Tricycle Therapy aka Dealing with my Demons in the Dark

Coming home today I had a nice talk with Beardy. It was one of those talks where what you say just unfolds by itself, sort of a live epiphany in front of a one-man audience.

It helped that we were in the dark, in a cramped tricycle, loud motor running, me buzzed from sitting all day making* art. I felt like bursting, and was in a safe space to do so.

I told him about how I think I've been avoiding being "seen" for a long time, because I wasn't comfortable with myself.

Being "seen" as in leaving any sort of impression. At first I claimed that I didn't want to leave any strong impression on anyone, and so I feel scared when people seem to get a whiff of my critical/agit side (I attempt to mask this by showing my kooky/awkward side so people know I don't bite) but I suddenly realised that I was trying to not make ANY impression at all.

Thus I had an aversion to speaking my mind without being asked (by name, not as part of a crowd), or to volunteer for things, or to make friends with people I liked or admired.

But recent developments had made it so that I've been spending more time with those people, and so it's becoming very unlikely for them to not have any impression of me. And so this provided a stark contrast from how things were just a year ago, which made the reasons, I guess, bubble up to the surface.

let's provide a visual! the oil = deep seated issues. they were stuck to the bottom when i was socially empty and friends = water!! 

It's because I have an ideal self, and I know I'm far from being her as of yet.

My ideal self would be kind enough to speak her mind, ask questions when in doubt of what someone says, but sound calm and reassuring enough that the person wouldn't feel attacked. But that takes a lot of nerve. It takes a very calm person. And I'm typically a very nervy person.

I get too nervous when speaking up around people because I'm overly either sensitive or imaginative about what they would think or how they'd feel of/about what I say.

It's kind of funny to realise this now, at a point in my life where I've supposedly very decidedly stopped caring what other people think about me. But now I realise that that only goes as far as my appearance. I don't care about being ugly, fat, or hairy. But I do care about being kind.

Beardy reassured me that it's already a lot for me to be so ambitious about being a better person, instead of being too happy about who I already am. I told him I admired him and others, who felt comfortable to be seen as who they are. Comfortable about people knowing their impatience, pickiness, all of their glorious idiosyncrasies, but he said he admired that I'm aware of mine and would like to improve upon them instead of settling.

I'm realising that perhaps I've reached the point of no return. There are things to be worked on that could only be worked on under the lamplight of the company of other people. I may feel like I got it together when I'm alone or unstimulated, when my mental, emotional and physical energies are untapped and thus feel abundant. I did feel like I was searching for a "flowier" state of being, rather than the safe and stagnant shell I felt I was in. Maybe I'm here now. Maybe this is how it will feel for a while.

I will feel more watched, my palms and feet will be sweaty, but I'd be learning and relating to other people more, at an exponential rate. I will feel misunderstood, I will feel scared about perhaps having said the wrong thing, but this way, I'd be able to reach and help more people, with whatever I'm called out to do. I'd be nervous because I care, and uncomfortable like I'm in a tricycle.

And maybe sometimes, that's the kindest thing to be.



 (*term used loosely: our mentor tells it's just copying because the composition is directed) 

The Art of Doing

This pool is just two floors away from me, but in the 3-4 months that I’ve lived here I’ve only used it about 3-4 times as well. Sometimes we do get things that we want handed to us, and still find ourselves unable to let ourselves enjoy them. Having Things isn’t worth much without the skill of Experiencing.

And yes, I’ve found that Experiencing is a life skill. It takes skill to recognize opportunities when they come, to do things that make us feel good and be better, and to have the will to go for them.

Many times, I see the logical value of taking advantage of valuable free experiences, but somehow in my heart I feel uncomfortable about doing so. My usual default reasons are social stress and transportation, and yet, even without those things being in the way, I find it hard to reach out and do things.

I’m sure there’s some inner work to do here, and I do feel like I’m doing that inner work. It’s slow, but I feel like I’m moving towards the right direction.

