Welp, Here Goes

  I'm Cassie. I'm stumbling my way through life and trying to figure it all out. Welp, here goes.  

[heregoescass]

Motivation

Let’s talk about it.

Mainly, I have none. Well, I have depression and that definitely is a hole in the bottom of my motivation bucket.

It is a struggle for me to be motivated to do things, even things I like or want to do.

It’s only two to three-ish weeks into the new year and I’m already falling out of habits I tried to start. My planking when I make my coffee? not really happening anymore. I tweaked my back and planking hurt like a motherfucker, so I stopped and didn’t start back up after my back felt better. I am still making healthier choices and cutting back on spending money but I still go over budget just that little bit too much and I still drink a soda every now and then and eat candy and sweets when offered (which happens a lot at work).

I go through all the daily motivation in my bucket just getting my ass to work everyday. And on days off, I just want to relax so all the things I wanted to be motivated to do earlier in the week just get put off indefinitely. It sucks.

But I like having goals and things I want to achieve and I will use them to my advantage. This year I wanted to make more content, be it blog posts like this one, youtube videos, or crafts, I wanted to make and create more and finish projects. Three weeks into the year I’ve yet to make a video for my personal channel (I’ve made a few for my gaming channel) and I have definitely not posted the two-ish times a week I wanted to on this blog. #Oops

But if you are a small youtuber you may be familiar with this image

And boy, oh boy, is that motivation for me to make videos. Not because I’m desperate to hold onto my patnership (I mean, kind of, but not really) but because I’m petty as shit and I want to have a big “fuck you youtube” moment when I hit the new milestone.

Motivation doesn’t have to be a positive thing. It can be petty, as long as at the heart of it it’s for you, it’s not JUST motivated by pettiness. I wanted to make more videos this year and this is just another reason pushing me to do that thing.

Nor does motivation need to be an external factor that happens and pushes, it can be an internal desire too. For instance, I am chubby. Not fat, but not at the physical look or health I would like to be. I want to lose weight and I struggle a lot with self image and finding the desire to work out and eat healthy when gummy bears and sitting at the computer is so much easier...it’s a problem.

I have a fascination with pin-ups and boudoir photography and have been interested in exploring doing a photoshoot in those styles.I am uncomfortable in my body as it is currently, so I always put it out of my head; that and I live in Utah, I didn’t really expect the photography studio down the street to offer such things. BUT now there is a photo studio, run by an acquaintance, who is offering such services. I can set my boudoir photoshoot goals as a motivator for losing weight. Technically it’s still something outside of me motivating me, but it’s something I want, an internal reason for me pushing to do the things.

Motivation isn’t a limited thing, like my bucket metaphor has been. But things can drain on it, more often than not you need to find something else to push you or a new spin and try to make it work. Just don’t get discouraged when you fail.

[heregoescass]

Routine

I wanted to expand on some things I touched on in my last post by talking about routine.

I talked about how if you want to change, you need to add things slowly, one or a few at a time and I honestly think that's the best way to approach it and make it stick. A lot of people say you need to do a thing for seven days to start to form a habit, twenty-one days for it to actually become a solid, established habit. We are five days into the new year and I'm already realizing that I've tried to add too many new habits at a time and had to ease off on some goals. Ease off, but not give up.

I love routines. I am bad at following them, but I love them. Knowing what I need to do when I need to do it, that is a very comforting thing to me. If I can't plan ahead, I get anxious... more than usual.

I want to be the person who has a planner. I have a planner, I carry it with me everywhere, it just doesn't have anything written in it... I always forget about my planner. I set alarms into my phone to remember things, even though I know if I physically write it down somewhere, I am more likely to remember it. The alarms work just fine to keep me on schedule, but I aspire to have a beautiful, color coded, scheduled life with stickers and check marks and I'm just not.

My "schedule" is pretty simple. I wake up around the same time everyday, check my phone a little bit, make coffee and then either get ready for work if I'm working that day, or try and run errands/do chores if I work that night. Whether or not I actually do run errands or do chores is a different story ( bad at routines) but that's my basic schedule. It's super open and flexible but it gives me a set idea of what I need to do in a day. The idea of having a basic but open schedule comforts me, but it also easily lets me add or remove things from it. Like

I've started working out when I make my coffee: While I wait for my coffee to brew, I've been doing the plank for incrementally longer periods each day, at first only for twenty seconds and by the end of the month around five minutes. I know that doesn't seem like much, but for my out of shape ass, twenty seconds left my arms and core shaking. I know that I want to do more intense workouts, but I need to work my way up to it. Starting with a simple workout that increases in difficulty over a month seems a good place to start. I have shitty joints so HIIT work outs are something I need to build up to.

I've added a few more steps to my skincare routine in the morning, still not great about doing it before I go to bed though. I am very excited to get to sleep, sleep is all that matters at night. Which is part of why I almost always forget to take out my contacts. Like I said, this blog is the good and the bad about me and my life.

