In February 2022, I put an offer on a house. I was 30 and had somehow managed to save up a 5% deposit on a modest two bed semi-detached bungalow in my home town for £140k. It's a whopping 56m² and needed full renovation. It took me two years, all the bank loans and all my sanity to get it to a liveable state (it's still not really finished because money). All while navigating challenges at work, relationship woes and my dad unexpectedly passing away. I finally moved in August 2024. If you've ever heard of the show Grand Designs, I always tell people that I hit the Grand Designs bingo and the only squares I missed were pregnant wife and living in a caravan. For the past year I've simply been enjoying having my own space for the first time in my life. Dishes left in the sink? Who gives a fuck. Washing not put away for days? I'll get round to it eventually. Shoes abandoned by the front door? It's just me to trip over them.
I'll be honest, I could do with another room but I can't afford it and also, I really do love my house. Some nights I just sit on my sofa and look round the room, satisfied that I just have a home that's all my own. But for a good eighteen months all I had was external walls and a roof. I didn't even have a foundation, that had to be redone. But the house is insulated to the extreme and I have underfloor heating throughout, so all the pain to get here was definitely worth it in the end. (I can't tell you how much of a heated floor snob I've become. It really is the most wonderful thing).
A few months ago I finally unpacked my nail polish collection and realised I had nowhere to store it. I ended up giving away half of it to my colleagues. I remember many years ago seeing a post by PiggyLuvs (her website no longer works but her instagram is still up but inactive: https://www.instagram.com/narmai/) about how she was giving up her nail polish collection because she too had bought her own small 2-bed home and didn't have room for it. I was shocked, my flabbers thoroughly ghasted. How on earth could anyone give away nail polish. And then the responsibilities hit and now everything needs to be contained to a single billy bookcase.
My softboxes had also disintegrated after being stored in my mum's loft for so long as well so I've had no set up to take photos. It was only just this past weekend, that I finally cleared out the last of my stuff and set up a small, make shift table that I could use to take photos again. And I mean make shift. The table was £6 from B&M bargains and it's got a mango wood lazy susan on top that I found half price in Morrisons for £12. I've got two new soft boxes on the way, my ancient Nikon D5000 that I got in 2009 for my eighteenth birthday has been charged and I'm excited to start doing nail content again. Perhaps leaning more into acrylic and watercolour paints to stop myself from buying new polishes.
I have been posting semi-frequently over on my programming blog (https://lptcp.blogspot.com/) but I've not really had time for many hobbies and I am a person with too little time and too many hobbies so some had to take a backseat. But no more, 2026 is the year of hobbies for me.
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