Schooled!: Things of Note

Just giving you a peek of what life has been like at work:

Right before classes started, the teachers had a nice little art workshop together. I took home a few cards from a watercolor exercise and used it to cover my work notebook, where I jot down random things. The school hosts many talks, workshops, even yoga classes, mostly for free. This is something very striking that I found about my new place of work. It's a school that values the personal development (and well-being) of the teachers just as much as it does for the students, and that's saying a lot, because I find that it cares much, much more about the kids than most schools I've come across in my life.

Birthdays are a big thing in Kindergarten. Here is the very first birthday wreath I've ever made, for a four-year-old. I try to pattern them according to the celebrant's age.

Hi Mom (one hand set-up ftw \m/ i'm holding the ball in my elbow-pit)

Aside from ~homemakin~, Kindergarten in my school requires a lottt of crafting! 

*palpability of excitement is OVER 9000*

We make toys for open-ended play, decorative crafts, puppets and props for story time, etc! I'm learning the very basics of crochet and knitting for now, but one night I was feeling ambitious and took on a SNOWFLAKE!

wet + stretch technique for taut and alive isnofleks

It was a success, but of course I don't remember how to do it anymore. I can only do it while watching the video. huahuahua. (Which I wanna do soon because CHRISTMAS!)

I also made a very simple (and admittedly very cartoony) but cute monkey for a puppet show we had recently and that was super rewarding:

Ooh-ooh, Ahh-ahh..ng cuute!

I may have always thought of myself as someone who was crafty and creative or whatever, but it's dawned on me often that although I have many creative ideas, I rarely am able to finish actual work, and this job really allows me to practice more, because somehow, being tasked to finish work, or to create output puts less pressure on making the work perfect, because it's less ~personal~, and it just needs to fit certain requirements that are specified. And in turn, being used to making more work also makes even the more personal work easier, because I'm already in the practice of Doing rather than Overthinking. It's really nice.

But aside from finish-able projects, there is also plenty of room for free playing, and not just for the kids! I also find myself playing around a lot more, and getting back in touch with what doing things for fun is like. Often in my adult life, I've found myself stuck in having to make everything I create mean something, or serve a purpose. There wasn't much free energy flowing outward from me, and I feel like it coagulated somehow and corked my energy in, even when I actually needed it. But my job somehow unstuck me from that somewhat! It put the focus out of my head and into my hands. It strengthens what I believe they refer to as my "Will".

None Some of Your Beeswax

Some of free-playing can be very soothing. There's an activity that our main teacher uses to calm the kids down if we have time before Story Time - everyone gets a ball of beeswax and just molds it into whatever. Beeswax, if you don't already know, isn't exactly as soft as play-dough. You have to be both slower and but more deliberate with it. It's done to make the kid's fingers stronger and to sort of herd their energies inwards rather than outwards. It helps them sit down and focus.

ma lidol ocdapus

The toys in the classroom are mostly wood, rope, cloth, and metal. Raaaaaaaaaarely plastic, and little paint. It makes the children's play-world less bright and deafening. The textures are tame and more like nature. And dolls are used to encourage empathy and gentleness.

The kids love tying things together with rope, building structures like houses, shops, and cars. Big ones, with chairs and some wooden skeletal components, often using colorful cloth for walls and roofs (more like pretty canopies). One time we even found them with an island kitchen layout, while one of the girls recreated my story table of The Three Little Pigs, and performed it super well, too! We thought it was reminiscent of our school café!

Early in the mornings, they only play with the "small toys" and during that time, they learn how to share, to borrow, to negotiate with train cars, train tracks, blocks, et cetera (with varying results). I think social manners are so important to establish early on for balanced and confident people (being someone who was super awkward and shy for most of my life), and it's really nice that the school puts that forward. Here is a "car parking building" the kids made next to a train track:

I'm really happy to find myself in a job where I really feel like I'm helping people. And on a more selfish level, a job where I'm not encouraged to put the job before my sanity or health, and where in fact I am encouraged to take care of those things. I remember being told during my interview that I "need to sleep enough for this job"... I came from a call center, so hearing that was as touching as it was confusing for me. They actually care about you (?!!?!?), not just what you can do for them.

I'm putting this picture of our daily fruit box because it's cute. And because I love that they encourage children to love fruit.

