Author: Scoraluna

She/Her | Hi, I am a person, who likes to blog about all kinds of stuff that are going on in my life. That includes, for example, bullet journaling, mentality related topics and video games. If that sounds like your piece of cake, come and check more of my posts! :D
Posted in Bullet Journal, Tips and Tricks

9 Bullet Journal “mistakes” you might be making

Posted on 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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Posted in Life, Mentality

2021 RECAP

Posted on by Scoraluna

Starting to stream, receiving a huge boost, finding new friends through streaming, increasing my work hours, losing my job… So many things have happened…

Hi, I’m back! 2021 definitely was a roller coaster from start to finish. Strap yourselves in folks, this is gonna be a long one.

So I recently cracked open my, admittedly very failed, Bullet Journal for 2021 (the last spread I did was April…but let’s not talk about that now shall we? 😅) and realized that almost all of the things that I wrote at the very beginning of the year, the things that 2021 should be filled with, 2021 has actually been filled with.

Happiness, ideas, togetherness, positivity, hugs, luck, laughter, growth, opportunities and many more…

But there were also multiple things that went less than ideal. So let’s start the recap, shall we?

As you may or may not know, I started streaming last year in April. Pretty much along the same time, I opened this blog and began writing blog posts. Was, unfortunately, not really able to keep up with it, but more on that and why I’m hoping to change that again in a bit. Pretty soon after I had started streaming, I was insanely lucky to receive a huge boost, for which I will be forever grateful, and suddenly there were people actually watching and caring about what I did. It was an incredible feeling and I was extraordinarily happy. So happy that I wished I could do it all the time. However, I was still working part time and had even recently increased my hours, because I had actually managed to get myself a bachelor’s degree and wanted to focus a bit more on working instead of uni. Didn’t mean that I wanted to stop focusing on uni completely, but at that point we had summer holidays, so stuff worked out, but boy was I naive to think that it would continue being that way. (Spoiler: It didn’t.)

Summer holidays also meant I had more time for being social, which was great, considering I had actually found new friends via streaming. Didn’t think it was actually possible to get this close with people you’ve never met in real life, but the internet, chatting and video phoning did it’s job and we knew pretty quickly that we wanted to meet in real life. All of that required planning and since I was the only one that was working every single day, we had to plan that around that somehow. It worked out, but it certainly wasn’t ideal, however, it wasn’t as if I could have just taken time off anytime someone was coming, so it was what it was.

As the summer faded, work became more and more demanding, which is not a surprise considering more hours meant more responsibility, and I quickly realized that I probably wouldn’t be able to continue as things were, but I tried. I tried to squeeze everyhing I could into the day: work, stream, blog, other socials, uni, workout, social life, at that point also a relationship and free time/time where I took care of myself. Needless to say, it didn’t work out and multiple fights, mental break downs, lost sleep and lost weight, due to simply not having the time to eat, were the result of the lifestyle that I was living, but I tried to keep going. My friends became more and more concerend about me and my health and tried to make me see that I was already at my limit and wouldn’t be able to continue, but I was stubborn.

Then came September, October and the beginning of November. Now, sorry, I know that sounds all dramatic and stuff, like something along the lines of “everything changed when the fire nation attacked” but it was sorta dramatic. At the end of September I lost my, what I thought was a stable job, due to economical reasons. This was a first for me and I knew that I had 6 weeks in order to find something new. I wanted to give Twitch a chance, but doing that meant that I had to see whether or not I could make it work. So I increased my stream hours, while simultaneously looking for a new job, because I didn’t think it would work out financially otherwise.

The next one and half months were hell. Uni had picked back up and that meant that I had even less time for the stuff I was doing. So there I was, trying to manage a week with about 12-15 hours of streaming, 15 hours of work, about 2-3 hours of uni each day, doing organisatory and bureaucracy stuff for the stream, trying not to fry my social life completely, being there for the people who needed me, trying to keep my relationship from completely breaking appart and doing the bare minimum to keep my soul from leaving my body, in order to find a more responsible vessel… Yeah… I don’t think that I need to tell you that this is definitely not something you should do.

Relief came with a talk that I had with my parents, who told me that for now I don’t have to worry about finding something new. That I should give Twitch a chance. That I should cut back at work to do the necessary but not more and also cut back at uni, since I have a degree already and can always focus on uni again, once the other things are sorted out. I am so insanely grateful to them for being as supportive as they are. Yes, I may be 25 years old and no longer need the approval from my parents, but knowing that they do support you is just absolutely incredible. From then on things began to be a bit easier. It was still stressful but the insane pressure lessened. Unfortunately, my relationship did end up falling appart, but I’m not gonna elaborate on that any further. It just didn’t work out, because we had different views.

