Scoraluna

My Journey to a Healthier Relationship with Food and Learning how to Cook as an Adult

Posted on February 21, 2023February 28, 2023 by Scoraluna

I know what you’re thinking: Luna, you’re 26 years old, how the fuck do you not yet know how to cook? And to that I say: I do but not right.

Okay, let me explain. I do know how to cook, as in I know how to handle myself in the kitchen but I don’t enjoy it, so I don’t do it often and if I do, I make sure I use mostly pre-done ingredients so I don’t have to bother with prep stuff.

Now, I don’t think I have to tell you that that isn’t neccessarily healthy and every person ever that has ever looked into healthy nutrition will agree. Although I do agree that eating anything at all is better than not eating, you should pay at least some attention to what you eat, in order to make sure you get all the nutrients your body needs. And although I have already known this for quite a while, it took me quite a long time to also want to fix that.

Since I don’t know what your relationship with food in general is I will put a
trigger warning here just in case.

Although I never had an ED as such, as in I never deliberately did anything to mess up my food intake, I would say that my way of eating was very disordered at some points during my life. There would be days where I would be just so busy that I forgot to eat and some other days where getting something to eat seemed like the worst chore to do (Mental health issues, yeeey). And on some other days I would just be lazy and instead resorted to just have snacks or nothing at all. My stance was always: if there was a way of getting all the calories and nutrients that you need through some other way, while still allowing me to consume food normally, cause I do like food I just don’t like making it, then I would go for that in a heartbeat.

The result of all that: My body got used to it and with that my general feeling of hunger kind of “dissappeared” leading to me not feeling like I needed any food. One meal a day was often enough for me to not feel hungry at all.

Before you get out the bonk hammer at this point, (especially if you know me IRL): I know. I know the way that I was handling that wasn’t healthy and I know that this is absolutely nothing one should ever do. And I also know of the consequences this can have, have experienced them: lack of concentration, headaches, dizzy spells, fatique etc… That’s why I finally wanted to fix it.

Regularly working out and being fed up with being underweight (due to my extremely fast metabolism) and wanting to gain weight helped with that because of course you can’t really have healthy weight or muscle gain, if you don’t eat enough. So I really started paying attention to having three regular meals every single day. I didn’t pay much attention to what I ate, I just ate because getting my body used to 3-4 meals a day again was more important to me than watching out for what I ate.

After a while though, I started noticing that all that energy that I had in the beginning when I got my body used to eating regularly again started getting less again. That, and the fact that I was getting bored of my food showed me that I really need to fix my nutrition, before I would go back to my old habits and just not eat again and so I divised a plan on finally doing this right.

I decided to look for a bunch of resources that could help me with cooking food. Basically my requirements were that they are easy, vegetarian recepies that don’t take too long to make cause I still at this point didn’t really enjoy cooking so I wanted to make the step in as easy as possible. I sat down, did some research, copied some links, downloaded some apps and decided to make a meal plan for every week from now on, because I thought, if I already know what I will eat for the week, I will have an easier time going shopping and actually using the ingedients I have at home.

Since I am only cooking for myself I obviously don’t need to cook every single day because I have leftovers that I can eat and when I say meal plan I also don’t mean plan every single meal every single day but just the main meals that I need to cook because I’ll always have something different for breakfast and the third meal of the day.

After I had looked for all that, I realized that I was missing quite some staples that a normal kitchen should have so the next step was to go shopping. Let me tell you, it was really weird to go grocery shopping and buy all of these fresh ingredients, felt like a proper grown up doing that ^^

And then it came down to cook the first proper meal. It went…. oh, as if I could really build up some dramatic tension here… It went really well. Cooking with a recipe was as easy as anything and although I took longer to make it than I should have, simply due to my inexperience in the kitchen when it comes to cutting things right and organization, it didn’t take too long to make either. And… and this is the best thing about it, it tasted really good.

Since then, which was two weeks ago, I have been cooking regularly and the joy I get out of eating something that I really put some effort into and that is made with fresh ingredients really helps with me slowly taking a liking to cooking. However, I have also decided to not force myself to cook anything big, if I don’t feel like cooking anything at all. Pasta and Pesto for example are still a good option to eat when you don’t feel like cooking at all. Don’t worry, during those two weeks that has happened once, I am really trying hard to not let no-motivation-for-cooking-days become the norm again.

