Welcome Back: Bursting with Ideas ft. New Year’s Resolutions & Anti-Resolutions

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Welcome back, everyone!!!

It is currently January 6th (almost made a typo of 66th, whoops!) 2019. This is actually my first blog post of the new year–although I had planned for a few other posts (articles) to be added to the end of 2018 and even wrote the start of a couple of other 2019 posts without ever completely finishing them (2019 Resolutions & Anti-resolutions). But we’ll get back to that at the end!

It’s currently about one in the afternoon EST here and I’m trying to get back my writing vibe from fanfic stories and blogging and the like.

Today actually marks 4 years since my first suicide attempt, and I’ve made myself a busy schedule for the day to distract and cope through it effectively and skillfully. 🙂 I also wanted to spend this moment talking about all the ideas and inspiration that’s bursting forth from within my soul as well as share some haul photos of my endeavors yesterday and an overall life update about things and where I hope to go with my blog in the new year! So, let’s jump on in!

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It’s been a long time since I last properly blogged and a few things have changed since then. For instance,

1. I graduated university with my BS in psychology
2. I’ve been in stable recovery for 11 months (almost one complete year in February; the specific date is something I still have to check for sure though)
3. I’ve acquired a new editing software (Adobe Premiere Elements) to help with the content I aim to create and explore on my Youtube channel
4. I’ve been writing lots of fanfiction again
5. I reorganized and redecorated my room
6. I had good holidays! (Christmas & new year’s)
7. I’m still attending my day program 3x/week
8. The Mokeys has been good and wonderful and entertaining! 🙂

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Back to my goals for the year:

I just made this new THUMB above, so sorry if it’s not my bestest work  but it’ll do for the purposes of this portion of the post.

Any who, here are my new year’s 2019 resolutions (that I have actually written out on a little scrapbook paper from women’s group at program):

1. Read 1 book each month for a total of at least 12 books for the year.
2. Complete or work on a book or film review biweekly for about 26 submissions in the year overall. (If anyone out there can correct my math that’d be great, I just Googled it but might not be working with the right set of numbers, thanks!!)
3. Blog more by returning to my blogging roots with 4 posts a month to start the year out at (so about one post a week).
4. Film, edit and upload videos once or twice every two weeks (about twice a month).
5. Continue writing more fanfics both new and old. Finish 1 or 2 stories by the end of the year.
6. Secure a job by May – summer.
7. Decrease the plunge of Deep Diving (Aim for 15 hours of Weekly Amount of Internet Usage)

Something you guys don’t know about completely, if you don’t follow me on Twitter or haven’t been closely following my articles from fall 2018, is that I’ve completely swooped my life around (haven’t you noticed that this particular blog post is extravagant and so different than what’s been uploaded for the last year? Holy shit, peeps!) with journaling my Score of the Day (SOtD) and Today’s Accomplishments (TA’s) every night before bed (and into the next day if I fall asleep beforehand); filling out my time and where I’m spending it each day in my planner (P); filling out my Diary Card (DC) from program tracking my mood, creativity, online usage, OCD behaviors (pulling/lip picking), self-harm/suicidality urges, number of candies consumed at Lights Out (LO) (as a behavior to prevent hair pulling at night); my trich papers (TP) and my 5 year journal (5YJ) which I got back in October 2018 which involves a little blurb about the day’s accomplishments.

So yeah, I do ALL OF THAT every single day.

With all of that tracking and with my tweeting on Twitter, I just grew away from blogging, pretty much.

I journaled every day since some time back in January 2018 for an entire year. Not always about SOtD’s and TA’s, but still. I went through 3 journals in last year alone. It started out darker than usual but then completely brightened up afterwards.

I think this is actually the first January in 5 years where I’m doing really, really well. I’ve been so stable and in recovery for nearly a year and it’s so, so, so amazing. It’s why I’ve been able to do so much every single day to uphold my sanity. I have grown in my pedestal and have found a way of consistently using DBT skills that I have a lot farther to fall and see all the little baby steps that are involved rather than just going straight from 0 to 100. It’s amazing. Honestly.

