My body is not what it was two years ago. Before it had great endurance, was decently slim, and the skin had a light tone. Now its endurance is as low as ever that climbing a few stairs is tricky. The lean figure is no more, and the skin has a dark tone.
For the last two years, I have been neglecting my mental/physical health a ton. Maybe because of Covid or because I didn’t realize how important it was to maintain my health. So I decided to start living life a little better than before. That’s why I will be writing about all kinds of things relating to personal health for the next couple of weeks.
I hope these upcoming posts will help you out because they helped me plenty. 😀
There are many emotions out there. There’s anger, excitement, fear, joy, and many more. But, some emotions like anxiety can have different shades. One of those shades is a state of mind called homesickness.
Have you ever had a situation where you were crying so much that you couldn’t stop? Or have you ever had trouble properly breathing, even though there’s nothing wrong? I have. At the same time!
If you’re going on a trip or just ‘leaving’ home for a couple of days, you could get homesick. It doesn’t necessarily mean you miss your home, but maybe you miss certain things about it, such as family or your bed. Sometimes it can also be that you’re not comfortable about going on this trip mentally, or you’re anxious about something that deals with the trip. And if you have difficulty coping with overwhelming emotions like stress, you could get homesick too!
Recently, I went on an FTX (Field Training Exercise) with my cadet summer camp. Usually, I wouldn’t mind camping for 4+ days without showering once, but this time I did. It’s because I wasn’t very comfortable going in the first place. First, I didn’t exactly have any people I could talk to freely or call friends (I was the loner in the group). Secondly, I had never been on a trip like this, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready. Lastly, I had experienced homesickness before (in my junior cadet camp, where they had showers), and it didn’t go that badly. But it did leave an impression.
We were going to leave for the campsite in the afternoon and weren’t doing much in the morning. It was more laid back than usual. But that’s when I got hit with a massive wave of homesickness. Tears would keep trying to come out of my eyes, with a lump in my throat, and I couldn’t focus on anything. I went to the bathroom three times to let it all out, but it would keep coming back. So I called home. I wept like crazy and had a lot of snot leaking from my nose like a baby. Thankfully, the officer who let me call home was very considerate and even showed me a breathing technique to help me calm down.
Camping in tents like this is amazing
There were times during the trip when I got stressed, anxious, or overwhelmed, which made me miss home even more. Whenever I would call home, a drizzle of tears would erupt. Although I enjoyed my FTX much more than I thought I would, there were times when my homesickness would kick in and make it hard to go on. 😦
I know how hard homesickness can be, physically and mentally, so here are some tips to help you if you ever miss home.
Distraction: Being the loner of the group made my sickness worse. Usually, if you’re with people you can talk to, it’s easier to cope with homesickness. That’s because you have something distracting your mind. You don’t necessarily need friends to help you with homesickness. It could also be an event, a thing, or an activity that can help you take your mind off negative emotions. As long as you’re enjoying or are interested in the distraction, you should be able to fight off homesickness! 🙂
Find positives in little things to help calm the negative stuff
Meditation: Now you don’t have to bring a yoga mat and your headphones to do meditation. It could be you doing a simple breathing exercise or a mindfulness activity to calm your nerves. The breathing technique my officer taught me was to draw a box while inhaling and exhaling. Inhale, make one side, exhale, and make the next. It helped in calming me down, along with assisting me in forgetting my homesickness. Maybe saying a prayer or mantra could help. I used to chant a prayer every night before closing my eyes to sleep. If you can do some basic yoga-like standing stretches, that could be useful too! 😀
Meditation is actually very helpful and works well in nature
Writing: While on my trip, I kept a journal with me. In it, I would write all of the day’s events, what I ate, how I felt, etc. It was so helpful. Journalling makes you reflect on the bad and the good and helps you see that your day wasn’t just you weeping in front of a superior officer. Keep up with your writing (mainly if you write in detail) because you wouldn’t want to write everything you did on the bumpy bus ride back home.
Thinking about the events in the past to write down helps with processing your emotions 😀
Keep home with you: When you have a particular picture or memoir, or even if you can communicate with your home, it can help ease the sickness. Occasionally seeing your loved ones or holding onto a keychain representing your bed at home can help you out. For my FTX, I didn’t bring a picture or memoir because I thought it would make me more emotional. But luckily, I had a phone! I would facetime my mom every evening, and seeing her with everyone else allowed me to sleep peacefully at night.
Pictures are the best because they are easy to store! 🙂
These are just some of the many ways to deal with homesickness. Of course, there are many other ways as well. However, these work out the best for people who have trouble with anxiety.