The school really feels like a community to me, and I didn't expect it to come to us this way, but that's exactly what Beardy and I wanted to have just a year ago, aside from a place of our own. We wanted to find our own community, with people who were a little more like us. 

This picture is special to me, I made vegan patties, lemonade, and a vegetarian potato salad for a birthday I co-prepped with my co-assistant teacher!! ♥

I'm glad that it's happening to a certain extent, and I just hope it gets even better from here. 

Life Update: Teacher Sophie?!

OH. MY. GOD.

I can't believe a full five months have passed since I was last here! What happened?! *shock emoji*

Well, a couple of things:

• Beardy and I moved out of my family home and into a nice little studio apartment nearby (so I get to go home a lot to see Sansa! haha) and we're loving it here.
• He and I got a job in an awesome school in the area (such a relief not having to commute to Manila for work!) And he still has his position from last year, so he currently teaches in two schools on alternate week days, while I have a full time job as a PRESCHOOL TEACHER!!!

*CUE CONFETTI*

I finally get to check that one off of my list of "dream jobs" :) The kids call me Teacher Sofie (Sofia is one of my birth names, while the nickname I've gone by since I was a baby actually isn't? Just a name my mom really liked), and often it's spelled with a "ph" by my colleagues, which I oddly prefer now. The kids can't really tell because they aren't at the age yet where they're taught to spell. Because it's a progressive school! A wonderful progressive school that prioritises the wellbeing and freedom of the younglings over ticking off checklists and getting ahead in terms of academics. Which sounded great to me.. and it is!!!

Anyway, I have a lot of good things to say about the school and I will in a seperate post, probably. For now, I just want to do a little update about things that happened in the past months while I've been gone:

We settled in! Moved our stuff in, bought a pan and a pot, color coordinated a lot (mostly green and blue for everything with minimal additions of red/purple!) and arranged stuff the best way we can in our tiny home. I love calling it tiny home, especially cos I recently started watching a lot of minimalism/minimal living type of videos around the time we moved. We aren't exactly living in a trailer in a forest with minimal electricity; in fact I think we're living quite comfily since we have a common pool outside and we use a/c, but it helped me a lot in acquiring less stuff, owning more mindfully, and detaching from my possessions.

This isn't our house, just the view out our window. It's a tiny room but with a BIG VIEW and that's a nice metaphor about our life right now I guess haha.

But that doesn't mean though that I live in a space that's dull! I still like creating small spaces of interest in the room. But the things I use are usually cheap, recycled, and/or multipurpose. This noteboard on the fridge came from the bottom of a cake box. Can you see the faces Beardy drew on the dino magnets? Hehehehe

Beardy's 26th Birthday!! We had a simple yet special one since it's our first on our own. Just a nice home-cooked meal (greek chicken and veg, tzatziki, tapenade, pan fried pita bread -all from scratch!-, and fresh Moroccan mint tea!) and his favorite Purple Oven brownies :)

Paradores Del Castillo in Taal has such an adorable turquoise/aqua motif!!!

Ihaw Boodle meal at Don Juan Boodle House

Last month, Beardy's family visited us again!!! But this time, it was for two whole weeks!!! It was super nice, even though Beardy and I still had to go to work. We did get to go away for a whole weekend together, it was to Taal and Anilao, Batangas. The weather did not let up, but neither did our spirits! We made up for the bad weather and power outages with boardgames and whatnot. It was such a nice thing to be with them so often, and they were so game for everything! We often would squish ourselves inside a single tricycle to go out for dinner haha. I miss them already.

Eagle Point. We didn't get to swim in the ocean though, just the pool. But we stared at it a lot. The waves were crazy but beautiful haha.

 We also had a nice lunch at Angelfields with my family one day and that was also nice because we were all complete and it's such a beautiful place!

I sadly only managed to take a picture of the tarragon tea. haha! But isn't it pretty? I had soup and a sandwich.

Edit: I forgot to add three events!!!:

1. Beardy and I also had our 70th monthsary! Isn't it crazy how fast time flies? We had dinner at Ziggurat. Cos it's our fave, and it's just downstairs.