So, yeah, I am slowly but surely learning how to cook properly, getting organized in the kitchen and experimenting with different recipes from all over the place. (I am also slowly getting myself used to spicy food because I really cannot handle that well but that’s another story xD)

Maybe you’re someone who enjoys cooking a lot, maybe you have helped with cooking or even cooked yourself since you were young, but for those of you who are like me and really don’t like cooking, I hope this gave you some motivation to give it a shot. It can be fun and it is an extremely nice feeling to eat something that you yourself have made.

Either way, if you wanna share your experiences, feel free to leave a comment, I love reading those!

See you in the next one, til then, take care ❤

~Luna

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Mentality

Procrastination Solution?

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Scoraluna

All good things come in threes, right? So this is a follow-up post to both “Procrastination Frustration” and “Instant Gratification Station.” In both blog posts I have expressed my disdain for this little thing that seems to rule my life, which is procrastination. I don’t think I have to explain what that is, but it might be interesting for you to hear that I seem to have found a solution that helps me to keep my procrastination habit in check. So strap in people, as I tell you the tale.

In the beginning, no not that far back, but in the beginning of my school career I was one of those children, who always had their shit together. I did my homework pretty much the moment I came home, while my mom was cooking and had the rest of the day to play and do whatever I wanted. That was really nice and boy do I wish it had stayed that way.

But unfortunately it did not. Fast foward a few years and little Luna is now in secondary school. During her time in secondary school, smartphones, where you don’t immediately get a mini heartattack when you accidentaly hit the internet button, are starting to become a thing and little Luna also discovers YouTube… and so the lifelong cycle of procrastination begins. Homework and studying becomes much less interesting than watching people on the Internet make funny and relatable skits and while her English gets better from day to day, her procrastination habit gets worse and worse.

Needless to say, it hasn’t really gotten any better since then but I think I actually have managed to find out why that is the case and what I can do against it, so it happens less often, which is something I wanna share with you.

Little disclaimer here!

Just because these solutions work for me, it does not mean that they will work for you as well but maybe there’s something you can take away from this.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s just jump right in:

First things first, I noticed that the biggest issue about procrastination is the fact that, at least for me, it barely has any ‘dire’ consequences. I’ve somehow always managed to still get things done on time, although it was hella stressful, of course. Heck, I was even proud of how little time it took me to get something done. And it really didn’t help that my friends were like “Damn, you started yesterday? Impressive that you still managed.” … Yeah… I think you see why someone would almost take this as an ego boost although it was obviously never meant as such. That my sleep and well-being suffered substantially from this act was suddenly no longer important.

So I was thinking of what I could do in order to give myself consequences should I end up procrastinating and I decided on setting myself a hard deadline. Now, what does that mean? It means that I have a deadline every single day, at which I have to stop working, no matter how far I am. It’s like in an exam situation where the teacher says “finish your sentence and then hand it in.” Everything I didn’t manage that day I have to leave it be and see how I handle it the following days, even if that means having to get up earlier. Getting up early is one of the things that I am not so fond of especially, if it means I have to do it for work (I believe hardly anyone is), so this for me is a consequence that I do not like.

So far, this has worked like a charm. The looming deadline every day causes just about enough anxiety for me to actually do stuff and get done before the deadline without pushing me into a worried frenzy. It actually hasn’t been the case yet that I struggled and the prospect of getting up earlier the next day was enough of a downer to actually make me say “yeah, I don’t want that.”

Little additional note here: The deadline only exists, when the reason I didn’t get any work done, is procrastination, other factors don’t count.

Okay so much for the first thing, what’s the second?

The second thing will probably surprise you…… not at all. It’s my phone. Or rather the apps on it. I think it is no secret that our phones are a massive distraction. This is no different to me. So I tried apps like “Forest”, which I have spoken about in a blog post before and while that worked in the beginning, it wasn’t the solution I had hoped for. If you have read, my other post (I know a lot of refering back in this one, sorry) where I described some things that I found helped me cope with feeling burnt out, you will know that I do something I have dubbed “offline hour” every single day, if possible. In said hour I will completely turn off my Internet, to spend some time “offline.” I will use the time for self-care, writing/journaling, reading etc. Something I have noticed during those hours, is how much stuff I can get done in that time because there are no distractions. This had me thinking “okay, if my FOMO (fear of missing out) can handle this, then it should also be able to handle actually working on something, aka being actively distracted, with the Internet turned off.” And surprise, surprise it does.