Next time you get homesick, I hope it won’t be so bad because at least you’ll know how to deal with it. 😀
It has been such an incredible ride with you all. When I started this idea, I thought I wouldn’t even reach till day three. And now, I’m on the final day. I seriously hope you enjoyed the marathon and had a wonderful Christmas if you have already. If you haven’t, then Merry Christmas! 😀
I won’t be posting until after New Year, so enjoy New Year! 😀
What is love? How do you express yours? And what happens when love spreads?
Love is such a vague word. Why? Because love is more than giving someone attention and affection. It’s more than doing something for someone else. Love is the result shown when we try finding peace, joy, and hope in someone or a group of people.
What is love? To me, love is when someone is there for you, even on the coldest days. Love is what keeps me sane, what teaches me that I’m not alone. The most important part? Being loved makes me want to spread this sense of joy with others, particularly those who need it the most.
Christmas is all about love and giving. This year, we did a fundraiser at school. We were to bring any hygiene products from toothpaste to shampoo, which would then be collected and donated to the local parish for those in need.
My class was in charge of the counting and rounding up of those products. And I couldn’t believe how much students and families had given to the cause. The kindergarten class that our group collected from had a massive box with so many items. It showed me that they cared. Maybe not to the point that they were ready to go shopping for things. But at least they donated to the cause, even if it was a small amount.
Without even realizing it, they were spreading their kindness to those who were strangers to them.
Love = 4 = my favourite number
That’s a way you can express your love. By giving it to someone who may need it. But what about someone near you?
I have a cousin (I talked about him in a previous blog) that would fight with me so much. Both of us were like cats and dogs, night and day. The more our parents tried to bring us together, the more we would break apart. Then one time, I heard that my cousin wasn’t being treated nicely by other people in our class. I felt bad. Yes, I hated his guts, but he was a good kid.Â
So along with that experience and a little talk with mom, I decided to turn a leaf. And he was better than I expected. He was a very kind child but couldn’t express those emotions correctly and was easily defensive if someone challenged his opinions. He saw what I did and let me in. I didn’t realize it then, but now I recognize that when I shared a bit of myself, my love, with him, it helped improve our relationship.Â
I never thought that anything could mend our relations 😀
When you spread your love, more people see what you’re doing and start to follow in your footsteps. Some do it intentionally, while others do it without even realizing it. More people get influenced, then go on to influence others. It’s a beautiful thing when it spreads.
The word love may be vague, but its meaning is much more. Hopefully, you’ll find that meaning this Christmas Eve.
You need all sorts of ornaments to make a tree a Christmas tree
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI Personality Test is a collection of 16 different personality types indicating someone’s strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and key personality traits. Each letter in a personality type explains a feature of a person’s personality.
Eight possible letters that can make up the names of the personality types are:
I – Introvert OR E – Extrovert
N – Intuitive OR S – Sensing
F – Feeling OR T – Thinking
J – Judging OR P – Perceiving
And when you make combinations of these, you receive different types of personalities! Take the test here:
When I first thought about this topic, I got a little spooked. I kept wondering for the whole week about what I should write. One thing I hoped for was that I wouldn’t make it biased. Why? Because I’m INFJ.
When I first took this quiz, I had no idea that it would help me understand myself better. It described me so well, to the point that I started to question myself. I was so surprised that a quiz could know me better than my family or friends.
I’m the type of person who will get shy of their own family when I see them after a long time. That is what precisely happened when my grandparents came. I was too nervous to even look at their faces or stay in the same room as them. That’s the introvert springing out of me.
I also have this urge to help others. Helping my friends with homework is something that I can’t refuse. If someone asks to borrow my paper to double-check their work, I give it to them even if I don’t want to. That’s because I’m way too sensitive to the needs of others, and I get worried about how someone may react if I refuse.
I’ll be like, “Will they look at me disappointingly? Or will they think I’m biased?” Another part of the INFJ mind. You overthink things to the point that you forget why you were thinking about the matter in the first place. That’s why I get so mad about the fact that I can’t even refuse a person, especially since I never think about how I feel.
😀
For me, creativity and staying organized are essential. Most times, I find it hard to express myself. There are some things I keep to myself because I don’t want to stress someone with my problems. Being creative helps me express myself and my feelings. Staying organized is necessary. Having a goal for myself helps me stay focussed, and planning to make sure that goal succeeds is a delight to do.
I’m a perfectionist by heart. If I’m not satisfied with a blog post, then I’ll stay unsatisfied. I may not change the blog (that’s when laziness takes over), but I’ll never be happy with it. That’s the same with school. If I work very hard on an assignment or test but fail, then I’ll be so disappointed in myself. My body might be over with it in a while, but my mind will not. It will question itself over and over again and will fear failure. That’s a part of INFJs that takes a toll on stress and anxiety.
