You may have noticed that the last post I wrote on here was rather reflective. I'm guessing it was pretty clear that I'd been mulling over some thoughts and ideas. You may have even guessed that some 'big event' had just passed. Yep, birthdays call for reflective times! It was a bit strange going from 18 to 19. It's just such a random number. When you turn 18, you hit the big one. Finally, you're classified as an adult, you finally get the independence to make your own mistakes (Oops.. I mean decisions of course). Turning 20 is also a pretty big thing. Suddenly, you're no longer a moody, hormonal teenager. That room for you to make your own mistakes suddenly disappears and you've reached a new chapter in your life. But what happened to 19? Does it count? Does it even mean anything? While we're at it.. What about after your 21st birthday? Is it only downhill from there. I think you can see how I always end up being so reflective during my birthdays. So here's the thing. Why am I so bothered about what is expected of you at a certain age? Who cares about how old you are anyway? I could easily just lie about it anyway (I have been told on different occasions that my face is oddly similar to that of a 12 year-old). I feel like the years are already speeding up (and I'm not even 20 yet). So, I've decided to do something else. I want to remember each and every age, just not in the way that we're often encouraged to: "young and naive", "moody teenager," "overworking adult" and "helpless and old". I want to remember the purpose and meaning of every age based on the events I've experienced and lessons I've learned. For example, when thinking of a typical 18 year old, I think of a teenager drifting away from their family and finding a life of their own (through friends and partners and whatnot). But I didn't really have that. In fact, I definitely learned to appreciate my family more this year.
Why don't we create new years resolutions when we turn a new age? Why don't we reflect and appreciate the lessons we learned during this time? Somehow I always feel a much stronger urge to do it now rather than at the new years. I'm not trying to encourage you to turn your birthday into something big and reflective if you don't want to. Some don't really identify with their birthdays and that's perfectly fine. Maybe just keep a list of your accomplishments at that particular age when you turn another year older. It's just a little suggestion.. Or thought..
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Two days ago I was sitting in a café with a friend. We hadn't seen each other in a while so there was a lot to talk about. All of sudden he announced that he recently discovered my blog. There was a small silence as I tried to process what he'd just told me. My first reaction was to burst out laughing, not because you can't really call a website with three little entries a proper 'blog'. To me it's more like a project, or a little thing I like to do while mindlessly while listening to a film in the background. After I had my little laugh my head started to fill with some more serious thoughts. I started to wonder about which blog it might have been. When I first started creating my own little websites in 2011 I was still in primary school. I was 'a little girl thinking big' and I still remember exactly what that website looked like.. Since then I think I've made approximately 20 different websites/blogs all with the same first entry which goes something like this: "I have a good feeling about this one. I promise I'm going to stick to this website, to keep evolving and developing this particular page!". Clearly, I managed to fail. every. single. time. I didn't stick to a single one. Now, I think of my 'random little website' as a small project, but when I started I was serious. I was ready to fight, to put in the hours and to get this blog going. At this point the shame started to kick in. Why have I failed to stick to my 'random little project' so many times? It's a difficult thing to admit, but the simple answer is because I get bored and lazy. I get bored with the layout of the page and I'm clearly too lazy to change the layout of that page. So my lazy brain tells itself that it's "because I've changed" and that "the only solution is for me to create a new one". It turns out that my friend was referring to this blog right here: Eucatastrophes (a word I still absolutely adore). I'll share a little fun fact with you: Since this page (which was created a little over a year ago) I've already created a new website since this page. It's still Eucatastrophes but it's been created using Wordpress rather than Weebly. But here's the deal.. I like writing and I like photography. I don't care if my friends or family members see the pictures I take or the words I write down so why not just keep it plain simple and easy. Why not just keep everything on a single platform? So after this long and tiring block of random nonsense it's finally time for me to tell you the purpose of this post. Are you ready? I'm introducing a challenge. I'll admit, it's a pretty well-known one but it's a challenge nonetheless. I challenge you (whoever you are) to choose something that you have been wanting to do for a while now, something that you have been making excuses for again and again. I challenge you to work on/do that thing for an entire month (starting September 1st). It doesn't need to take up the same amount of time each day. It doesn't even need to take 10 minutes out of your day if you happen to be busy. In fact, you don't even need to physically do anything everyday. As long as you're doing something that allows for this idea/passion to develop itself I'm happy. Maybe next month I can introduce a new challenge saying "okay, this month you actually have to work on the project". But I'm hoping that will come by itself.