(Fun fact: Ziggurat follows us around. When we stayed in makati for 10 days, we were looking for a good restaurant nearby and found out that the #1 Tripadvisor restaurant was just a short walk away from the AirBnb we booked. Then when we moved in this apartment, we noticed there was one downstairs! Whuuut. Too lucky.)

2. My aunt had her 60th bday this month! And our family had a bowling tournament. It was really fun, we don't usually actually do things for parties other than eat, drink and sit around so that was a really nice change. Hope we do more fun stuff from now on! ♥

Some pics from my tita Del's FB:

3. Also, our old neighbors/childhood friends from Alabang came by our house!! It's been YEARS since we were last together! The kuyas of the group live in Vegas now and they visited because their grandma (who we all call Nanay) passed away.

This was us in 1992:

And 24 whole years later!!!!:

Lastly, but very important!!!! Carmen and Aizel FIIIINALLY got to see our new place! Pia still hasn't due to BPO scheduling (huhu) but it was so cool to have them over. We had rumcokes and chats up on the roof while families flew kites, enjoyed the view, and I cooked them dinner! We had a bit of a giggle about how adult it seemed to host a dinner for your friends at your own place. It felt really cool but also made us feel really old haha! We all have new jobs right now and it just felt like a nice stopover before starting a looong road trip in our lives. They're both in Makati but I really hope we get to do it again really soon. With Pia.

So that's more or less my life right now. Just trying to make it work. The first few months have been very draining energy-wise and thus I didn't get to keep up with Youtube and this blog, but as I get more of a hang of my new job I imagine to be able to juggle it with my other interests on the side! Soon I'll be practicing guitar again, I'll certainly be on here more, and who knows, maybe I'll get to upload videos on Youtube again. I DON'T KNOW!! Isn't that great!! The world is so big and full of possibilities.

Post-Romantic Love Conquest: The Dreamiest Life

Valentine's Day amiright?? All the love-themed memeing has got me thinking and reflecting about love in my own life, and what my love "conquest" is going to be now that I'm A-OK in the romantic love aspect.

A lot of us grow up thinking that we are to search life looking for that other person to complete us, and V-day is supposedly about that kind of love. Recently though, I find that people are more sensible about it being a commercial holiday and have decided to own it instead and put their own spin: it's morphed to become a holiday that's about just love itself, and we express it to people who are important to us, not necessarily just our lovers or crushes. Our friends, parents, siblings, even our pets! Personally, I've been spending the past Valentine's Days with either my friends or my family. And now that Emmy and I are actually together on Valentine's Day for the first time?...

 We both spent it with my family. Haha!



I got to try Umenoya for the first time - it's located in the Microtel by Windham hotel that Emmy's family stayed in two Christmasses ago (woah! I almost said "last Christmas", how fast time flies!) Only my mom has tried it before in my family.

I had a Nigiri set meal as usual, and I find this place to be REALLY GOOD. The fish was fresh. The Uni was clean on the palette and service was nice. My mom opted for a private seating room - the kind where you can put your feet down into the floor - not sure what the terminology is! It has interesting decor, but it's muted compared to Ryuma, which is more kitsch. It was more relaxing and intimate. And the prices are lower, at least for the meal I got.

Emmy and I got a picture taken at the entrance - this was where we dropped his family off after New Year's Eve - it was very bittersweet for me. 

The day after Valentine's, we remembered that we had downloaded Sense and Sensibility in January so that it could be our special V-day movie. We figured it was never too late, and since our Mondays are free for now we had a nice Film/Show watching day complete with Mcdo and the long-awaited V-day Bob's Burgers episode.

Today though, I decided to openly ponder, through writing, about my current love conquest. And that is the search for my own ideal life. I want to take a few moments to fangirl over not my dream boy or girl, but my dream life... Aaaaaah.

And because most of pondering occurs in lists, let me list down the aspects of this dream life in bullet points!

