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An emotional void is the empty space that lacks meaningful emotion. An emotional void can be described various ways – numbness, a sense of nothingness, lack of excitement, lack of purpose, hopelessness, isolation, and feelings of being disconnected, lost or confused.

My therapist used the term emotional void in one of my previous sessions back in march, and it was possibly the best way of summing up where I was in that moment of my life. I was numb, hopeless and had a complete lack of purpose. I didn't see the point to my life I felt like I was purely existing yet not living. She stopped me for a second and asked me to listen outside, birds were singing. "That's a reason" she said. I carried that away with me from that session and its something out of all the sessions I always think of first. It might just be because I had had a particularly bad week and that therapy session helped me rationalise and lift me out of the slump, however it did make a huge impact on making small steps forwards. Which brings me here today - Wednesday the 18th April.

I am in a good place currently and although I know I will most likely have some low days I am trying my hardest to live in today as apposed to worrying about future me. I still have my big goals I am working towards but I also have lots of small daily goals. My therapy session went well yesterday, it was a good catch up as I had not seen her for a good few weeks (I cancelled a session as I was mentally unwell and unable to get myself to her). We discussed how I had been and it was nice and refreshingly positive. I had been using the Mindfulness technique we had discussed previously and focusing on the here and now. It has helped get me get myself into a pleasant morning routine. A cup of Tea and a breakfast bar to start the day and with the weather warming up getting outside and the use of the garden has made things easier.

I feel the void lifting, I am starting to see a purpose again, I'm enjoying life again and I am very grateful to my husband, family and friends who are helping me recover. Its all about taking those small steps to wellness.

Im still here, I had forgotten about this blog. My last post was spring 2016! Like a lot of projects that I start they often get forgotten about and never finished. A huge amount has happened since that last blog post.

We stayed in that lovely house with our house mates only 10 months! By August we had moved to another 1 bed flat with a garden a few roads over. It was a stressful time and as usual I thought it would be the final move for a while.

My life continued to get a bit lighter for a while, my freelancing was going well and I had some well paying projects up until November which helped me pay for christmas that year. However December was a dark place and with no freelance work on I started to slip into old habits again. Breaking point finally came as it has done for the past 4 years living with depression. This time it was pretty serious and I ended up being admitted into a daycare hospital for mental health.

I was there for around 6 weeks, but it was not until the final 2 weeks that I finally settled in and found it was helping me - a bit.

Structure & Routine - I find I thrive off it, we all do. I was getting in for 10am, leaving at 4pm. During that day period we had structured groups, we sat in some lessons and also learnt about mental health and depression and how to guide ourselves back onto the right track. Lunch was always at 12.30, the staff became familiar but my time there was coming to an end.

I was worried about being discharged, I was worried that I would relapse and I did but that came later - 6 months later.

I can't quite remember where time has gone from being discharged in March. Its a bit of a blur, things happened and Im sure I had good days. We were starting to settle in the new flat and neither myself or Andy wanted to move again for a good 2 years. It didn't last long, we received our end of tenancy letter in May because the landlords were selling up. The next 3 months were fairly stressful, it put us in a awkward position. Come July I ended up taking a week away from Andy and going back to my family as it had all become too much for both of us. It was a hard 5 days apart, anxiety ate away at me and we made a pact to get more help as my mental health was taking its toll on the both of us.

Reunited we bought a beautiful flat together with a private garden. Continuing our journey together.
This took up a few months of my time and before we knew it we were in our new place! and it was time for a well deserved holiday. We went to the lake district in September, its such a lovely place. I love the fresh air and the walking trips we do. Its a completely different lifestyle and pace than London. The food and company was fantastic and the week ended too quickly like most holidays do.

It was also a burden, I was out of routine and in a different mindset when I returned home. I thought the low come down after the holiday would pass. However it just seemed to worsen and I started to lapse.

Picking up on this and realising my shift in mood, and old patterns returning. I knew I needed to act on it because I couldn't bare to keep living like this. I got myself a desk at andy's work 3x a week so I could focus on freelancing and being around people. Its been hard work, my depression stems from a life long anxiety disorder which is provoked around people I don't know, new places, new situations.

I got through 2 weeks of this and it is Helping. However its also very hard and come Thursday 2nd Nov I had a crash at his work. I was pretty distraught, I had put a lot of pressure on making this work and my head was telling me how it had failed. A viscous cycle of thoughts of not being good enough, a waste of space, a burden on Andy. I went home that evening a bit earlier on my own and when I got home I closed the door and broke down.

