Black Cat Blue Sea Award #3

I’ve lost count of  the awards I’ve gotten nominated for. Ooops. Ah well, there’s a whole folder dedicated for them at the bottom of the page! 🙂

This nomination came in from:

Sober Girl who I really feel like is named Lindsey, or is that someone else? I keep mixing up people lately D:

But anywho, the lovely Sober Girl nominated me so I shall now be doing this award too! 🙂 Before I forget, especially.

From Google!

My three questions are:

1. What song currently describes your life?

Rachel Platten’s – Lonely Planet. Because it is AWESOME. And I love that lyric “I wanna know your name, wanna feel your joy, wanna feel your pain” and I think it describes me well right now.

 

1. What motivates you to blog?

I’m realllllly starting to feel that recovery is a lifestyle, so making it my lifestyle is a great way to keep on blogging. Also, it keeps me busy!! I really need that in my life, too. I cannot imagine what I would have done this summer if I didn’t have this blog (other than getting a job, which would have been helpful) though I am planning on getting some work while in school in the fall semester. 🙂 So yeah, just having a place to put my recovery thoughts is great and getting to interact with like-minded people is super swell as well. 🙂

1. What is one goal you have for this year?

One of my new year’s resolutions actually was to stay alive, so I did that one pretty damn well. Ahaha, and another was to read 10 books, which I’ve read 12 so far, so that’s snazzy!! Although one was a graphic novel, but I’ve counted it anyways. I have PLENTY more books to read before the end of the year too, so I may even double up the score!!

BONUS QUESTION:

Because I liked one of the one’s Sober Girl answered :3

1. What would your dream partner be like?

She’d definitely be a chick, for starters. And because this is a dream partner we’re talking about, I’ll make up some attributes, but also ones that could apply to a legit person if she ever stumbles across me. So, in my dream she’d be a black girl and she’d be supportive and compassionate. She’d like some of the things I like, maybe like reading and art, yet she’d also like different things, so that I could learn from her and be opened up to a whole other world. She’d be sweet and beautiful and I’d love her whether she was having her best day or her worst, because that’s what love is all about. And we’d be there for each other and live in our fancy dandy Recovery Home and everything would go blissfully–just imagine us drifting away in a hot air balloon now. *dreamy sigh* That’d be great.

Honestly though, some of those attributes are on target, if I do some value searching now for a partner. I have more journaling to do on the matter, though. But, a girl can dream, right? 😉

 

Okay, for the three questions I’ll ask another!

1. What is a life metaphor or quote that gets you through your darkest days?
2. What do you value in a partner?
3. Do you own any adult coloring books?

ANNNND I nominate these 3 buddies:

• ….nah, I’m lazy again. I feel like I keep nominating the same peeps….sooooo if you are NEW to WP, you are NOMINATED by ME! Happy blogging 😉

 

Stay safe, peeps. ❤ ❤ ❤

And find love where you can! *sniffles* 😉

Blogger Recognition Award

B-b-b-b-blogger recognition, woot woot!!

So, I was nominated for this award by TWO LOVELY people:

1. Lottie at Run Rabbit Run
2. Athina at Courage Coaching

BOTH of these people are remarkably awesome and fantastic. Athina, I’ve only just met you from your generous nomination, however your blog is AWESOME and I LOVE the work you’re doing for the community and hope you get all the love and recognition from followers that you deserve!! ❤

And Lottie is someone special to my heart who is the greatest woman out there, a survivor lad and courageous and getting ready to share her story with the world–via her blog and her book! I’ll definitely be wanting to read a copy when it comes out, love! ❤ Keep on writing!! ❤

So let’s get this started! PARTY TIMEEEE!

Image from Google!

Le Rules:

Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
Write a post to show your award.

Attach the award to the post.

Give a brief story on how your blog started.

Give a piece of advice or two to new bloggers.

Select 15 other blogs you want to give the award to.

Comment on each blog and let them know you nominated them.

So, 15 bloggers is a LOT and I’m not gonna do 30, I mean, if I were up on that LEVEL I would but I’m not there yet, but I will do…hmm, 4 or 5!