There's also some sillier(?) things I've added to my routine. I love all things spooky, Halloween, and witch-y. I got another beautiful tarot card deck (I have like three now) for Christmas, so I've started doing a single card reading at the start of my day. I don't necessarily believe in magic, but I like symbols and I love shuffling cards. I'm not good at shuffling cards, but the act is comforting to me. So having the small physical act of shuffling mixed with interpreting symbology is a fun way for me to start my day. I also am working on relaxing with a coloring book at some point, no established time of day, but I like coloring and I want to do it more often. Both of these things I'd classify under my Enjoy Shit 2018 resolution, but that doesn't mean they aren't important.

I'm trying to be a better me. Better being happier, healthier, more stable both emotionally and financially. An important part of that for me is improving my routine. Adding things I want to do, removing things that aren't necessary. If that means I need to schedule everything so I can form better habits and improve my quality of life, that's what I'm gonna try to do.  

[heregoescass]

Welcome To 2018

New year, new opportunities to be better or, ya know, not.

I find new year's resolutions to be an odd and kind of stupid thing; there's no reason that the start of a new year is the only time to make an effort to make yourself a better person. But I also always make new year's resolutions, so there's that.

I usually manage to keep up with them for about 6 months. Which is pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. A lot better than the around 75% of people who stop after a month or two. But if a person decides they want to make an effort to better themselves, regardless of how long they stick with it, I think that's admirable. It's just stupid to only try specifically at the beginning of January.

This year I actually started working on my "new year's resolutions" probably back in October-ish. Really I just started working on things I wanted to improve by slowly incorporating them, the opposite of what most people seem to do for resolutions. People seem to just expect that if they throw themselves at all the things they want to change all at once it'll magically all stick and that is very not the case. You need to slowly build habits, work things into your routine one at a time, set reminders, etc.

I have so many alarms set on my phone to remind me to help me build new habits. I wanted to have a more regular sleep schedule, so I set an alarm to tell me I should get ready for bed and then another alarm 30 minutes later to tell me "no really, get ready for bed" because I know me. I know that after a while, I'm gonna ignore my initial alarm and will need another reminder, or that I'll acknowledge my alarm and get distracted. And I don't hold myself 100% to that alarm: I try and get to bed by eleven, but don't beat myself up if it's not until midnight. I always wake up between eight and nine, regardless of when I go to bed. It's just my natural rhythm to wake up around then, and that's fine. I've had those alarms set for about two months, and I don't need them anymore. Around 11 at night, I start feeling sleepy and want to wash my face, change into PJs, and crawl into bed. The alarm is just a gentle reminder.

And I have alarms for everything, it's actually a trick I stole from my boyfriend. When we were in college, he had alarms for everything from "brush your teeth" to "submit that assignment" and I stole that. I have alarms for taking my vitamins, working out, did you shower?, get ready for work, feed your pet, alarms for all the things! Because I know I'm hella forgetful and easily distracted (my boyfriend has suggested I may be ADD and that sounds like it might be right but I've never been diagnosed soooo merp) having my phone gently buzz and tell me what I need to do is helpful. It's a crutch, but crutches are useful and it helps me begin to form habits more than just me trying to force myself with pure willpower.

Almost all the things I chose to be my new year's resolutions are things I've already been working at.

Better budget? I've been throwing myself at budgeting blogs and trying out new budgeting techniques to see what works for me since at least October, I just plan on sticking with it and pushing my budget harder to build my savings. Cause I'm broke as shit.

Better body? This one is one of the ones that will require more work. I've cut soda from my diet for the most part and I already don't buy snack foods. But I work in a fast food place where I get free food and I haven't worked out regularly since July of last year sooo, this one will be harder.

Finish Projects? I am real bad at this. I get excited about new ideas and stick with them until a better idea comes along and then I abandon the first idea, ad infinitum. This year I'm gonna try and just write down the new and exciting idea but continue the first idea until it's finished.

Stay Organized? Well, that one is pretty self explanatory. I want to be more organized. I have folders and bins and specific places for everything... they just never actually make it there and I want to fix that.

Enjoy Shit? Also self explanatory, I want to enjoy things un-apologetically. While I'm trying to be healthier, I'm not gonna feel guilty about having a candy bar or a soda every now and then. I want to take baths not just because my muscles are sore from being stressed constantly, but because I like baths.

These goals are all very broad, but I also have a notebook page where I break these broad goals down into smaller, more specific, achievable goals. The broad strokes are good to put up above my desk as a reminder, but the specifics are what I need (along with alarms) to keep me grounded and motivated. I may even make a vision board, who knows! The year is new and full of opportunities for me to be better at being me, and if I fail at any of my goals, there is no shame in taking a break and trying again later. I can do resolutions year round, Mid Year Resolutions ftw! And failure is just a step... a step that may fuck up your ankle, but a step. Ankles (and pride) heal and you need to keep trying, all the attempts eventually add up to something. It may not be what you hoped, I probably won't look like (insert really fit popular celebrity woman here) by the end of the year, but it'll probably be somewhere better than where you are if you don't give up.

[heregoescass]

Goals And About Me

I suppose I should do an intro of some sort? Explain who I am, why I'm doing this, what I want from it. Typical about me stuff I guess.

