The Importance of Making Time for Yourself.

Bonjour honey =).

Last Monday (As in, "the day before yesterday"...), I decided in favour of creating a schedule for fitting my hobbies into my day, and thus far I really did it AND enjoyed it. I must say, there is more to this kind of "system" than meets the eye at first, because I also am tracking my progress & whatever I learned along the way. I watch tutorials / lessons in certain areas of interest in order to really learn something along the way... I track the video name & the one who's responsible for uploading & creating said videos.

Then, I take notes of whatever I am told... It is a bit like at school and/or university; I am responsible for whatever I learn or don't... Thus far, I took virtual lessons in Finnish, drawing, Japanese & journalism. Plus, I wrote a poem, which I will share in a minute, and interpreted a tarot card for my friends & followers on IG. I am doing my best to really fit everything in, and I am allowed to change things around as I go, too.

What I learned today is that there are really so many fields you actually should rely on your knowledge & whatever it is you actually can do, rather than what you have been told & taught at uni (That maybe didn't really seem interesting at all...). And I feel there is so much truth to this, though I feel there are still jobs out there you need a degree for (Doctors of all kinds...) - however, some fields I feel it is not necessary to really "study". There are of course benefits, but the education system is partly really screwed... And so, I feel there is some truth to "Fake it until you make it." :) Just start seeing the spark in yourself, going "I am an artist / a writer / a musician / etc.!", and take it to the next level.

As for the poem I wrote... There was a really nice (AND CUTE!) encounter I recently had with a ladybug. :) The little one didn't want to leave my arm / hands, not even when I tried putting them onto a leaf and other really nice green places around me. I even looked up what kind of ladybug it was, and ended up writing a poem when I was home again. Here it goes (I haven't written poems for so long now, though. I hope you like it.):

Ladybug

The ladybug is smooth, not smug,

She flies from you to me.

"Greetings friend! I'll bring you luck,

Just believe and see!"

Once she leaves your hands alone,

You wonder where she's flying,

Heading off to what you've shown,

Sitting on leaves, sighing:

"I'll bring this person luck and wonders,

Just if they treat me right.

Maybe joy, or health," she ponders.

"And love - all day and night."

As for the drawings, what I practiced mostly was where shadows are located & how to sketch the right way (Many little lines except for one rough line on its own.), which helped immensely, too. I mainly drew round objects and how the shadow was building below / on them. And I tried drawing a tree & a glass that was standing near me on the table. Hm. Keep going, will you! ;)

Other than that, I have nothing to say. Today's goals I already completed. Tomorrow will be an astrology day & a crafting / sewing, etc.-kind of day, and the day after, I want to focus on numerology & music making.

Have you ever done something like this? Did it help you? (As for me, it is an act of self-care & stabilising my mood.) Do you have any pieces of advice for me?

Have a lovely day & See you soon!

~R i n a.

Return of the FAULENZER.

It seems even to me that I am always just popping in to say what has happened and to apologise for the previous period of absence here, so I will leave it to this. It is not like I have done NOTHING in the mean time, though...

I did start writing letters again. It is slowly, but surely getting better. I found two new penpals very recently, one lovely lady from Malaysia, and another one from the US. Will not go into the details concerning these people, but it makes me happy to, for example, draw / paint for these people... To share what is important to us with each other... To learn about them, and their home as well... Ah well. I am planning on sending more letters soon, but I cannot promise them all going out in NO TIME, as I do want to put some effort into writing them and preparing stuff for people. But... YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. ;)

I recently learned about the death of a loved one, and decided to write a song for them... It is still not very easy to deal with all this; the wounds are still quite fresh so-to-say.

And then, I started working on a tulle tutu this week. I cannot promise to really finish it this week, because there is still a lot of stuff waiting to be done OTHER than the skirt, but I do hope I will be able to make it still. I also bought some new sewing needles and yarn yesterday. And something to repair broken jeans' fabrics with. As in, you know when you walk sometimes there will be parts of the jeans thinning and such... THAT'S what I mean. I want to repair some jeans this way...

Recently, I have been in sewing / DIY mood a lot. But I didn't really get around to making much. I did watch some DIY tutorials on Youtube, though... So yeah. That tulle tutu is really easy to make, though (I GUESS XD!)... It is mostly a no-sew project, and actually quite popular. You will decide how much elastic band you will need for the project (Do you want your tutu to fit around your waist? Or around your hips?), cut that off (but with a sewing allowance!! I added about 1 centimeter for this project, so... I hope this will suffice!) after trying out whether you can still step in and out of it, then sew these ends together.

