The Thing About Goals

Yes, I know, people say to reach for the stars and "dream the impossible" but I don't necessarily agree with that particular advice. No, no, no, don't hate me until you've heard me out completely. Shall I begin?

Ok, so let me make 1 thing Crystal clear. I do NOT mean that you should not set goals or have high ambitions. I mean you shouldn't dream so big that you can't see your dream. I'll tell you why.

Cue harp music; Backflash begin:

So this summer I was, well you could say, SUPER AMBITIOUS. Like beyond ambitious. I wanted to learn 3 languages, study for random tests, get ahead in next year's curriculum, fix my routine, etc. There's like 5 more goals. Long story short, I did none of them, and as my summer drew to a close, I fell into a sort of depression. Thoughts going through my head around that time were like:

"Oh Elle, your such a failure."
"You couldn't even do ONE STUPID THING."
"This is a prediction for what'll happen next year."
"Look at all your friends doing great things."
"You told them your goals, and your gonna go back to them unchanged, if anything, worse."

Etc, Etc, Etc.

Well I became afraid to dream anymore because I was afraid my nightmares would wake me up.

I dreamt a dream too big for my eyes to see. Beyond my capability. I don't mean to tell you to dream small. You should dream HUGE! Just don't lose your sanity if things don't go as planned like I did. I'm motivated again as a new year begins in my life and as excited as ever.

I think the mistake I made was thinking I failed because I had set a type of due date for myself. It's not like I can never attempt those things again. Nothing is lost. That is the lesson I hope you learn from my story.

1. DREAM HUGE, just not unbearably strenuous
2. If you think you've failed, don't be too hard on yourself
3. Anything is STILL possible!

Good Luck with ALLLLL your goals:D👍🏻 👍🏻 👍🏻

~ ELLE

Finding My Voice

-Imagine we're in the hunger games- It has begun! someone yells, and suddenly everyone swarms around and begins screaming and beating each other and chaos, ect. In OTHER words, school has started, yaey ^-^

Up until recently I have been a small child with practically no responsibilities and worries. I could go all around doing and speaking to as I please, traipsing around without a care in the world, or that's how I like to envision my past, I highly doubt that's how my life actually played out (shh, let me pretend!). I had parents to do all the tricky stuff for my little self, like handle scary things like... people. 

Then came life and whoop, congratulations, you're a teenager! Now, I used to scoff at the whole, oh teenagers are horrible and frightening and you will go through a whole identity change bla bla bla, But my was I proven horrendously wrong! Teenage years are horrible! They are painful! They are GRUELING!!
You have to find out what you are in this mess of a world. With people battering you on all sides trying to tell you to think some way, act one way, be another way.

For me that horrid limbo teenager mode means trying to find how to be towards others.
One thing I struggle to figure out is how I want to deal with other people. I never had to deal with a big social circle, I have a small school, and a small family. And suddenly being thrust into a whole new pool of people with different beliefs and thoughts painting abstract colors before me, I feel a little lost.



Do I want to be an open book for people to read and write their problems in, or someone who screams my beliefs from the rooftops and doesn't care what people say about me?
Or do I want to be somewhere in between?

These piddly puddlings are written in this blog, in my posts. Do I want my voice to be loud and bombastic, making silly jokes and exclamations, never hinting at the feelings that bubble underneath my skin? Or do I want to be a solid voice of my beliefs and loud about my opinions, wiping back the curtain on things that need to be said and are normally hidden. and still be humorous in a different, more refined way?

The normal response to these things are, oh child, do what makes you happy! And they strut away feeling like they have given you the most marvelous advice of all and expect your problem to be promptly solved.
But that is the problem, that I don't know which version clicks, which me feels like the me I can fill my skin in.

So I will keep turning over these things in my head, in my posts, in my writing. Trying different things and seeing what fits and what has to get lost.
I want my writing here to reflect my real voice, not a fake smile that I put on for the people of the Internet to poke it's spun glass strands.

-Crystal!


What an angsty post that was, feel free to leave your angstings down below so we can angst together :) What do you think? What helped you find your voice?

How to manage reading all of your favorite blogs

"greatness is not a solitary act"
Is something I wrote on some college application. Although this is an important aspect of most forms of success, this sentence rings true especially for blogging!

On a random side note, please send over some mosquito incinerator and a magical panacea for all these wretched bites, my poor flesh has been eaten by the blood sucking vampire monsters, and it itches so bad, SO BAD! 

Something I've noticed since I've made this blog is that blogging by yourself in your little hobbit hole doesn't work, you have to go out and talk to people (frightening as this may be, especially if you're low-key afraid of the Internet and stuff), they can help you, and you can help them. You don't have to go and be instabuddies with everyone if that's not for you, but interaction is a key part of blogging.

And no, this doesn't mean you should only go to blogs to bring traffic back to your own (you probably weren't thinking that but if you were, I caught ya!) You should comment and follow blogs you actually enjoy reading, it makes for better interactions later on. But looking for support in the blogging community is a great incentive to get out there and find blogs you truly enjoy.

Now you've found all these wonderful blogs, each of them special and cool with different charms and personalities, what could go wrong!? Suddenly you're drowning in all of the lovely blogs you want to read and end of missing and forgetting some great blogs.
I'm no expert on managing reading many blogs and most of the time am drowning myself, but I do have a few helpful tips I've picked up juggling a large reading list :)

Pretty self explanatory, but one of the easiest and most helpful things you can probably do. Even if you don't read every blog you bookmark regularly, you can scroll through your bookmarks on a rainy day when you have nothing to do.
It also does wonders to prevent prevent the, darn it I can't find that amazing blog that had everything I needed on it, scenario.


Most bloggers have the widget in their side bar and doing this helps both you and the blogger, you're giving them a shiny new follower (which is always exciting!) and when you add them it makes it easy to see all their new posts. When you visit your own blogger dashboard your subscribed blogs show up in a handy mandy little box at the bottom, and any of their recent posts in chronological order. This is better than bookmarking because a) there's less of a chance of the blogs getting lost in all the other bookmark junk on our computers, b) you can see if they posted anything new and c) you can access it from any computer.
The only thing I don't like about this method is that you have to be signed in to your google account and you can only access the feed from your blogger dashboard. It's just a little cumbersome for me and I don't get any sort of notification.

 
Again, most bloggers have this (Hint hint, you can follow YJR here)
And while I don't like Bloglovin' for discovering blogs, which is a topic for another day, it is very handy for keeping up to date on the blogs you read. It's nice because you can read the posts directly in Bloglovin' and not have to navigate between everyone's individual blogs.



You are NOT required to read every blog all the time.
I know the feeling of wanting to read ALL blogs ALL THE TIME and comment on all posts because blogs are wonderful and the pressure can get stressful.
But we're all humans here yes? That means we often have busy lives and our responsibilities should take first priority. When things get rough it's okay to drop regularly reading blogs you like, you shouldn't feel guilty for it and it in no way means you don't like their blog. Your health and work comes first, take care of it.