How the blog started:

I started this blog when I was angrily searching for jobs during finals week of the spring 2016 semester. I wasn’t finding much of mental health related ones that I could actually do without a bachelor’s degree, and so I started looking at writing jobs and found one site that had a long requirement for sending in a submission and even more frustrated I decided all of a sudden, right then and there, to create THIS blog. I used the name from a same named group I have on my deviantART account, Recovery-to-Wellness.

How the blog is maintained:

Adding this one for the double factor of nomination. I maintain this blog through book reviews, teachable moments, daily prompts, artwork (as well as gift art), life updates, mental health awareness, recovery, positive coping strategies, Mass Media articles, and lots more.

Some days I get more time to post a lot, other times I am doing either so well or so shit that I just don’t get to post! I prefer to be a bit more on the quiet side when it comes to venting on here, although I’ve done it sometimes with varying results. Venting, with the exception of in person, isn’t helpful for me, and can even be harmful. And that’s not entirely the atmosphere that connects with Recovery to Wellness. It’s a balance, for sure, but I’ll always be honest with you guys–once I’m being honest with myself. So you’ll see the good and the difficult, and I’ll do my best to maintain positivity and optimism so we can both have faith that wellness is achievable and recovery is possible. 🙂

Plus, I truly do believe that I have a story worth telling and some great resources worth spreading online. So there’s that. 😉

My Tips for New Bloggers:

1. Browse through the tags. That’s how I started finding other blogs and posts that were relevant to what I wanted to learn about and follow, and you can find some great people through this. As well as having other people find you through your own use of tags!
2. Have fun with your blog’s design. I know that while the awesome purple hydrangeas are a fitting backdrop to this blog, as of right now, I also know I’ve gotten used to it and that it can be hard to read the texts in some places (and more so on some devices besides a laptop), however, I’ve grown comfortable with it and it’s a bit of my style to have text harder to read than most. Also, while I can be bold with my thoughts, I’m not sure I’m ready yet for being BOLD and VISIBLE with all my words centered and as the main focus. If that makes sense? So, my advice, layout how you want to layout based on your comfortability level and what works for you at this point in time.
3. Keep in mind your values as a person and your message as a blogger. You may start out blogging with X theme, and discover other themes or topics you want to include. Be open to your Muse and see where it takes you.
4. I saw this in another post, and I do agree, write an ‘About Me’ section and utilize a ‘contact’ page. When I go to a new blogger I go pretty quickly to the about them section to get a gist of who they are and what they blog about and determine if I’m interested in following them. And for the contact page, personally I like the idea of being able to contact them directly, in case, for instance, we live in the same area and could potentially meet up! 😀

Speaking of, I remembered I have another award to do, too!!

 

Any who, those are my tips and more about me! 🙂 I have some fancy DESK photos and other fanciful things to update you guys on soon. I’ll have to out of my blogging shell soon to have dinner with uncles and aunts. My, oh my.

Here are my nominees:

1, Orchid’s View

2, Blooming Lily

3, Sober girl

4, Our Crappy Demons

5, Anonymous

 

Stay safe, peeps! ❤ ❤ ❤

Slowly Expanding + Accepting

Daily Prompt ~!~ Slowly

So, I’ve been rather quiet the past few days, my apologies firstly for that! I’ve been doing some exploration on the Interwebs about a topic I’d like to discuss in full today.

Before I do, though, I’d like to say that I am doing pretty well, all things considered. I had another IOOV presentation this week, moved around my therapy appointment, saw my psychiatrist yesterday, and am still waiting on an email from my professor about our practice problems/review material so I can get off my ass and work on that! I have LOADS of reading to do for fun and am hoping to get started on that soon after this post launches. ALSO, I went by the library yesterday and got out like 8 MORE books.:D ALL OF THE READING! I will get into that and some other topics, later on though.

 

Let’s jump into what this post is all about.

First:

I LOVE color and I LOVE rainbows. I can imagine we’ve already established that about me so far. 😉

Second:

This bracelet can have many meanings. Living life to live life, rainbow colors and FUN because I like them and my soul is the color of a sparkling rainbow (with a bright white light that causes traffic accidents worldwide ;)), the Butterfly Project (a project aimed at helping people stay clean from self-harm), and PRIDE. All of that LGBTQA+ (asterisk? I’m still learning) pride stuff!! 🙂

Third:

I’ve been thinking about this subject for the majority of 2016. After some slow, larger, and growing exploration, I think I can say that I identify as bisexual.

