Tag: self-improvement

Posted in Mentality

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

Posted on 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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Posted in Mentality

Procrastination Solution?

Posted on 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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Posted in Mentality

Of Emotional Burnout and Social Anxiety

Posted on 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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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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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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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 41 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?
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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 41 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 […]