I have moments, moments I often share on Twitter, where I feel a swell of gratitude for everything I’ve done and managed to accomplish. Lately this weekend it’s been stability and fanfic writing. Being stable enough to be able to share my doubts and uncertainties, meaning and happiness into my fanfic stories.

I’ve built a palace, so to speak, with the foundations of everything I’m learning from program. And it’s brought my life around 360! I don’t know, I think it’s amazing and awesome and I’m so happy now. 🙂 Happy enough that yesterday I had that moment where there was that epic deal at Bath & Body Works for their semi-annual sale and I was smelling all the scents in their lotions, stockpiling a shit ton of them in a screen textured bag and was just so happy to be alive to smell all the smells and feel happy and good and everything about life and shopping, lol. But really though, I actually walked by Bath & Body Works to not go in, but smelled like a watermelon scent, turned around and then waltzed back in and found out they were having a big sale.

It was definitely a moment of self-indulgence and self-care, because now I have 4 new body lotions to play around with (they were 4 for what the price of just ONE would be! AKA they were $3 each rather than $12 each) 😀 Here are some pictures of the ones I got (I also filmed a video yesterday sharing this but that probably won’t be up online for another week or two):

As you see with these first two, I just took the picture on my phone with all the background nonsense and then switched over to my bedspread in a more professional-esque wave of realization. They all smell sooooo good though!

Ahaha, you can actually see me in the reflection of the cap! 🙂

But today, when I shower, which I’ll be doing after I eat lunch which happens after I put this post up, early by the way, I’m going to use the ‘Fresh seasalt mango’ lotion on my hands/body. 🙂

Actually, a new thing I’ve been doing since last year, maybe around June 2018, is putting on this vanilla almond foot cream and pretty as a peach body lotion on my bum (because I’ve gained weight I’m having to finally deal with some pretty prominent stretch marks). But I like putting on lotion and smelling nice. My Mom had gotten a bunch of new shower gels so I get to smell all sorts of fancy lately! I normally don’t like lotion because of the slickness of it afterward but once it dries it’s okay, I will probably warm up to it more in the future. But these are all good self-care measures and relaxation measures (the last little booklet I’ll be making for myself).

Additionally, yesterday my family and I went to the mall and my parents played bowling while I went shopping and spent time on the comfortable couches writing some fanfiction for Chapter 9 of Severed. That was fun! Here are the two other things I got:

It’s an Avengers logo keychain (which I will be putting on my car keys) that I eyeballed last month at this nerdy Japanese store now in the mall and an impromptu buy of a mini Crazy Aaron’s thinking putty in the snow angel type which is a sparkling rainbow iridescent gray which is so pretty. I love the tiny tins personally, and a friend from school is the person who got me into them as fidget toys, and the tiny cans I find work best with my fingers and hands (I have the glow in the dark Northern Lights one but it’s so thick and big that it will make the muscles in my hands ache after a bunch of threading and pulling). 🙂

You know, another accomplishment I had in the last month was that I went TWO WEEKS without pulling at all. That was awesome. 😀

Oh! Two last things I wanted to mention:

1. I define my Internet Usage separate from my Deep Dive time–which is mainly Youtube stuff. AKA Deep Diving is primarily involved with Youtube mindless consumption where I go to just “watch one video” to it being three hours later and I’ve ‘Deep Dived’. Internet usage besides that would be productive websites like Twitter, FF.net, AO3 and WordPress or DeviantART. Or Canva (where I do my graphic designs). Some of the Deep Dive can also be me checking up on people I follow that are not doing well mentally which in turn makes me feel all sorts of sad. 😦
2. My anti-resolutions!

So, at program, one of the art therapists defined anti-resolutions as things you want to keep the same and maintain into the new year! Here are mine:

1. Maintain my stability by continuously choosing to use DBT skills in an effective manner.
2. Upkeep my journaling and tracking progresses through DC, J, 5YJ, P and TP.
3. Add working on journals (free thought writings or even blogging topics like what I look for in a job/career, what are positive qualities about myself etc.) and workbooks (in my possession) 1-2 times a week.
4. Continue with my NAMI involvement in particular IOOV and peer to peer mentoring.
5. Continue creating art through various mediums.
6. Continue to grow in my recovery
7. Spend time each week (about 3 hours) working on my projects and ideas for the future and researching where applicable.