My head was in a very dark place that day and It was the day I decided I'd had enough and could not go on any longer. A text message saved my dark thoughts, just enough to stop me and make me think about what I was thinking of ending - my life. Andy left work early that day and we took the appropriate steps to seek help privately and found a qualified therapist.

Which pretty much brings me up to date, here - the 24th March 2018! Still battling anxiety and depression however I am still here.

I normally would have posted about starting my seedlings however I just haven't got around to the post yet. Then weeks after planting them past and today I have just potted them up into their 3rd pot where they will stay until they are ready to go into there final pots for the growing season.

I sowed the usual variety of crops this year, keeping it simple:

• x2 red robin tomato plants - these are patio size and will produce baby toms
• x1 money tomato plant - the large salad size tomato
• x2 sweet bell peppers
• x2 hot patio chilli peppers
• x1 cucumber plant
• x1 courgette plant
• x1 butternut squash plant

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be a cat. They are strong willed independent creatures that do as they please. Coming and going as they like, happy with some affection (on their terms) and some small meals throughout the day. A blissful 14+ hours of sleep a day, oh the life of a cat.

A few years ago I decided to cut down on eating meat so the food shopping bill was cheaper. 2 evening meals out of my 7 became a meatless meal. I figured it was better for my wallet, my health and the environment. Over these few years my awareness of how our meat is raised and slaughtered just for our consumption increased. I never really understood why people chose to be a vegetarian or a vegan, I simply thought it was just because they didn't want to eat meat. This is true, however it is also about so much more than this. 

I recently came across a new non-profit organisation Reducetarian.org  via Facebook after seeing one of their social media adverts a friend had shared. The concept behind the Reducetarian is really simple, you simply eat less meat. It caught my attention and I was interested in finding out more about this 'movement'. I had already a few years ago removed meat from 2 of my meals but I also knew I enjoyed eating meat so do not think I could ever become a complete vegetarian or vegan. This meets you in the middle, you choose how much meat you wish to stop eating, small acts which make big impacts! 

So I decided to take my 2 meatless meals and up it to 4. I have pledged over a 30 day period to reduce my meat consumption and I am hoping by the end of this pledge I will be happy enough to continue. 

I am now coming to the end of my 3rd week, it has gone much better than I thought it would. I find there are certain things I am not ready to give up eating, mainly seafood. The hardest thing I have found is finding new meals so that I am not just repeatedly eating pasta or vegetable chilli. I like a good mixture of food each week and enjoy trying new recipes - this does help :) I am upping my 4th week to be a 5 meatless meal week, this is how I intend to continue once the pledge is over.

So what are the benefits?

IT'S HEALTHY

IT'S EASY

IT'S GOOD

• Clearseal ReefSpace 700 // oceanlife overflow
• TMC IlumunAir 600 display tank lighting
• BM c3.5 skimmer
• TMC v2 4000 return pump
• x2 Hydor korilia nano - one to be replaced with a Jabeo rw4
• Aqua medic titanium 200w heater w/ stc1000 thermostat
• D-D 20w UV steriliser w/ Eheim pump
• Wavepoint 6500K DAYLIGHT CLAMP LAMP 6" 8W Sump light
• D-D h2ocean fluidised reactor running Rowaphos

• 15kg* of mixed live rock, real reef branches and ceramic rock. *May be more I have not completely weighed it all.
• 10 kg of Red sea ocean white dry aragonite sand

• Macro Algae - Dragons breath, Red grape & Cheato in the sump.
• x3 Red Mangroves (Mainly for decoration) currently growing well in the tank

• Clownfish x2
• Firefish x1
• Pom Pom crabs x2
• Peppermint Shrimp x2
• Hermit Crabs x2
• Snails x8
• Tuxedo urchin x1
• orange lipped conch snail x1
• cleaner shrimp x1

• x1 Royal Gramma
• x1 Orange striped prawn goby (Amblyeleotris randalli)
• x5 yellow striped cardinals
• x1 Peacock wrasse - female (Tank at 6 months mark)
• x1 mandarin (Tank around 8-12 months mark)

• x1 pistol shrimp to pair w/ goby
• x1 Maxima Clam
• x1 bubbletip anemone
• x3 sexy shrimp

• Pink kenya tree coral (added 23/1/16)
• Toadstool leather coral (added 30/1/16)
• Assorted mushrooms
• Assorted zoas