• I want a creative life - It seems like it should be obvious that a creative person automatically will have a creative life, but as I grow older it takes more effort to seek creative activities actively. I want to spend more time deliberately painting, drawing, crafting, generally working with my eyes and hands, alone or with friends! My best friends and I have been discussing activities that can make this happen in a communal kinda way, because everything good is better when shared.
• I want to get back with music, and to stay together with it - because it's been hard for me to write songs lately, I've stepped back from singing and playing at all, and that's super strange! Especially since, like I told Emmy a few weeks ago, music used to be what I identified with when I was younger. When I self-identified, I would say "I'm a singer and a songwriter". And for years now, that hasn't been true, and it feels very bizarre and surreal how far away I feel from that person now. I know people change, and if I've naturally moved on as a person to something else then I'd be fine with that, but recently I've been itching to come back to that. It's not gone from me. It's still inside, wanting to come out. I just haven't taken the chance to have a real go at it again.
• I want a lifestyle change!!! - I want to take charge of my daily habits even more.

1. I want to wake up earlier and sleep more soundly, 
2. I want to eat less meat and dairy, and more whole foods, and to drink more water 
3. I want to move moderately and regularly, and form fitness habits that work for my lifestyle (I don't like pushing too hard, I don't want to have to go somewhere else to do it, I like dancing)
4.  I want to use my time more actively rather than passively. Less browsing, more editing videos, writing content, practicing my skills in those areas, and in art and music! And French.
5. I want to be more mindful of my belongings and have less unaccounted-for stuff in my place.
6. I want to start saving for my future and my creative projects. I'm currently in the process of finding a job that suits me, and I gave myself an ultimatum that if I don't find anything else, I will do what I used to do: be a call center agent! Scary! But I found a place that seems less stressful, and again that's just my option for when I don't find anything more suitable.

I've been going towards the right direction but very slowly, and it's a forward-and-back-again kind of process. But once Emmy and I move into our own place, I'm looking forward to really dive into it face-first! That being said, even now that we're still living in my room all of the time, I can still do a few of these changes:

1. Using my free time more purposefully. I'm still struggling at this bigtime, as can be seen through my very sparse posting habits here and on YouTube, but I'm sure I'll get a hang of it, I just have to keep at it everyday. 
2. I'm going to have a major decluttering session! I'm going to apply the KonMari Method (with alterations) to the things in my room, so that when I move into a new space, I will feel like a NEW WOMAN. whoo. It will also help me worry less about the attic caving in from the weight in my room. Haha.
3. Less-intense diet changes. We have trouble keeping our ideal diets when we live with other people, and end up eating McDonald's a lot! But even though we can't make our own food, I've kept on pulling my intake into the reasonable side, which was greatly helped by my #eatmindfully project last year. To be honest, I've been eating a little more, but it's still under control B-) And we still keep our owl water cups handy all the time!
4. Very easy exercise! A little goes a really long way for me. Just 12 reps of weighed squatting leaves me sore for a couple of days! Then I can go again. And I really feel improvements right away. It's pretty nice.
5. Keep learning about how to make things happen. I know I say this all the time, but Gretchen Rubin books are so effective and helpful to me. I love that she takes into account everyone's idiosyncrasies and real data, statistics, and sprinkles personal accounts and accounts of real people in the mix. It's just... So easy to understand and doesn't ring my "THIS IS BS" alarms. Right now I'm reading Better Than Before, which I was thinking about preordering on her website, thinking it might take a while to get here, but suddenly found on a shelf in the bookstore with the minimalistic original cover that I really like!!! Anyway, it's teaching me how to prioritize and effectively attempt change, so that's exciting because I can really use the guidance.

So yeah! A creative, functional, healthy life! So dreamy!!! I hope I make it werqq this year!

Spiralling into inaction thru spiralling into chronic imagination

ALRIGHT. Since I've been finding it hard to sit my butt down and write a proper post and consequently forgot to update this blog about my channel's first vlog (?!?!?!?!?) Let me attempt to gather myself today and do just that.

There. now that's that out of the way...

I have big plans for this year. I'm attempting to veer closer to the edge of my comfort zone (and maybe even... step on the line??? possibly.. step... OUT? of it???! even??) and even though I saw January come and go without much of my plans really working, I'm still daring, still trying, still figuring out what works for me and how I can trick myself into making things happen because I have the worst attention span.

