day 121
The other day Matt had to sit me down and I've just now found the words (hopefully) and the will to write it out.
For those of you who don't know, I suffered from depression for a while and I still suffer from the effects of it. Senior year has been especially hard because the girl friends that I was close to stopped hanging out with me and I really felt abandoned. You need to have close girl friends around to support you and I was missing that.
It had gotten so bad and my disdain was so great that it was really having a negative affect on me and those around me. Finally Matt, and I thank God every day for him, sat me down and really got to the heart of the situation. It was really hard for the both of us, but I am so thankful for him and everything he does for me. He made me come face to face with the lies I had been believing and even just a few days later I am feeling so much better about life.
1. You are not weird.
The lie I was believing was that me not having many friends meant I was a loser. But that is absolutely not true. Not only does the amount of friends you have have nothing to do with whether you're a loser or not, but for me, I actually do have a lot of friends. Are they close friends? Not all of them. But the few people that I was focusing on made me blind to all the people that actually cared about me. Don't let a few people who you wish you could be friends with or who just rub you the wrong way keep you from seeing all the people that truly love you for who you are.
2. You are not selfish.
Okay, this one may actually not be true for some people because let's face it, there will always be selfish people in the world. I am the person who believes that there is always room for improvement, but it gets out of hand when I begin to believe that I am a horrible selfish person whose motive for everything is to please myself. While a lot of times that's true (because let's also face that humans in general are self-centered), you can't beat yourself up every single time you do or think a selfish thought. The right thing to do is to fix it, not think you're the worst person on the face of the earth. Though us humans have some bad in us, there is still a lot of good.
3. You are not ugly.
The most beautiful people are the ones with the genuine smiles. I am discovering every day that real beauty is held in the way the sun hits the mountains or the sound of water trickling through the woods or tickling a baby or a nice warm shower. Beauty is not the outward appearance. Beauty is joy. When I am joyful, I feel beautiful. When I'm not joyful, I don't feel beautiful, and when I'm not joyful and don't feel beautiful, I have a bad day. That's the way girls are wired. If we have a bad hair day, we have a bad everything day. But I shouldn't let something as silly as my hair ruin my outlook. What else I'm discovering is that no one else really cares what you look like. I don't notice when other people's hair is greasy or not curled right or whatever, mostly because I'm too focused on myself. Which goes back to the selfish lie. When we focus on others, we should focus on their true beauty, their joy. And if a person doesn't have beauty, it's our job to give them some. Just today in psychology we learned that those people who are kind and compassionate to others have lower health risks and are less stressed. If everyone focuses on putting out true beauty, we in turn become what we give.
4. You are amazing.
When Matt asked me if I liked myself, before I could stop it, I said, "No." This was at the end of the conversation and after realizing I had been lying to myself about all these things and I had allowed it to take over my life, I really couldn't believe what I had done. Negative thought is so self-destructive and it took a lot of tears for me to realize that. I encourage you to ask yourself if you like yourself, and if the answer is no, then ask yourself why. Then when you know why, stop believing the whys! I don't like myself because I'm weird, I'm selfish, I'm ugly, I'm just ordinary ... those are all big fat lies. The truth of the matter is that we all have been blessed with gifts and talents and strengths and weaknesses alike. We should use them to our advantage! And not only to our advantage, but to bless others.
You know the metaphor that we are all like snowflakes--not one of us is alike, and then the rebuttal is that since everyone is unique then no one is unique. While it is true that every single person is unique and special in our own way, the other cool thing is that we're not that much different from each other. At the end of the day, we're all human and we all need and want to give love. We all have fears, hopes, dreams, worries--we are all united.
This conversation I had with Matt really had a profound impact on me and I'm already feeling so much better about life in general. I know there will always be off days, but really I cannot explain enough how much better I've been feeling.
So if you ever feel that you are alone or that what you are feeling is something no one else can relate to, stop believing that lie as well. Don't let a couple negative things blind you from the people that love you and from the beauty of the world. Don't ever let anything steal your joy or make you feel anything less than amazing. Because, let's also be honest with this, you are a beautiful, amazing, talented individual, and no one in the world can tell you otherwise.
And that's the truth.
day 120
Today I got to take some engagement photos for my friends/teachers. Matt came down with a bad cold so I was the sole photographer for the outing, but it was all good. We went to the airport and found some fun locations with not too many people staring at us. I did have a fun conversation with a security guard after I tried (and failed) to cross the no-entry line (I asked first, so no worries!). I should have given him my business card, haha. In the upcoming days I'll post more photos from this shoot. I always love looking at engagement/wedding photos even if I don't know the people because not only does it give me good ideas/lessons, it also is just so darn cute! I'm hopeless ... I just love love.
day 119
I feel like I've been very neglectful of this blog, even though I'm still posting 365s every day. I just want to say that I apologize for that and to never fear because I will be focusing a ton more on this blog starting May 1st. I am so excited for it. :)
But anyways, this weekend my social life went from non-existent to crazy busy and I love it. Yesterday was Matt's birthday, so I skipped the first part of school to go to my little sister's concert at her school, but before I drove to her school, I snuck around and hid things in Matt's locker. In seventh hour we had cupcakes for him and sang songs and played games. Then I went to Hot Hula (super awesome name, I know! The name made my parents wary but the fact that I was getting physical activity allowed me to go, haha) and then went over to Matt's house to give him more presents and see what everyone else got him. Then we drove to a friend's house to play more games. It was a crazy day filled with a lot of driving, but I really loved it.