I have now gotten into the habit of turing off my phone Internet completely, if I really need to focus on something and so far, it has been working like a charm. The extra step that it would require for me to turn on the Internet, plus the fact that I tell some people that I’m going offline, aka I have someone who would ask me, why I am back online already, is enough of a barrier in order not to do it. This means I either have the choice between actually doing something, or waiting until the time passes, because phones without Internet, turns out, are not really interesting.

I thankfully don’t really have the issue with the Internet on my PC distracting me, meaning I am not really tempted to visit any distracting websites but I know that some people might be. Since you probably, like me, have to use the interent for work/study reasons, I can recommend turning off everything else that you don’t need, including any and all messaging programs/websites as well as maybe putting a temporary website blocker (such as Forest, which also exists as a web extension) on sites like Youtube, Netflix etc. Last but not least, in order to not start playing a game instead, should that be a temptation you have, it helps to turn off the “launch on start” options for all game launchers, meaning you have to yet again go through this extra step before you can play. (Even more annoying, but effective, if you disable auto-login).

And there you have it, the fix to my procrastination problem. Obviously, everyone’s is different and you might have other reasons and issues as to why you procrastinate. However, if you do think that any of these tips or methods might help you, and you do end up giving them a shot, let me know how it goes for you in the comments.

Until the next blog post, take care ❤

~Luna

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Coping with Social Situations without Headphones

Posted on December 11, 2022December 11, 2022 by Scoraluna

This is, as promised the follow up post to my “Of Emotional Burnout and Social Anxiety” post, where I promised to tell you about the way I cope with social situations in which I can’t wear my headphones.

A while ago I was just wasting time and procrastinating on other things I had to do by browsing Instagram when an advertisement caught my eye:

Live life at your volume.

For someone who was at that point constantly overwhelmed, stressed and feeling like everything is just too much all the time, this sounded like an absolute blessing. However, sceptical as I was I just saved it and decided to look at it at a later date. Really shouldn’t have done that. Even imagining how much of a relief I could already have had, if I had looked into the advertised product sooner… well I won’t go into that otherwise I’ll just get angry at myself again.

Either way, fast forward a few months… yep, you heard right… months and I’m on my way to a holiday destination and a good friend of mine and I are talking about noise sensitivity, promted by the people surrounding us. During that talk, we realize that we’ve both been seeing the same advertisement and decide to have a proper look into it together during our holiday. We both end up ordering a pair after we decide what we want to use them for and we’re excited to see how those really work and if they will deliver what they promise

When we get them delivered, we try them out immediately. The first thing we notice is that with the type that we’ve chosen, it is legitimately possible to still have a conversation with both of them in our ears but everything feels filtered. As if someone had given us a volume control for our surroundings. Everything seemed less overwhelming at once and I’ve never felt so relieved to no longer have the constant need of drowning out unwanted sounds with other sounds; more specifically music. (Although that is still my prefered method and will always be but sometimes it’s not posssible and it is still a relief that I no longer need it in order to not feel overwhelmed.)
From then on they have become a permant fixture in my life. I never leave the house without them anymore, they are always on my keychain.

I got the chance to test them out in many situations since then. Both for reducing backround noise and reducing noise as a whole as well as using them as proper earplugs when trying to sleep by putting the lil mute thingy in. (I have since then ordered a second pair that’s specifically designend to be used for sleeping and blocking out sound completely for future situations but I didn’t have to use them yet.)

For example, we decided to go to a pretty lively bar/club while I was on holiday and there were a lot of people there. As a result, it was loud and the music that was playing wasn’t helping with that fact. So I put my Loop Earplugs in and everything just got a lil more quiet. It was an absolute blessing.

I’ve also already used them at Uni in order to block out the background noise of people shuffling, rustling, basically anything that would distract me from what I’m actually supposed to be doing, which is listening to the person speaking in front.

Needless to say, daily life and noise has become a lot less overwhelming since then.

I have also recommended them to a lot of people since then and they’ve all been extremely happy with them. So, if you’re now curious to check out the website yourself you can simply click here.

Before I end this blog post I want you to know one more thing: Yes, this is an advertisement and yes, I am affiliated with Loop Earplugs, and the link is an affiliate link, however I want you to know that it was me that looked for whether or not they had an affiliate program and I have not been approached by them, simply because I am so happy with them.

As a result everything that I have written is 100% genuine and my own opinion.