• Hammer coral
• Torch coral
• Frogspawn Coral
• Duncan coral

• Birdsnest coral
• Branching acropora coral

For the Filling
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter, softened
• 2 tbs maple syrup
• 1 teas ground cinnamon
For the Dough
• 3 cups flour
• 1 tbs baking powder
• 1 teas salt
• 1/2 cup cold butter, cut into small cubes
• 1 cup milk
For the Glaze
• 2 tbs cream cheese
• 2 tbs plain Greek yogurt
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar

Around 6 weeks ago I decided to dive back into a Hobby of mine, Fish keeping. I have kept fish since I was around 14. Growing up, my father had his own tropical fish tank and also a very large Koi pond in our back garden. I found them fascinating to watch and as I got slightly older my interest in keeping my own tank grew.

Its been 4 weeks since the house move. We have relocated to the east end of London to start another chapter of this journey.

We have rented a beautiful 2 bed house which has lots of space and a lovely small garden. This time the garden is square, a nicer change from what we previously had - which was a long narrow garden. It has artificial grass for easy maintenance, a lovely raised pond (yet to be used) patio area and a shed. The outside space will be great for the summer next year, and there will be a small area I can use to plant some fruit and veg in the spring, my little bliss.

Living in London comes at a price, it is not cheap! Rent is high and bills need to be paid. We were getting by where we were in our previous little house.  However the rent was expensive and we had little money spare each month.

Two friends of ours were in a similar position, they were relocating to London from Brazil and staying with friends whilst looking for an apartment. They had been looking since March however their budget was low. Me and Andy had spoken a few times about the idea of house sharing to make the bills and rent cheaper and in August we decided it was the right thing to do. So we are now sharing with another professional married couple Carmen and Priscila.

New house, new house mates & a whole lot of the unknown. 

The area is nice, we are right beside a large park which is convenient for the dog. 30 minutes to London Liverpool street and we have a lot of local amenities within a 20 minute walk. We also have Stratford on our doorstep! So a 20 minutes commute to the heart of stratford shopping centre Westfield. However I am going to miss my weekend walks to Ladywell park and the walks to Greenwich. However with some further exploring we found a lovely park called Valentines Park. Perfect for weekend strolls with the pup and it will be beautiful in the summer.

A friend of mine has recently been sharing his success pictures this summer of the Spartan events he had attended. I have barely been able to keep with my jogging routine let alone tackle a 3+ miles obstacle course. However I was intrigued and for some odd reason it looked fun.

I think it must be the fact that there are obstacles along the way, such as climbing over walls, swimming and crawling under barbed wire fencing that made me want to tackle it. Im not the kind of girl who would just enjoy running a marathon for instance.  So i did the stupid thing of convincing myself to give it ago and sign up for 2016.

I knew I would need someone to join me for extra encouragement and to help me get into shape and train for this event. So I have got a group of friends together who are also interested in tackling the sprint next year. Shortly after I has signed both myself and Andy up I received an email with a workout guide to prepare yourself for the sprint. My first thoughts, what am I getting myself into.

My trainers that I ordered finally arrived. I had previously been running in my converse and I just didn't feel comfortable jogging with such flat shoes. I ordered some pretty basic Puma running trainers from M&M direct for £25 and they seem to be doing the job. They even match my running outfit - another cheap purchase I recently made from Primark: lycra shorts, sports bra and vest top. I didn't want to heavily invest with named running gear as I wasn't certain I would enjoy it.

A few weeks in now and I am still on/off with the jogging. I haven't yet quite managed to do a full 2 weeks. I have been very distracted the past week or so as we have decided we are going to be moving. Looking for a place to rent which allows pets is not that easy in London. We did however manage to find a lovely home which we are hoping to share with our two friends. This is so we can save money and start saving towards a Mortgage. Fingers crossed we hear next week.

So in between juggling work with house hunting, walking the dog and cooking dinners I have hardly made time for myself and my running! Mostly due to being slightly more stressed than usual and incredibly tired in the mornings. I have struggled to find the motivation to get out of bed first thing and just go. Im going to be away this weekend, however I am planning on getting back into my routine on the Monday and I have a new cool gadget to try.



Last week my Fitbit Flex arrived. I was using the Fitbit app for a while on my iphone which I liked as it counts my steps, tracks my running and has some fun achievement medals when you reach certain goals. However having my phone strapped to my arm was not the most comfortable thing whilst jogging. So I decided to invest into one last purchase for this new running malarky.