For the rest of the year I fell into a somewhat comfortable rythm. Doing uni, which sadly started being online again, so my motivation for that flew out of the window never to be seen again pretty quickly, and streaming in between. And for a while that worked out pretty well. However, towards the end of the year and beginning this year I started to notice that something wasn’t right. I felt frustrated and angry with myself and didn’t even know why for some time. After a while I realized that it was, because I wasn’t being as productive as I’d liked to be and that wasn’t happy anymore with the quality of the content I was producing. Granted, I was also dealing with some health issues, but my mentality plummeted and I felt drained more often than not. On top that I felt like I wasn’t improving anymore. I had lost my fire and had gotten too comfortable. I had completely stopped producing any sort of other content other than stream and I had gotten bored of myself, my own content.

All of this I realized with a clarity when I woke up one day, after a horrid night’s sleep, and my head just started screaming at me. All of my insecurities, self-doubt and every negative thought I’ve ever had about myself were there all of a sudden and they were so loud. After I had finally found a way to make them quieten down again, I knew with a clarity that this wasn’t how things can continue. I needed to change something. What those changes are gonna be exactly, is at the point of writing this post still up in the air. I’m hoping to use this week to clean up some “constuction zones” that are currently open, reorganize myself and figure out not if but how I’m gonna continue this adventure I’m currently on.

However, one of the things that I already know that I wanna change, is to create other content besides streaming again, including blog posts. The plan is to do at least one a week, even if it’s just someting I ramble about and it’s less elaborate than this one right here. Some of the other things that I wanna work out is my own health – mentally and physically. I can’t just stop taking care of my body any time things get stressful, so I also need to find preventitive measures to make sure that all of the negative things above don’t happen again, and, on top of all that, I need to find a way to realistically decide, what I can promise others and myself, as to not keep feeling like I’m disappointing people and myself.

So yeah, that was my 2021 and the beginning of 2022. I know that it was a long post, so thank you for taking the time to read. It feels good to be back to writing and I’m hoping that I will be able to keep up with it.

Time to show you what I can do once I have regained my passion!

But for now, see (read) you in the next one! Please stay safe and healthy! ❤

~Luna

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Posted in Mentality

A Laywoman’s Guide to Meditation

Posted on by Scoraluna

Where to start, why I think everybody should at least try it once and what all of that has to do with no longer wanting to give a fuck about everything. Put your seat belt on peeps, this is a long one xD

So, if you have read my “The Path to Self-Improvement” series, you probably already know this, but for those who didn’t: I’ve started meditating regularly during the past month.

I’ve always wanted to include meditation in my daily routine, simply because the few times I did try it, it always felt nice. However, I always struggled with keeping up with it or finding time for it every single day. That has now changed, thanks to the challenge that me and my friend Joan did for two weeks. I have included meditation into my daily routine and, in fact, have already noticed that I miss it, if for some reason, I don’t have time to do it on certain days.

Now, I am certainly no expert, probably not even intermediate yet, when it comes to meditation, but I wanted to write this post nonetheless because I noticed that it can be confusing af to know where to even start and there are a bunch of things that I find are important to know, regarding the topic.

How do I know, if meditation is for me?

Honestly, I think everyone can and should at least try to give meditation a shot at some point in their lives. In my opinion you can only know, if it is for you, if you have tried it. I mean, I guess if the concept of sitting still and focusing on yourself for a few minutes doesn’t appeal to you at all, then that’s also okay, of course. However, even then I’d recommend to at least try it once, you might be surprised.

To Guide or to be Guided that is the question…

…and probably a major one that you are likely to ask yourself at the beginning of your meditation journey.

Guided meditations are programs or videos where someone quite literally talks you through the whole process. They are most often targeting a certain topic and help you focus by telling you to pay attention to your body and your breathing. The benefit of such meditations is that it is easier to stay focused than it would be, if you didn’t have a voice that keeps bringing you back to the task at hand, when your thoughts inevitably decide to take a stroll.

Non-guided meditations on the other hand are great, if you just want to sit down and relax for a little bit without having to focus on anything. They are fantastic for “emptying your mind”, so to speak. However, while some people might immediately get the hang of it, most people, including myself, struggle to keep their mind from wandering during meditation, especially when they are only starting out. So it can be a quite hard to just sit down, focus on nothing and have your mind quiet down.

