Hi everyone.  Are you still there? I hope so. I know I have said this before, but I think I am back now, or at least I will try to be. Ever since covid hit, I hadn’t really felt like blogging. A lot of my blog prior to covid was to do with navigating the world as a disabled person and I just didn’t feel like there was much to say when we couldn’t go outside much. 

I suppose I could have talked about the vaccine. The importance of it. The fact that, as a disabled person, I have the same eligibilities as elderly and young children. But I looked on the wordpress reader. Everyone was blogging about the vaccine. Everyone was blogging about the lockdown. And it wasn’t what I wanted to do. To me it was just a thing we had to do, disabled or not. I just happened to be eligible quicker than most my age group. It wasn't something, in my opinion, that needed blogging about. And everyone was experiencing lockdown.

I did try and get some guest blogs over the year, not very successfully, although I’m sure you’ve seen the ones I did manage to obtain. 

Things are changing now. Covid is still around, obviously. That’s not going to go away anytime soon. But I’ve made some changes.

One of the things I noticed during the lockdown was that I was terrible when I had nothing. Covid saw me, like many others, without a job. I did try and job search for a little while, but it became depressing to see that the only jobs available were workhouse jobs or other labour-intensive jobs that just was not ideal for someone who can only walk a short distance and has the use of only one hand. 

During this time, I started to struggle with my mental health. Don’t worry, I had support from family and I was well aware of what was happening to seek external support too, but I knew things had to start changing too. 

What I did about Lockdown Boredom

For me, lockdown was the first time in my life where I had nothing. There was school, then there was college, then university, a masters degree, a job. Covid changed that, within weeks of lockdown been announced, I lost my position as a Senior Project Administrator. It's a shame, because although it wasn't what I wanted to do, the people were nice and I enjoyed working there.

My mental health was linked to not having anything. I had my writing, and I had the Sims... but there is a limit, even for the avid simmer, of playing virtual barbies. I was worried about my prospects too. Able bodied people at least could work in warehouses, but I was limited and admin jobs were given to people who lost positions within the company.

In May, I finally took action. I’ve signed up for a PhD.

I officially started September, so be assured, you’ll see posts about disability, university life and writing again. I’m not going to leave the post there though, I want to let you know what I am doing for my PhD. 

Now, you may have noticed—especially if you have looked at my portfolio —that I have this obsession with pirates. So my PhD, for the next three years, is going to look into piracy. 

Marginalisation and Morals: a creative and critical approach to pirates and women in the 18th century. 

I’m going to be spending the next three years developing my novel, accompanied with a literary review. The novel when completed will be 80,000 words, but for the sake of the PhD, I’ll only be submitting 40,000 of the creative piece. The accompanying piece will also be 40,000 words. 

What this means is that you might see a lot of work on the 18th century, on pirates, on women, and on my writing process as part of my Paws and Prose section of the blog. I'll also be keeping up with Bearing Disability too.

That’s not all, at my institution you are required to complete a minimum of 300 hours of research activity. 

Research activity includes:

• teaching 
• mentoring 
• blogging (yep, I can use this blog as part of my PhD development hours, so no excuses not to post anymore)
• workshops
• attending taught modules 
• attending conferences 

I’m looking forward to complete the research activity. I can see why it’s important, with many of the encouraged skills in these activities being transferable to many careers. 

What else have I been doing over the lockdown period

mostly writing or playing games. It’s november, so any writers will know what that means. It’s National November Writing Month (Nanowrimo) which means that I’m also going to be trying to hit 50,000 words this month. This year, I have decided that part of the 50,000 will be any written work that I am writing as part of or because of my PhD. It’s still words, right? and I still have a target to reach. So it just makes sense to me that I include it. It’s a way to keep on track for my PhD too.

Great news is that the Nanowrimo group includes making notes and writing outlines as working towards the writing goal too. So that’s good. 

If you want to follow me on NanoWrimo, my username is: Seabear. And if you have a project of your own, do let me know in the comments below, I would be interested to see what you’ve come up with yourself.

Here’s a bonus for you:

In 2019, Nanowrimo made streak badges, I couldn’t find the official ones for this year, so I made my own. I have since been told that the official ones are on instagram, but if you would like to use mine, feel free to do that. You can find them all below. I currently have 16, but I’ll get around to the other 14 because they’re needed. 

Thanks for Reading

Anyway, to my loyal readers, I am sorry I have been away so long, but I already have started feeling the need to write more now that I have started my PhD so you should be seeing more of me. 

You may also see some guest blogs too, and if you would like to guest blog yourself, do let me know. It can be on writing, books, or disability.