Its a small sleek device that you wear on your wrist. Its really easy and comfortable to wear and I even sleep in it as it records how well you slept. It also has a silent alarm which gently vibrates to wake you up in the mornings another nice feature. You can set different goals, challenge friends and keep track of a range of different categories such as calories, weight, sleep patterns, walking / running / cycling. I recently earned the penguin march badge - 112 kilometers.

I have very recently gotten myself into jogging. Its something that I  have never wanted or even thought of doing if i'm completely honest. Im not a very sporty girl, I am the average joe who smacks the alarm at 6.45am in the morning to stay in bed that extra hour (or 2) longer. I am not a morning person - far from it. 

Im pretty lucky in that I am a self employed graphic designer and I work from home, so I do not have to rush to commute to my job in the mornings. My typical days since loosing my job (the company moved to another location) & moving to London usually start with my husband kissing me goodbye as he went off to work and I  crawl out of bed at a certain part of the day to see what work needed finishing. On good days I am sat at my work desk by 10am and tackling my design jobs, replying to emails and contacting clients about future projects.

However as I have found freelancing can also be lonely, team that with anxiety and depression and you get bad days. When I have no work on or even when I have very low mood days I can actually struggle to get myself up before 1pm. This does have a big impact on my work and can cause more self loathing and upset. Depression makes me not want to do anything and it results in me sleeping my days away - literally.

I was continually going in these vicious cycles.  
I have lived in London for 2 years now, for me the first year was the biggest challenge. It was a roller coaster of emotion pretty much for a solid year. I have always had anxiety so moving to London was a huge challenge and the anxiety rocketed and hit me hard. New places, new faces, trying to get use to a big city and tackle a job. It made me really Ill. 

With the help of CBT I am slowly on the mend. This second year has been less challenging and although it has not been as hard or daunting - Im getting very use to London now, however I do still struggle with bad & low days and Im getting tired of being on this rollercoaster. So as I was saying in this previous blog post - its time to break the bad habits. In order to overcome anxiety and depression, you have to do.

Thats where the jogging comes in. My husband is fairly active, he loves his job and he also cycles to work up to 4 times a week. A huge 50 minute bike ride from our tiny house in Hither green all the way to shoreditch. He is also the genius behind me jogging. He suggesting one day I come jogging with him in the mornings. At first I laughed it off, no way was I getting up at 7am to go jogging! But more recently when another wave of depression hit it came hard and I couldn't keep doing this to myself. Thats when I decided I needed to make changes for me and my husband.

It works and it makes your feel great. 

Its really hard work! Im only managing a mile at the moment which is around 10 minutes and i won't lie it hasn't been consistent each morning. Yesterday I just could not find the will to get out of bed - my biggest challenge. Today I managed to get myself to go, however I then got back into bed and fell asleep for another 3 hours. I lost the feel good feeling and just felt bad for the rest of the day. So learning from this my aim for the rest of this week is too get up and go and not allow myself to climb back into bed! Small steps everyday.

So welcome to my new blogging direction, feel free to stick around and watch as my journey to a better and healthier me unfolds. I fully intend to find my blogging niche, let’s break the bad habits.

Its been around 6 weeks since I got the raised bed set up and sown. The vegetables are well on there way, growing well - I think? The dog has since pinched most of my markers so I am not 100% sure what is growing where now. However she has stopped getting on it and flattening the poor plants.

I plan to start cutting a lot of the salads which are growing this week - you can see the large mixed salad leaved at the back have grown nice and large and have to been spoiled too much buy the intense afternoon sun like I feared. In the top right corner I have just planted my cucumber plant - its a bit slow growing however I am hoping it will start growing faster outdoors.

In the front left row is my second crop of carrots I really need to thin these followed on with lettuce, pak choi and I think beetroot?
The middle row gets a bit muddled I think there is onions, chard, spinach and spring onions growing.
The Back row from left is leeks, mixed salad, marigolds and cucumber. Although the leeks could be onions and the leeks could be middle row? Haha who knows - I guess I will eventually find out and make a note for next years crop rotation.

My garden is very narrow and small, it is roughly around 8mx2m. So I tend to use one side of the garden to grow the majority of my plants in this small space. I would happily use both sides, however we currently don't have the space for this as we need easy bike access in and out of the garden.