But why is that?

Well, I can of course only speak for myself and what’s going on in my mind when I try to quieten it down, but I tend to think about a lot of random stuff. Starting from all the stuff that I need to do that day, over what’s gonna be for lunch, all the way to what I saw on social media the day before. What usually happens then is that I wonder why I can’t focus and start to focus on why I can’t focus and that I should be able to and suddenly the whole calm and serenity is broken because now I am judging myself for not being able to focus… yeah… you get the gist xD

So I have very quickly realized that guided meditation is the way to go for me, and I’m very happy with it 😊

Where to start?

When it comes to non-guided meditations, that question is easy to answer: either look for some quiet background music you enjoy and that isn’t distracting to you or do it without any music at all. You’ll figure out pretty quickly what you prefer, I’m sure.

When it comes to guided meditations, however, the question get’s a little bit more complicated to answer. There are a ton of different apps and programs out there that offer you guided meditation, such as Headspace or Calm, to only name two, and at least I felt a bit overwhelmed by all of the possibilities in the beginning.

I found that the easiest way to see, if meditation is something you want in your life is by looking for guided meditations on YouTube. There are so many out there, targeting so many different topics and it’s genuinely a very good place to get started.

If you then want to switch to an app for whatever reason, I can recommend reading through some reviews and maybe looking for some comparisons between the different apps; or you can of course also download them yourself and check them out. Most of them do have some free features after all.

Why should you meditate?

Meditation has many benefits and most of them you’ll find out for yourself once you give it a shot, but for me there are two that stick out in particular. One is the fact that no matter what mood I’m in, meditation helps to improve it. Even if it’s just by a little bit but does help.

The second major benefit that I see in meditation is that it helps me focus on myself for a little while and not on my friends or family or strangers and what those might think of me. It helps me to shut those thoughts down for a bit and just focus on what I want for myself.

So, now what does all of that have to do with no longer wanting to give a fuck about everything?

Well that’s easily explained. Meditation forces you to focus on yourself instead of others. Depending on what you go for, you might even tackle certain topics that bother you and you might find that they become much easier to deal with, the more often you concern yourself with them.

So, if you’re someone like me, who used to give too many fucks about too many things, meditation can help you to center your thoughts and make you aware of what really matters. I personally realized that I was spending too many thoughts and too much energy on things that didn’t really matter instead of focusing on a few things that I wanted to matter. It helped me to take a step back from my life and reevaluate what I really wanted to spend my energy on in the future.

Of course, and I think that needs to be said as well, meditation is no miracle. It’s a process. And a process takes time and there will be better days and worse days. Old habits die hard after all and sadly, nothing will magically solve itself. However, I have noticed significant improvements in my life since I included it in my daily routine and that surely has to stand for something, right?

Have you ever considered including meditation into your daily life or maybe you are already doing it and want to share your own experiences? Let me know in the comments 😊

As always, stay safe and healthy, and thank you to everyone who is supporting this blog in any way, shape or form. You’re all incredible and I appreciate every single one of you ❤

~Luna

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Posted in The Path to Self-Improvement

The End but also a New Beginning?

Posted on by Scoraluna

I know the title might sound a bit dramatic but let me tell you, why it is fitting nonetheless:

After 14 days our challenge has come to an end. You already know that of course, if you have read the previous post, but in a way the challenge isn’t really over or at least the topic of it isn’t.

Joan and I have both decided that living this way is much, much better than our old habits were and while we sometimes struggled with the early get up times, we not only got used to it but also started to appreciate all the benefits that come with such a lifestyle change.

I decided to post one last post as part of this series and I asked Joan to give me a final statement, sort of her final thoughts on this challenge. Here is what she said:

“I really enjoyed this challenge and I think I’m gonna keep doing most of the aspects of it. Although it has really been hard in the beginning to make myself get up at those “ungodly” hours, I’ve really grown to like it 🙂 

There are definitely some things I want to keep doing besides getting up early, such as making my bed first thing in the morning, yoga, skincare and meditation (kinda wanna try some different ones)

Something I definitely want to stop doing is using my phone a lot in the morning (especially after I’m done with my morning stuff – I think my brain sees this as a sort of treat) 

There are also some things that I want to add to my routine: evening yoga and a more closing evening routine in general (I’m thinking about a nice cuppa tea and maybe getting myself to read for like 30 minutes before bed or something like that, but we’ll see), Maybe a daily walk since I don’t go outside a lot (rrrrRRoooooooOnNaa …. and anxiety mixed with a healthy dose of introversion 👍)