And today I woke up bright and early to have a study date for AP English, did some hot hula again, went to the thrift store and signed up to be a cat cuddler (seriously, can there even be a better job?) and finished it off by babysitting awesome kids. Aaah I just love doing things.
But I do also enjoy a little bit of relaxation so tomorrow the only places I need to go to are church and a location that has yet to be decided for some portrait shooting. I am very excited about that but also excited that those are the only places I need to go to. The rest of the day I'll be chilling out at home being sore from hot hula!
There's not much else to report, except that hot hula is really fun to say out loud. Seriously. Go ahead, say it. You know you want to.
Sounded awesome, didn't it?
day 118
Been excavating my mind
To find out what's inside
Of grainy gold and dust mites
And I know that I love you.
Thank you.
day 117
black and white version:
sorry this is just a little late. I was so tired by the time I finished editing it that I just didn't have the energy to post it! My mom had surgery on her shoulder yesterday (don't know how many times I've messed up when saying that), so I've been busy taking care of people and driving everyone to different places. Yesterday I was being a homemaker until 11pm making yummy goodies! It was actually pretty fun. My mom is doing okay. She's in a lot of pain and has to be strapped to a machine and sleep on the couch, so everyone else is trying to help out, giving her medicine, setting her machine, helping her sit up to turn on the tv and whatnot. I've driven so much these past two days, since I can have the car (because she can't drive it), but of course I drive the kids everywhere when my dad can't do it. But that's okay.
Today's photo will be up later today (maybe!). In the meantime, I'm going to go do physical activity (this is a rarity, so we'll see how it goes) and who knows what else.
Have a great weekend everyone!
day 116
(Experimented with colors in this one ... not sure if I like it.)
day 115
(part of a scene from Matt's movie. No actors were harmed, haha.)
day 114
Sorry I didn't have time to update anything yesterday. Some teachers really like to hit us hard on the last few weeks of school and frankly it's all I can do to give any sort of effort. I never thought I would be one to get senioritis, but I think I have it the worst of all. I'm just so ready to be free from people who complain and are hurtful and mean. Only a few more weeks and then I never have to see their faces again.
On the plus side, yesterday was our senior fun day, but I opted to skip and go shopping instead. All by myself too. I came home with so many colorful things, which is exciting because my wardrobe definitely lacks bright, fun colors. Also Matt finished up filming his video, so I have a lot of photos from that. I probably won't be able to get them up on here until this weekend though. School has that uncanny knack of taking up a lot of my time spent doing things I actually want to do ... oh well. Only sixteen more days!
I had an old cork board lying around that I used to use to hang my jewelry on. Since then I've moved on to different ways to display my jewelry but this poor board was left collecting dust.
So here is a super fun, easy, and versatile project for you guys today! It's a diy to-do list board, but you can really use it for anything you want. It's a beautiful way to add color and organization to your room (something that you've seen me working on if you follow me on instagram @impulsings).
What you'll need is a cork board (they're pretty cheap on amazon), paint and paintbrush, fun fabric (I ended up using two different kinds), post-it notes, a hot glue gun, and scissors!
The first step is to measure and cut your fabric. You'll want it to be just a little bit bigger than your cork board so that when you glue it down you'll be able to fold it into a nice hem. Mine ended up being too small to cover the entire board, so I added even more color with different fabric.
With your hot glue gun, you'll fold down the corners of your fabric and glue away. Work in small sections to make sure everything is straight.
Here's what I found to be the best order to glue down the sides, so that you can easily stretch out the fabric to eliminate any wrinkles. Since I used two different fabrics I had to do this step for each piece.
This step can be optional, and if I had to redo it I would have taken out the 'daily' part as I already have some things on my list that I won't be completing for a few days. But that's okay! You just write out what you want, fold a straight line, cut, then glue it to your board.
Step four is to lay out your post-it notes and glue them down to the board. I purchased mine at Office Depot in pretty colors. :) So now when you complete an item on your post-it note, you can just tear it off and a blank box is available for the next project!
Then I added some extra little embellishments since I had a little bit of room left over on the board. I can't wait to take this to college and fill it with photos of my adventures!
The final step is to add a coat of paint. Mine took three coats but the paint was fast-drying so it didn't take too long. The white matched my room perfectly. :)
And that is all! Pretty easy, huh? I really love how mine turned out, and the great thing about this is that I can easily use this for multiple things.