The only thing that remains to say is that if any of the things that I have mentioned have in some way shape or form spoken to you, give them a try, you won’t regret it. They even help you figure out which ones suit you best by asking you what function you hope the Loop Earplugs fulfill.

So, if you do decide to get some, feel free to let me know in the comments how your experience with them goes.

For now though take care. Till the next blog post ❤

~Luna

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Mentality

Of Emotional Burnout and Social Anxiety

Posted on November 28, 2022November 28, 2022 by Scoraluna

Hello fellow people on this earth, I am back and a lot has happened. My mental health has gone from bad to worse and then to better again and now I would say we’re somewhere between okay and good. But let me start from the beginning.

Once upon a time… okay we don’t need to go that far back but let’s indeed go back a few months. As you may or may not know (you would know, if you watch me on twitch) my mental state was pretty fragile for a while after that stressful time last year. A lot of canceled plans, streams, events… you name it, I probably canceled it. I was constantly feeling stressed, overwhelmed and like everything was just too much. I felt like a rubber band that was being stretched too far, ready to snap at any given moment.

After a while I felt like something was seriously going wrong in my life. I started noticing things like myself being constantly anxious when around friends and family alike, which was something I used to only experience in social situations with strangers before. I also started to have a hard time doing simple things like going shopping or going to pick up a package without being super anxious or needing like days to prepare in advance.

Long story short, I noticed it was starting to affect me in my daily life and quite strongly so. I have always been a bit socially anxious but I’ve always managed to cope with it. At that point I no longer was able to, and a rule that I had set myself was that I would look for help incase it ever startes influencing my daily life and stops me from doing things. So that’s what I did. I got help and it got better. We figured out that my social anxiety probably started getting worse and developed into a disorder because I was rarely leaving my place and that that was because I was lacking the energy in the first place. So I realized that it was all connected like a weird hell cycle: Constantly stressed out and no time for myself led to me not having any energy and no longer enjoying things. That led to me canceling plans, meaning I didn’t subject myself to social situations which in turn made the social anxiety get worse and worse which made me more stressed out and …. I think you get the gist.

Fast foward a year to now and I am slowly beginning to recover. About a month ago I told my roommate “you know what? I finally feel like I wanna do more than the bare minimum again” and that was such a huge feeling for me after I had felt so empty and without energy for a long time. I’ve also changed a few things in my life. I have restructured my day just enough so that it has a lose structure to keep me from feeling like I am just drifting along, I’m trying to add some habits into my day like meditation, regularly working out and going to bed and getting up at a regular time and I call “offline-hour”.

Offline hour was really something I wanted to implement into my daily rhythm simply because a lot of my life happens online. During offline hour I turn off my Internet for an hour. No social media, no chats, just time for myself. Whether or not offline hour consists of me actively doing something or just chilling and listening to music for an hour doesn’t matter. This is my time that I am taking to turn off from the day, so to speak. And believe me when I say you cannot imagine how incredibly rejuvenating this hour is for me, it gets my mind to slow down and stops it from going what sometimes feels like million miles an hour. It’s pure bliss.

I also, believe it or not, may have finally found a solution for my pesonal problem that I have with procrastination. I will write a separate blog post on that soon because it’s really something I wanna share with you.

Alright Luna, that’s all fine and well you’ve found ways to no longer be burnt out but what about the social anxiety, how is that going?

I’m so glad, you’re asking, dear reader. As shitty as it might sound but the only way how you can beat social anxiety is by subjecting yourself to the situations you’re the most scared of. So I did. I went shopping although my heart was racing and I was constantly fidgeting around. I went to that gathering although my head was telling me a billion good reasons not to go and instead stay home where it’s safe and we don’t have to deal with anxiety symptoms.

However, just because you should subject yourself to those things, it doesn’t mean that you can’t do it with stabilizers. I used to get massively overwhelmed by a lot of people and their noise, so I used to only enter stores or places with a lot of people with my headphones on. Works totally fine when you’re alone, not so much when you’re with someone or rather you’re meeting up with people to go somewhere, where a lot of other people are too. So that was always a bit of an issue. But thanks to my instagram algorithm I have found a solution for that too. I want to give you a proper review of that solution though also in another blog post because it deserves it. Don’t worry, you won’t have to wait long.