To be honest, I kinda had my doubts about how good I would do in this challenge and if I had enough motivation to keep pushing through. And I have to say, I really surprised myself and I am proud of pushing through it. Even though some days were hard and my energy levels were low, I still kept at it. The day feels much more useful and I actually feel more responsible and mature now than I did before. Last but not least, one of my favorite things in this challenge has got to be the morning atmosphere (the sun just rising, birds chirping and sitting down with a nice cup of coffee while you are listening to the radio and just  ✨EXIST✨- it’s just 👌)”

My thoughts about this challenge are very similar. I love to sleep in and getting up at 8 am and then later at 7 am felt daunting at first, to say the least. So you can imagine my surprise, when it ended up being not as difficult as I thought it would be. Despite struggling with it at first, my body seemed to notice that I was doing something healthy to it and it responded super positively to it. (Newsflash: Doing something that is considered to be healthy actually has a positive impact on your body and your health – who would have thought 🙄)

No, but in all seriousness, I am glad I wasn’t alone in doing this challenge. Having someone else to talk to about it and holding each other accountable for keeping up with it, really helped me with pushing through and not immediately going back to old habits, when things got a bit rough. So I want to thank Joan once more for doing this with me and keeping me motivated throughout this challenge. 💪

I will also keep most of the habits that I have picked up, in order to make sure they stay part of my morning routine and not just stuff I do every once in a while. Those are meditation first thing in the morning, reading for 30 minutes a day (not sure if I will keep doing it in the mornings but so far it actually has worked out quite well) and skincare and of course getting up early (duh). However, since I work from home and my days tend to be very samey, I think I won’t be so strict about in on the weekends because I want to have this distinction between the week and the weekends. Admittedly, this is also because I don’t think I will be able to sustain it otherwise.

There is one habit that I definitely have picked up during this challenge that I want to get rid off again asap, and that is, staying in bed on my phone after I have done my meditation and my reading. I’m thinking of maybe changing my routine a little bit so that I do my skincare and everything else before I do meditation and reading, cause then I will already be up and hopefully won’t feel the need of wanting to laze in bed.

I also want to add two habits. Both of which are things I don’t really enjoy but I know are healthy for me so I should definitely add them regularly: those two things are cooking and exercising. I think those two things are self-explanatory healthy habits that I don’t need to go into about why they are important.

All in all, it was a fun challenge and I can definitely recommend doing something like this, if you feel like you don’t get enough out of a day. And here is why the title fits this scenario well: It is the end of a challenge but for both Joan and I it is also a new beginning of at least a healthier sleeping schedule, if not anything else.

I hope you enjoyed reading along and are maybe inspired to do something similar. If these posts did inspire you to try this out yourself, let me know in the comments how it goes. I love reading all of your comments😊 I also want to thank everybody that has read, liked, commented or followed these posts! I am glad you enjoyed them. Btw I have figured out a regular posting schedule now, so let’s hope I’ll be able to stick to it 😅

So talk to you guys soon, and of course, please make sure you stay healthy and safe! ❤

~Luna

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Thank you so much for taking the time to read this post! If you want to see, if I can stick to my planned schedule of publishing a blog post every Monday and Saturday, hit the button down below, and you’ll be informed once a new one is published 😊

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More Posts

You read this post but have no idea what this is about? No worries, down below you’ll find from oldest to newest most of the posts published in this mini-series 😊

  • Prologue – The Path to Self-Improvement
    Before I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been […]
  • Day 1 – The First Step is Always the Hardest … Or is it?
    Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things. It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing […]
  • Day 2 – Good Habit Central
    Day two of our challenge was filled with us picking up a lot more good habits and a lot of, let’s call it, “new year, new me” vibes (even though it’s obviously not the start of a new year, but I’m sure you know what I mean). Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “Getting up […]
  • Day 3 – A lil bit of both
    I know, I know, “wow Luna way to keep the title vague” but honestly, I don’t really know, how else to describe this day xD Nighttime, Getting up and Morning Routine Joan: “Waking up was the hardest so far today. I only really fell asleep at around 2am so that may be the reason why […]
  • Day 4 – Rock Bottom
    This day… was certainly a day… Oh, who am I kidding, this day was an absolute wreck, for both of us ironically, but I did want to include it, so you can see that not every day goes as well as you think it will. Nighttime, Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “I gotta be […]
  • Days 5 -7 First Impressions and Thoughts for the next Week
    Since the days are getting a little bit samey and I’m sure you’ve got better stuff to do, than reading the same stuff over and over again, I’ve decided to summarize the rest of the week. After hitting rock bottom and genuinely having a bad day on day 4, things started to look up during […]
  • Day 8 – Challenge Part 2 – Begin!
    Day 8 marked the first day of the second part of our challenge; getting up at 7am each day. Here is how it went: So, this is going to be a very Joan focused post because day 8 was practically non-existent for me. To summarize very quickly, getting up was still fine but around 11am […]
  • Days 9- 14 – “7am, the usual morning lineup”
    After 14 Days our challenge has come to an end. Here is the summary of how the second part of the challenge went: (Bonus points to whoever knows, what the title is from😄) Getting up and Morning Routines Our getting up- and morning routines stayed pretty much the same. Joan was definitely doing a bit […]
Posted in The Path to Self-Improvement