Are you ready to find out what mine will be? You guessed it: I'm going to work on this website/blog right here. I'm not going to post something every day.. But I'm going to work on it, change it up and perhaps write a few posts for the fun of it. I want this thing to stay fun of course, but I also don't want anyone (including myself) to look back and think "if only". So here, take these words as a sign or a simple kick of motivation and GET GOING! I'll check back with you in 2 weeks ;) I was going to write a little post about the excitement surrounding the coming of spring. But then I realised that it's still February and that people would probably not agree with or understand my enthusiasm. Additionally, it's been pretty lousy weather here in the UK which again wouldn't really correspond to my Springy post. So I decided to focus on this period. Yes, I can already hear you saying: "why would you focus on this period? It sucks! Let's just hope it ends soon and forget about it forever and ever."
Wherever I go and whoever I talk to, most people say the same thing. They complain about their life, about the world and about their mood in general. Most people are not very happy at the moment, including myself. So let's just take a second and reflect upon the nice things. After all, the news has a had a few glimpses of happiness.
So after all this commotion about Christmas it's finally over again. I won't lie to you, I always hate this period. I've been home with the family, eating whatever I want, doing whatever I want and felt pretty contend with myself. Now, I'm home in my dingy little room, nobody around me and worst of all, all the christmas lights and songs have disappeared for another year.
At least there's always one thing we can be happy about: the christmas presents we managed to collect throughout the festive period. Since I moved out this year, I asked for mostly practical things but I decided to do a separate post about it nonetheless. In total I received the following items: - pink bowl (Blokker: €7,00) - Cheese slice (Blokker: €5,00) - Cutting board (Xenos: €12,00) - Gold leaf decoration (Xenos: €3,00) - Chocolate (English supermarket) - Cat statue (German Christmas Market €5,00) In addition I also got: - Big, fluffy blanket (Wohnwelt pallen: €5,00) - Animal pillow (Wohnwelt pallen: €10,00) - Maroon turtle neck jumper (outlet store €15,00) This year was basically everything I needed for my room which is exactly what I wanted ;) If there's one thing I love about my university, it's the fact that they have 'reflection weeks'. This means that I get one week of holidays every 7 weeks. The weeks were up, exams were completed and I had only one thing left to do... Visit my family! Autumn always manages to pick me up again. To smell the fresh air again, forget about my worries and snap some autumnal pictures, that's the goal right? The weather is getting colder, wetter and more beautiful now, I suggest we all make the most of this situation and spend as much time as we can enjoying it.
Three weeks ago, I spent my first night in this new, strange place I'm going to have to call 'home' for the next three years. I must admit, it was strange, the walls were empty, the bed felt unfamiliar and the toilet was no longer just mine. It never felt like this was a mistake, or like I was doing something I shouldn't, it just felt a little odd. But as the walls were painted, the pictures were put up and the little bits and bobs were added around the room it started to feel more like a place I could live in. It's not finished, but I'm getting closer to an end result. Making my own mistakes is scary, but also quite fun. I feel no pressure to do things right because the only person facing those consequences is myself. If the food isn't nice, I'm the only person who needs to eat it, if the washing turns out a different colour, it doesn't matter because it's my washing. It's just so relaxing knowing I don't need to ask somebody's permission to go out or money to buy clothes. All I need to do, is walk out the door and remember my keys (so far that hasn't gone wrong yet but it will definitely happen soon). Since this is the first room I'm having to decorate, it's quite difficult to discover 'my style'. I think my room will be facing quite a few stages of development. The printout pictures hanging above the table were supposed to be temporary to cover up all the patches on the wall, but they're actually beginning to grow on me. I suppose I'll see where the room takes me. Perhaps I just need to do something and live with it for a few days. If I don't like, I can change it. The overall vibe of the place so far is quite cosy. The beams make the ceiling quite low but chique and the kitchen is definitely a one person area. The blue wall is still quite bare, but once my inspiration comes, I'll have something to place there, I'm sure! The room itself is very central. The marketplace is right outside my door making it ever so easy to nip to the shops. the alley is cute and (even though some may say it appears quite scary at night), I feel very comfortable in my little space. I realiset that this may seem like a bit of a 'useless' post, but the actual uni posts will come, no worries.
