Because most of the colours I will be using will be shades of blue, I tried to look into very aggressive, unsettling phases of water such as big waves or currents in order to extract a certain feeling of being trapped.

My fear of the Danube River is, in my opinion, a bit paradoxal, in a way that my father used to be a sailor for many years before I was born, and his boat would exclusively sail on the River. The pic was taken by my mom on Isaccea 10, while she was pregnant with me.

While travelling, I couldn't help but notice the prints on the train and tube tickets, which inspired me to use them as the prints for the origami boats, as this is how the whole tradition started. Moreover, because my colour palette is mostly composed of shades of blue denim, I felt the need of a contrasting colour, and I decided on red, as it appears on the train tickets, as it is also a very powerful colour that can represent fear very vividly.

While I was making my ticket summary, I couldn't help but notice how different tickets are, but one thing really caught my attention: every time I met up with a friend during the holiday, they would make a small origami out of the receipts or travel tickets we had and would give it to me. I'm not quite sure how this started, but it dates back from when we started Highschool. Most of them are usually making an origami boat, which for me has a double significance: boats and water are related to both my father, as he was a sailor before I was born, but also, ironically, my fear of the Danube river. Paradoxically, my dad used to sail mostly on the Danube river.

I'm also quite interested in the shape of the boat. Its geometrical shape creates contrast with the idea of dreaming which, for me, feels more fluid. 

• 4 plane tickets
• 5 tube cards (10 trips)
• 2 train tickets 
• 6 bus tickets 
• 1 monthly Oyster travel card
• 2 coach tickets 
• 3 Uber trips

Falling: anxiety dreams often place us in overwhelming in which we are powerless to act. Among the most common is the dream of falling from a great height, an image that emphasise that the dreamer has climbed too high in personal/professional life and may now be ready for a fall.

Drowning: dreams of drowning, or struggling in deep water, may represent the dreamer's fear of being engulfed by forces hidden in the deepest reaches of our unconscious minds. Such dreams often indicate that control over the unconscious minds need to be relaxed slowly.

Water: is the symbol par excellence of the unconscious, the depths of the imagination, the source of creativity. To dream of swimming suggests that the dreamer should venture into this realm, but if he or she struggles to float, this may be a warning that more caution and more careful preparation are required.

Because I remember a part of my nightmares I was able to identify some recurrent elements:

DROWNING 

THE DANUBE RIVER 

BEING INSIDE OF A CLOSED SPACE 

FAINTING 

BEING CHASED

DEATH OF LOVED ONES 

ANIMALS (MOSTLY CATS) LEAVING SCRATCHES ON ME 

FALLING FROM A BRIDGE 

NIGHT TERROR DIAGNOSTIC

At 4 years old, while I was on a trip with my brother and grandparents, I was rushed to the hospital after my grandma woke up late in the night to find me sitting up with my jaw in a weird position and not responding to any signals. After being rushed to the hospital, they're told my grandparents that I have something known as night terror, which is a sleep disorder causing feelings of panic or dread typically occurring during the first hours of stage 3–4 non-rapid eye movement sleep and can last for 1 to 10 minutes. This disorder is common to children, and decreases with age (it kind of goes away by the time you're 14-15). Even so, night terrors are not the same thing as nightmares.

Pic from the trip when I was diagnosed with Night Terror in Toplita, Borsec, Romania. 

NIGHTMARES AND SLEEP PARALYSIS

I've started to get very bad nightmares when I was around 12-13, and they would increase in numbers at times when I felt very vulnerable or anxious. As for sleep paralysis, I started to have it when I moved to Bucharest, especially in the first 2 years. It started to get worse every time I would have a fight with someone, a lot of free time, or when I felt very anxious. 

Pic from the trip when I was diagnosed with Night Terror in Toplita, Borsec, Romania. 

I began to wonder why my sleeping is so bad lately, so I did a mini recap of my last year in terms of how I managed it. Looking back, I realised that during my last year of Highschool I used to sleep quite normal at times, getting around 8-9 hours of sleep a night, except for the times when I used to work for exams or my portfolio, which meant all nighters with 3 hours naps during the day. 

During summer, I had a job where I used to work 2 full days (12-14h each) and had 2 free, but the sleep was very very bad, as I would get 5-6h a night. Even on my free days, I wasn't able to sleep properly because of work stress and moving to London stress. I would wake up during the night up to 3 times, either because I was dreaming that I have to take orders or because I didn't find an apartment in London.

Looking at last week's summary made me come to the conclusion that my organisational skills are not the worst, but more than that: they don't even exist. I've always found it hard to keep a pattern in my day-to-day life, even though I tried many ways to do so. The way I manage my sleeping time has always affected my schedule, and by looking at the way I slept this week, I can tell why. I'm barely able to keep a constant sleeping schedule, and it varies a lot from day to day.

• spiders
• bugs
• spicy food
• communism
• cold people 
• corruption 
• fainting 
• being treated unequally
• being lied to 
• grumpy people
• the busyness in Bucharest's public transport (and the smell!)
• people who smell
• people with bad breath 
• very hot summers 
• crying 
• vodka
• hangovers
• EDM music 
• very long train rides 
• being afraid to walk at night in my area
• my acne 
• the feeling that I look different everytime I look in the mirror 
• being anxious all the time
• using so much plastic