Days 9- 14 – “7am, the usual morning lineup”

Posted on by Scoraluna

After 14 Days our challenge has come to an end. Here is the summary of how the second part of the challenge went: (Bonus points to whoever knows, what the title is from😄)

Getting up and Morning Routines

Our getting up- and morning routines stayed pretty much the same. Joan was definitely doing a bit better with staying on track than I was though. She only overslept once, which she wasn’t thrilled about at all, whereas I really struggled with going to bed and therefore also getting up on time. For me, going to bed at 11:30pm was just so early (yes, for someone that used to stay up until at least 2am but often longer, this is early, fight me xD).

Me not making it to bed on time also meant that I rarely actually got up at 7am; at least not during the first part of the week. By the second part I had kinda adjusted and now I actually do get tired around that time (is that a success? – I guess so 😅).

Mood

I feel like our mood hasn’t really changed that much over the past few weeks. Depending on what was happening or what we had to deal with each day, we either had good and excited days or bad ones (I mean, duh, like everybody else). However, something we have definitely both noticed, is that having a morning routine did help us to feel calmer, more centered and more ready to tackle the day ahead.

I also used meditation to help calm down when I was struggling with something during the day, which also worked out great.

Productivity

We both have seen huge changes in regards to productivity. The days in general felt longer but not in a “ugh everything feels so slow” but rather in a “oh, I have so much time on my hands, what do I do with that” kind of way. Our morning routine helped us set the right tone for a productive day, but our productivity was of course also influenced by a bunch of other things, such as our mood and our sleepiness-level. However, I dare say that before the start of the challenge, my days were never as productive as they are now.

Starting early means getting done early and the feeling of getting done with the first chunk of work around midday, when before you had barely started around that time, (don’t look at me, I know it’s awful), is just absolutely incredible.

Sleepiness-Level

Our bodies again definitely took some time to get used to the new routine and our sleepiness-level reflected that. The first few days were a bit rough, but by mid-week, we had actually kinda gotten used to it again and our sleepiness-levels slowly but surely adjusted as well.

Motivation

With the changes in productivity came changes in motivation. More productivity basically led to more motivation because we had so much time to be creative and to work on our personal projects. Of course, as with everything, there were some motivation downs, simply because some days are better than others, however, in general I felt like there were so many opportunities to be creative. The feeling of actually having the time to be creative because you already have done everything else that needs to be done, feels so much better than feeling guilty for procrastinating on the things you have to do, with the things you want to do.

On top of that, usually I feel guilty for veering off track and doing something else for an hour but with the amount of time I now have on hand every single day, it kinda felt much less detrimental to do so and I felt significantly less guilty about it. (Haven’t really figured out yet whether that’s actually a good thing or my procrastination habit just rubbing its hands together maliciously because now there is even more time to procrastinate).

Alright and that’s a wrap, everybody! Hm, this doesn’t quite have the same effect as it would if this was actually a movie but hey, we’re wrapping up this challenge so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. There will be one last “closing thoughts/plans for the future” sorta blog post, which I hopefully will be able to finish and post tomorrow, and then we really are completely done with this challenge.

Thank you so much, to everyone that has read, commented on or liked these posts and/or followed the blog, I really appreciate all of the support! ❤

As always, please stay healthy and safe and take care of yourself!

