i'm aware that i became absent almost immediately after starting to post here. the reason being that i was visiting my boyfriend's family in ireland. i got to meet his mum for the first time and we got on great. we brought our chronic bad luck with us, though, as the heating broke as soon as we had arrived at her house. our heating had not been working for the week leading up to leaving for ireland as well. it's been an incredibly cold couple of weeks, to say the least.

i got to see lots of towns in both the north and the south on a day-long roadtrip. it was a strangely emotional experience for me. my boyfriend grew up in the north, whereas i have grown up in scotland in an irish family. i'm still working through my feelings from the trip. i had a lot of firsts. i got to finally engage with the cultural aspects of my family without the worst of it all. i got to enjoy the music and community without the bad tempers and complicated relationships with drinking. i felt safe.

visiting has very much cemented my desire to move there. i want nothing more than to have one of the beautiful houses along a country road where i can live with my boyfriend and get a dog. he wants to buy a hurl to use for playing fetch with our future dog. i hope that my writing will get me far enough for us to have that be our life. i will exist for as long as i have to in order to work towards the moments where we are living.

most importantly, the inspiration for this entry is built upon the stars. i had never seen stars so clearly in my entire life than i had on the country roads. you would have to peel my face off the window to stop me from staring out. it was also the first time i had ever witnessed a shooting star. they're beautiful. fleeting, but brilliant. if i had blinked at the wrong time, i would have missed it entirely. i spent a very brief moment sobbing while looking out at the stars. they were just so amazing that i didn't really know how to manage that internally. i was wholly overcome with emotion. there is a great joy in being so inconsequential. the stars don't know who i am, but watching one of them simply fall and cease to be was a profound and formative experience for me.

i'm not here strictly to romanticise my experience. the quaint peace of the countryside was offset by the looming presence of police stations built up like fortresses. they were not built in the interest of protecting people like us — quite the opposite, in fact. to identify as we do is to be subjected to hatred and resentment there. british colonialism has firmly rooted itself in the north. it's an occupation which is overlooked by people outside of ireland. although, this is not the space for me to be unpacking my thoughts on that. for now, i am doing my part in raging against the machine by being unapologetic about taking up space in a world which is not built to favour me. i am here to love until i die.

i need to sit down and dissect that experience more thoroughly. it's something worth writing about. it deserves to be done with unwavering intention. i will make sure that every word earns it place — unlike how i write on here. poetry requires a certain degree of discipline and word economy which i can dance around while writing in long-form like this.

all in all, i feel deeply loved and valued. i am building a family with my boyfriend and i have never felt more seen. he sees me for everything that i am — even the ugliest parts — and he doesn't force me to change for him. he wants nothing more than for me to grow and become healthy at my own pace. i will never be able to articulate the depth of gratitude that i feel now that i am loved. despite the cold, i feel warm inside.

sending love,

mutt

giving it a try

hey! how's it going? i figured that i wanted to give long-form writing a proper try since i've never been able to maintain a blog before. i reckon a fresh start will do me some good. i've got a wealth of time these days; i may as well use it properly.the reasoning for the name of the blog is that the things i will be talking about are my own personal matters, it's not just an assertion that i matter. i'm a fairly inconsequential guy.

as for some background information, you lot can just call me mutt. i'm aware it defeats the purpose of the name of the blog, but that's why i prefaced with an explanation - just roll with it. i'm currently twenty-two years old and i live in scotland. i'm taking a year off from university in a last-ditch attempt to figure myself out just enough to become functional again which is a pretty huge task to be grappling with, if i'm honest. my field of study is english literature with the projection of going on to study creative writing. i write poetry and plan to continue to do it as a career. although, the concept of calling it a career makes me feel a bit ill. it's more just a passion that i'm hopefully going to be lucky enough to be able to sustain my existence with.

my hobbies are kind of an eclectic gathering of things that i occasionally pick up and put down in short bursts. my current haunts are gaming and miniature painting. i've been gaming since i could operate a controller and i used to paint warhammer minis as a kid, so i feel like i'm very much returning to my childhood these days. i'll save my deep dive on the specific things i'm up to for another entry. my other hobbies which i haven't touched in a while include: 35mm film photography, painting, drawing, reading, emulation, and walking.

i'm also a big physical media buff. i will collect any physicals of anything that i like. my main formats are cds, dvds, cassettes and records. i've got a pretty modest collection of things because money is perpetually tight, but i have some really cool stuff. i like a pretty decent range of music, but my current favourite artists are creeper, kneecap, pansy division, sum 41, and green day. i'll never escape my pop-punk fixation, i fear.

i think that about covers everything you need to know for now. i don't reckon there will be any sense of regularity or routine to my posting. there is likely to be lots on some days and absolute radio silence for several in between. i'm not the best at habit-forming.

i hope someone out there finds a little comfort in my endless yapping.

sending love,
mutt