Stress is hard to deal with
Being a perfectionist also means I have high expectations. Rarely, I have expectations for others, but I have them for myself. But setting these kinds of goals can be exhausting and stressful. Yet I still do it.
Being INFJ is a task, and believe me, this isn’t even half of the info I got for you on INFJ. There is so much more. But revealing it may be a little tough for me. Still, INFJs are the kind of people who worry about you a lot and care for you if you matter to them. They just suck at showing it. ;D
Leaves in the shades of yellow, orange, and red flew in the sky as they ripped apart from the brown branches and fell gently to the ground. The weather wasn’t too hot, nor was it too cold. The breeze had a sharp coolness to it, which tinted your nose slightly rose. The strong scent of the earth was firm and made you want to close your eyes and lie in the faded grass.
Beautiful :0
Today we’re covering the last season of the year! Usually, when I think of autumn, the first thing that comes to mind is the beginning of a school year which I chuckle at because of the expression I imagine. That expression is pain and regret. 😀
But that doesn’t make me dislike the season.
Yes, school is stressful for me, especially the first day back since I’m an anxious and introverted person who needs the shadow of an extrovert to survive.
But fall is one of those seasons that gives me hope that better things will come.
Fall = Orange 😀
One thing that I love about fall is the pretty leaves. You don’t even realize when the leaves turn into a different shade until you see them falling to the ground. The leaves before being green, rich with life, and slimy to touch. However, afterwards, the leaves become warm colours like red, struggle to keep up, and are crinkled.
Kind of like life.
The thing that I oppose is raking those leaves. This year my mom, brother, and I raked the leaves in our backyard for the first time. The sun was out but in the clouds, and the wind was as chilly as ever. My back has never ached so much before, and it is not because I’m lazy or out-of-shape. But it was good exercise. 😀
Picking up leaves with your hands by bending down is work
A tiny tree opposite our house had the most beautiful colours of autumn. My mom would always point to it because it was so pretty and eye-catching when the sun was out.
Another thing I love about autumn is the temperature. It’s never too hot because there is always a breeze in the air. And it is never too cold because the sun is always out or hiding within the clouds.
The four seasons are all unique in their own ways. Some look appealing, and others suit the mood. But the best part? They all have something to offer. 😀
The streets had people like last-minute gift buyers. Cars and buses zoomed from left to right on the bright streets filling every inch of it and creating lots of traffic.
Trevor was a young boy who had decided to walk around the sidewalk of his apartment because the tight walls of his room enveloped him in a trance. He was alone.
His parents had gone to stay with his brother in France. They insisted, and to the point, begged for him to join them or have them cancel their trip to stay with him. Instead, he was the one who had urged them to go. His parents had done too much for him, and he wanted them to spend time with the child that they hadn’t seen in a whole year.
Christmas never was a holiday that he liked because all the noise and excitement agitated him. But this year, he yearned for someone to be with him to celebrate the holiday.
As he walked in the chilly outdoors, he noticed an elder from his apartment. The man was carrying two big bags all by himself. Trevor rushed to the man to help him out. He knew who it was just by the man’s build. He had a big white beard and red cheeks. It was Mr. Jones.
“Mr. Jones! Would you like some help?”
“Ahh! Trevor, is it? Yes, yes, if you could assist me, that’d be great!”
Trevor picked up the heavy bags and carried them to Mr. Jones’s apartment. As soon as they reached the apartment, Mr. Jones asked:
“You seemed a little lonely out there! If it is okay with you, would you like to join my wife and me?”
Surprised by the sudden invitation, he nodded slightly and followed Mr. Jones into the home.
Inside, the aroma of gingerbread filled the whole house, and tiny decorations of gingerbread men hung from the walls. A bushy Christmas tree sat in the corner of the dim living room with all sorts of ornaments and lights around it. Mrs. Jones popped out from the kitchen and made Trevor and Mr. Jones sit by the fireplace.
She then came and gave everyone gingerbread cookies and warm chocolate milk.
“So Trevor, how’s school?”
“School’s good. How are the two of you?”
“We are doing well.”
There was an awkward silence. Shortly, Mr. Jones said,
“I haven’t seen your parents in a while. Where are they?”
“Oh, they’ve gone to France to celebrate with my brother. I insisted.”
“I see.”
Again another moment of silence.
“Trevor. Were you feeling lonely today? I know how stressful Christmas and holidays can be, and if you want, you can spend the rest of the evening here.”
The worry in Mr. Jones’s voice made Trevor tear up a little, and he felt a lump in his throat.
