For me the month of October felt a little bit patchwork, weaving together a multitude of pieces into a nice but jumbled whole. I guess that feels somewhat indicative of my year more broadly, which I suppose is no bad thing.

This month was mostly a slow plod into autumn and working a little bit harder than usual to manage my health. Here’s my round up of it all.

The core of my work this month has been with Inspire! on the Headstart Action programme, running the programme in two of my local schools. We’ve been focusing on the so called soft skills and employability for the most part but this week kicked off the second phase of social action. I’m looking forward to supporting my cohorts to make a difference in their local communities. I’ve also been doing my usual dash across the South East with Future First to run careers workshops with secondary schools – it’s been a busy autumn term so far for delivery work.

In addition to youth facing work, I’ve also been gearing up for a new role as a Training Associate with Mental Health UK. From November, I’ll be training up teachers to run resilience programmes for young people in schools as well as co-facilitating their first cohorts.

This month has been a bit trying when it comes to my health conditions (I feel like I say this every month but we’ll gloss over that – basically it has been harder for the last 31 days!) I’m not sure what it is – I’ve not been doing especially more than I’ve been used to this year but something has been causing my symptoms to flare a little more strongly. Maybe it’s the change of seasons – the cold always hits me quite hard – but whatever caused it, I’ve been in the mood to hibernate significantly more.

One of the biggest days of my month, however, was health related but for all the best reasons. After a year of shadowing the board at Action for M.E, I was voted in officially as a Trustee at their October conference.

I’m sure it will come as no surprise that writing has formed a large part of my world outside of work this month. I’ve been filling up my sticker chart with gusto, kicking off my second draft and even writing some personal essays to submit to magazines.

I was also really thrilled to discover one of my pieces for Dear Damsels – “I have been thinking a lot” – was also featured on their podcast earlier this year. You can listen to a brief extract and discussion of my writing in their June episode. It was such a joy to hear my work spoken about so warmly and I’m so grateful for their ongoing support.

Finally, after months of putting most of my creative energy into my novel, I finally made some time for art again this month. This culminated in attending a full day with Sketch Appeal for their Inktober special. I had an amazing time co-creating artwork and drawing/painting portraits of the other attendees. I love taking home the portraits created of me – always so different – and the connections I make on the day. So much of my recent energy has gone into work and solo creative practice and it was good to remind myself that making time for fun and friendship is really important too if I can manage it.

Looking ahead to November, my calendar is mostly more work, work, work. I’ve got plenty lined up with everyone I worked with this month, alongside some youth engagement work with YoungMinds and training for young champions at Time to Change. Expect a lethargic blog post in thirty days!

Otherwise, I plan to keep up the pace of my writing, continue making time for art and for my friends as well. Fingers crossed my body sorts its act out so I can manage to pack it all in! I’ll see you on the other side.