I feel like I have short term memory a lot. It's hard to see my whole life in one picture in my brain, it's always in bits and pieces and I lose touch of what I need to accomplish a lot because of this. 

It seems that the more plans i have in place, the less I get done! Perhaps I can use the fact that we have a dying dog and a sick dog as an excuse, but I spend far too much time playing Neko Atsume and watching YouTube to even buy that.

No, there is no excuse. The explanation though? I had a fuzzy brain for days and have sort of settled into the type of lifestyle that it causes. I can't latch on (focus my attention) to creative activities, except when it's in an erratic and impulsive way instead of an organized scheduled one.

So, things I can't do at the moment:

1. edit things
2. focus on tedious attention-requiring tasks (but some of them that can fall into this category can help if i do them impusively! see below)
3. write in a calculated manner
4. mentally connect ideas from different days into working tasks without INTENSE EFFORT
5. in the same manner, coming back to a task that takes time again and again with breaks in between is really hard ~ once i do something else, i am repelled by coming back to what i need to finish.
6. COME BACK TO MY PLANS AND DO THEM?!

But! things I #1 can do / #2 am doing / #3 should do more of:

1. deep cleaning, any cleaning, organizing, chores (they clear my head and help me get back to doing meaningful things)
2. impulsive writing (what i'm doing right now!)
3. imaginative activities, in short!! bursts!!! (also what i'm trying right now)
4. physical tasks (if i am caffeinated enough and have an electric fan facing me to cool me off cos it feels like i'm a hamster and am constantly shaking slightly and creating heat and have sweaty pits)
5. impulsively singing and turning my life into a musical because it releases tension i get from trying to focus (only counts as a #1&2 this is useless and annoying but i'm turning into Linda Belcher AAALRRIIIIIGHT)
6. DEEP TALKS AND LIKE THINKING ABOUT WHAT I WANNA DO AND STUFF (also writing things in parentheses too much)

So since I have a video series lined up about PURGING MY THINGS anyway i might just shoot the timelapse parts where i show some of the action happening while I'm in this neurotic state. And then I'll do the rest when I'm back in fighting form. Also I'm going to keep "scribing" with my journal and planners to help ground me and remind me of things I need to do. Even though it takes so much effort to focus on that too!

Also yesterday I had a very fruitful date with my Frond Carmen in which we brainstormed about projects of a personal and collaborative and speculative nature. I'm excited about those, but I need to plot them properly in my planners! I HOPE I FIND THE FOCUS TO DO SO

So yeah. I'm just going to work with what I have right now, because it's the best thing to do given the circumstances. I can't keep waiting for the composed, coherent, functional me to surface before I make anything because it's starting to be clear that if I do that, I won't be showing the whole picture. And the point of all this documenting and reflecting that I'm doing with my blogging and vlogging projects is to be honest with myself, and to whoever tunes in, so that I can paint an honest picture of struggles that people like me face everyday, and how I make things work, when I do. I don't want to give people who might need whatever help or insight i can offer the impression that anything is effortless, or a straight line going up, when you climb uphill these things.

And because there's a severe lack of visuals in this here blog post let me impulsively reward you with a taste of my very raw Photoshopping skills. With a takoyaki border. It's what we ate while discussing things yesterday. Hahaha.

 God it was so good.

Year's End, Wit's End, Bell End.

Ah, here it is. The year's end. Two things happen at this time, and as much as they contradict each other, they always come in tandem:

1. People start giving up on things they resolved to do this year
2. People start making new resolutions for the next year

As for me, I've tried enough times to know well enough that the typical kind of New Year resolution making is just not a thing that works for me, but I still use the pumped-up feeling that new years give me psychologically to push myself to dust myself off and try again.

*chiki-chiki-whow*

But I don't limit myself to just the start of the year. At the rate in which I stumble in my life, that simply would be unsustainable and I'd become a pile of self-loathing mudslosh. No, in fact, I'm doing another Aaliyah right now as I write this, because after a few weeks of hitting my post goals, one night of merriment has thrown me off! Yes, I've been doing well, posting once every two days to make up for the lull in November which was already a re-do of a failed re-do in the first place, but on the weekend it all went to shit.