“I wanted my parents to spend time with my brother because they haven’t seen him in a long time. They treat me too well. But never did I know how lonely it would get.”
Mrs. Jones got up from her seat, sat beside Trevor, and softly gripping his hand with hers, said,
“Dear boy. Parents don’t treat you too well. They treat you like that because they care and worry about you! And it’s okay to feel lonely. I mean, look at us! We’ve been lonely for a long time now.”
Mr. Jones looked painfully at Mrs. Jones when she said that, and a tear flew out of his eye as he quickly brushed it away.
“You know, I haven’t seen my son in a long time. We’re old, and our son is young. He has his own family now. He needs to tend to their needs, not ours. So yes, it sometimes gets lonely for us. Especially during the holidays when everyone else seems to enjoy and be with each other.”
Trevor looked at both Mr. and Mrs. Jones, who had let him stay over and were so kind to him. Suddenly an idea popped in his mind, and smiling gently, replied, “Well then. Is it okay if I spend Christmas with you?”
This time we got basketball going up against Scrabble.
Basketball is a sport played by a team. Up to five people can go onto the court to play. You win by shooting the ball into the opponent’s hoop. The points you earn by putting the ball into the ring are either a one-pointer, two-pointers, or three-pointers. At the end of the game, the team with the most points wins.
Now I want to play 😦
Scrabble is a board game where you make words using tiny squares and aboard. You can play in teams, partners, or singles. Each square has several points to it. You are to make words with the squares on the board, which gives you points. The twist is that all the words have to interlink with one another.
This is how the Scrabble pieces look like 😀
Basketball is a game that my mom played for a very long time when she was young. She’s played at the state level, which makes me very proud. I, too, am learning how to play at school and am also trying out for my school team!
Unlike soccer, basketball doesn’t give me stress even though it is a team game. I can trust my skills in this game more than my soccer skills. Plus, I love playing it. Basketball is a game of thinking and tactics. Knowing where your opponent is, where the ball is, where your teammates are, and how you can snatch the ball are only some things to think about when playing.
Recently I started to play Scrabble. Our ELA teacher gave us the chance to play Scrabble during class which is a blessing considering how merciful she can be. Anyways, I played Scrabble after a couple of years that day. And the game makes you think! 😀
You want to be smart when playing the game. Would you make a seven-letter word if it only earns you 10 points, or would you make a four-letter word that gives you 14 points? Not only that, but you have to make the words make sense because they have to interlink.
I’m going to try to find my old scrabble and give it a go with my family. 😀
Oh no. It’s time to decide. Let me say this: depending on the situation, I would pick.
Basketball is a game that I would be ready to play at any time. Playing a scrimmage in basketball is the best overall other sports. I would pick it if I feel like doing something! 😀
Scrabble is a game I’d play on a Saturday evening or one where I need a break. Challenging my brother to a scrabble game sounds amusing, and I’d beat him for sure. 😀
In conclusion, I felt like sitting on the fence today and decided to love both because both are enjoyable and exciting to play. 🙂
One of the things I like to watch nowadays is anime. Anime is based in Japan and is cartoons/animations for all ages.
This week’s topic is shojo. Shojo is the counterpart of shonen, so in this case, shojo is cartoons/animations for young female audiences.
Shoujo can be more towards romance and slice-of-life than action and fighting. Things like high school romance, everyday life, and the struggles of a girl in the real world are some examples of shoujo animes. Some shojos even have fantasy elements, such as switching bodies or turning into animals.
Shoujo is a more calm version of shonen 🙂
One of my favourite and heart-breaking shoujo is Fruits Basket. My friend recommended this to me when I first started to watch anime. The story is about Tohru Honda, who loses her mom in an accident and is alone. She then meets new friends who are all part of a family. The plot twist? If hugged by the opposite sex, they turn into their zodiac animal.
Be sure to have a tissue and a strong mind when watching this anime!
The shojo genre focuses on romance because the audience it is directed at is females in their pre-teens. However, it doesn’t mean that all shojo is only romance.
Many are based on conflict and hate and how it turns into love 😀
Shonen can also have romance as the theme, and shojo can also have action. Remember, there is no specific theme to the shonen and shojo genres. The one thing that makes them shojo and shounen is that both are aimed more towards pre-teens and teenagers.
If you ever watch a shoujo with tons of emotion and conflict (which all shojos have but in different ways), then be sure to have a tissue and your heart prepared. 😀
Hey everyone! Sorry, there won’t be a post today as I am busy preparing for a test this week. I will post both today’s and tomorrow’s post tomorrow! 😀
Thanks for all your support, it means a lot for someone who procrastinates over things like this. 🙂
Life Is Everything 