My Post-Isolation Bucket List

Hi Readers!

I hope we’re all well and finding ways to pass the time during this difficult period, remember you’re not alone and everyone is going through a similar thing so please get talking in the comments if you’re feeling lonely/struggling.

I decided to make a slightly more positive post today and talk about things post-coronavirus (if you can imagine such a thing). The other day, I wrote a post talking about how I wanted to focus more on positivity because it had been a problem of mine for a long time. Well, since writing that post I kind of had a downward spiral of misery where I was being really negative so I started journaling, but instead of my usual rant about how shit everything was, I decided to write a list of good things about some of the situations I had been struggling with and it made me feel a lot better and made me see everything differently. I also wrote a list of things I was going to do after this isolation ended and at first I wondered if it was a good idea, because I worried that maybe it would make me feel worse being reminded of all these things I couldn’t do, but actually, it made me feel positive because it gave me something to look forward to, something to hold onto when I was feeling negative, because this will end and when it does, I’ll be able to do all the things I wrote in my list and that will make me happy! So… now for the list:

1. Go to a Cafe with a Friend – This is definitely something I’ve been missing with all this free time, cafes are always where I go with friends for a good catch-up and it feels so strange not being able to message a friend and meet up for drinks.
2. Buy Vegan Fudge from the Fudge Shop – There’s a local fudge shop in my town and obviously, with everything being shut and people not being able to go out, I haven’t been able to buy any. It was only recently I discovered they sold a whole variety of vegan fudge which is just as good as the real thing and I was so excited for the Easter holidays to come along so I could go and buy some, so I’m definitely looking forward to doing that when this is all over!
3. Have a Picnic in the Park – This is still technically something I could do in the fields by my house because they’re always deserted but I feel like one of the nice things about a picnic in the park is the atmosphere of the other happy people enjoying the sunshine around you and sitting in a field alone with just my family just wouldn’t have the same feel to it.
4. Go to More Events – This is linked to my university life because I never really went out on nights out with any of my friends, I am far more of a stay-indoors-with-Netflix kind of person, but now we’re in this situation and my first year of university ended so abruptly, I wish I’d spent more time going out with them.
5. Commit to Clubs and Societies – In my first year at university I started going to clubs/societies for the first couple of weeks but then I got lazy and stopped going because I told myself I was “too tired” and “I’d go next week” but now that I’m stuck indoors I really wish I’d made more of an effort to go more regularly especially as there are lots of free societies that I would potentially be interested in getting involved with so money isn’t even an excuse.
6. Go Out for Dinner in a Restaurant – I know this sounds super basic but I have missed it. It’s one of those things you take for granted, a nice night out in a restaurant and then suddenly it’s gone and you realise you hadn’t appreciated it enough. One of the first things I want to do when this is over is have a lovely date night with my boyfriend.
7. Appreciate All My Classes – When you’re a uni student, especially in first year when you’re only just getting to grips with the whole independence thing, you start counting the minutes until the day ends and you get to go home, but now that my first year was cut short and I’m not going to have lessons for a long time, I really want to make sure I appreciate how lucky I am to have any lessons at all when I go back.
8. Start My Scrapbook/Photo Album – I got a beautiful scrapbook/photo album for Christmas last year that I’ve been desperate to start ever since, but I haven’t had time. I want to fill it with some of my favourite photos over the years and decorate it and write down memories I have of that day and just make a really beautiful scrapbook of loads of my favourite memories and I want to keep doing that year after year and there has never been a more important moment than right now where I want to have something to reflect on all the good memories I have to brighten up my day.
9. Order Take-Away Pizza and Watch a Film – I know I could technically do this now, but, I live in the middle of nowhere so although places are still delivering, they don’t deliver to my house. So, probably once all of this is over it will be more of a collection process… but… still, I’m just craving a crappy dinner in front of the TV.
10. Buy pasta – This one’s kind of a joke just because I felt like I couldn’t only have 9 things… but seriously, I will never take pasta for granted again!

I hope you enjoyed this post! Please leave a comment below of what you’re looking forward to doing once this is over – let’s spread some positivity!

Stay safe everyone ❤

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

 

 

Summer Bucket List 2019

Hey guys!

Since it has officially been summer since the 21st June here in the UK, I thought it was about time I posted my summer bucket list. I really love bucket lists and I have a life-long bucket list that helps keep me motivated and helps me layout my goals in life clearly by getting them out onto paper. My life-long bucket list is my main bucket list and I always try and tick off as many things as possible every year especially in the summer when I have lots of free time, but a summer bucket list is more general things that I hope to achieve and it’s also a much smaller and more manageable list than my main bucket list which is currently 400+ items long!

