As I drove back to Stirling in early January of 2024, I was depressed. Really severely. The few weeks I had before my friends and boyfriend came back, as I stayed alone purely so I could go to work, felt like my world was collapsing around me. So to stop myself from going insane, I took back a tactic that I used in Covid lockdowns. When my mental health was similarly dreadful. You know when you’re having a panic attack, and someone tells you to find things that you can see, hear, smell, and feel? It’s basically an extended version of that.
I decided to make a list of my top 10 favourite things every month. These could be things I could see, like films, hear, like my favourite song or playlist at the time, feel, like a new makeup I was trying, or smell, like a perfume. And I’ll say proudly, that a lot of it was my favourite food at the time. From that, it might sound oddly materialistic, but it gave me a reminder that even little things, like the concept of lighting a candle, or baking, or having my nails done, or 1am trips to the Kelpies in the rain, were little joys to look forward to, even when times got really morbid, and I worried that I’d never be happy again.
For The Sake of Nostalgia
Creating a list of your favourite things, and then never touching it again, creates your own miniature time capsule of what your life was like at the time. And I found that it was really nice to look back and see how much I’d grown (or not). For example, last January, my favourite film was Thirteen. My favourite song was Taking What’s not Yours by TV Girl, and my favourite thing to do was to go on a walk in the freezing cold. You could really tell that I had nothing going on. But when I got to November, my playlist included The Blossoms and Chappell Roan.
I genuinely enjoyed studying somehow (carrot cake and and oat dirty chai from The Burgh was a significant factor in this), and I went through a phase of eating potato waffles and playing UNO into the wee hours of the morning, which might sound like a cry for help but is actually one of my fondest uni memories so far. Comparing these two months, I can actually sense a change in mood here. I can look back and think “Wow, I was really sad back then”, but also know that I got through it. And I have this undeniable, first hand evidence, that things really do get better.
Death to Cringe
Your list is private. It’s yours. It’s your safe haven to admit the cringey and uncool things you like. You begin to appreciate things. Not for the sake of looking like a grateful person to other people, but purely because, you really liked these ten specific things this month. You don’t have to justify or explain any of it, to anyone, ever. For example, my October list has some very questionable choices. The two that come to mind are The Terrifier franchise (as I’d seen all three of the films for the first time in the cinema in the space of a month), and: “starting a cold morning at my desk with just washed hair and an iced coffee”.
Wow. That sounds really lame. Someone who doesn’t know me could read that and think I had a really slow month, and was just looking to fill space. But I wasn’t. I just really, really liked that specific feeling, and I don’t have to explain that to anyone. It’s mine. Even if someone does read my list, I don’t have to explain why I enjoyed the Terrifier movies. I don’t have to answer any questions about it at all. Because it’s my list, and I can like whatever I want to like. No questions asked.
No One Will Ever Know What You Know
Not only that, you’re the only person who can look at your lists and know what really happened at the time. My February is maybe the best example of this. Everything on the list was pretty, with the exception of maybe egg fried rice, but I’d argue that that depends on how good the rice is. But it was things like lip oils, blush, 10 Things I Hate About You (which I’d seen for the first time in a posh Edinburgh cinema for Valentine’s day with my boyfriend, and is a really sweet memory to me). The soundtrack was Love Song by Lime Garden and I had my coffee order perfected (vanilla oat latte with cinnamon, best appreciated when made by myself at the end of a rush at work).
But I know what happened in February. I cried. A lot. Work was insanely stressful, more stressful than a job that you really only took to pay your rent should be. I downloaded I Am Sober for the first time. Life wasn’t as pretty as I’d made it out to be in this list. But making these lists gives you the opportunity to be honest with yourself about how you’re really doing. And even when you choose not to be, or when you choose to only look at it whilst you’re doing good, you get to see that even when you might feel at rock bottom, there was things you still appreciated. Your entire month isn’t defined by one day. And you get to control the narrative, even if it’s only to yourself, of how good that month was.
And hey, there’s also the basic of “appreciating life more”, which I guess is true to an extent. I never really noticed how much I loved reading Vogue, or giving compliments, or listening to The Clash, or eating Cornettos, until it was on paper (figuratively speaking). And I suppose it’s not really “romanticising your life” if everything you write down is actually true. It does make it selective memory, but in all honestly, I don’t really care. Just make the list. Start in January, and list your favourite things, and it can be literally, anything. My first addition was “baby animals”. If the whole philosophical faff didn’t convince you, just try it. It made me happier, maybe it’ll work for you too.
Featured Image Credit: Jess Urquhart
4th year Politics and Journalism student.
Secretary for Brig
The Herald Student Press Awards Columnist Of The Year 2024 (which sorry i’m still not over)
