After a pretty crappy start to the year, I couldn't be more pleased that it's finally February. One month closer to Spring, one month in to the swing of a New Year, and one month where lots of exciting things are happening. More friendtime with a visit to see my newly-engaged pal in Bournemouth, a healthier routine with visits to the gym (which I'm loving) and one step closer to securing that mortgage and making our rental flat a proper home. If January was a tumultous month that left me feeling down, stressed and unsettled, February is hopefully shaping up to be the month where I finally feel like my year is getting started.

And of course, if there was another reason to be cheerful, it would be these lilac corduroy flares. Originally from Cotton Traders but snapped up for a fiver on eBay, they still haven't made it out of the house due to a lack of styling options when it comes to winter-appropriate footwear, but I'm hoping come Springtime I'll finally be brave enough to take them out for a spin IRL. In the meantime, I love how they look against the yellow of this top - a bargain purchase from Primark last summer that never got it's outing on my holidays as intended. I wonder what adventures we might have this year...

On New Year's Eve, you fell and broke your arm. You knew it immediately, and your face told me as such as I helped you up, parting the crowds to head to A&E where we'd ring in 2018 together. Nile Rogers regaled us with his Good Times on the waiting room television as we waited for the Morphine to kick in, two of a sea of party revellers in need of patching up. Neither of us have ever been more sober.

It was a long evening. 11.30pm trickled into 8.30am as we were passed from Nurse to Doctor, Radiographer to Receptionist, all as kind and patient and undervalued as the next. Fear chilled us both as they mentioned surgery, lengthy rehabilitation, permanent nerve damage. What was a unfortunate slip on a wet gig floor became an ominous sentence, a funny story of #NYE2018 turned potential for a lifelong disability.

Sometimes, it takes a bout of ill health to make you realise you truly love someone. It can also make you question it too - question if you're strong enough to embark on this journey of care for another person that is one day, inevitably going to end in a darker diagnosis. It says nothing about the person you are, but everything about the person I am, the depression that clouds over whenever I consider the inevitability that one day, a broken arm will be the least of the ailments of the people I love, and that trip to hospital as a pair will end with one of us leaving alone. Tracing the path back along those long, disinfectant-scented corridors, heavy with words you never wanted to hear. We lose your gorgeous, brave, loving Nephew to an unspeakably cruel illness just days after your first plaster cast, and all of those fears are confirmed, as if some higher power is punishing us for being content for so long.

The worst thing about a broken arm is the lack of closeness, especially when we both need it most. Cuddles on the sofa are suddenly tenuous, intimate moments resigned to helping the other person bathe or wash their hair over the sink. The routine of waking, mealtimes, pill times and poor sleep on the sofa replace spontaneity, trips out or a shared responsibility of the housework. There's a fear too - fear that you making things worse, that you aren't being patient enough.

But, slowly but surely, this fear gives way to recovery, to better nights sleep and to conversations that look outwards rather than in. The road seems long, and narrow, but through a sense of perspective, through patience and selflessness and commitment, the horizon grows closer. We begin to feel grateful for the softness, the quiet and calm to reflect and rebuild after such a tough start to the year. Slowly, surely, your strength grows in equal proportion to my affection for you, my desire to see you better.

They say that surgery isn't necessary - you ask where I want to go on holiday this year. Our world grows bigger again, and for now, at least, this becomes a fire that we've been able to fight. Together.

I'll fight fires forever with you.

I hope you like my doodles!

I've never been a huge fan of making New Year's resolutions, but if I were to do so for 2018, top of my list would definitely be making an effort to immerse myself in more local art and culture. I totally forgot until this week when I was clearing out my hard drive that there was one thing that initially inspired this new determination – an exhibition I was lucky enough to catch way back in May of last year.

2017 - what a wild ride eh? It's felt like the longest of my life in many ways, and yet it seems like just yesterday that I was sitting on my front lawn cursing the summer heatwave. It's been a year where I've packed a lot in, made plenty of changes and boy, am I ready for a new year with hopefully a whole lot less personal drama. Still, you never know what's round the corner...before we head into 2018, let's reflect on what I've learnt this year. 

This year I've made the first proper new friendship group since Uni. We're similar yet different, in all the best ways. I've learnt the power of womanhood in tough times, and the strength in finding other women of colour to share experiences of childhood with. I've rediscovered the power of a late night out, having a social life outside of a relationship and the importance of really loving where you work. Thankyou Chloe, Dessie, Eve, Chenice, Lilli, Bobbi, Nathan and Callum for turning up in my life exactly when I needed you. 

Turning your back on things that you've started but don't want to finish isn't a failure. It's a sense of respect for your own time, your mental health and your finances. Maybe one day I'll get that driving license. Maybe I won't. Either way, putting it on hold was a decision that benefitted me at the time and one I'll stick with until it doesn't benefit me any longer. I'm cool with that.

I've written more paid, published pieces for outside publications this year than in any other. I'm really, really proud of that.

I've not written anywhere near enough for myself this year. I'm really not proud of that. Please 2018, be the year I finally manage to commit to a blogging schedule. 

I've been to more gigs in 2017 than I have since I left uni, but listened to less new music. 2018, please bring me some new inspiring artists to get on board with - and a new Arctic Monkeys record, of course. 

My journey of self discovery through blackness is a big work in progress, but I'm beginning to reflect on my youth in a way that is productive and cathartic in helping me navigate my place in a still highly screwed world order. I'm seeing the strength and humour in being me too - working with Gal-Dem this year on a very personal piece was one of my entire year's highlights and something I'm keen to do more of, telling stories that other people can relate to.

