To Do List & Future Goals

Hey everyone!!

I think I’m working back into a new system, finally! 🙂 So one of the things I want to do this late evening is make myself a to do list (something for the week). So, here we go!

(I legitimately JUST created these two new thumbs today! They’re super gorgeous (I used the templates just screwed with the colors) from Canva! Also, I JUST recognized that they’re a bit larger than the other thumbs, so I’ll work with my other ones too to see if I can use these designs in the smaller version (it’s weird, there’s like a 7 x 5in one and a 14.8 x 10 cm one. I never noticed the difference until just now! Anywho)

• Work on a new article tentatively titled Maintaining Wellness
• Prepare for my campus IOOV presentation (song lyrics and notes) on Th 11/30
• Begin writing in my new mermaid journal with song lyrics (see above)
• Write more fanfiction (Distorted and Disordered, A Little Unsteady, etc.)
• Prepare my friend Diary’s first Recovery 101 mail package
• Send my friend Diary’s card (tomorrow–possibly using the mail office ’cause I put stickers on the card and I think it MIGHT be a little heavier than normal and I’d rather just get it done all at once than have it come back in the mail with problems. See parents about this to figure out if this is necessary or not.)
• Send some university emails about future classes (internship)
• Return to typing up pre-written articles
• Edit old videos and upload them to Youtube
• Clean/Reorganize/Redecorate my room

 

Now a list of current goals I have — featuring the second NEW THUMB!

• Consider spending a couple hours (~6pm) of the evening at the local library one day this week
• Attend my facial around 2pm on Tuesday
• Print out Amazon rental information to mail back rental books on Tuesday (print on Monday)
• Prepare for a daily blog challenge for the month of December
• Prepare for and figure out a good vlogging challenge for the month of December (twice or three times a week, something do-able)
• Continue filling in my planner
• Attend more yoga classes
• Create 5 new artworks (creative writing (fanfic/articles), coloring, painting, watercolor, bracelets, scrapbooking, photography, filming) this week
• Work on 1/4 of a book review
• Read for pleasure
• Take a Friday bubble bath 🙂
• Review Diary’s package things (i.e. read through the literature for my own purposes and because we’ll be sending certain things to Diary)

 

I……think that’s about it!!

This evening heading towards yoga I was thinking about how… odd the world is. All the things there are to experience in the world–like all the different flavor options at Friendly’s (where we ate dinner) in so many different combinations and the accomplishment that would be to obtain. The way the world works and the languages and cultures and differences AND similarities that all exist around us. It’s…complicated and rather perplexing. How we form our words and worlds and the way we edit out certain troubles or situations, even conversations.

It just made me think.

I think I will be spending some more time on deviantART again too. I think it’d be nice. I got to get better at all this management stuff, hehehe.

And only one way to do that: experience it! 🙂

I’m so glad I’m jumping back into blogging. It felt…like the best and quickest way to sort through my thoughts, and I’m so happy that that flow is back again! 😀 I can’t wait to start daily blogging again 🙂 This is a new goal that I just thought of, perhaps even TODAY. YAY!

So, welcome back or hello if you’re new. I hope you enjoyed this post!

I want to go make more thumbs. 🙂

Love you, peeps.

❤ ❤ ❤

PS I just added the journaling thumb and ohmygoooood I LOVE how more organized and structured it makes the post. TO CREATE MORE NEW THUMBS IT IS. I just LOVE it. 😀 😀 😀

PPS I wonder if I should create a folder just dedicated to daily blogging? Hmmm….

PPPS I listened to Attention by Charlie Puth during this and it was a PERFECT neutral song to listen to. YAY.

PPPPS I have ideas for the next new mental health related music sharing song a day things. 🙂

PPPPPS Okay, I SWEAR I’M DONE

Dear Diary, The Analysis

Dear Diary,

I see, we meet again.

With the hindsight of perspective, I find myself doing what I wanted to do yesterday after I read through your post: I wanted to analyze it. Try to gleam as much information from it as a clue to what was the inner-workings of your mind. I hope that doesn’t sound too technical. I hope it’s not prying too much.

I tend to do that, to pry. I can be a little creeper–I try to pull as much information as I can from a person (which, in most cases I already tend to know it) and then contact other people to find out resources available…I fear I may be sounding confusing: I want to send my friend Jeanine a letter in the mail even though I had to find her address online. I still haven’t sent her anything, because I fear the fact that that set of actions would be crossing a pretty physical line. Maybe I’m a creeper with a conscience?

I look through your words, to try and figure out where I could have stepped in. What I could have done. Was there anything I could have done?

I am not triggered over your words. I kept myself calm, relatively, stable, level-headed. I did NOT re-read last night. I was good. Diary, you even opened up a little too, I am STILL grateful for that.

But I guess I have a problem, diary, because I find myself wanting to save you…from you. But really, you don’t necessarily need me, as you are self-sustaining. Is it too pompous to think you may need some of my own guidance though? I’m not sure.

I want to do right by you as others have done with me.

Yet I fear I may come on too strong. Too…heavy. Too much.

Maybe it’s my duty to reign myself in some more.