~Luna

Follow my Blog

Hi, and thank you for reading this post! If you also want to read any future posts coming out and want to make sure you don’t miss them, please click the button down below 😊

Join 42 other followers

Come and say Hi

More Posts

If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy the others in this series. So if you’re curious, down below you’ll find most of the entries from this blog mini-series 😊

  • Prologue – The Path to Self-Improvement
    Before I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been […]
  • Day 1 – The First Step is Always the Hardest … Or is it?
    Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things. It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing […]
  • Day 2 – Good Habit Central
    Day two of our challenge was filled with us picking up a lot more good habits and a lot of, let’s call it, “new year, new me” vibes (even though it’s obviously not the start of a new year, but I’m sure you know what I mean). Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “Getting up […]
  • Day 3 – A lil bit of both
    I know, I know, “wow Luna way to keep the title vague” but honestly, I don’t really know, how else to describe this day xD Nighttime, Getting up and Morning Routine Joan: “Waking up was the hardest so far today. I only really fell asleep at around 2am so that may be the reason why […]
  • Day 4 – Rock Bottom
    This day… was certainly a day… Oh, who am I kidding, this day was an absolute wreck, for both of us ironically, but I did want to include it, so you can see that not every day goes as well as you think it will. Nighttime, Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “I gotta be […]
Posted in The Path to Self-Improvement

Day 8 – Challenge Part 2 – Begin!

Posted on by Scoraluna

Day 8 marked the first day of the second part of our challenge; getting up at 7am each day. Here is how it went:

So, this is going to be a very Joan focused post because day 8 was practically non-existent for me.

To summarize very quickly, getting up was still fine but around 11am I got a really bad headache and some circulation problems that lasted through the entire day. Therefore, I wasn’t really able to focus on anything until the evening, where I did get some work stuff done, but I pretty much felt like a useless wet rag for the entire day. 😅 Needless to say, my mood also was less than great. So, now that that’s out of the way, let’s see what Joan’s Day 8 looked like.

Getting up and Morning Routine

“It was the first day of the second part of the challenge which meant I had to get up at 7am. I didn’t really get up immediately but rather stayed in bed for like an additional hour to browse on TikTok and look at pics and videos on Instagram. A perfect way to start your morning (note to self: Put your phone somewhere else so you literally have to get up, you idiot). “

Mood

“I was a bit fidgety today. I am not sure why exactly but I hope that it will be better tomorrow. Doing my yoga routine and meditation helped to center myself today so much that I am thinking of implementing it in my nighttime routine as well.”

Productivity

“Apart from my morning stuff I actually surprised myself today by cooking up a really tasty rice casserole (at least I think that’s what you call it 😅) and almost mastering the “Toss a coin to your Witcher” guitar part. I also had a nice little make-up session in the evening, where I tried out some new looks, which turned out way better than I anticipated.”

Sleepiness-Level

“No real change in that department.”

Motivation

” I felt motivated to do a lot of creative tasks today, as I already mentioned with the guitar and make-up. Coincidentally, or not idk, my positive affirmation today was “I am filled with creative energy”. I really internalized that today. I am also contemplating on starting a different kind of “mini challenge” regarding make-up looks because I really wanna check out more looks and maybe even find something new.”

Thank you so much to everyone that took the time to follow us through this adventure so far and for following the blog or liking any of the posts, I really appreciate you! ❤

I have decided to summarize the rest of the challenge for you guys because, as I already noticed last week, the days have gotten very samey and I feel like at this point Joan and I already have established our routines that we are following, so there won’t be that many changes anymore. Also, depending on how long that summary gets, I will either write about our final thoughts in the summary itself still or write one more separate blog post to finish off this mini-series.

I hope you are looking forward to that, and as always please make sure you stay safe and healthy! ❤

~Luna

Follow My Blog

Hi there, and thank you so much for reading this post! If you liked it. please let me know by leaving a like and if you liked it so much that you never want to miss a future blog post, you can click the button down below 😊

Join 42 other followers

Come and say Hi 👋

More Posts

You have read this post and want to know how it all started? Down below you’ll find most of the blog posts of this mini-series. Give them a read, if you’re interested 😊

  • Prologue – The Path to Self-Improvement
    Before I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been […]
  • Day 1 – The First Step is Always the Hardest … Or is it?
    Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things. It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing […]
  • Day 2 – Good Habit Central
    Day two of our challenge was filled with us picking up a lot more good habits and a lot of, let’s call it, “new year, new me” vibes (even though it’s obviously not the start of a new year, but I’m sure you know what I mean). Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “Getting up […]
  • Day 3 – A lil bit of both
    I know, I know, “wow Luna way to keep the title vague” but honestly, I don’t really know, how else to describe this day xD Nighttime, Getting up and Morning Routine Joan: “Waking up was the hardest so far today. I only really fell asleep at around 2am so that may be the reason why […]
  • Day 4 – Rock Bottom
    This day… was certainly a day… Oh, who am I kidding, this day was an absolute wreck, for both of us ironically, but I did want to include it, so you can see that not every day goes as well as you think it will. Nighttime, Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “I gotta be […]
Posted in The Path to Self-Improvement

Days 5 -7 First Impressions and Thoughts for the next Week

Posted on by Scoraluna

Since the days are getting a little bit samey and I’m sure you’ve got better stuff to do, than reading the same stuff over and over again, I’ve decided to summarize the rest of the week.