I love my family though. They are a trip.

Here is what happened. We had a family gathering set for Saturday, and instead of just forgetting my responsibilities, I decided to plan ahead and be ready to make a post whilst away. At first I was even going to bring my laptop but at the last minute I decided pakdatshet and decided to do all my blogging on my phone, since I use it for my #EatMindfully posts anyway. And then I left my phone at home! I managed to salvage my food post by using Beardy's phone and posting it the next day, but by the time I was home and needing to make a quick post the alcohol in my system from the night before had already made me a sad, tired, loopy mess and I just wasn't feeling it. Hard drinking and I are not very good friends and we have not met for a while so I was pretty weak. I like beer and wine but I rarely drink for the sake of being drunk, which is the type usually done in Filipino gatherings. Unfortunately, the alcohol is usually really strong and not very tasty, and it makes me feel icky the next day. So I missed my personal deadline, and that in turn made it a bit emotionally daunting to try a day later. I'm really the easiest person to discourage at times.

But! Here I am. After a pep-talk with Emmy I decided to just talk about my process honestly instead of avoiding writing at all because of how shitty I feel. Feel too shitty to write something good? Write about feeling shitty instead to move on, then go back to normal programming. Yas. Good. So where was I ~

Ah yes, I'd like to discuss my "why". Why do I bother trying? What makes me feel like I should go on? It's not like people rely on my posts and can't go on without them. In fact, only a handful of people even see them.

Well, it's a matter of principle at this point. I'm making a conscious decision to do what fulfills me as a person. Writing and creating content is something that I'm truly passionate about, but I never gave it a real shot, never really stuck to it. I was too afraid to fail on my own. But now I feel like I have nothing to lose. Also, I want to come at the end of the 90 days and be able to tell myself that I started something, and I finished it! I've always pegged myself as someone who doesn't finish things she's started, and I want that to change. And how do I change that belief? By proving to myself that I can finish what I start. I need so much more than ever to trust and believe in myself. So that I could exert myself more creatively and be less defensive in my actions. I NEED SELF-CONFIDENCE!!!

Me on Christmas trying to make this work without losing my Christmas cheer
or rather my ..Christmas chill

So yeah, even though it might have sounded like I don't believe in resolutions (I do! - It just depends from person to person and how realistically you plan your actions), I actually think it's something that shows an admirable thing about being human - we always have hope. There is nothing wrong with having a healthy dose of it every now and then.

HELP ME I am TOO OLD.

Hello. I'm a twenty-five year old, able-bodied female person who has always felt too old.
Not old, I'm not old, I know I'm still in the young end of the human age spectrum, but I feel too old for where I am in my life right now:

I'm a person who lives at home, is technically unemployed, not famous, not rich, no patents, no published work, nothing.

It's been easy to tell myself "You just have to get a job, any job, be 'of use to.. whoever, society? sure' and you'll feel good." for most of my adult life; heck, it's been easy for most people who find out about my situation to tell me that. But see, I did work for a while, and I didn't feel like I was of use to anyone, I felt like my purpose in both the jobs I had was lubrication in human form, just letting the gears of the machine work smoother, not really making any changes, just making things easier for "the man", totally out of touch with what that man is even trying to make happen. Is he trying to nuke North Korea? Is he trying to bulldoze more homeless shelters for Trump? Realistically, he's just another guy who has a lot of money, or a bunch of guys who have a lot of money- trying to keep himself from making less money. I've lost myself there. Just --Whatever it was, I was keeping the gears from rusting and grinding.

So I saved money from both jobs, and up to this point, I've been trying to figure out what it is that could actually make me of use to society -that is, cause change in a way that I actually want to be responsible for.

Some of this has been searching for jobs that are more engaging (yes, I'm still on the lookout for that possibility), some of it has been thinking of business ideas because I ultimately want to work for myself, some of it has been trying to figure out what skills I need to gain in order to get to a place of doing what I want to do, and admittedly, a lot of it had just been living life normally as a stay-at-home person - exploring things online, entertaining and educating myself, cleaning, cooking, trying not to freak about about how slow things are progressing.