But yeah, needless to say, I am doing much better. Of course there are always things that can still be improved, bad habits that can and need to be broken but I am making progress and I’m so incredibly happy about that. 😊

The last thing I still wanna say, if you’ve made it this far, is “thank you”. Thank you for sticking with me, thank you for being patient with me, thank you for taking the time to read this and thank you for listening to me. I’m not writing these posts because I want pity or anything the like. I’m writing these because I want to be open about mental health related topics. I want to be open about how it easy it can be to slip into something like this and I want these topics to no longer be taboo topics no one talks about because we all have to function. We don’t. It’s okay to take breaks, it’s okay to say no and it’s okay to look out for yourself, to take care of yourself. In fact, it is not only okay, it’s a must.

So please do me and yourself a favor and do so ❤

And now I will go, offline hour is about to start. We’ll read each other in the next one.
Take care.

~Luna

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Rambling

A Nostalgic Love Letter to Music

Posted on April 15, 2022April 24, 2022 by Scoraluna

I have only recently realized again how putting on music can change your entire day around and how much that fact alone makes me love it. So I decided to show my love for it in this post; in the form of an admittedly very nostalgic love letter.

Dear Music,

Ever since I was old enough to understand what music is, you have been part of my life.
In the form of the old records my dad used to listen to, in the form of the lullabies and childrens songs my mum used to teach me and sing for me, and in the form of the radio constantly playing in the background whenever we did anything. I grew up with so many different genres of music due to my parents’ varied music taste and I could not be happier about that fact; and how it has shaped my own music taste to like almost everything as well.

I still remember the time, when I got my very first portable CD-player. It was my pride and joy and I took it with me everywhere I went. It blew my mind to know what this, what I back then thought, small thing was capable of doing. I was able to listen to you wherever I wanted and didn’t have to rely on a my radio at home. It was truly revolutionary!

I would say that this was the point in my life, where I started to write “love listening to music” into all the “friends books” I received and into every single text that asked of me to write what I like doing or describe my day and so on and so forth. You became my daily companion.

Fast forward a couple of years, music is now portable on phones and one no longer needs to record radio songs with their flip phone to have special ringtones (god, I’m old). I am now in highschool, which means daily busrides to the city in the morning and the afternoon. It’s loud and there are a lot of people. Sometimes I don’t even get to sit down for the first few stops but I don’t care. I have you. I have my my headphones, and the few songs that would fit on phones are playing up and down. Maybe this is why I’m still the kind of person that can listen to the same song(s) up and down without getting bored. There were a lot of things that weren’t great about highschool but I think it was due to music that I came home and was able to deal with those things. I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying “music on – world off”? It’s a cliché saying but it’s true. You helped me dream myself into worlds that weren’t ours. I had somewhere I belonged.

It also always impresses me that it was due to you that there were actually two occurences that led to me finding friends because the people were wearing band t-shirts of bands that I like, and I decided to just go up and talk to them. One was in the school I went to after highschool and the other was at university. Both of those people became very close friends of mine. So the other saying “music connects people” is also definitely true. You do. You create communities where people of all kinds can come together and enjoy the same thing. That fact has only recently become very prevalent again, when I was at a concert for the first time in like three years. The people visiting the concert couldn’t have been more different from each other. There were people that were dressed casually, people that were fully styled, people who were my parents age and people who were significantly younger than me. It was truly incredible to see you bring all of those people together.

I feel like the older I became, the more important you became to me and the more I needed you in my life. You became a neccessity for both the good days and the bad. For the happy moments and the sad. For motivation and for relaxation. For when I can’t sleep and for when I just need you to be loud enough, so I can no longer hear my own thoughts.

So now, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you to all the artists that make you into something beautiful, powerful, and emotional every single day. Thank you to the people that made it possible to listen to you, no matter where I go. Thank you for bringing people together and thank you being there for me whenever I need you. You truly are a gift to humanity and I truly don’t know what I would do without you.

With Love,

~Luna

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Mentality

Dealing with Writer’s Block and Overthinking

Posted on April 13, 2022April 10, 2022 by Scoraluna

A blank page. Cursor blinking. On. Off. On. Off. On… Fingers switching between resting on the keys and restlessly thrumming on them but no words are filling the page.

What I just described is a part of what it feels like to have writer’s block. There are either too many ideas but no clarity of how to write them or simply too few and your mind feels blank, as if there are no words in it.

