You Can Call Me El

I've conducted some scientific research recently. My methodology was as follows: I thought about the time I spent volunteering on the mental health helpline, and I thought about how many times people had said they didn't want to open up about their mental health to their friends or family, and I thought about what proportion of these people had given the reason, "because I don't want to be a burden."  The results are in: it was A Lot. A lot of people said this. This leads to the conclusion: many of us are worried about being a burden! This is probably true of many areas, but talking about your  mental health shit is a dead cert. It's heavy and difficult and people just don't want to lay it on their friends, their family, their loved ones, their colleagues, their acquaintances - anyone! They don't want to burden anyone. And sure, b eing a burden suuuucks! No one wants to do it! So a cool solution is to hold it in and don't talk about it.  The diffic...

It's hard to write something without a satisfying narrative. For a proper story, you want a beginning, a middle and an end. For example: first I felt okay. Then I felt terrible for a while. But then, after lots of trials and tribulations, by the end I felt better. This is what stories should look like.  The trouble is, real life usually doesn't have a satisfying narrative. This is why I stand by my theory that films based on real events are often in some way disappointing. Consider the Sound of Music. It'll surprise no one to hear that we watched it numerous times when I was growing up, and it was a formative part of my childhood. But, there was an issue. The happy ever after wedding scene was, for some reason, in the middle of the film! This must have been some sort of error. Instead of finishing there, the film continued with some awkward, unnecessary singing of Edelweiss again , the family singing in front of a gigantic crowd for literally ages, and lots terrifying cre...

That's right, this week is Mental Health Awareness Week! Look at their website: the theme is kindness . It’s really nice that this exists, especially at the moment. I encourage you to dive in. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about this week. Mental Health Awareness was a ready-made theme, but… I’m tired. It’s obvious that Mental Health Awareness Week is good, CLEARLY. It’s fab that we have it, and that we have World Mental Health Day (on 10 October). But I’m just… so aware already, you know? Thinking about mental health is crucially important and it’s also BORING and I do it ALL THE TIME. I’m sick of it!!!! So I came into this feeling vaguely annoyed, and then I spent some time on the campaign’s website and felt guilty, because honestly they’re doing great work. Of course we should be focusing on kindness, the most important character trait anyone can have, and of course we should be trying to spread it. It’s reassuring that there are compassionate, diligent people w...

Hi friends. It’s me, Eleanor. Long-term fans of me will remember this blog from my third year of university. That’s right! I spent a year abroad as an English Language Assistant in Chemnitz, Germany, and I kept a blog every week, and I’ve revisited it today for the first time in five (5) years. [1] And now here we are on 22 nd April 2020, in London, England, the world. By my count, this is week 5 of enforced working from home, and about a month since lockdown officially started. Hope things are going well!!!! I was moved to sit down and write this today for a couple of reasons. I will lay them out for you here: Number One : As of yesterday, I am on furlough and I don’t have any work to do apart from domestic labour such as keeping the flat clean and tidy, which because of Feminist Reasons I’m not fucking doing, even though it would actually make sense for me to do it because my sweet boyfriend is still working full-time/breadwinning as we speak. (“I’m not your litt...