I have yet to maintain this blog consistently, but I am urged to write. Although I have always enjoyed writing, I have been preoccupied with work, caring for my child, and other responsibilities. However, logging in today, I realised I had missed it. This blog has been a means for me to connect with others, and as someone who tends to be a bit of a hermit, I appreciate the opportunity to interact with people and connect about mental health. I know mental health issues are commonplace, but why do I struggle to be open about mine? I would rather stay at home alone than put myself in social situations and worry about my anxiety turning into a full-on panic attack or fight thoughts of paranoia.
I am so accustomed to being alone that I hardly notice the feeling of loneliness and preoccupy myself with one of my 99 hobbies.
Since I last posted, I became engrossed with candle making. I thought I’d save myself the cost of buying candles weekly and decided to learn to make my own. The obsession cost me over £1000, buying, trying, testing, aesthetics, and researching with the idea that I would be able to make and sell them. I quite like my job as an administrator. It’s pretty simple and mainly stress-free, which is excellent for my mental health, but it was only supposed to be a stop-gap, and I’m studying part-time, so it suits me perfectly.
I learnt quite a bit about candles; quite a few are toxic as they contain synthetic oils. I thought I’d make the safest, purest candle I could, except trying to make essential oil candles is no easy feat, and in December 2021, when I failed to make my family and friends candles as Christmas presents, I diverted to diffusers.
2022 was spent making Essential oil reed diffusers. They were pretty good, but when I realised my total spend, including candles, was up to £1,744.39, I decided to put the kibosh on my endeavour.
To sidetrack. I took up photography as a therapeutic hobby. Since childhood, I have enjoyed taking pictures, but I went from point-and-shoot to an SLR and became a professional photographer until I quit (or paused), but as the stuff sits in my garage, I estimate the cost at roughly £10,000, I made some back while self-employed, but the price helped steer the choice to stop making candles. That and the fact I began to hate it. The mess, the clean-up. I was done.
I then decided I would try something less expensive. After admiring a creator on Instagram, I decided to try the form of modelling paste. While I enjoyed the process, my need for perfection got the better of me, and I put everything in the garage as I found something more straightforward to do on a canvas with a cloth.
In August 2022, instead of visiting my garage and digging any of the many things I have out to entertain myself, my new endeavour, which I also discovered on Instagram, was resin. I’m at £1,098.17., I diverted to metal stamping as I needed to make my charms, not to mention the accumulation of dried flowers, which I had done for years with roses. I enjoyed the process until I again decided I could do this to sell and moved from mini letters to large and other sorts. I managed to make gifts for the family for Christmas and a plaque for my sister’s desk, which she loved.
Today, I went into the garage motivated by the sound of an enormous skip being placed on my neighbour’s drive. I looked around and realised I needed to get rid of stuff. It’s packed to the brim, and I’ve no idea where to start. I have a good idea of where I keep everything, but I need help navigating as it is packed to the rafters.
My plumber came over a few weeks ago, and we have quite a friendly rapport. Convesating in-between him working. The last time I saw him, I was in full candle-making mode. I was filling him in on my quitting candles. He mentioned before his brother-in-law makes candles, and as I was about to start listing my stuff on eBay, he said to make a list, and his in-law might take it off my hands.
Except as I’m looking, I’m trying to fight the need to keep it. I’m enjoying resin, so I will try and get rid of the candle stuff—goal time.
If anyone has any advice or tips on decluttering and organising, I would appreciate it. I’ve taken out all the candle stuff and will list everything today. eBay is good for clawing back some funds, which I can use for the resin project.
c7azybeautiful 