Which, ultimately, brings me back to where this post started out! I have a LOT of ideas, mainly art related ones, ones that I’ve shared with you guys in the past, and I’d really, really like to revisit them and add to them and change them up and everything. Here are my ideas for that, too:

• I want to write and publish books (a novel, a memoir, a workbook (Recovery Home), a collection of all my Mass Media articles (Titled Recovery: In Progress), a positive and recovery and art filled book, as I’ve seen mindfulness books and gratitude books like that that exist too)
• I want to create a nonprofit organization named RecoverytoWellness where all of my ideas come from and are based in. Along these lines, I’ll need a mission statement and a website and people who follow it all.
• I want to create Recovery Restoration, the dream being to collect pro-recovery based artwork by individuals with lived experience who create positive art pieces that are collected in photo albums and donated to psychiatric inpatient units. I’d like to start compiling these creations/photo albums with my own artwork primarily and an about the artist section and what it is about and where to follow me and my mission. I have a couple prototypes (and more to start giving away and figuring out what pieces are more positive and honest than others that might be too triggering) although I haven’t completely fleshed out the idea or worked on it much from its conception.
• I want to create cards of hope and positivity with my friends from program to donate them to psychiatric inpatient units so people inside can get support and guidance for resources and help outside of the unit. (This one is new and I’m not sure why I didn’t think of it sooner but it’s in part inspired from giving care baskets to cancer patients etc. and also popped in my head after listening to a Joel Osteen speech)
• Along with this, I’d like to work with inpatient psych units to provide things like books to read or coloring supplies like crayons and such.
• I’d like to return to blogging and engaging with the communities I do have currently online and work to create larger ones to create even more of an impact. This means getting more involved in Youtube creations and the community there and reading and engaging with other bloggers and blog posts.
• I also want to flesh out the Recovery Home idea and continue using the hashtag RtW which is my signature for my art making through the form of the cards, positive messages etc.
• I also want to continue leaving kindness and compassion wherever I go through the positive messages and leaving them where people can find them, etc.

Additionally, I’m going to be working with @Mental_Live from Twitter for World Mental Health Day which is Oct 10 by sharing my story through their website and possibly Youtube videos and creating graphic designs for them.

So, yeah, these are all the ideas I have right now. I am now VERY hungry and look forward to munching on some food soon and seeing where this year takes me, genuinely. I have a LOT of research to be doing and I’ll definitely have more posts to come soon, including some leftover articles and 2 new articles I have yet to fully write.

Eventually, by summer-ish I will be getting a job and before then it’s a lot of preparation and playing around with everything so I’m going to have a lot of time on my hands to build these projects and write fanfic and edit videos before I am ready as ready as can be to start a job. I also plan to get re-certified for my advocacy in NAMI which I can also work on (and if I stay away from Deep Dives I should be able to accomplish a lot–including BOOK and FILM reviews that I want to bring back into my daily life) soon and something else that I totally can’t recall at the moment. Oh yeah, I will probably try to get paid writing work done too (like from the place which inspired me to start my blog 3 years ago in May).

I want to additionally bring film/book reviews to my Youtube channel and Lessons Learned Lectures, sharing my journal entries and creating a path of well, creating and hope and light and love and kindness and compassion.

Okay, I’m definitely even hungrier now and it’s been an hour of writing. So I think it’s time for me to switch songs, I’ve been listening to ‘Praying’ by Kesha this whole time, and dream big and start figuring out where I want to start at all.

So, if you have ANY ideas, let me know down in the comments!! I’d love to read your thoughts and figure out together where this can all go and lead to. ❤ I know I have peeps who’ve created some of the things I hope to one day create so I can definitely get some support for that in the future too.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING AND PUTTING UP WITH ALL MY EXCITEMENT.

I love you guys and hope you’re doing well! ❤ ❤ ❤

I’ll just leave this here…