After hitting rock bottom and genuinely having a bad day on day 4, things started to look up during the following days. Our mood was actually consistently good during the three days and we both were in a good headspace. Granted, it did help that it was the weekend as well, but we did keep going with our challenge and even managed to get up early on the weekend. Something I did not expect I would be able to keep up with because I’m the kind of person that loooves to sleep in on the weekends.

Productivity wise it’s also a little hard to say because we both didn’t really have much to do during the weekend, but Friday went down really well. I was super productive in doing my work tasks, a work call and Joan also got a boring lecture done and did some other stuff, such as setting up her weeklies for her Bullet Journal. We also both joined a two hour zoom event in the evening that day.

The most interesting thing that happened during those three days, however, has to be how we both slowly but surely adapted to the new getting up time, managed to keep our sleepiness levels more and more consistent overtime and Joan managed to completely overcome her usual energy crashes. I found myself often getting tired around the time that I should be going to bed, in order to be able to wake up rested, which is something I haven’t really experienced before. When my sleeping schedule was all over the place, so were my bed times (except for always consistently being past 2 am but ssssshhhh 🤫 we don’t need to talk about that).

So, where are we at the end of week one?

There have definitely been some improvements that both of us have seen. We have noticed some great changes in behavior and health; both mentally and physically and we are both excited to keep going. We even talked about how excited we are to get up even earlier the following week – like what? Who are we and what happened to us? xD

No, but in all seriousness, I am really glad we decided to do this and so is Joan as far as I know. We have discovered some things about us, our work-life balance and our relationship with procrastination that I know I wouldn’t have discovered, if it wasn’t for really giving this whole thing a shot.

There were definitely also some downs, some bad moments and some days where we instantly could have fallen back asleep but we pulled through so far and I am honestly proud of us for sticking with it. Let’s carry this spirit into the next week as well! 💪

So yeah, that was week one. I hope you enjoyed reading along with our journey and will join us next week as well when it’s 7 o’clock wake up time. Make sure you stay safe and healthy ❤

~Luna

Follow my Blog

Hello, and thank you for reading this post! If you’re intrigued about how this saga is going to continue, make sure you hit the button below, so you’ll never miss a blog post 😊

Join 42 other followers

More Posts

Down here you’ll find all the previous posts in this miniseries, so if you’re curious as to how this whole thing started or what this is about, make sure you read the prologue 😊

  • Prologue – The Path to Self-Improvement
    Before I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been […]
  • Day 1 – The First Step is Always the Hardest … Or is it?
    Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things. It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing […]
  • Day 2 – Good Habit Central
    Day two of our challenge was filled with us picking up a lot more good habits and a lot of, let’s call it, “new year, new me” vibes (even though it’s obviously not the start of a new year, but I’m sure you know what I mean). Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “Getting up […]
  • Day 3 – A lil bit of both
    I know, I know, “wow Luna way to keep the title vague” but honestly, I don’t really know, how else to describe this day xD Nighttime, Getting up and Morning Routine Joan: “Waking up was the hardest so far today. I only really fell asleep at around 2am so that may be the reason why […]
  • Day 4 – Rock Bottom
    This day… was certainly a day… Oh, who am I kidding, this day was an absolute wreck, for both of us ironically, but I did want to include it, so you can see that not every day goes as well as you think it will. Nighttime, Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “I gotta be […]
Posted in The Path to Self-Improvement

Day 4 – Rock Bottom

Posted on by Scoraluna

This day… was certainly a day… Oh, who am I kidding, this day was an absolute wreck, for both of us ironically, but I did want to include it, so you can see that not every day goes as well as you think it will.