I know that I’m attracted to men, that part is a given and is easy.

However, I also think I’m gradually becoming attracted to women, too. Which is really just great because it expands my horizons–more people to love, really! 🙂

Now, let’s be honest, I’m still a virgin. My sexual education is about 5% out of 100%. I don’t even know how to masturbate. Annnd, I’m still reluctant to learn about it too. I’d rather just not, you know?

I don’t know how “into” sex I’d be, but for now, I’m looking for and am open to a dating relationship, which is big for me because the last time I was in a romantic relationship was six YEARS ago. When I say I’m not all that into sex, the idea of it (at least with a man) just makes me gag. *shudders* eugh, just, no. With a woman, well, I’m not sure how it all works yet, either, (haven’t explored the research/information about that) but it’s not the first thing I’d want to check off the list, if you get what I mean.

 

Part of this understanding of myself requires me to recognize how much I’d like to make out with a girl like RIGHT AWAY. And how that’s a shitty reason to get into a relationship and sigh, just not focusing too much on that because it makes me a bit depressed which contributes to the OCD which is just not a load of fun for me.

But when I say gradually attracted to women, I mean I’m appreciating from afar.

I don’t know what it is, or if this is part of the process, but I can really picture myself with a woman. In a dating relationship way. Maybe it’s some of the youtube videos I’ve been watching and learning about on the subject, or the lesbian books I want to read (heteronormative romance novels are off-putting to me now, each time I reach for a romance book and hear about the girl portion of the relationship I expect another girl to be involved but it’s often a male and my interest just disappears. I’m not much of a romance reader anyhow, I like thrillers, psychological ones, supernatural stuff, murders, etc.) or the images of chicks making out but I can really, really picture myself with someone of the same gender as me now.

And, honestly? It’s exciting. It makes me smile. I really, genuinely, wish to explore this aspect of myself.

Now, I don’t think I’m just bi-curious, as more of that definition coincides with the sexual experience, which again, I’m not interested in.

I think another contributing factor is me just meeting more married lesbians in the world. And, I’ve had thoughts and fantasies and girl crushes before in my life, I just suppressed it because I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship with ANYone.

Maybe I’m still not. I don’t know what I’d value in another person yet or how it would all work out, and I know I’m EAGER to jump into a relationship and trying to balance that out is a bit of a bitch so far, but I’m hoping I can swim along until the fall semester, where I can start attending some LGBTQA+ meetings and such. I may try to check out a gay bar with some friends up in the city, too, and I have a couple of friends who swing that way that I can ask advice on and such.

 

Basically, I’m slowly and gradually getting used to this idea that I’m bisexual. I’ve been coming out in parts with my Mom, who doesn’t generally support the idea (it’s a little too much for her right now–part of that might be bad timing with the funeral coming up tomorrow for my uncle) little by little. I’m confident that it’ll just take her time to get used to. She did say this morning she wouldn’t support me being in a relationship with a female while still living here, but, I’m not going to take that too seriously. I want to be open to whatever happens. I mentioned it as well to my Dad today, and he didn’t say much on the subject. (My Dad is worse than my Mom on the subject, based on what he says about other people in the LGBTQA+ community)

But, I say fuck it. Love is love, bruhs. Either they’ll accept me over time for it, or they won’t. *shrugs* I can’t control that. And I’m not going to let it limit me on who I can love. Especially if it’s with a good gal out there, she’s worth it. 🙂 ❤

 

Also, the whole lesbian novel genre, I actually was going to write about it a few weeks ago with a daily prompt, but I didn’t like how it was going, so I deleted it and then wrote that poem about the bisexual woman sitting on a ledge instead. That was a little bit of a coming out nudge on WP.

And before THAT, back in June, I wanted to do a daily prompt about fences, because I love fences and I’m ON THE FENCE about my sexuality. Get it? Even the ledge works with it, too. 😀

I’ve been dropping subtle hints all over the place! Lmao.

 

Any who, I hope you guys can support me as I explore this blooming side of myself. However, if you can’t, well, you can’t please everyone now, can you? It reminds me of a cognitive distortion reply: “People won’t always approve of me, and that’s OKAY”. ‘Cause, fuck ’em, right? 😉

That’s all for this fancy dandy post! 🙂 Hope you guys have a fabulously colorful day!

 

Stay safe!! ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