I have made it back into the European Union safely! The UK was a scary lawless post-Brexit place and I’m glad I made it out alive.
All jokes aside, I went to my best friends’ wedding and had a blast. I had to sign the document as a witness, which was scary, but it was great seeing my friends again, or in some cases for the first time. This left me painfully little time to do any writing. I considered bringing my chromebook with me, but decided against it, and in hindsight that was the right move, since I wouldn’t have really liked leaving the room to go do some writing. And in the evenings I was way too tired to do anything.
Travelling during covid-times is still scary by the way. And more so for someone with serious anxiety. There’s all these extra papers you need to keep on you, not to mention social distancing and mask wearing. It’s a lot, and even now, two days after I returned, I’m still feeling tired deep into my bones. I suspect that won’t go away anytime soon. What surprised me is how little checks were actually properly done. I went from the Netherlands to Ireland, then on to Northern Ireland. Then I went back to Ireland again, and only when boarding the plane to the Netherlands again did they ask about my vaccination proof for the first time. That means I managed to go to two foreign countries without showing any covid-related paperwork. I was disappointed in this, so much for proper safety. But I had my papers in order, and everyone else that I traveled with was the same, so for us it didn’t really matter in the end. There was a small scare in Dublin when I went to check in my luggage, and the lady couldn’t figure out my ID-card.
For reference, in the Netherlands we have Dutch ID-cards, which are basically like a small passport. These are used as identification inside the EU, and are valid for travelling to the UK until the end of the month, so I didn’t bother getting a passport yet. Either the system didn’t want to accept the ID-card easily, or there was a problem with my name. There’s a middle bit in my name “van”, which is very common here. The check-in didn’t allow that, so on my ticket the last name was both parts combined. Maybe that’s why they couldn’t figure it out easily. But fortunately after a short scare I was let through and everything ended up being fine.
As for writing, I am a little bit behind on schedule, as always. This time around though, my excuse is being gone for a week and having anxiety attacks leading up to this week, so I will be excused. I hope to be back to more or less 3 posts a week shortly, but the next chapter of The Necromancer’s Daughter will likely be delayed by 1 or 2 weeks. I’m also currently going through my analytics to see which series and which kinds of posts do well. I’ll take that into account when devising my new upload schedule, although I do confess that it will mostly still be based on what I like to write.
Last but not least let’s have a quick look at the music. I promised the playlists would have more of a cohesive theme starting this month and I mostly succeeded on that. It’s a lot less of a pile of random music, and more in line with each other. This month I decided to go with what I dubbed soothing pop music. It’s mostly songs that just feel pleasant to listen to when you’re winding down from a stressful day. I’ve been particularly enjoying Khalid’s Saturday Nights. There’s also some of the newer Twenty-One Pilot songs on there, which are a joy to listen to. I hope you enjoy the music as much as I have, and I’ll see you all here again next time!
Opal Kaharis 