Another year has flown by and pretty soon we'll all be seeing the "New Year, New Me" posts as people inevitably set goals for themselves for 2019 and start using that gym membership they've finally signed up for. Which is great. It's good to set yourself targets and a new year is a perfectly good reason for doing so. Usually, I'd be one of those people but this year I've decided I'm not making any resolutions.
That's not to say I haven't got goals or things I'd like to achieve in 2019. This year has been pretty up and down, both in terms of my mental health and with drama school. There are some really great memories in there too, and though I think it does more good to look at the positives, sometimes it's worth thinking about the not-so-positives and reminding yourself how much you've managed to deal with over the past year.
Second year of drama school hit me like an absolute tonne of bricks, and to be honest I spent most of the first few weeks back not really knowing what the hell was going on - I really questioned my ability as an actor and I started to lose sight of myself and that was pretty tough for me to deal with. I've always been quite self-assured, I know who I am and what I believe in, but having that stripped away from you is very exposing, especially for someone who likes to be in control. At my lowest, I actually started to think that maybe I shouldn't be at drama school, that there'd been some kind of mistake and I really wasn't cut out for it.
However, over the last couple of weeks of term I think I've finally started to find myself again, both personally and in terms of acting. While I still have moments of self-doubt, my confidence levels have definitely come back up and I have a much more positive outlook on life. I've fallen back in love with acting, and I think a lot of it is down to my process during my first workshop performance of Lulu. I can't begin to describe what that show has done for me - I went from having a near panic attack in front of my course director because I didn't think I could do it, to actually really enjoying myself and having a great time. I've had some really lovely feedback from a couple of teachers. I was chatting to one tutor at a third-year show and he told me he thought I seemed much better than I had over the last few weeks. (I was actually suffering from a horrible virus and felt like shit, so I don't know what that says about the state I've been in but I'll take it!) And he's right. I do feel better. I know I've still got a long way to go, but I've definitely proven to myself that I can do the things I want to, even if they scare me, even if I look at them and think "never in a million years".
I set myself some goals at the beginning of this year that, for the most part, I've done pretty well at sticking to: I've rejoined the gym, I'm more consistent with eating well and I've finally got back into baking again. I don't think I'm really in the right mindset for setting new goals and piling even more pressure on myself in the new year, but I've found all of these things have been really beneficial for me, so instead my only goal is to just carry on the way I've been going. I need to focus on working through everything that's being thrown at me, rather than trying to do things that I think will make everything ok but actually just distract from the real problems.
So here's to 2019, here's to whatever it's going to throw at me and here's to just focussing on being better!
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