"New Year, New Me," and Covid-19

"New Year, New Me." A bold thing to say to oneself.

You see it everywhere. New Years resolutions all a flutter about social media and it's all up in the air in almost every conversation. A world with a deafening noise of "I'm going to" and then usually followed by either a very disciplined following to reach said goal or falling flat on your face two days in and giving up.

It's slightly different now in a Covid-19 world. It started last year when I told myself I should go out more instead of spending my free time just sitting at home doing whatever, getting fat and not bettering myself unless it's cooking or filling my head with useless trivia and an abundance of plotlines and character bios from endless shows on streaming services. And then came March 16th as I remember, and the country went into its first lockdown, and work closed.

In that time, I didn't think much of it. I spent more time with my mum, who was also out of work, and we binged boxset after boxset.

I was luckily furloughed so I could live life in relative comfort, only going shopping for essentials when needed and enough to pay the bills. Then the first lockdown ended, work reopened with a brand new system in place to ensure customer safety, I work in a cinema so we had ensured that only a certain number of people could be in a screen at a time, as well as another number of things in place to ensure everyone's safety and stop the spread of infection.

Work had also had enough employees to allow us to work one or two shifts a week to reduce our exposure but also save up on hours, so I found myself still having a lot of free time. So, i decided I was going to do something I always wanted to do.

I was going to practice with makeup.

I had always wanted to do makeup. I was fascinated by drag queens and Halloween makeup and Special FX makeup. The likes of Guillermo Del Toro with films about fantastic creatures, the majority making near unimaginable use of makeup and costume and minimum to no CGI was incredible to me, seeing the likes of KlaireDeLys and MadeYewLook on YouTube since I was a teenager, and I wanted to be on that level.

Mum had gifted me a makeup box for Christmas in 2019 which came with a variety of eyeshadows, some lipsticks and nail polish as well as a separate lot of foundations and a set of brushes to get me started. I was over the moon.

Of course, I did practice with them at first throughout January last year, then once I was working 5 days a week, I wound up not touching the stuff. Then, of course, lockdown, and within a week or so, I looked at my makeup and decided to try again now I had time, even setting up an Instagram account to document my progress with makeup.

And then something else came, something that was always within me from something I have always admired and found myself doing. I wasn't just doing beauty makeup or special effects makeup, I was doing drag makeup!

I want to be a drag queen!

I came up with a name for myself that I had thought about for a long time and sure enough, I felt like I was reborn.

Of course, given my experience with makeup, I was DREADFUL to look at (and still am but with slight improvement) but in time, I will be what I've always wanted to be.

Of course, during the June-October period was a high time for me to practice whilst I wasn't working. Come August, I had entered a competition on Twitter, a giveaway to a drag show in town, only coming across it by chance and thought, why not? I wound up winning! Tickets for me and up to five friends to an open venue, front row of a drag show!

When the day arrived I did something I never thought I would do, I went out with makeup on! I was terrified but thrilled. I was sure I was going to get battered but... nothing! I was fine! People didn't care!

I met with two friends and went to the show and had the most amazing time, watching these queens perform.

Come Halloween I had practiced enough with the little makeup I had left to do something stupid and fun, I painted myself as someone else! Whilst everyone in our Halloween zoom party dressed up in traditional Halloween attire or monsters, I showed up in drag and impersonating one of my beloved idols throughout the entire night, albeit badly. I went as Pete Burns.

I had bought a shoddy £4 blonde wig off Amazon, did it up in a bun with clips and wore it with a loose black t-shirt and draping a white fleece blanket over myself and pretending it was the iconic "gorilla" coat, joined the zoom party in a scouse accent that would probably be deemed offensive and dropped one liners Pete had said in his life all night at every relevant opportunity.

So for 2020, my resolution to get better with makeup seemed to be a success, and is something I'm still working on. Now for something more personal in 2021.

I need to lose weight.

Of course, as with most people in a similar predicament to myself, losing weight is a struggle, and in my honest opinion, anyone who said losing weight was super easy for them is lying.

I'm not an active person. I hated P.E when I was in school, I hate sports, I even hate running for the bus, I'll just wait for the next one, or get a taxi if I'm in a rush.

However, something I have on my person at all times is rather useless given the current THIRD lockdown we are now in in the UK; a gym membership.

I'd found myself going to the gym three-five times a week during the period between the first and second lockdowns but I wasn't really focusing on losing weight, meaning, I wasn't weighing myself like I should nor was I changing my diet either besides cutting out the fizzy drinks, only having them on rare occasions, drinking mostly juice and water.

Now, 2021, I have completely thrown myself in the deep end and held my breath; I have completely changed my diet, eating meals with lower calorie intake, switched out most meats to meat free alternatives and having hearty amounts of salad with most evening meals. I'm also now only drinking water or green tea and have done exercises regularly as well as investing in Just Dance on the switch, making full use of Sweat Mode.

Though I lack scales, I decided to do something else to keep track of progress.

Every Thursday, starting from New Years Eve 2020, I would take a photo of myself near nude in the mirror and then put the photos in a note on my phone with the date above each one. I've told myself that results are not immediate and am hoping that come March, I will notice some significant difference. However, despite not seeing a significant difference within three weeks, I definitely feel a difference. I'm more energetic. I can move more.

I feel like I am slowly becoming the person I truly wanted to be, after almost a quarter of a century being alive, an autistic kid being told they can't do this or that or be this or that who was ugly, fat and nigh unsociable, was becoming the very thing that I was told I wasn't.

Now once I feel like I have achieved my weight loss goal, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that by come the end of March, vaccinations will have completely been dished out across the country and we can finally return to our pre Coronavirus lives. Then I can do the most personal goal of all.

Be myself in the world.

Photo by Olga from Pexels