I started romanticising my life almost a decade ago, though I didn’t know to call it that at the time. I was in my early twenties, away at university and, after a year of truly dire mental health, had finally started to feel better. It was still a tricky time, but I was getting out of bed, cooking and eating full meals and managing to leave the house.

On the advice of a campus counsellor, I started making a real effort to stop focusing so much on the future (frightening, unknowable, enormous) and more on the present moment and the areas of my life that I could improve and influence. It was just mindfulness, really, repackaged and reorganised as it has been many, many times.

I started small, in the care and curation of my box room, arranging bunches of wildflowers in old jam jars on my desk and cleaning the window so the morning sunlight could cut through the glass more clearly. When the weather was good I took the longer and more scenic route as I walked to lectures or for my weekly therapy sessions, stopping to take photos of beautiful or interesting things that I passed.

I read in cosy cafes instead of racing home to climb back into bed. I got little tattoos as souvenirs of my efforts. I changed........

© iNews