In all of these, an important and kind of funny thing I realised is how important it is to, and forgive me for how cheesy this sounds, actually know and accept yourself  before coming into your own and presenting your ideas to the world. I realised how much I have been censoring myself and trying to "prune" myself before letting myself grow to my full potential, and how limiting that has become to me.

I decided to write this now to come clean about all of my insecurities - to lay it all out there - to give context for the existence of this blog and to let you know that there is a human behind all of these. An incredibly, disastrously flawed one. And so, this won't be written like an article like my recent posts. This will just be me baring myself to you, to humanise this corner of space that I have made for myself here in the vast interspacewebs.

First, the thing in the title that was definitely not meant to mislead you - I am insecure about my age relative to where I am in life. Whenever I see people who have done more by now and are younger than me (and there are many of them - I started feeling this way at FOURTEEN for godssake) I always manage to wonder if it's too late to start anything by now and I should just find a desk job and not look left and right and try to forget about all of my old passions. 

Today though, I found out that Bunny Meyers from YouTube (grav3yardgirl) started vlogging at 25 - MY AGE! In her 5-year YouTube anniversary video, she said she was a "late bloomer" and my bitter brain was like "She probably meant starting at 21 or something and you're already four years down the road from there, hun" But I googled her age, and nope. Born in 1985. I know how silly the next part is going to seem, I know how crazy I sound, but I actually, literally TEARED UP from relief. It felt like once again my existence has been validated by this lady - the first time was when I started watching her and saw how delightfully weird she was and I felt quite okay about myself and started letting myself be myself more. Yes I just said myself three times, Beardy. Four times now. Sorry. Love you, *kiss*

Every time I fail to convince myself that age is just a number from now on, I'm going to tell myself that I've been half-assing my whole life, so when it comes to self-actualisation, my real age is only twelve and a half. So I could just shut up about being too old, and get immersed in things as openly as I did when I was 12 and just starting to learn how to play guitar.

I was having a good skin day the other day so. *feelin myself*

Second, I fear that I'm too out of touch with what used to be my natural talents - and yes this is sort of still the first point, because it has to do with my age and how I didn't form the right habits in my formative years when it comes to harnessing my skills and whatnot, but it deserves its own spot because it's just HORRIBLE. I am so afraid of not being able to write songs anymore, not being able to learn new software that would allow me to digitally draw again. Not being able to dance well anymore because of my hip problem. So many fears! But recently (and yes, all of the points here are going to come with reassurances because this blog is about being encouraging to oneself and others, after all) I've been successfully maintaining two habits- eating moderately and cleaning regularly - for a long time now, so I have some ammo against my own brain telling me I can't create any new habits~!!! >.< Shuddup brain. You know nothin. Or.. enough. You know enough, so stop doubting yourself, shh.

Third, I don't know if I'm likeable enough. To be listened to, for my opinions to be valued, to simply get enough hits online when I publish my content! Okay, maybe that last one is more about marketing knowledge, but you get the point. And this is the bottom line to many smaller insecurities that I could have considered as separate: my looks, my tone, how dumb I come across... I'm putting them all here because essentially they are just about being received positively after I put myself out there. The only reassurance I have for this point is the hunch I have that it simply does not matter. That's one good thing about growing older, I guess. Things become less and less about what people think about me, but rather my experience of life. I just want to give this a shot man, and if it fails, if nobody ends up reading anything I write, then I'd know for sure that it just wasn't there for me. I'd prefer not having to live my life wondering.

So there it is. Right now, I'm still figuring myself out, yes, but at the same time, I've finally come to the realisation that this is just simply not meant to end! I'm never going to come to a point where I've figured myself out, where it's done, a thing of the past. I'm one of those things that Elizabeth Gilbert calls "hummingbirds".. People who live through life going from one thing to another. My life simply is about figuring things out. This blog is where I document myself figuring things out too, and sharing things along the way. Nothing is final and unchangeable here. I know that things I feel today will evolve, and maybe I'll regret many things I say from now, much like I regret many things I said when I was younger. That's just how life is. And I'm far too old to keep resisting. ;)