I’ve started organizing (I did a LOT of organizing) through all the three years worth of recovery/treatment oriented information (and coloring pages and artwork) that I’ve collected and saved and kept. I’m calling it the Recovery 101 series. I’m going to make copies of some things (some things are your own copies) and send it into a long vanilla envelope that I’ll pick up at CVS and take to the mail office to send to you. I’m not sure yet how I’m going to divide it up.

I can say that there are 7 folders. Which means there’s 7 packets from each folder. This is divided up and numbered/labeled appropriately (for my own purposes because I want to keep them together in the same folders and not mix them all up) although I am mixing them up as I prepare them to send to you. I basically went through the folders and created piles from that that I think particularly apply to your situation and what I think may be helpful.

I’m also making notes on the pages themselves so, yeah, it’s a lot of work and really, I don’t have much else to do anyways, so it’s all good. I’ve done this with Jeanine before. Even with a newer friend, too.

I created a sticker-ed-out card today that I will put into the mailbox tomorrow. That will get to you first.

I also, off topic, have to send back my textbooks and prepare for my IOOV presentation this Thursday.

I also want to use a new journal for inspiring music/song lyrics.

That’s just some self-reminders at the moment, ahahha.

 

To return to the topic at hand…I’m listening to “One More Light” by Linkin Park and the words Chester Bennington is singing couldn’t be more true:

If they say, Who cares if one more light goes out, in the sky of a million stars? It flickers, flickers. Who cares when someone’s time runs out if a moment is all we are? Or quicker, quicker. Who cares if one more light goes out?

Well, I do.

Diary, you ARE that star, that light, that flame, that hope, that life.

You have battled on for a very, very long time. You have rested in shadows for many moon cycles. Darkness may appear to be all that is around you–but trust me, it’s not. There is light coming towards you, hands reaching out for you and when you are ready, so many of us will be here to support you. You have a community of souls around you cheering you on–although you may not hear our voices just yet, hold onto hope and believe in yourself and in your own self-kindness and they WILL appear.

I write this to you, Diary, and I write this for me and for anyone else out there who finds these words are spoken to them, through them, through us.

We have lost too many lives to suicide.

Just this year: Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Hannah Stone, and countless, countless others. Others whose names I may not know and whose truth I know so dearly.

And Diary, we almost lost you, too. The world would be far too dull without you. I hope that you begin to find the reason to live, the passion for life, the choices to opt for self-love and self-compassion, to be kind to yourself and those around you and to let your mask fall from your wonderful cheeks.

If I were there for you, physically, I would first ask if I could hug you, then totally HUG you, Diary.

I am so thankful that you found a spark of hope within yourself to choose a different action, to choose a different direction, to get help.

It will be a long road, and so much is possible.

You are loved. You are important. You are worthy of recovery. You can get help. You can become better. You can regain your life and punch mental illness IN THE FACE like a boss, and you can become a survivor radiating badassery.

You can do all of these things. You will.

 

 

Please, do.

Your passing would be a loss not only for a community, but for a world. But rather than just living for others, find the will within yourself to live for YOU. You have the power and the ability to one day be the person on this side of the screen, writing out a similar letter to someone else out there who is struggling. You have a story to be told. You have a life to live. You have a reason and a purpose for existing.

Please, continue to exist. I don’t want pain to be the last thing you experience.

I hope all those we have lost to suicide this year and in all the years rest peacefully.

I hope that if you are someone out there struggling that you have the courage to come forward, out of the shadows and raise your voice to be HEARD. Because you deserve to be recognized and heard and understood, and there will always be someone out in this stratosphere that will be there for you. It’s just about finding us.

Resources (USA): 1800 273 8255 (24/7 suicide prevention lifeline), Text 741 741 HELLO or START, 911 (local emergency services), resources for individual countries can be found through Google, find inspiring MUSIC and song lyrics and QUOTES.

#SickNotWeak on Twitter. #KeepTalkingMH, #ImRightHereMovement.

 

Find us out there, because we are here. Always.

Stay safe, friends.

❤ ❤ ❤

Dear Diary: The Message

Dear Diary,

I have a message for you.

My words aren’t succinct. They aren’t planned, they aren’t…necessarily welcome. They aren’t smooth. They aren’t… almost aren’t polite.

I dig for words in the dirt. My gloves are getting all soiled, and I fear that they’re still not quite adequate enough. I hold my shears in shaky hands, wondering if–when–the next words come that they’ll form into phrases and if those phrases will jab at you like a sliding tongue or if they’ll be in your memory as the friend who wasn’t so polite. Or whether you will think ill of me if you found out what was going on through my head as I tried to tell you that you matter SO MUCH to me.

Mental illness feeds on the lies it tells you.

I know because what you are experiencing happens in my brain as well.

I know because I’ve been where you once stood and I’m SO VERY THANKFUL that you are here, alive and coherent, today even when sometimes and some days you wish you weren’t AT ALL. I know, because I, too, have been there.

I don’t know how to phrase this in a way that makes sense or in a way that takes the venom out of the demon’s words.

I don’t know how to convey to you that I’m so very glad that you got help. That you went to a psychiatric hospital to get help.