To be fairly honest with you, I don’t know what this post is going to be, nor do I know, if I will even publish this. I just have the need to write something, anything at all, because it feels like I can’t at the moment. What I’m writing doesn’t feel good enough, not worthy enough, not cohesive enough to be on the Internet and be read by you. Words too shallow, sentences and paragraphs not long enough. I just need to prove to myself that I still know how to write.

Should I publish this, it is not to arouse pity or make you feel like you have to reassure me. It is simply to show what I think many writers, no matter the type of content they produce, go through sometimes. Some more (often) some less (often). And I would also say that depending on the individual, the experience is different for each and everyone.

So, now we know what the problem is but how do we deal with it? Well, I think the best way how to deal with writer’s block or rather, how I always deal with it, is by writing. Ha, ha, very funny Luna. Yeah, no, I am serious. Just sit down and write. Don’t focus on your project, the text that you’re supposed to be writing, but just write. Open your notepad, Word or whatever program it is you’re using to write, or simply grab a pen and some paper or a notebook and just write. Whatever comes to your mind. Your current thoughts, recount your day, a conversation you had with a friend and what you think about it. Just write. Produce words.

It can be so freeing not to focus on anything specific but just open your mind and let anything that comes to mind flow onto the page. It’s basically what I am doing right now. I just sat down and wrote. Not thinking about anything specific, just letting the thoughts that are currently bothering me be those thoughts and as I am writing, it feels like the text is writing itself. I’m not really worried about structure, cohesiveness or anything else, I’m just writing, with no goal in mind.

Sometimes we worry too much about what we’re writing, how we’re writing it and what people will think of it. Heck, today it took me about 20 minutes just to formulate a single email because I was overthinking it and double checking everything. Sure, some people would call that professional, it’s just something you do, if you wanna make sure that there are no mistakes, but I would say there is a small line between being throrough and exact and being pedantic. Like, I overthink every single sentence that I write. Is the tone right? What if it is misconstrued? CAN it even be misconstrued? And so on and so forth. It’s exhausting, really.

Realizing that sometimes writing can just be, well writing aka the act of putting words down and doesn’t in and of itself come with any rules or requirements, can really help take the strain off of things.

I think I will publish this, even if it’s just to show you this process that I and likely many others go through from time to time. Who knows, maybe it helps some of you to feel more confident in your own writing. Maybe you realize that not everything you write has to be absolutely perfect every single time and maybe, just maybe it’ll help you to be a little bit kinder to yourself, just as I am being right now.

Take care and stay safe, everyone ❤

~Luna

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Mentality

Instant Gratification Station

Posted on April 11, 2022April 8, 2022 by Scoraluna

This is, in a way, an add-on to my other post. Check that one out, if you haven’t already. I think I’ve mentioned instant gratification briefly in my other post but I’ve recently noticed how bad it can actually get.

Motivational issues are nothing new to anybody I would think. It’s just one of these days where you feel kinda “meh” about the things you have to do and procrastinate on them by doing other things. Yeah, that’s what your day usually looks like, if you’re procrastinator. However, I have these days where I go and procrastinate on things that I actually want to do by doing other things that I also like but do everyday anyway.

There are exactly two reactions that one gets when they describe this issue to someone else. It’s either “oh, yeah, I do that too” or “eeeeeh….what?”. Let me explain it to the ones that had the second reaction while reading this: This means that I want to, for example, play a video game sometime during the day and I have the free time to do so but I end up being on my phone instead (like being on Pinterest for ages, anyone else?) until it’s too late to actually still play said video game and I end up being salty because I didn’t get to do the thing that I actually wanted to do…. Aka. I didn’t have “proper freetime” because being on my phone is something I do every single day anyway, like that doesn’t count as freetime, what are you talking about?

Or to give you another example: I will sit there and watch a movie that I haven’t seen before and I am actually curious to know what will happen but I want to know it right then and there and so I take out my phone and google the fucking plot summary instead of normally watching the movie like any other person would…

Yeeeah, I’ll give you a moment to take that in…

It is so absolutely and utterly stupid that I don’t even know myself how I can justify that in any way, shape or form. I don’t think you can. But the main problem is: I feel like it’s getting worse and worse. We basically have constant entertainment at our disposal. The Internet is filled with things that we can discover and oh yes… look… the approximately 6000th pin that I can save to one of my many boards, don’t mind if I do… Now, where was I? Dammit, got distracted again.

