not to say those that I don’t mention (or forget to mention) are insignificant because they’re not. Also please understand that because of my memory problem, I may have mixed up a few dates and events as I’m not exactly sure or remember fully. Please also understand that this is just an overview and in no means my full life story as there would be things that I would deliberately leave out too. ~~ Please enjoy my journey with me! 🙂 ~~
Year 2010
I was already in my second semester of my first year of uni for awhile now (having starting in October 20009) and then I’ve been enjoying myself a lot. I was at my element, with friends, getting involved in the society and other fun things. I loved it so much! I was really into Anime and Manga (addictive level) and also wanted to make a friend from Japan. I tried making friends online (a safe website) and ending meeting one of good Korean friend! It was an amazing experience! We chatted and clicked straight away! She even came to the UK to visit me, it was so sweet of her. We got along and had a blast!
However, I spent most of my time either watching anime or reading manga, playing The Sims 2 (huge part of my life), going our with friends and events with the uni that I didn’t do as well as I thought I would on one of my modules. I ended up having to retake it in the summer (which is when I met my Korean friend and also was speaking to her for awhile). I ended up passing the module that I missed too.
That summer I hit my 20s as it was my 20th birthday! It was great again I spent it with friends and we had a lot of incredible memories together. My second year started, I was a student ambassador which was a fun experience and definitely something I continued through my 3rd year. I also went to a 3 day (not staying just travelling) conference over at Chelmsford for one of the projects I was doing with the uni as well. That was a lot of great memories and it was an amazing experience. By the way, I actually was close with many of my lecturers, tutors etc. at my uni and some of them even came to this conference which is great.
Year 2011
I honestly don’t remember anything significant that happened this year except for my 21st birthday which was a great celebration with my friends and then later with my family. I also started my 3rd year which was a huge milestone as well.
Year 2012
This was a very eventful year! I graduated this year with hons! I was so happy. I also went onto doing my PGCE in Sept. It was such a great year, while I was in my PGCE it was very intense and stressful, I came back from my first place which was a success and then had my graduation.
During that first place, we also got a kitten! It’s my first pet and I was so excited and happy. All I ever wanted to do was just stay home with Aston and never go out ever, I would miss him a lot and everytime I came home my family would tell me how much he cried for me.
Year 2013
This was a few important things that happened this year. Firstly I had to withdraw from my PGCE programme around March due to many reasons. I found that I was literally at a hault with my life wondering what else to do. I tried getting a job but it was very difficult, however I was passionate about finding a job so I joined a teaching agency. However, around July 31st I started to feel a lot of pain.
I had to battle with the DWP for not being able to work which was such a stress. I still didn’t know what was wrong with me, my diagnosis wasn’t given. The silver lining through all of this was Aston! He was so comforting and adorable that he became attached to me and even tried (and succeeded) in cheering me up.
Year 2014
I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and managed to finally convince the DWP that I was not fit for work. It wasn’t a great year overall as I had to go to court at the end of the year with this whole mess. Thankfully though I was able win my case and was deemed unfit for work.
Now, being an ambition person like myself, you can imagine how hard this is for me. I don’t like taking breaks and I wasn’t able to do much. However I did spend time with Aston and my family and that was very pleasant.
Year 2015
I would have to say it was another year that I wasn’t able to do much as I was weak, there were lots of hospital appointments and doctor appointments along with noting that I can’t do so much when push myself a little. I know there were many things that I wanted to do but I felt limited.
I did however, joined in on some short courses at the library as I loved to learn and thought that I would at least do that for a year. I started them in September which was nice and I really enjoyed myself a lot.
Year 2016
I did a lot of courses at the library as I wanted to keep busy and I did. I ended up volunteering (sort of) at the library as I wanted to do something after the courses came to an end (of course this was my way working as I couldn’t actually do traditional work) and I ended up volunteering with them (I think this actually took place from 2015 but I’m not exactly sure).
Year 2017
I felt that I needed to release my creativ flow a little as there was a build up of creativity in me that wasn’t being satisfied. I also felt that over the time I wasn’t using my cognitive skills as much and felt that I needed to studying something that would help both.
This is how I joined the creative writing course at the library, I have to admit it was definitely overwhelming and then I thought that this wasn’t going to work for me and I even thought of dropping out. However this thought was very brief as there’s one thing about me that you should is that I never give up and I like a challenge (no matter how bad I am at it) and I think that that’s something that I have not changed about myself over the years.
I also started volunteering at my local centre by facilitating a jewellery making and arts session. I think this was another thing that changed my life, and it has shaped me a lot and on top of all that, I made some great friends and it was incredible.
Year 2018
This was probably one of the biggest year in my life that I never thought would be possible. I published a book! I am offically a published author! I am still surprised to this day. I entered a creative writing competition after my creative writing class. By the end of the course, the tutor gave us a list of competitions that we should try out and I picked one that I was happy with. I was in the zone of creative writing and was passionate about it.
I submitted my entry and thought that if I win that it would be a bonus as this was mainly for experience as I never entered a writing competition. I thought I didn’t win as the announcement for the winners had passed and I didn’t hear anything. But a month later, I heard back from them and I was genuinely ecstatic and surprised. It was published as a compendium, and I was still so happy to be a published author.
Of course, the launch day happened in the centre (it was a mini launch) I was genuinely happy and there were many who bought the books as well! The love and support from my family, friends and community was outstanding and I appreciated it and still do.
This then motivated me to write my next book. The whole year I spent time with my editor and she went through my work and we made changes where we needed to. After it was finalised, I immediately started on my next book.
I still can’t believe I achieved one of my dreams 🙂
Year 2019
Now, we catch up to the final year, I have to say I did do many things in this year. Many that was documented on here, one of them was hitting a huge milestone of 10 years of friendship with my uni friends which was incredible. I went on many outings both with friends and the centre and to top it all of I finished writing my new book a day after my birthday (21st Aug) and even finished one of the biggest editing of the book recently (Dec 29th 2019 to be precise).
I even won the OSCARS 2019 (this is the community centre version not the real one of course lol) for The Volunteer of the Year Award which I think is amazing and felt honoured to be appreciated for my efforts. That day was such an incredible day and I loved it so much.
So overall there was a lot of things that happened both good and bad but one thing is for sure, I don’t regret it. Also I remembered something else, it’s pretty huge personally, which is that from 2017-2019 (and moving forward) I have been learning to manage my pain and flare ups a lot more and listening to my body when I can’t do things or when I take on things as well.
Journey from 2020 onwards – Goals, plans etc.
I don’t want to make a list of goals that I’m probably going to make increadibly unrealistic and at the same time not going to be able to achieve them. Instead, I’m going to look forward to things that I want to do and hopefully make them happen when they do. One of the things that I would like to work on is my writing and now I can say that I will be looking for a literary agent for my writing endeavours. I feel like this would become a huge change in my life (if and when it happens) and I’m prepared for it.
Looking forward to this year!
Take care and think positive
Tarana A beaming star shining with positivity for the world to embrace xoxox
Tarana 