Nighttime, Getting Up and Morning Routines

Joan: “I gotta be honest. I feel like I already kinda failed the challenge a bit [please insert gif of Alfred here]. I didn’t wake up at 8 AM but overslept about half an hour. I attribute this to my bad sleep tho tbh. I went to bed at midnight, fell asleep at around 1 and woke up around 5 the first time (?) and 6:30 the second time (???). Nevertheless I still got my morning routine done and felt a bit better after completing it. Maybe my body is already kinda accustomed to my new rhythm (now watch my body screw it up for week two 😅).”

Me: Not gonna lie, I now know what people mean when they say that a ruined morning kinda equals a bad rest of a day, but let’s start with the morning. I got some annoying news from my university that sent me on a treasure hunt through the whole flat in order to look for something that I haven’t looked at in three years . Didn’t find it and got super worried about what that meant, only to find out that it wasn’t that important at all… 😒. That whole ordeal led to me not being able to do my morning routine at all, which made me realize how much I’ve already gotten used to it.

Mood

Joan: “I wasn’t in a bad mood per se, but I felt kinda disappointed in myself for not waking up on time (I know it’s a bit nitpicky but still. Sometimes I felt kinda aggravated and even lashed out a bit because of minor inconveniences but overall I wasn’t death on two legs (please tell me there is a Queen fan out there that gets it 😅). I just felt kinda discombobulated.”

Me: The best way how to describe my mood for that day is: all over the place. It started out with being angry and annoyed and only got to somewhat neutral after some meditation in the afternoon. I also wasn’t really satisfied with anything I did. In short: I didn’t handle my frustration well at all.

Productivity

Joan: “As my energy was kinda absent today, I decided to postpone the two lectures I had today (they are asynchronous) and spend some time working on my Bullet Journal and on my guitar skills. This helped a bit with getting out of my funk.”

Me: Thankfully, I didn’t have much to do at work as my productivity was extremely low and I only did what was absolutely necessary.

Sleepiness-Level

Joan: “Yeah so sleepiness-level… IT’S OVER 9000 (too cliche?). No but seriously, I basically felt sleepy the entire day and even after my morning routine and the creative break, that didn’t change a lot. I’m really looking forward to going to sleep tonight and hope that I won’t wake up that often again.”

Me: Honestly? Couldn’t have said it better than Joan already did. I almost fell asleep several times during the day and felt extraordinarily exhausted as well. Don’t really know, if the weather or the general lack of motivation are to blame here but probably a combination of both.

Motivation

Joan: “Not a lot of energy for me also equals not a lot of motivation. I didn’t really feel motivated to practice guitar or to Bullet Journal, but I know that it helps when I’m having a bad day so I decided to do that nonetheless.”

Me: Looking at the rest of the parameters today, it’s safe to say that my motivation was also kinda trash. I did get dressed and put some make-up on in the hopes that it would improve everything a little bit but while it helped a little, it did not do a whole lot.

So yeah, this was a indeed a day. But I hope that it helps you understand that not everything always goes according to plan and that there can be bad days. You can still learn something from bad days tho, so I’m kinda glad I do get to experience both the ups and the downs of this challenge.

Please make sure you stay safe and healthy and I’ll “see” you in the next blog post. ❤

~Luna

Follow my Blog

Thank you for reading! If you want to keep up with this challenge and also read any of my future blog posts, make sure you hit the button down below, so you won’t ever miss an upload. 😊

Join 42 other followers

More Posts

Down below you’ll find any previous days that were published at the time of this post’s release 😊

  • Prologue – The Path to Self-Improvement
    Before I write anything else, I want to thank every single one of you that has so far liked, subscribed or supported this blog in any way, so thank you so much! It means so much more to me, than you can imagine! ❤️ So, there is no need to mitigate here: 2020 has been […]
  • Day 1 – The First Step is Always the Hardest … Or is it?
    Monday marked the first day for our “path to self-improvement” challenge, but before I go straight into our “findings” as promised, I want to first explain, how we decided to gage things. It was clear to us that we needed some way of judging this whole thing, so we have decided to, besides just writing […]
  • Day 2 – Good Habit Central
    Day two of our challenge was filled with us picking up a lot more good habits and a lot of, let’s call it, “new year, new me” vibes (even though it’s obviously not the start of a new year, but I’m sure you know what I mean). Getting Up and Morning Routines Joan: “Getting up […]
  • Day 3 – A lil bit of both
    I know, I know, “wow Luna way to keep the title vague” but honestly, I don’t really know, how else to describe this day xD Nighttime, Getting up and Morning Routine Joan: “Waking up was the hardest so far today. I only really fell asleep at around 2am so that may be the reason why […]