Hey guys, so, I have some explaining to do… you may have noticed that my blog posts have been wildly irregular at the moment, that’s for many reasons. I feel like I owe it to you to explain myself.
I feel like I keep this blog pretty open and impersonal in a way, that’s not necessarily a conscious decision but rather due to the fact that the posts I write don’t often reveal very much about me. I guess it’s kind of nice to be putting something out there on the big wide web and still feel slightly anonymous.
Anyway, because my blog is kind of open and impersonal I like it when I get to give you life updates, I’m not sure if it’s anything anyone’s particularly interested in but I guess I feel like through telling you what’s happening in my life I can in some ways justify my absence, I know it doesn’t need to be justified but as humans we feel guilty for things that we don’t do and because of that we try and find ways of making ourselves feel better about it by thinking of all the reasons why it hasn’t happened.
So, let’s begin!
Firstly – and I am sure this is something everyone can relate to – I have been drowning in the amount of studying I have to do, I know there’s a saying that’s ‘up to my neck’ but I felt like that wasn’t even close to being the truth, I am so out of my depth it’s scaring me a little bit, but I’m sure everyone feels like that. It’s the most bizarre feeling because a month ago or maybe even as recent as a couple of weeks ago every morning I would wake up and literally feel sick with stress, no lie, and every day would be hard to get through because I would sit at my desk and I would just work for ten hours every single day in the hopes that I could begin to get through the insane amount of work I had to do – luckily, those intense ten hour study sessions actually paid off and I am now drowning slightly less in work and all of the stress has just disappeared, it’s like suddenly I can breathe again but I don’t understand the transition from suffocating in stress to now feeling completely calm, but it’s a great feeling other than the fact that now I’m not stressed I’m slightly less motivated. But anyway, I know most teenage bloggers are going through exam stress and are putting off their blogs in favour of studying so you all completely understand and I am in no way saying I am in a worse situation and I think those of you managing to maintain a blog through all of this stress are absolutely amazing and incredible people – honestly I think you should be given a reward for all your hard work! But I just haven’t quite worked out how to manage my time in a way that caters for both studying, blogging, other commitments etc.
What else has been going on… I’m so busy I can’t even remember. I had a wonderful trip up into London a couple of weeks back and that was really nice, I went to visit my best friend whom I hadn’t seen since November and it was really nice to catch up with her! It had been long overdue and I did double studying the week before specifically so I wouldn’t ‘miss’ any studying while I was there and it was so nice to be able to just relax for a few days and be there with my friend and just feel like a member of society again rather than the introverted nerdy student that I’ve become over the last few months, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, I would rather be indoors studying for a couple of months than failing my exams. We went on a lovely picnic in Regent’s Park and took lots of photos both of the park and of us together, the sun was shining, we did a bit of writing, we got to catch up, it was one of the best days I’ve ever had with her! Oh, and then we got lost on Baker Street (apparently that street goes on FOREVER!) but it was a truly amazing trip and one I wouldn’t change for the world. Although, I did get a migraine after coming back from Regent’s Park through being in the sun for too long… and maybe having a photoshoot which featured me lying in the grass and looking up at the sky, I would not recommend and that did prevent us from watching all the films we had planned to watch but it doesn’t really matter, there’s a time and place for everything. I was going to blog on this trip to London because not only were my friend and I using it as an opportunity to see each other but we were also going to use it as an excuse to just do the things we don’t normally get the time to do because we’re too busy with life, for example, reading, blogging, writing etc. etc.
Also, my cat died, which you probably really didn’t want or need to know and has probably just made this post quite depressing but yeah, I loved him to the moon and back and he was a wonderful cat. He was beautiful and you’d always wake up in the morning and go downstairs to see him sleeping on the sofa or an armchair curled up into this cute little ball of fluff and it was the most adorable thing! But he was old and we knew it was going to happen eventually – it was unexpected that he was going to die at that moment but he had been getting visibly older and less capable, but it just kind of added to everything else and it’s not really a reason why I haven’t been blogging because despite being upset, when he died it didn’t feel like an overwhelming loss or like a huge hole had been created in my life that could never be filled, it was devastating but it wasn’t like if a family member (or even my other cat who behaves like a dog, calls for me, cuddles with me all the time and whom I adore more than anything else in the entire universe) died so I wasn’t like in floods of tears for days unable to concentrate but this is a life update as well as being a post for me to explain all the reasons why I haven’t blogged.
