I have the feeling that I’ve only been complaining lately… Possibly not so much over here, but face to face.

When people can pretty much figure out you’re not at your 100% with just one glance, I guess it’s time to start snapping out of it. Truth is, I don’t deal well with bad moods.

Since end of last week, I’ve been feeling a bit down. I’ve had too many things going on in my mind, and I wasn’t sure how to deal with all of it, so I pretty much decided to shut down and don’t deal with anything at all. Last weekend, I spent it in bed. I wasn’t necessarily sleeping all the time, sometimes I was just staring at the ceiling/wall, or maybe watching series, or yes, sleeping. My brother was tentatively poking his head around to check I was still alive from time to time, and to check whether I was going to have lunch and the usual basic-survival stuff.

On Saturday, I made a bit of an effort to go to a friend’s engagement drinks (congratulations again!!) and met up with Brian at the train station. I really wasn’t up for it, but I thought it would do me good. In the end, it was a fun evening, but it ended up being a bit overwhelming, because there was a lot of noise, and a lot of people, and the bar was rather narrow. At some point, I felt I needed to leave (needed to get out, being the more accurate feeling), but luckily Brian wanted to leave early too, so we journeyed back together.

As soon as I got home, I ate, put on my PJs and went back to bed, until Monday morning, when I had to go to the doctor’s.

Yup, I’m also dealing with some (minor but disruptive) health issues, which have been going on for a while. I had surgery over a year ago, and further treatment recently, and now it’s all checkups and all that. Again, it’s nothing serious or life-threatening, but it’s a bloody pain in the buttocks.

To top things off, I’m busy at work, and sometimes I have the feeling that I am not going to manage with the workload. Actually, not the workload itself, but more my management of it and prioritisation and all that. I have the feeling that my desk (and my brain) exploded, and I’m trying to go over all the notes, papers, emails, lists… And nothing makes sense.

I might have had a little panic attack or two in the past week, thanks to all of the above…

Yesterday, I snapped at a few people… I didn’t direct my frustration at them, as in they weren’t the victims, but more like I vented my frustration about other stuff and people to them. Does that make sense? Once I let some of it out, I did apologise and made sure they knew I wasn’t ranting at them, but because I have great friends, they totally got it, and were very understanding. So we’re cool… I think.

So, other than listening to my Spotify “Happy” playlist pretty much on a constant loop, I’m trying to focus on positive stuff happening around me, so that I get on with life as I normally do.

As you might remember, I’m often taking photos of Halloween Jack, my friends’ band. They asked me to photograph them at their last gig, which I did. They wanted to use some of the photos to promote their coming gig at the O2 Islington Academy on 27th February. It seems it went really well, as they sold out their allocated tickets (I’m sure there are more sold through the venue, so you can still go and see them).

This is the photo they used to promote the gig:

I’m happy to see the photos worked well, and I’m even happier to hear the guys really liked them, and that they got great feedback as well!

Here are more photos I took:

It’s difficult to translate an idea into a photograph, especially when you don’t have the right tools… It took me a good deal of post production to get everyone in this photo visible without being burnt by the main light on the right, or without being completely in the dark, but hey, it looks nice, doesn’t it?

Adam is a showman, and you can tell by the way he moves around the stage. He noticed me taking a photo and looked straight into the camera. We’re such a great team!

This one is actually my favourite of all the photos I took that night. If you ask a professional photographer, they’ll probably say it’s not a good photo in itself, but I just love how it looks all dark and broody, and how focused on playing Nigel is. I would have loved it even more if the background was even darker, but it’s still a great image.

Overall, it was a good photo shoot and I’m quite pleased with the results. I need to get more confident in asking the guys to pose and change their posture, and quicker in taking the pictures. I am really looking forward to taking some “studio” photos of them at some point.

If you want to see more photos, head over to Halloween Jack’s website, their gallery is pretty much my work, except the recording studio ones, and some others that fans might have shared with them (they should definitely get me on payroll, with all the photos and promotion I’m doing for them! Ha-ha!). I’m trying to create a portfolio area around here to show my photography in an organised manner, but I’m not sure if my blog theme supports it. I’ll let you know if I manage and once it’s live, if that ever happens!

Last night, I went to bed very late because I was working. I completely lost track of time, as I usually do, and I finished at about 1am. Anyway, I’m always more productive at night! Thanks to that presentation I was working on, I learnt a lot about millennials (generation to which I’m supposed to belong) and what our behaviours are and how we fit within the workplace. Much of the stuff I read applied to me, not all of it of course, I’m not a fan of boxes. It was interesting! The presentation was fun, and I even included some very good memes; although my boss liked it, it was not really her style, so she changed it a bit in the end (all my fun photos were gone!).

I started drafting this post, and then my brother came back from work and we started chatting. In the end, we were standing up in the middle of the kitchen for ages while I was showing him the app Dubsmash. If you don’t know it, don’t download it! It’s stupidly addictive! There are many sound clips from films, cartoons, or famous people and you record a video of yourself dubbing them. You can then share it with your friends. It’s one of the most absurd apps I’ve ever used, and probably the one that has made me laugh the most (proper out loud laughter).

Today, my day at work consisted on taking roster photos and recording videos of employees. We gave employees the option to have their roster picture retaken if they didn’t like their current one. The videos were the fun bit of the day. Someone in the US (my former team, I guess) came up with the idea of recording shout out videos of employees thanking colleagues for their hard work, their help, or similar. Some of them meant serious business, and others were hilarious. The best/worst part is spending my day around people being uncomfortable while I have to stare at them through a lens. Photos or videos, it’s clear people get very nervous when in front of a camera. Some people were very shy, some didn’t have any problem (you can always tell who has experience doing presentations and speaking in front of an audience, and who works in sales!) and some are plain posers (you know who you are!). All in all, it was a fun day.

Since I spent my day in a meeting room, I brought my laptop with me and worked while there were no models around. At the end of the day, I was going all cabin fever and started being quite silly on Lync. A teammate and I came up with a great idea for a thriller starring a kidnapped cute guy forced to work as a model for The Color Company brochure… Don’t steal our idea!

I can’t believe it’s only Wednesday (night, OK, but still) because I have been so busy and done so many things (as opposed to last weekend) that it feels like a Friday, only without the partying (not that I party much, to be fair). The weekend can’t come any faster really. Would it be too bad to spend a second weekend in a row in bed and not getting out unless there’s an emergency? What do you think?