lists

My Favourite Films

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Over on Instagram i’ve been taking part in a 30 Day Film “Challenge”, posting film posters and art to specific prompts, and then invariably giving a few comments about why I picked them. Some of the daily prompts are quite vapid, and some a lot more meaningful than others, but It’s something i’ve enjoyed doing daily. Recommending films is something i’m always eager to do, but this gave me reason to actually stop and think what my favourites were. A recurring issue ive had with the challenge is finding myself wanting to write even more about why these films are so good, why they’re special or clever or why I’ve enjoyed them so much, hence this post here.

All-time favourites and top lists are always subject to change, of course, and there’s always going to be discourse and debate about any list. It’s not ordered at all, it’s quite loose, it’s just films that I really like for one reason or another. I’m not even sure if these are my definitive favourite films so i’ve included other possible candidates/runners up at the bottom. I might redo in a year’s time just to see.

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Lockdown 2020: Three Months Later

Three months later, for better or worse, it’s only really now that the UK (and Scotland in particular) is easing lockdown. I’ve written a little about it, but for the most part i’ve reserved the nitty gritty and worst of it all for my diary and daily moping. That might seem a little bit of an exaggeration, but hands down, the last few weeks have been weird, and hopefully a once-in-a-lifetime deal. I can safely say I never want to experience these three months mentally again and i’m sure plenty of others are in a similar boat.

With the last three months suddenly there was an abundance of free time, there’s less social requirements, and for myself just less urgency all around if i’m honest. When it was all announced it seemed like a chance to finally catch up on everything but to begin with this was mostly just endless news refreshes, eating, and like I said, moping. NOT learning all the new languages, running everyday, and all those unstarted projects, because somehow I had absolutely convinced myself that was all going to happen? The Onion covered it best: Man Not Sure Why He Thought Most Psychologically Taxing Situation Of His Life Would Be The Thing To Make Him Productive. I always give myself grief over how little i’ve achieved at the best of times (spoiler: recurring narrative) but the truth is looking back over the last three months I did achieve more than what I realised. In 2020 it feels somewhat wrong to care and think about self when there is so much more important things happening worldwide like equality demonstrations, media misreporting, and THAT global climate shitstorm, but maybe that’s the point to feel less overwhelmed. So to fill in the long gap in this blog between posts (again, recurring narrative) here’s a big list of everything ive been doing/achieved while in lockdown. I guess i’m writing it down and posting to feel better.

  • Took our dog a (big) walk everyday and started playing Ringfit Adventure on the Switch. I hurt my ankle, stopped, and then started again. I haven’t been running properly in weeks, and this one really annoys me. I need to reintroduce activity gradually, slower this time.

  • I played 90 hours of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I can not stress how reassuring and relaxing this was- total escapism for the early days of lockdown, maybe obsessively so. I also replayed the entirety of Grand Theft Auto V and The Last of Us -less relaxing more cathartic- and played lots of Mario Kart Online with friends, this was loads of fun.

  • I built Lego 10255 Assembly Square, and it was great really hving something to focus on each day- it took around 15 hours to build. I took lots of photos and videos during the process, I might still retroactively post about it. Creatively for an online contest I built this.

  • I reopened my Bricklink store to sell off some excess Lego. Buy stuff from me. I also rejoined Spotify and made a few playlists. Follow me.

  • Socially, I participated in lots of videochats and played lots of voice D&D too which was initially different but very cool.

  • Shaved off all my hair. Later shaved off all my beard. Both grew back- what a huge twist.

  • Rewatched all of the Extended Edition Hobbit and Lord of The Rings films. Really enjoyed LOTR for nth time, everytime I watch it I appreciate it more. I watched all of these films too.

  • I did some video editing! I made videos about our recent Edinburgh trip, climbing Ben Bhraggie, and going to Durness and proposing(!), they’re all on my mega-amateur YouTube channel.

  • Started Creative Writing. This is something ive wanted to do for ages so I took a short online course at Open Learn and have been doing some exercises independently too. Ive really enjoyed it, it’s I definitely something I want to keep up once we go “back to normal”. I found this quite relaxing too.

  • I also drank a shocking amount of coffee, and had scrambled eggs for breakfast every other day. Did you know you can make them in the microwave? I did not know that until this year! This was probably the most useful thing I learnt.

And did work training, checked the news a stupid amounts of time like I said, and lets be honest, just generally survived as well. Both my parents had (and recovered!) from Covid-19 back in April/May and the last three months i’ve just felt completely spent energy wise. Things are hard, overcoming them and doing things are harder? There’s a big focus media-wise on going “back to normal”, but normal wasn’t always the best anyway; i’d like to think the last three months have given me new perspective about everything. Like I said i’ve moped quite a bit and found this all a lot more difficult than it maybe should be, so doing everything listed above is just a bonus I guess. There’s been no right or wrong way to survive this mentally at all.