Okay, another reason why I haven’t been blogging as much is because since last November I have been working on a fanfiction series – I am currently planning on it being 4 books long; which was completely unexpected but given the current state of the series 4 seems like a good number to get all the storylines completed in. Obviously I love to blog, it’s something I have a passion for but I also have a passion for fiction writing. I just love to write and I get different things out of both experiences. I like the feeling of being part of something that you get when you’re blogging, I like how on WordPress it’s like a community of people all sharing stories and opinions and interests etc. and there are just certain things I’m passionate about that I want to write about and I can’t really discretely put into a fictional story. But I also like the ability to escape that I get from writing fiction, maybe ‘escape’ isn’t quite the right word because I don’t feel like I need to ‘escape’ from my life but I guess it’s kind of a way to experience things that you don’t normally get to experience or to just create a world that can be however you want it to be; you can control the level of good and bad; the level of nice and horrible; the level of love and hatred and so on, you can put words in other people’s mouths and develop relationships and I enjoy it a crazy amount and have been getting really excited about my fanfiction series, maybe I’ll upload it onto Wattpad, maybe I won’t. I’m not sure. I’m going to finish all four books first. Anyway, I don’t really want it to sound like I’m prioritising fanfiction writing over blog writing but unfortunately it’s not exactly a choice, you see, the thing is, when I write fiction I think about it almost constantly and I am always thinking about what’s going to happen next or certain things people can say to others or a particular ‘moment’ that I want to happen, a cliff-hanger, a certain new character etc. and sometimes I get these really vivid images of a ‘scene’ I want to include and I know how I want it to read word for word and so I have to get my laptop and I have to write that scene whether I would rather be writing a blog post, watching TV or reading a book because if I don’t write that scene out there and then unfortunately the scene will be gone, and whilst, of course, I can write down a small memo saying I want to have a ‘marriage proposal scene’ or a ‘dramatic break-up scene’ or an ’emotional death scene’ I still don’t have the word for word details and – without trying to sound really full of myself because I’m really not – my first draft is usually actually the best draft, I mean everything needs a bit of editing after it’s finished but for some reason the way I write just comes out exactly the way I want it to first time, I do reword things sometimes or add things in that I didn’t think to add in the first time around and of course correct spelling errors but usually the way I’ve written it first is always the best so if I don’t get the words in my head down on my laptop then they all disappear and I can never recreate the word document on paper as good as it was in my head, if that makes sense.
I would just like to put it out there that I have been doing ‘blog’ things despite not being noticeably active on WordPress, I haven’t completely been ignoring my blog although it might seem like that. I have a number of drafts waiting to be reviewed and edited and in fact finished but the problem is, I am so busy that when I do have some free time it’s usually late at night when I’m exhausted from whatever I’ve had going on in the day, I’m half asleep and what I really want to be doing is drinking a hot chocolate and watching TV and the few times that I’ve tried to write a blog post instead in those circumstances they just don’t sound right, it sounds like I’m forcing the blog post and I’m not fully connecting to the content – probably because I’m half asleep – also, often I know the point I’m trying to make and what I want the blog post to say but I struggle to actually come to the conclusion and write it in a way that sounds good, basically I need to not be blogging when really I should be sleeping but I do plan on reviewing those blog posts over the next few evenings hopefully and finishing them, editing them and then getting them published.
Lastly, before I go I would like to quickly mention that I have been attempting to be much more active on my social media sites so you can go and follow me on them (links down below). I have specifically been paying attention to my Instagram recently firstly because I took lots of beautiful photos in Regent’s Park in London when I went to visit my friend and also because at the moment Instagram is my favourite social media site, I just love how so much can be conveyed in a photo and how loads of people are using this app and sharing photos of either pretty things they’ve found in their day-to-day lives or more professional type photos or even pictures of themselves and what they’ve been doing with their day, I just think it’s such a nice idea and personally I’ve been becoming slightly disconnected with twitter recently but I want to try and get back into it soon. Make sure you’re following me on both of the social media sites just mentioned so you can keep up-to-date with what I’ve been doing even when I’m not actively publishing new posts on WordPress.
I really hope you enjoyed this post, make sure to give it a like if you did! You can follow me if you aren’t already to see any new posts as soon as they’re published! Also, feel free to leave any comments letting me know what you’ve been busy doing and how you’re coping with all the exam work/revision you’ve got going on at the moment – I would love any tips and tricks you might have on effective study sessions!
If you want to get in touch you can do so using my e-mail – aninspiredteen@gmail.com
That’s all for now!
Inspired Teen 🙂
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