I'm learning to live my life without striving for perfection. I'm learning to find my voice online, to say no to things that I'm not 100% into, and to say yes to things that I can't guarantee I'll be good at. It's working out alright so far.

Antidepressants work. And therapy works. Not all the time, and not completely but on the whole, they can pull you out of a whole just enough to see the light for yourself again, and that can make all the difference in helping pull yourself out. But nothing, nothing works as well as escaping away for a week in the sun with your best schoolfriends. Georgie, Reema and Caitlin, thankyou for making me laugh till it genuinely hurt. 

Aside from beach holidays, there are few things more cathartic that holding your best friends hand as you say goodbye to your favourite childhood band as they play their biggest gig to date. The power of live music has never meant quite as much as it did in 2017. Thankyou The Maccabees, you truly were wonderful. Thankyou Anna, the last twenty years of friendship are only just our beginning. And thankyou Manchester - the strength of your city and community in the face of horrendous adversity was truly inspiring, and showed that the show really does have to go on. 

People really, really appreciate a good glow up. Unless you're my boyfriend, in which case you'll just freak out and demand to know what happened to my real face. Make-up is great, but it's not as great as loving your face the way it is, or being with somebody who is fully on board with who you are. 

My bigtime goals remain the same. Write, study, be a good friend and partner. Own a home, embrace my personal style, stay creative. 2017 was the groundwork, 2018 will hopefully be the execution.

And lastly, one bonus point...

Good things come to those who wait. Or rather,  Drake will finally play a gig in your city at which you will do many cries and decide to write your entire Masters degree about the man himself, inteweaving all the aspects of popular culture that interest you most deeply. Nothing feels as freeing as placing yourself right back in the world that makes you most happy, writing and reading and learning. No matter what anybody else thinks, the things that are important to you must be clung onto tightly - your passions are who you are. 

Well what do you know - I've only gone and become a bladdy student again haven't I?

If you're a long term reader of this blog, you might know that I already have an undergraduate degree - I graduated with first class honours in Music Journalism in 2014 and absolutely loved the entire experience. Although I really wanted to get some proper life and work experience after graduating, I knew deep down that my heart lay in academia, and so earlier this year, I decided I wanted to go back and get my Masters. A few months later, I've finished my official proposal and am three months into life as a part-time Masters degree in the School of Music, Humanities and Media.

So how did I get here?
Well, it's long been an ambition of mine to become a professional academic lecturer, and the route to that involves getting a PhD. Having seen some friends make the transition from undergrad straight to PhD and find it pretty tough, I felt that a Masters course might be a better form of preparation to ease me back into the world of studying and prepare me for a full-on PhD.

Having looked at some taught courses with a traditional lecture/seminar set up, I realised that the part of my undergrad I really enjoyed was the final independent dissertation, where I could immerse myself in whatever I wanted. With that in mind, I made the decision to pursue a Masters By Research, which would enable me to pick exactly my topic of interest from the off. I also made the decision to enroll as a part time student, meaning I could ease a bit of the cabin-fever pressure that comes from the 24/7 independent study lifestyle.

And how exactly are you affording this?
With the help of a postgraduate student loan and a lot of hard work. I'm very fortunate in that I was eligible for the full tuition fee loan, but obviously this is another debt to take on and does nothing to ease the burden of you know, actually living. As someone who couldn't rely on the bank of mum and dad, this was a huge part of deciding to study part-time so I had some breathing room to work on things that could make me money and pay the bills. So when I'm not studying, I'm working part-time in a vintage shop, I'm freelance writing for various publications and I do odds bits of box office work at gigs too. Very busy, but all things I love and find to be rewarding, as well as keeping me immersed in the industries I want to work in.

But what are you actually studying?
Ah, the juicy bit. Right from being an undergrad, my interests were always very much in gender studies, gendered consumption of music and the meanings that fans attribute to certain artists. A right little sociologist, that's me. Since I graduated, I've also become fascinated with race, with hip-hop and with the way social media has facilitated our access to our favourite stars, and to fellow fans. And then of course, I've become something of an appreciator of a little artist named Drake.

Whack all those interests together, and I've got myself a thesis proposal that I'm finding challenging, exciting and ultimately, something that I think will really contribute to the understanding of feminism's place in 21st century hip-hop. I don't want to say much more considering how much my thesis is likely to change over the next two years, but right now, I'm pinching myself a little that I get to read around all of these topics and call it work.

And how is it going so far?
Pretty well I'd say! It's very early days, and it's quite difficult to know how on track you are when there's no real comparison, but I'm really enjoying being a student again. It feels great to be inquisitive, to learn new things and to undertake the challenge of articulating my thoughts in watertight arguments.

Compared to my undergrad, it feels completely different - I feel like a proper adult now and know when to ask for the support I need from my supervisors, who I feel treat me as a professional colleague rather than a pupil. Ask me again in a few months when I enter the real writing phase, but at the moment, I'm feeling fully validated by my decision to go back to school.

Are you a Masters or PhD student? I'd love to chat, especially if you're studying something similar/have published in this field/ have any general advice on staying sane. Get in touch!

Dress: ASOS | T Shirt: Topshop | Jumper: River Island | Shoes: Topshop | Bag: Topshop | Skirt: H&M












Jumpsuit: Boohoo | Top: Valentino | Shoes: COS | Socks: Need Supply | Trousers: Isabel Marant