April 2 2021
I wanted to give a brief update on where I am regarding the activities I undertook over the Lockdown. With the upcoming exams and completion of my CAS blog, I felt it would be good to mention how I’ve progressed in the activities I started and how they’ve helped balance my time.
The things I’ve improved most in are creativity. I have had many opportunities to be creative outside of the things I began doing during Lockdown, like with my Theatre class, working after school to workshop and practice my Solo Theatre Piece. While this was schoolwork, I thoroughly enjoyed working with my class to help one another with their pieces and ensuring our work was good, for example helping Harry by manning the moving spotlight for his piece. However, I am posting to update on where I am with the things I stated over Lockdown:
I think I improved most on guitar. I started learning it fairly late in the Lockdown, but it quickly became the thing I most enjoyed. I learned the intros to many more songs I liked, now with over 30 tabs in a folder for me to practice and learn in the future. At some point, I was watching Breaking Bad with my brother and heard a song that was clearly played on acoustic guitar. When he revealed that he liked the song, I learned it on guitar and kept playing it to annoy him. I practice almost every day for about 20 minutes, with the callouses almost fully developed on all my fingertips. Below I’ve attached a video of me playing a song from the game The Last of Us Part II, called Longing. Also, because I had no backing track for Longing and the audio might not have been very clear, I have attached the audio file at the bottom of the page.
(Playing Longing on guitar, video filmed by my brother)
I also practised the bass guitar a few times a week, although the guitar had taken over as my favourite instrument to play. Nonetheless, I learned a few more songs, and have attached a clip of me playing the bassline to the What’s New Scooby-Doo theme by Simple Plan.
(Playing What’s New Scooby-Doo? on bass, video filmed by my brother)
I failed to mention the books I’ve been reading in my last Creativity post, but by that time I was about a hundred pages into Lee Child’s first Jack Reacher book: Killing Floor. I tried reading Jo Nesbo’s The Snowman but didn’t find it very enticing when I began, so instead I began the Jack Reacher novel, as I had seen and enjoyed the film based on the ninth book in the series, One Shot. At this point, I’m on page 230 and plan to finish it before I graduate, which is actually pretty impressive for me. Since then I have also finished and absolutely loved a couple of graphic novels: Invincible by Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead, and Y: The Last Man, by Robert K. Vaughn. I enjoyed Invincible a bit more for a few reasons. Firstly, it didn’t end on a sad note. That’s not to say Y: The Last Man was sad, but I felt fairly anxious with the bittersweet ending it left on. Another reason was the way Invincible built its world, and had many more twists and turns throughout, even making one of my favourite characters a villain. Also, the book has been adapted into an animated series by Amazon, and I have been watching it with my brother every Friday. Finally, I read a bit of Stephen Hawking’s last book before his passing: Brief Answers to the Big Questions. This book was a compilation of some of his past papers and answers to questions he’s received, compiled after his death by his family and friends. The introduction and foreword alone were enough for me to gain astounding respect for him that I didn’t really have before I bought the book. I also read through his answer to the question of “Is there a God?” which ended up giving me a new insight into life and drastically changing the way I see things.
I also kept up with my meditation. I felt more and more need for it as I became increasingly tired after school and with exams nearing, so I used it more often. Again, the sleep meditations have been immensely beneficial, but in exploring the app Calm, I found interesting music and ‘sleep stories’ voiced by some of my favourite actors. Furthermore, the meditations for anger and anxiety were surprisingly helpful as well, as these are things I have had to overcome in my last few years of high school. All in all, meditating even a few times a week has been incredibly useful in improving my mental and even physical health, so I am glad it was something I started doing.
(Longing audio file, recorded by myself)
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