I don’t know how to convey to you how grateful I am to know you. Or how to convince you that you, too, will get through this hard time, that suicide doesn’t have to be your answer, your calling like it is to me.

How do I word this right?

Because, I should know that there is a way to word it incorrectly.

I know, I’ve been there.

I want to say so many things, I want to burst from the seams, and the silence of the night washes over me even as the music is paused and the beeping message hasn’t rung and maybe you’re trying to figure out what to say or what mask to keep in place, but I’m here to tell you that you don’t need that mask with me. You don’t need to hide and feel bad and terrible and like you want to die.

You CAN get better. Right now, there’s an illness inside of you like the dirt that’s on my gloves. One day you will find that you, too, are wearing gloves, rather than dipping into the ground with your bare hands–no, you too, will find your gloves.

You notice that I’m not talking. But I finally find myself forming words that make sense to me, that ring true, that feel good, that feel right. I can’t let you see the d–my darkness. Because it may be too soon for you right now. It may be too much, in the same way that your words were so familiar, so dark and shadowy, so….accurate, right, fitting.

It’s not that I’m too close to the situation–or, maybe it is.

I just want the best for you.

I want you to want the best for you.

And I realize that I am powerless.

I realize that I have to step away so you can properly breathe, even if it may feel like you’re breathing underwater right now, I promise to you that you will find the light again soon.

The darkness does not last forever.

Even when it tells you that it will, it won’t.

It lies.

It feels like the truth right now, and as Andrew Soloman once bravely said in his first TEDtalk: “But the truth lies.”

And that’s what your brain is doing to you right now.

It is lying.

Because you DO matter, to many, many people. You know this, inherently. You became aware of it yourself. You will never run out of people to tell you how much you mean to them, how much they care about you and how much they never want to see you suffer (and that doesn’t mean they don’t want to be there for you when you do struggle, rather, they WANT to know about it so they can try to help you in whatever form that you need in that moment). You can always grow your roots deeper into the soil, to form connections with more people and more things and learn about the world around you while you come into your own as a young person.

Because YOU are important. Because you are loved. Because you are cared about. Because you have friends; and you are my friend.

I may not see you face to face in person. I may not truly know who you are as the person you walk around with outside of the text-based world.

And, really, does that even matter?

Because I know you for everything that you are, or maybe, I know myself for everything that I am.

To read your words left me speechless. I want to read them again but they’re still swirling in my mind from the last time. They’re in me now, a part of the puzzle, your story interlocking with mine.

I just, I just want you to know that I hope you don’t have to go through all the things I have to enter into recovery and receive the help that you need and deserve. Because you deserve to smile and be happy and live a happy life alongside whatever may ail you. You are so talented. In so, so, so many ways.

And I want you to know this. More than anything, I want you to know this. And I want you to be okay. I want you to know that you can reach out to me if you need me. When, you need me. I want to be a support to you. I want to help you.

I want to help me.

Diary, I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve missed you. And I’m so sorry to hear that you’ve been struggling so deeply–and for so long.

I hope this is your start of the road to getting better, or at least better than how you felt on that fateful day in November. Because it DOES get better than this.

 

Please, please.

Please, believe that it does, that it will.

I love you, my diary. I am always a text, Skype or phone call away. You can reach out to me. And I can reach out to you. And I can be okay, too.

❤ ❤ ❤

A Post-Production Note

Hi there,

This is a brief post brought to you by the post-production AKA Raquel in Editing Le Youtube Videos to say:

• I is alive.
• I haz been well (this week, a stagnant solid 7 out of 10 (10 being the most awesome))
• I haz been a’making the Youtube videos (two uploaded last week, one in progress now and a few others that are sitting and collecting dust!)
• I haz been a’doing the Twitter (although for 5 days I was disinterested/unmotivated, but I’m back on track now)
• I haz been a LITTLE creative (not very much though, sadly)
• I haz been a doing the YOGA (with my parental)
• I haz been a’texting. Mostly. I kinda forget though, too. So many friends I haz, man, so many friends….
• I hasn’t been on DA much. Sad. 😦
• I have been on the Tube-u-lar very much. Recently watching/reading about the Shanda Sharer case, (murder served cold) which I may have some thoughts about. I also HAVE made like 2 blog posts but never finished them/never got to the drafting phase and am still unsure as to whether or not I will go back to fix them up. I apologize that it’s been so static silent on here for the last 3ish weeks.
• I haven’t been drawing or coloring lately, grrr.
• If we consider that mid-July 2017 into August was a great HABIT time for me, I’m still half of where I was before (i.e: Not planning/structuring myself, not doing art regularly, not making Youtube videos, not tweeting, not blog posting, not…you get the picture) So, still have some room to progress and get better, hopefully before and INTO the new year.
• I haven’t been reading either. 😦 Or doing book reviews (like the pencil work for ’em)
• I have found some new fanfic reviews, yay! But haven’t written not quite in a while (I wrote a future chapter on the 8th)

I think that’s all I can update ye all with for now. On a time crunch, but I got my other goal done today, to update all of ye! 🙂

❤ ❤ ❤