Skip to main content

An Identity Crisis: how to make small (and helpful) changes while avoiding ones you might regret

A pic from a lovely evening dog walk! 

 Good evening folks!

I am absolutely desperate to cut my hair. I've been scouting round hairdressers in town that can cut my hair, right here, right now. Thankfully none have been able to placate my whiny need of a drastic cut, and I'm going to work on making small changes that will, hopefully, end in me avoiding cutting my hair. Because my hair is not the problem. It is instead a need for change, a shift, a new start, which comes whenever I feel things are sliding out of control. So here are a few tips to get you (and me) started with making small changes, that we won't regret, and small being the operative word.

Me, with all the tattoos!

Change Up Your Room

It's well known, or at least I know it well: the space around you can really influence how you feel in yourself and a change, whether that be a lick of paint or some new furniture, can feel like a mini-fresh-start. And that is exactly what we're looking for - enough change to satisfy us without going too far and possibly making a change we might regret (like me cutting my hair).

So, some interior design ideas passed from my yellow-loving-imagination to you. It's approaching summer, why not add some bright colours to your surroundings. It could be a bunch of beautiful flowers (preferably daffodils) on a side table that you decide, almost as a second thought, to paint a vibrant ochre. Or why not do some digging in the charity shops and find some fancy material, while simultaneously googling 'how to make curtains', and fashion yourself some new window-clothing (aka my attempt to find another word for curtains - fail!).

My final and most favourite interiors tip is... 'Everybody change places' (get the reference?), by that I mean switch up the positioning of your furniture! Obviously, everyone is restricted by the composition of their room/house, but wouldn't it be nice to put your bed next to the window and your desk facing a wall that you then cover with inspirational images? So go for it! I love a good old switcheroo.

A recent outfit of mine, which I wanted to feature quickly here...

A New Addition (body-mod style, if that's your thing)

Right,  folks, we know I'm a fan of body mods, and by that I mean tattoos and piercings, but that's not everyone's thing, so if it is your thing, a new addition is always welcome in times of desiring change. Try not to be too impulsive though and think through any potential tattoo ideas. Deciding on the day of the appointment is never wise, in my opinion, but finally taking the leap concerning an idea you've had for a while is an excellent idea.

I might finally get my Nietzsche tattoo, or perhaps another bug for my patchwork insect sleeve. I have a bunch of potential ideas lined up! What might your next tattoo be?

Another potential body mod possibility is a new piercing, or taking out a current piercing. It can really change up how your face/ear/pierced area looks by adding or removing a piece of jewellery. I have my eye on the 'smiley' piercing. It might be my next one!

If body modifications are totally off the table for you, maybe playing around with makeup or nail art might be an avenue you'd like to explore? Stepping out of your makeup-comfort-zone might just be enough to satisfy that urge for change. You never know, blue lipstick could be your new thing!

Another dog walk pic! Will I ever tire of them? (NO!)

Your Phone/Tablet Could Use a Makeover

This is a bit of an unlikely one for most people, as it's probably too simple, but for me it really helps. Changing up your phone/tablet case or screensaver or arrangement of apps can introduce a degree of newness and of freshness to an otherwise stale technological experience. I am definitely going to do this after finishing up this post, I've had my screensaver (and haven't updated my mac) for like a year. Gah!

Also, if you're a social-media-fiend, why not switch up your Instagram name or feed theme (if you've fancy enough to have one of the latter, I salute you!), and choose something radical, interesting, unusual. Set yourself apart. You'd be surprised just how a small change like a name can renew your interest in an otherwise unchanged account.

Or, start a blog! Go on, I dare you (it's worth it!).


Contacts vs. Glasses

This final tip is one I'd love to be able to do (I've tried and I'm afraid contacts are not for me, though I do prefer my face without glasses), but if you wear glasses, try contacts and if you don't wear glasses, give them a try. Sunglasses, tinted glasses, faux-lens-less glasses, you name them, they're an option.

It used to be really fashionable to wear glasses and now I feel it's ebbing and flowing as a trend, but it can really change how your face looks. Goodness knows how different I look without glasses! Here's some evidence. I might get another pair of glasses (when I have the money) just to expand my collection. Just a note, my glasses are medical prescription glasses, not sunnies, I'm afraid. And in answer to a question I was asked once, no, you can't get them from Specsavers unfortunately (if only!).

Right guys, I've waffled enough. I promised you lot a less serious and more fun post and I hope that this was it! Thank you for reading and if you're interested please follow me on instagram @jumper.dweller

Over and out!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not-Dinner-Party-Appropriate: anecdotes from the mental hospital

 I feel like a time traveller. I've awoken in 2021, sleeping through a pandemic and my teenage years, now in my mid-twenties. I have no dinner-party-appropriate anecdotes. Only mental ill-health with bouts of questionable wellness. I have been in four different mental hospitals, which I predict could be four more than most people. No one talks about it, including me. Like, at all.  Whenever someone talks about mental illness, there is this most impenetrable silence, followed by: 'I knew someone who was depressed once.' Or a casual, almost nonchalant change of subject. I mean, we talk about mental health a lot - how to keep it afloat, how to do 'self-care' in a commercially-assisted sense. It's all body butters and face masks.  I don't like it when people reduce preventing mental illness down to looking after yourself or not. That is a large part of it, a whole team of people looked after me at my worst. Most things cannot be made better with a face mask.  It
3 comments
Read more

Imposters: a story about a Capgras delusion

  It's cold. I'm always so cold. My hands quiver blue and wrists bloom purple, after days of bang, bang, banging my wrist on the arm of my chair. I don't think I'm okay, but I don't think I'm not okay either. I think, I think, I think I'm breaking. I am on the children's ward. I have not seen my real parents for months. Some strange people visit sometimes. I hide from them. They are not my parents. They are often nice and I begin to trust them, then they'll do something off-kilter and I shy away again, like a beaten dog.  I had climbed out of a window, bawled through the lane outside the house and taken solace at a friend's home up the road. Gently I was led back to my childhood home and bundled into the car, driven to the hospital and admitted in hopes of finding a way to avoid another inpatient admission. We couldn't find one.  I arrive at the unit, brittle. Last time I was in this position, I had a home, but now I'm adrift. My parents
2 comments
Read more

Section three - a mental hospital anecdote

  There is so much that I can't tell you about my third admission, so much I can't remember. Illness blurs the details and the privacy I owe to my friends erases the daily minutiae of the unit. In short, I had been sectioned - section three, six months. A treatment order, that in retrospect, could probably have been avoided. Or maybe that is just what I like to tell myself when I think about it late at night.  I had found myself in a field, shivering in the early evening sun. It was July, I was in love, but still very, very ill. I had been taken on four occasions to our local accident and emergency department that week. I was, as I read later in my unit-admission report, 'no longer manageable in the community'. I was sad, but determined. I was determined to make an exit any way I could. Instead I was flown to Woking, heavily sedated - so much so that I have no memory of the journey there and was deemed 'unresponsive' in my admission interview.  I digress. So man
Post a Comment
Read more