Next, you cut the tulle fabric in the colour(s) you want the tutu to feature into (I would say) about 20 centimeters worth of width. The length should be, however, roughly twice the length from the elastic band's final position (Once again: Hips or waist, you will decide!) to the final end of the tutu's length (This could be any length, really. I want mine to be rather short, but have no idea just yet how short in particular this will be :P!). You cut out as many pieces like this as you will need. Then you fold the pieces (or two or three together?) so that the ends meet each other, and tie these to the elastic band (You create a loop at the end opposite of the meeting point of the ends *gestures wildly*, then hold this loop next to the elastic band, and pull the other end through the loop over the elastic... ^_^).

So, that is the plan right now... I have cut off the elastic band as I said already, and I bought yarn & needles. Now on to sewing the ends together. I will have 0.5 centimeters sewing allowance at both ends (Which may be a bit too small / thin, but I will try nevertheless.). This is my first "real" sewing project, and to be frank, I am a bit scared it might go wrong. I know some tricks now as to threading a needle & tying a knot for the end of the thread, too, though, so that's great.

Let's hope for the best, shall we? And with this more-or-less understandable, written tutorial, I am leaving you today. I hope you all are in a good mood. ^o^

Today is going to be a great day~!

OHAI MARK (& the others!)!

I am sorry it has been so long. :( Some stuff has happened, partly not really GOOD stuff, but I am trying my best to deal with it. I hope everybody is okay, though! I really do.

Apart from soul-searching and going to doctors and hospitals, I didn't really feel like updating here a lot. Sorry to bore you with this; it is nothing personal, though. I guess it was just hard for me to write in here (publically), too. I have finished some paintings and drawings when in hospital, though. Also started writing new songs, whoo. Kai, the epic guitar of epicness that also entered my dreamworld yesterday or so (I dreamed of getting my other guitar repaired...), hasn't been mad at me and performed well enough for my ears.

Maybe I can show you those works soon. :) And I want to work out another 101/1001 list for myself, to be entirely honest. I know this idea is stolen (Kei, I am really sorry for this :(...!), but I feel it could help me get out of the boredom and such. I will let you know in time...

Am I doing this right?

Hey!

How are you all? I hope you are all fine :). I feel incredibly lucky and happy, and this has been going on for quite some time now, which is surprising to me as well. I know I never really talked about the topic of mental health and I don't know how much I will get into this topic as of now, but I feel like talking about it, so why not?

Okay, so: I have been diagnosed with a psychotic episode in 2004, and in 2006 I experienced the second one. However, I must also say that ever since I was about 10 years old, I felt not really happy with myself. I don't know what to say about this; I don't want to trigger anybody, but let's just say I started early on doing things to myself that were not very "nice"... I never really overcame this mentality of self-destruction, and never actively really tried to get over it. Okay, I *did* try out living with the LOA and tried living 28 days just giving stuff to others, but I always slid back into my mindset of being worthless, dumb, uninspired, neither creative nor intelligent and so on. It was very hard to live wiht this, especially since I did try to help people who were going through similar stuff in their life, and I felt a bit like a hypocrite (No offense to the people I mean at this point; YOU REALLY ARE WONDERFUL PEOPLE AND I AM INCREDIBLY GRATEFUL FOR HAVING YOU IN MY LIFE!!).

So after having hit the ground in December 2015 again, which I will not go into greater detail now about, I somehow had my mood lifted again, and I don't really know what did this or why? I mean, I really engaged in more fun activities, I drew or painted or sang or whatever-ed whenever I felt like it. Also, as I told you already, I picked up language practice and made some progress with this now, too :). When I felt like, "Oh I want to do XYZ!", I moved things around until I was able to... I even participated in said competition, and even though I didn't win in the end, I did feel good about it, because I did have the courage to send the poem away!

I don't want to claim this IS the key to overcoming mental illness in general, but (a) I feel more open toward seeking for help actively now, and (b) it helped me to just engage in some activities without overthinking stuff. I know this is really hard to do, especially when you are stuck or having depression, when you feel like everything you loved doing loses its meaning and you just want to lie around and do nothing (At least it was like this to me; my favourite activities started meaning less and less to me, but I forced myself to remember and think it through then, and I *always* came to the conclusion my heart was yearning for making music, which, in turn, made me happy again and made me stand up again.). But yeah, of course I am not you; I don't know what you need in all cases. I just wanted to write this, and maybe some of you who are going through a particularly tough time in their lives will find the will to get out of there, too.