See you in the next post! Norway, a rainy, mountainous, beautiful country... well, that was my experience anyway. We went to Norway for one week, stopped at all the famous spots, hiked a bit and went home very much satisfied at the end. My family and I decided that it would be cheapest for us to see Norway via cruise (don't worry, I'll get to that later). This meant that we saw most of the highlights but didn't have nearly enough time to truly experience each town. But I think we got as much out of it as we possibly could. OsloOslo, a quiet little town the Norwegians like to call their capital. It's a shame that I felt pretty ill that day because it meant I couldn't enjoy most of the city. We visited the most important sites but personally, this was my least favourite place. KristiansandI'll admit that my expectations for Kristiansand were below zero. I'd googled the place a few times, looked at some pictures on pinterest, but the place just seemed uninteresting. However, once I actually visited the place, it was cosy, the people were friendly and it seemed to have character. It wasn't extroadinary but it was cute and I was very pleasantly surprised. Pulpit RockAnd now for the bucketlist section: Preikestolen. As soon as my mum told me that there was even the slightest possibility that we could make it up there in the time we were allowed ashore, I was sold. I was absolutely deteremind to run up the track if it meant that I could see this famous...rock. We had 4 hours to do it, 4 hours to walk up the entire mountain, see the rock and walk all the way back down and we could have easily done it if it weren't for all the slow pokes we had to try and pass every step of the way. We made it up in 1 hour and 30 minutes but we were scared it would take us longer to go back down seeing as all the other hikers would need to make it back down as well. This is where the cruise was relatively irritating. Due to our limited time and the questionable time we had left to make it back down, we spent a total amount of 2 minutes on the rock. TWO MINUTES! We raced back down and made it back again within 1 hour and 15 minutes meaning that we did the entire trip under 3 hours. Personally, I would have loved to have spent more time enjoying the view but there just wasn't enough time for it. But I'm still SO grateful I had the opportunity to see this beauty. FlåmOne of the the most beautiful train journeys in the world, the flam railway was a must. It was stunning and fulfilled my expectations, but I'm glad we got off the train to enjoy the actual scenery as well. I know it will sound strange, but Flam was definitely my favourite destination, even more than Pulpit Rock. It was unforgetable, not because of the rain, but because there was something to see around every corner (hence the trillions of pictures). Our Cruise ExperienceAnd now for the luxurious aspect of the trip... I'm not much of a pamper person, so I was sceptical to say the least. But I was very pleasantly surprised by the whole experience. From all you can eat buffets to amazing evening entertainment, this ship had it all. I'm not sure it's the best for every trip, but for Norway, I saw a lot more than just one place. Cruises are expensive and sometimes a little too posh, but if you like the James Bond lifestyle (where you hike up mountains during the day and dress classy with fancy meals at night) then this is REALLY something for you ;) If you ever have the chance, go to Norway. It's not cheap but it's worth it. Trust me.
Yes, I moved and yes, I moved with good reason. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed The Creative Explosion but it just didn't feel right anymore. I decided to jot down a few reasons, not only for others but also to clarify my need to leave for myself.
So here's to a new beginning! Let's hope it's a good one.
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Hi There!
I'm a university student who loves to keep themselves busy with anything but university work. I also enjoy looking like a banana as you can tell from all the yellow coat pictures. I've somehow managed to turn into a music and photography geek. I'm not entirely sure how that happened but let's just go with it. That seems to be my life motto at the moment.
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April 2018
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