It’s so easy to fall into this trap of instant gratification, even if you’re actually looking forward to something else. Because why turn on the PC and start a game, when I have my phone right here, next to my cozy and warm bed, and I don’t even have to properly move in order to get it? And I would say that, as someone who is already succumbing to instant gratification when procrastinating on the things I have to do, it’s even easier to succumb to it in every other situation as well.

It’s insanely frustrating and the only real solution is to just stop doing it. There is no magic potion, no productivity tool, no “try this and all your problems will be a thing of the past” voodoo trick that will solve this issue, the same goes for procrastination. It’s all just mentality. That and the fight against the weaker self that you have to do over and over and over again until you finally come out on top for good.

sighs But hey, who knows maybe this year will finally be the one where I beat procrastination and everything it comes with for good – yeah, let’s all laugh together.

Anyways, I am gonna go now and make sure my procrastinating, instant gratification loving ass has less to procrastinate on. Take care everyone! ❤

~Luna

Now reading through what I have just written, it almost seems as if my phone was the problem, but psssssh… let’s not go into that shall we?

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Bullet Journal, Tips and Tricks

9 Bullet Journal “mistakes” you might be making

Posted on February 14, 2022February 16, 2022 by Scoraluna

Consistency is key when it comes to bullet journaling actually being a useful tool to you, but just like me you might be making some “mistakes” that keep you from sticking to it.

I have been bullet journaling for multiple years by now and there have certainly been phases, where I wasn’t as consistent with it as I would have liked to be. For example, last year I definitely had a low point where the last spread I did was in April, and I didn’t start up until Mid-January this year. During those phases I like to take a step back and reevaluate what’s stopping me from keeping up with it. While doing so, I have noticed some “mistakes” I was making, which were stopping me personally from using the system continuously.

Why do I write “mistakes” in quotation marks you ask? Well, none of these really are mistakes in the sense of you’re actually doing something wrong, if you do these. No, not at all! But for me they were mistakes because they hindered me in using my bullet journal effectively. So they are my personal mistakes, if you will. Some of these I have also already mentioned in my Five Things Beginner Bullet Journalists Should Know blog post, but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to mention them again, for good measure ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So, now that this disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get started:

1.Not setting apart a designated time of day for journaling

This is crucial, especially if your day tends to be different every single day. Set aside a designated time in the morning and evening in order to fill in any trackers, plan for the next day or plan any new spreads.

For me, I now like to start into the day with it. So after getting up, I sit down, still in my pyjamas, fill in my sleep tracker and add on any additional tasks that I might still have thought of. Then I go about my day, ticking off tasks whenever I achieved something and then in the evening, before I got to bed, I fill in my other trackers and plan my next day.

Since I am only using one type of weekly spread, called “the rolling weekly”, I add on tasks and events regularly during the week into one big list instead of copying them over day by day. (Btw, if you’re interested in how that works and what that looks like, make sure you leave a comment, and I can make a mini post about how the rolling weekly works and why it is the best method for me personally)

2.Not setting apart a designated time for creating new spreads

The same thing as above goes for creating new spreads in general. I often found myself being way too late for setting up a new weekly spread. I have made sure to set aside a designated day of the week, that day being the Saturday, in order to work on a new weekly spread. This is especially useful, if you wanna make intricate, special spreads for each week that are a bit more time consuming than the rolling weekly.

3.Starting with monthly set ups too late/ trying to do them all in one day

This “mistake” goes hand in hand with the two above but I still decided to mention it seperately. Same as with the weekly spreads, I often started with new monthly set ups way too late ( and by that I mean way too late, like we’re talking either last day or, even worse, the new month had already started by the time I got to it…) and on top of that, tried to do the whole set up in one day.

Now, if you’re like me and you like intricate monthly set ups that do take a bit of time to set up, you will easily see the mistake here. Setting up a nice title page often takes me about 4-5 hours alone, depending on how intricate and detailed I’m making it of course (I think the longest one was even 6-7 hours). That’s half or more of a regular work day… yeah.. not really possible to do an entire set-up, unless I spend like 10-12 hours a day on it, which is time that I certainly don’t have, nor want to have.

So the solution for that mistake is an easy one: start a few days before the month ends, so you have enough time in order to finish it, before the new month starts.

4.Too many or complicated trackers

Another “mistake” that I made was having too many trackers in my bullet journal. Sure, in the beginning you wanna try stuff out to see what works for you and what and how you want to implement them, but I certainly overdid it with the trackers. I was basically tracking every aspect of my life, which ended up with me feeling bad if I didn’t accomplish things or simply forgot to fill out the tracker.