With this limited amount of ground space you may be surprised to hear I am attempting to grow winter squash. Winter squash (butternut) tends to be a ground dwelling plant and would happily cover a 4ft x 3ft raised bed on its own! This is where vertical gardening comes in! By training and supporting the squash within a cage you can get it to grow upwards rather than out. I have not attempted this before - its going to be my first try. However I have read and seen on you tube that with a little bit of help it can be done. So I have planted both my squash and courgette into a separate large container each ready to start making the support around them.

The recent weather has resulted in some very happy plants. My roses are growing incredibly well with little sign of pests or blackspot this summer. The lilies are getting rather tall and look like they are also going to be another wonderful summer display. I also purchased a Hydrangea this year which was a little bit slow to show signs of growth, however has finally started to shoot leaves.
Among these plants I have 2 mixed summer flower containers and some marigolds growing in the raised bed.

Despite Lily trampling the raised bed a few times when I first sowed the seeds, the bed is growing well. You can finally see each of the squares growing seedlings - each at different speeds. Since my previous blog I have thinned down the lettuce and bok choy which was growing far to closely together. The mixed salad leaves I have left to grow further, although they are crowded they are doing ok and its preventing some of the leaves burning in the afternoon sun.

One thing I have noticed which is due to the pup getting onto the raised bed is that some seeds were mixed across over squares. Mostly the odd carrot, salad or chard seedling. I have decided to leave the odd seedling in place as many of them will grow and be eaten before they become a problem for the leeks and onions - which is mainly where they were spread to.

I mixed up another batch of my 3 part compost and decided to use a spare container to grow another set of lettuce, spinach and chard. I have been keeping my eye on it and I can see seedlings slowly starting to emerge, pushing up through the compost. This was mainly an experiment to A) attempt at getting some correct spacing between plants and B) seeing how little space I can actually get away with.

The bell peppers, chilli peppers and tomatoes appear to be doing ok. The Tomatoes are the red robin variety so will not grow as large this year and may only need a slightly larger container to the one they are already in. The first flowers are starting to set on them so they will soon start being fed.

The bell peppers & chillies appear to be smaller this year, I am not too sure if it is because I have put them outside slightly sooner or because I used a compost which had no food added to it (cheaper wilko variety). I will be potting them on soon to their larger containers and will add some manure which will hopefully help.

Sowing seeds in rows! How do you do it? Especially with the likes of the tiniest seeds such as carrots and mixed salads! My seedlings are coming up in the raised bed and its looking like an order of chaos, not lovely structured rows.

I think I am starting to see my first errors in this years sowing.

My temporary built cage / protection netting has been really rubbish. The dog has been getting through it, along with cats! so some of the soil is really turned up, messy and in some placed dented.
Im going to take some time to redesign the cage making it super animal proof this week.
It is my first time having a raised planter and seeing the seedlings grow is brilliant. However they are really bunched together and all over the place. I definitely need to spend more time sowing the seeds in rows which is easier said than done! As you can see in the pictures I am going to seriously need to thin out a lot of the seedlings, however I am going to let them grow on a little bit more first!

If you have any tips on sowing your tiny seeds I would be very grateful to hear them!

Its  been a good few weeks since I sowed the first batch of seeds. They have been growing really well on the bathroom south facing window. I finally got around to potting them up to 5 litre pots - the final stage before they go into their final positions. I don't really know if it was the right time - or if maybe it was a bit late to pot on. However I generally go with when I can either start to see the roots at the bottom of the small pots or if they appear to slow down in growth. As you can see in the second picture I think it was a good time to pot up.

Its been a bit longer than I planned to get this post up. However I have been super busy at work so have not had the time to update this blog. In the last post I decided to grow some more plants than last year (even though I originally stated I was going to grow less). I guess the gardening bug kicked in and I wanted to challenge myself even further.

The Raised bed came whilst I was away and my lovely neighbours who were looking after the cats managed to take the parcels in for us. Along with many bags of composts!
I planned it out and placed it where I know is the best position and got building!

In my previous post I did state that I was only growing a few fruit & veg this year. This however has kind of gone out the window. I have been researching a lot about square foot gardening - which is ideal for small spaces and allowing you to grow a variety. After some careful thought and consideration I decided to go all in and test out a 4ft x 2ft raised bed.

The raised bed will allow me to divide the area into 8 sections (1ftx1ft). I have decided to grow the following:

• Spring onions 
• mixed leaf salad leaves
• Marigolds x2
• 1 cucumber plant
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Onions
• Lettuce