I had a really shitty cough a couple of weeks ago; it was honestly so violent that it kept me up at night, made my muscles ache, and at times felt like I was going to vomit, and was on the verge of peeing myself. Not great. I went to the doctor after about a week of it being absolutely ridiculous, and she prescribed Pulmicort—a medication in the form of an inhaler—saying that I likely had a post-viral cough. The virus was gone but the cough could last a few weeks. Yikes. We did a PCR test and everything came back negative. No COVID, no virus, no whooping cough, and no other bacterial infection. Is it a mystery? It may be a mystery, but the good thing is that I am on the mend. Phew.

I have been participating in Weird Web October! It was created by JZ from the XOXO community and I am glad that he started something up like this. I’m planning to write more about the experience of taking part, maybe as a bit of a check-in or some kind of reflection part way through the month. But I remember being not so keen on making a website every day in a month, especially after kinda burning out from my #blogeverydamnday efforts in January 2023… until Mitch told me that he was considering participating to some degree. Perhaps once a week, even. This was actually the encouragement I needed to give it a go. 😅 The theme of making weird websites and bringing back the weird web was really refreshing. I think, after all, I do miss making stuff for fun. When was the last time I made websites for fun? I cast my mind back to how much fanlistings and how I was a big part of The Fanlistings Network, where people really put in a lot of effort into designing, coding, and adding a plethora of content to their websites. I have since left the network and closed down my fanlistings, which was a shame, but I think the community also got smaller over time, unfortunately.

You can see all my entries for Weird Web October at by.georgie.nu/weird. If you’ve been following my work for a while then you might remember back when I had dev.georgie.nu and by.georgie.nu as subdomains for creative coding projects. Obviously, that shit died at some point, because I became so anti-side-project… but honestly, post-XOXO I’m feeling like making stuff for the fuck of it. 💁🏻‍♀️ I’ll be writing and sharing more about that on my blog over time! ✨

On Friday night I went to the Lime Cordiale concert in Sydney. Chris accompanied me and that was his first time seeing them. We both enjoyed the show! They were supported by Aleksiah and Ball Park Music. We missed Aleksiah since she was on at 7 and that was a little early, but we arrived for Ball Park Music. I used to listen to Ball Park Music a lot about 8–12 years ago and it’s great to know they were still really fun in concert. Lime Cordiale is also one of those bands I discovered 12 years ago when they were much smaller, and so to see them play a huge theatre like the ICC was quite incredible. They played a solid set with some new songs from their new album, and some old classics (but not that old—I miss those days haha 🥲), and of course their much-loved cover of The Divinyls’ I Touch Myself. There were other fun elements of the show like a mock fight between brothers Oli and Louis from the band, and them also getting the crowd on their respective sides of the theatre to rival each other through cheering. I realise I’ve seen the band about 17 or 18 times since 2012, all at very different venues. 😅

I do think I’m going through a little bit of burnout at the moment. Not gonna lie, spending many hours on Weird Web October stuff probably wasn’t the best idea as it’s supposed to be a little bit of fun and nothing serious. Combine that with some general mental health woes and having recently been sick, and my body is sort of crying about having to go to the gym (or any kind of exercise really). I’ve been doing my current program for five or so week, so it’s time to do a de-load week from the gym next week. I was really pushing myself at this point and I think things just came to a head. That’s, uh, great… considering World Mental Health Day was earlier this week. I didn’t even realise until someone at work pointed it out to me after I said I wanted to take a step back from responsibilities. Oooh, the irony.

I also realised it’s ADHD awareness month. I almost wish I had the energy to share some stuff around that, and almost feel guilt about that, but productivity guilt as a result of ADHD is very real, and literally deciding to take a deep breath and not desperately try to partake in advocacy is a statement in itself. That’s not to say I don’t care, but as someone who writes about mental health quite regularly on my blog, I hope that this is an example I can set around being open about mental health in general, not just on dedicated days. Same goes for ADHD and other neurodivergent conditions. Who knows, maybe I’ll find the motivation to write some stuff later on, but the existence of a dedicated day shouldn’t discount from the work anyone does to be open about and speak about these things all the time.

It was much needed to take the Friday morning off (I had an appointment to get my eyelash extensions done too) and then just do some work in the afternoon before going to the concert. Then I had a sleep-in on Saturday. (For me a sleep-in is 8am… I’m a morning person, hahaha.) The small things we do matter. Self-care doesn’t have to be a giant show or expending large amounts of money on “healing” treatments. Take care of yourselves. ❤️‍🩹