I have since then downgraded to 3 main trackers (habits, mood and sleep) and a gratitude log, and let me tell you, it becomes so much easier to fill those out, especially if you manage to implement them well.

5.Focusing too much on making spreads look intricate/ perfect

In the beginning, I wanted my bullet journal to be perfect. Like all those other ones that I was seeing online; with beautiful covers, detailed spreads and gorgeous illustrations. I quickly realized, how time consuming it actually was to make those spreads, but I still spend time that I actually didn’t have on making them. By focusing so much on that I lost the fun I orginally had with creating those spreads because they took so long to make.

Taking a step back and realizing that simpler spreads are just as effective and may be even more so, when times are stressful has helped me immensely in adapting my spreads and my effort to how much time I actually have.

6.Comparing yourself to others / not allowing yourself to be a beginner

This point is one that I would consider the most harmful out of all of my mistakes. Maybe you know the feel: You’re confronted with all of those wonderful and talented people making all of these beautiful and intricate spreads and then you look at your own and promptly get discouraged. Sound familar?

I know how you feel, cause I felt the same when I was just starting out. I spent ages on making a spread and in the end it still wasn’t “good enough”; and that realization hurt. It hurt so much that I was completely and utterly ashamed of some spreads, to the point where I didn’t want to show it to anyone, despite being proud of it beforehand.

Or maybe a spread didn’t turn out the way that you imagined it? Yeah, had that too, and it was so insanely frustrating. I was focusing more and more on the mistakes I was making and my shortcomings instead of on the things that I was getting better in.

To be honest the only real advice I have for you in case you’re experiencing those feelings as well is to stick with it. Stick with it, try to focus on the things that are improving and start simple. Start with the things you know you’ll be able to do easily and gradually move up from that. You will get better because practice does make perfect.

It also helped me to figure out, how long some people have already been bullet journaling before and/or have done art before. It can put things into perspective.

7.Not allowing yourself to be inspired by others

This next one sorta ties in with the one above but please as much as you’re not supposed to compare yourself to others, allow yourself to gather inspiration from others. That doesn’t mean you’re supposed to copy them, of course, but put your own spin on things.

I often wanted to be completely original, cause my thought process was that if I’m not original then I’m just a copy. That is not how things work though. You are definitely allowed to sit down and recreate a spread or hell, even a whole set up that you’ve seen and you like. It’s so easy to make it your own though. Use different colors, change certain elements, add on or leave out things; the options of customizing spreads and set ups are endless.

Slowly but surely you’ll notice that you develop your own style and are more and more able to work with even just small bouts of inspiration and make those into fully fledged set ups and then all you need to do is to share them with the world. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the one who’s inspiring others then. ^-^

8.Not trying out new things

This is one was a big one for me as well. I kinda forced myself to stick with the things that I started with, despite noticing that it wasn’t really working for me the way I did it, just because “everyone else does it that way”.

Not trying out new things, giving yourself the chance to figure out what works for you and what doesn’t, replacing the things that aren’t working with things that might be, almost killed my entire process of bullet journaling. Had I not taken a step back and taken the time to figure out what I can change/ try out in order to make the system work for me (again), I would probably have stopped bullet journaling and never taken it up again. So take a step back, maybe watch a few different creators on youtube, gather some inspiration and really give yourself the time to try out new things. This is your bullet journal. The goal is to figure out a system that works for you and no one else.

9.Focusing too much on not having/ getting the “right” tools

Last but not least, a short but really important one. (Although this doesn’t apply to anyone because some people prefer to keep it simple anyway).

I remember spending way too much time and money on finding and getting the “right” supplies. There are so many creators out there who are using all of these fancy stationary, such as calligraphy pens and markers and gel pens and different types of fineliners, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: You don’t need all of those. You can do faux calligraphy with any fineliner of your choice and you probably have some colors at home that you can use to make your spreads a bit more lively, should you decide to do so. Those pens you were/are using in school? Brilliant! Markers? Hell, yes! That pencil you use on a daily basis? Yep, perfect! To cite a lot of people who have said this before: “All you need is a notebook and a pen” Anything else is just a bonus.

So there you have it, 9 bullet journal “mistakes” that I was making and that you might be making too. I hope you enjoyed reading this post, see you in the next one and as always: Stay safe and healthy ❤

~Luna

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