My name is Cassie, at this point in my life I'm just a few months from 27. I like making things, I sculpt, paint, draw, sew, bake, crochet, video editing/scripting, write poetry and short stories... I do a lot (to varying degrees of skill). I own and run a (very) small stuffed animal business, and I hope when I'm all grown up to work in the theatre world as a costumer designer... or stitcher, I'm not picky, I just like making things, tbh. I'm also a (very) small time youtuber with a personal channel and a gaming channel I co-host with my boyfriend. I'm also attempting now to be a blogger.

And I'm buried in debt from my time in college and work slightly less than full time at a fast food place and have basically nothing in savings.

I also suffer from mental health issues that have never been formally diagnosed, including depression and anxiety.  I feel overwhelmed a LOT of the time. I often ignore issues because my brain can't handle the stress, I'm aware of this but it doesn't actually help me, ya know, do whatever thing I need to do. It's super great.

Wooooo, living that spoiled brat millennial life, obviously.

I'm really not complaining, I manage to have a roof over my head/pay rent, food on my table, and a little extra cash to occasionally go out to eat or to the movies. But I am still basically living paycheck to paycheck, and barely making a dent in my loans and what I am putting into savings is for things (a car mainly). Also ignoring a lot of problems that I really should not be ignoring.

What I'm hoping blogging like this will accomplish is maybe, putting my life is on view for an audience (which, let's be real, is non-existent at the time of this post) will help hold me accountable. If I post about needing to call and make an appointment and then in the next post I either need to say "yay successful appointment made" or "welp, I didn't do the thing and now consequences" I'll (hopefully) have more "yay success" moments than the usual "well I hate myself cause I didn't do the thing I said I'd do" which is more the standard of my day to day life right now.

Not everything I post is gonna be as down beat as this one, I don't want this blog to be a "pity me, my life is hard" blog. I do also want to talk about things I like and am interested in. And how they may or may not be helpful to trying to be a better adult. Like, I look a lot to the minimalism movement to try and help myself feel less overwhelmed. That's something I want to talk about at length in a latter post. It is hard sometimes to pull away from the negative thoughts in my head, but I do enjoy things and want to focus on the good more in this coming year. This past year was really rough for a lot of reasons and I got stuck in a mire of unhappy for a lot of it, to the point where I lost the good things that did and are happening. I want to work on that.

There will be ups and downs, successes and fuck-ups along the way but I want to share it all with you and maybe we can improve together.  

[heregoescass]

Here Goes Nothing

To start I'm just gonna say it. I have no idea what I'm doing. Not as a blogger, just in general. I am a lost, broke lamb wandering the interwebs trying to make everything balance and still be instagram worthy.

As a millennial, I look online for a lot of things; basically I need the internet to be a person. I look for fashion, exercise, recipes, budgeting, validation as a human with real experiences that matter...everything I can possibly think of. I have books and blogs and apps and follow pages upon pages trying to make my life work.

But, I have not found anything that fits whatever vague, ethereal, one stop shop/blog/app of advice that I've created in my head. Most life tips/advice I find aimed at millennials is usually just "aimed at millennials" in that "well if we talk down to them while also using modern slang and buzzwords they'll get it" kind of way.

"It's easy to build up savings! Just do these five things that require you to be in good credit and open eight bank accounts and have enough money to make sure you get those new account bonuses." That shit might work on a salary, Judy, but I'm working a fast food job and living paycheck to paycheck, I can barely get a few hundred into my savings over months at a time before some disaster wipes it out. And I don't even have a car (yet), which is a huge vampire that sucks at the emergency fund of most poorer people.  

The internet is this big, wide fountain of useful information, and I still can't find anything that fits the life I and so many other people live. Budgeting sites are all middle class white ladies talking about how easy it is to budget, just buy my $200 budgeting class. Workout and exercise blogs are all pretty, thin people saying look how easy this is, just workout an hour a day and spend hundreds on groceries a week to meal prep and/or buy my workout program. Fashion? Get rid of all your clothes and buy all new statement pieces that cost more than your rent.

I just can't afford all the "easy and simple" solutions every blog tries to sell me on. But what I can do is fumble my through what I do actually do in my real life and what new things I'm learning as I go. And maybe making time to write it all out, all the things that I do or attempt to do, can help someone else and make me stick to those goals and routines better.

That's what I'm hoping this blog will be; a collection of what I do, good and bad, to try and function in society. I want to talk about budgeting, trying to be healthier, cutting back on useless things, trying to make my business work, etc. This probably isn't going to be life changing for anyone, like I said at the beginning of this post, I am a mess. I'm trying to change that, but so far, I'm doing a meh job. Hoping to do better, but meh right now.

And there are a shit-ton of these style blogs out there: the "follow me on my journey and change your life" blogs. I can guarantee that, while that's the model I'm trying to follow, this will be more of a "we're gonna fall down this cliff and get bumped and bruised and I guess you can follow me down if you really want to" blogs.

(I’m also posting all these exact same posts on cassluvsmusic.blogspot.com if that’s more your speed)