I cannot say I am 100% recovered of course, and it will take a long time to overcome ways of thinking I kept "dearly" to myself for almost 22 years now, but right now, I feel like it is worth it. Creativity has a healing effect sometimes, it is unbelievable... :) If you DO want to know something or comment with your concerns or whatever, please do so. I really don't want you to feel uncomfortable, but ---- please don't give up. I know I don't know you all personally, but I strongly feel it is saddening I don't. Why? Because everybody has an enormous potential for personal growth, for creative endeavors, for making the world a better place inside of them, and I firmly believe this... Everybody is worth getting to know, everybody is worth speaking to. And I really believe that everybody has a piece of the puzzle hidden in their hearts, thus being an important part of the world's population... This includes YOU, too, my dear reader! :)

I don't really know what else to write about... There are so many things I could do, but right now, my possibly biggest wish is to go to bed (it is half past 11pm now)... The sleepiness is probably also the reason this sounds very weird now altogether, but I really mean it! You. are. special. A special little snowflake, if you wish. Whatever you want to be, it is a part of you already!

Okay, my bed is calling me, and I guess this is just a sign of being tired (Thanks for reading, though!)!

~S. R.

PS: I also learned that doing stuff because I want to do it & NOT to fill entries in my blog(s) is the best way to go. :)

PPS: Please comment with any feedback if you have that. Just constructive criticism, please, though. Thanks.

[Nur wir]

Hello...

I have "lost" the competition, but I will continue participating in future ones nevertheless. Thank you to everybody keeping their fingers crossed and congratulations to the winner :)! I mean it. & I am really looking forward to reading their story or poem... I shall publish the poem I wrote here as soon as the winner's version has been published, too. Otherwise I'd see no reason in doing so!

Other than that, I ordered some fabric for making a tulle tutu, and I am looking forward to this task so much. It is - surprise, surprise! - tulle fabric in black... And even though the thought of making mistakes when making the skirt makes me nauseous, I still am very fond of it (the idea). It will be the first time I am making something clothing wise with my bare hands, and I hope that said hands will not get in my way. ;)

And the next point is a little unrelated, but still very important for me recently: The past 23 days + today, I spent learning mainly Italian, but also French, Russian and Swedish. But mainly Italian... Maybe some of you don't know this about me, but languages are really a part of my life I love working on. I know I am nowhere near fluent, not even in English, but still it makes me happy to practice foreign languages, and speak to other people in their native language. :] The upper languages are not the only ones I learned in my life, though.

Anyways, I'd really love to get some suggestions for blogs to read in one of the following languages: French, Finnish, Spanish, Japanese & Italian. It would be cool if those had to deal with stuff I am interested in myself... I want to make learning languages a lot more fun than just stubbornly sitting somewhere and learning stuff. :) And learning by doing is really important, too. I will keep my eyes open, though. :D

Thanks for reading & have a nice day...

Wo Sein Hintern Ist! (Poem in German)

I was booored, and once I am booored, I need to get ouuut of this staaate of miiind. So I wrote a poem. :)

Wo Sein Hintern Ist

Liebes Kind, dein Leben ist,

Was gut und schlecht und Beben ist.

Dieser Mann, ein Internist,

Sieht nicht mal, wo sein Hintern ist.

Und pupsen kann er auch ganz gut,

Und schnappt sich seinen Bauchtanzgurt,

Mit dem die Stärken lauter würden,

Doch sieht er nichts vor lauter Hürden,

Und schwebt hinfort, als er sich wundert,

Mit KMH der Marke Hundert!

Transl.

Where His Butt Is

Dear child, your life is

What is good and bad and earthquake.

This man, an internis,

Does not see where his butt is.

And he can also fart very well,

And grabs his belly dancing belt,

With whom the strenghts*d get louder,

 But he doesn*t see anything because of the hurdles,

And floats away once he is wondering,

With a speed of 100 KMH!

I know it is just the most beautiful piece of poetry I have ever written. Somehow I cannot stop grinning for this reason ... :P

That said, I also worked on some more music today, but I desperately need to record my vocals before putting these music masterpieces online :PP.

And soon I hope I will be able to watch the movie Snow Sharks, because I can. :PPP