September and school, part 1

School is nothing like you'd imagine it to be from movies. The cliques are fluid, and people rarely conform to the Mean Girls or Camp Rock stereotypes anymore. Every school has this unique spin on things socially that you have to figure out. I'd know, I've been to 3 elementary schools (one I went to twice), and I'm about to enter my third high school. Not all of these were in the same district, and I started with very few or no friends each time. That, on top of social anxiety and other annoying things kept me occupied in a sense, feeling trapped and helpless. Fun fact: I am not.

I'm sort of ambivalent about school, or rather I have two distinct feelings about it. Fear and a sort of excitement. I like learning, generally speaking. I like having friends. That said, I feel trapped by my social anxiety and the dictation of what I must learn, and the stress & time suck that is homework, tests, projects, exams, studying. I understand the benefits, but 1.5-3 hours of daily homework, plus about 6 hours of school (lunch break lasts almost an hour, and there are short breaks, but most of that is eating/ walking to and from lockers & classes, and an hour or more of transportation time leaves 14-15.5 hours to sleep, socialize, exercise, perform household chores, take care of oneself through hygiene, health appointments, romantic activities, personal projects, volunteering, and just plain doing nothing. It's not that bad, I suppose. If you take away sleep time (9-9.5 hours is what teens need according to studies), you're left with 4.5-6.5 hours for other activities during the weekday. 4 minutes to brush teeth, 1 hour to exercise, 15 minutes to shower, 2 hours to socialize, 1 hour for chores, 1 hour of volunteering, etc. It can all fit in if time gaming/ on social media/ streaming videos is cut down. Still, it's a rough adjustment from summer, especially if you hate rushing.

I've rediscovered waking up early, which makes me quite an outsider to the late sleeping teens who stay up late. I don't find it so bad, I'll be socializing with mostly adults soon, anyways. Mornings aren't the perfect, silent time for me, but they're less loud than afternoons. They're almost everything I love about nighttime: dark, quiet, cool, and non-rushed. They're surprisingly wonderful. What started as adjusting to back to school wake times led to a discovery that mornings aren't that bad, after all.

I'm going to go outside, read a little, walk a little, and disconnect for a while.

May every day be the best day of your life,

Poem: Trapped

Exhaustion in my soul
Settles into my bones.
I am trapped.
A bird in a cage,
A prisoner locked far away.
I am trapped.
Please don't let me lose myself,
I still have far to go.
This journey is long, and it takes being strong,
But it is all I know.
Will you laugh and cry with me
And love me while I'm here?
Will you respect my identity?
Or leave your friend in tears.
I'm happy that you stayed with me
And sorry I have to go.
I tell you it's for the best.
Strangulation will not be my home.
I will chase my goals without regard for your conveniences
For now I'm on my own
I'll tell you for the longest time
That this is how it goes.
Please don't cry as I leave the nest,
I thank you for your care.
Please don't cry as I leave the pack
I just need some fresh air.
It's okay to let me go
Do whatever you feel is right.
Do what makes you comfortable.
I will deal with my own might.
If I seem far away.
It's okay, it's okay.
Wait for another lovely day.
It's okay, it's okay.

Poem: A Place To Call My Own

A Place To Call My Own

My Original Poem

You walk into a room

And you're presented with two doors,

Two pictures of two different types of people

But neither is you.

What do you do?

Confusion overtakes you,

A deep pit in the bottom of your stomach.

You choose a door

Numbly, you look around.

This isn't right.

Naturally, you try the other one.

This isn't right.

What do you do?

Lost, you stare at the doors

And make a new room.

Nobody helps.

They don't care.

They tell you,

"Pick a door,"

"Pick a room."

They shove you into a room.

What are they seeing?

You keep fighting.

This is my room, my door

And a place to call my own.

My decluttering journey

It's said that teens are messy, that it's a reflection of the mess inside their brains. I can confirm that my hardest times were some of my messiest. Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the worst of it, because I was so ashamed of how my room looked.

My journey started a while back, I decluttered over and over and it was such an overwhelming task. However, it has gotten exponentially better over the past two years.

I have decluttered bags upon bags of stuff! From books to clothes to all sorts of random decorations has been decluttered from my room. It's such a free, awesome, light feeling to have it out of my care.

Top 10 Reasons I'm Decluttering

(and why I'm keeping my life much more simple in the future & taking in far less stuff)

1. I'm heading to college/ university in September 2018 and will have a much smaller space to work with.
2. Clutter stresses me out and makes it hard to concentrate fully on the task at hand.
3. I have memory issues and having less stuff makes it easier to remember what I have and where it is.
4. I want to travel more.
5. I don't want to become a hoarder, and apparently it's an easy trap to fall into.
6. I have motivation to clean others' houses, but not my own.
7. I don't want to pay my time and attention to insignificant things while the things, activities, and people important to me sit there untouched.
8. I want to feel happy and free, and contribute less to companies that rely on child labour.
9. I am forever changing, and I want my life to reflect me, not a past me, at the lowest cost possible.
10. I'm tired of the upkeep, the mess, the stress and frustration of too much.

Steps I have taken

Phase One: Constant decluttering and reorganization, but no real change.

I constantly got rid of and organized things, but there was so much stuff replacing it that, in about a few months to two years, I was back at stage one.

Phase Two: The Catalyst

The catalyst to decluttering for good was moving several hours away. There was limited room, so I only took what I thought I needed.

I decluttered a bit during the year I lived there, but when I moved back was when I started really thinking about what to get rid of again. I got rid of several garbage bags of books I didn't read, clothes I never wore/ were too small/ I didn't feel good in, and some pieces of decor that I didn't have the space to display in a non-overwhelming way.

Phase Three: The Plan

This is the phase I'm at now, the one where I ask how much I want to own, truly. Where is that 'just right' spot for me at this time?

I'm Goldilocks-ing it!