So here’s the things I hope to do over the summer:

1. Workout often including yoga and running – I am always trying to find the time to keep on top of my physical fitness but when I was at school it was a massive struggle because I was so mentally and physically exhausted all of the time. When I do have the time to focus on my physical fitness I notice the difference almost immediately, my body is less tense, my skin is better, I feel more energetic and motivated, my body feels lighter and more free meaning I fidget less and it is easier for me to get comfortable and I sleep better at night, so I definitely want to be focusing on my physical fitness as much as possible over the summer although it’s difficult when it’s so hot!

2. Save money/find money-making opportunities –  With university starting in only a couple of months, I know the time will go much faster than I think and I’ll have a bigger need for money than I ever have before. I currently have a part-time job which I am picking up lots of extra shifts for but I also hope to find other money making opportunities over the summer and save as much money as I can. Something I’m definitely going to incorporate to help me with this is a budget. I have a notebook with a pre-existing budget planner in it which I have used a couple of times but unfortunately became too busy to focus on anymore, but the times I did use it were so helpful and it really shed some light at the end of every month how much money I had wasted on things I didn’t need and how I could change my spending habits in the months to come to save more money.

3. Explore vegan cafes – Over the last few months I have learnt about so many vegan cafes, mainly through instagram that I really want to go to and the summer seems like the perfect time to do so. I have never been that excited about food and am often indifferent to food, however, I cannot deny the excitement I feel at finding a new vegan cafe and exploring what new foods they offer that I would struggle to find anywhere else. I will keep you updated on my vegan cafe journey mostly through instagram @aninspiredteen (I haven’t posted in ages but that is something I hope to change over the summer!).

4. Cook more – Having said I am indifferent to food, I want to expand my cooking repertoire especially as I am going off to university and generally starting adult life. It would be nice to get more confident with cooking while I still have my mum in the house to help me if I get stuck and it would be nice to go to university with a few recipes already under my belt that I know how to cook. Additionally, if I ever host guests for the evening whilst at university I want to be able to cook them a decent meal even if it is only my family or my boyfriend, rather than cooking them pasta with a basic shop bought sauce. I got a couple of vegan recipe books for Christmas that I’ve hardly had the chance to look at yet which I am going to go to for some inspiration during the summer.

5. Spend more time in the sun – Something I’ve noticed about myself over the past couple of years is that when the sun comes out and it’s the summer holidays and I’ve finally gotten a break from school I spend most of my time in bed binge-watching TV shows or scrolling through instagram or watching YouTube videos that really aren’t adding anything to my life and then, before I know it, summer’s over and it’s time to wear jumpers and raincoats again and I never spend enough time just appreciating the good weather. So this year, I’m trying to make extra effort to truly enjoy the outdoors while it’s sunny and making me happy. I often feel so much happier in the summer if I actually go out and enjoy the outdoors rather than staying in bed all day. I have already started incorporating spending more time in the sun into my daily life by going out exploring my new area as I have just moved house, sitting in the sunshine during my lunch breaks at work and also sitting outside in my new garden while eating dinner and I’m going to start sitting outside and reading as well. Which brings me onto the next bucket list item…

6. Read more – I have loved reading basically my entire life but over the last couple of years, again because of school, I’ve hardly had the time to do so. Recently, I started reading on the kindle app on my phone during journeys home from school as I missed reading so much and it was the only way I could read as I physically couldn’t fit a book into my school rucksack! Reading on my phone certainly wasn’t the same as having a real book in your hand so I look forward to being able to read more in the summer time – there are quite a few books I want to re-read over the summer as well because I just love them so much.

7. Focus on learning Spanish – I am currently in the process of learning Spanish and I have been learning it in dribs and drabs over the last couple of years now since meeting my boyfriend who has some Spanish-speaking family members. I’ve always wanted to learn another language and originally started learning Italian but with no purpose for learning Italian other than for fun and with no way to practice it with others I lost all motivation and gave up. However, my motivation for learning Spanish is to be able to talk to members of my boyfriend’s family and I can practice by talking in Spanish with him so I really want to focus on that over the summer.

8. See my friends a lot – Another thing I’ve noticed is typical of my summer holidays is that I fantasise about all these plans I’m going to make and all the things I’m going to do and all the friends I’m going to see and then again, I end up doing none of it. So this summer I really want to make an effort to see my friends more and to actually plan to go out and do stuff rather than just to “hang out” and then the hanging out never even happens. Obviously, being able to do this also depends on my friends actually having the time to plan to go out but I already have some plans being made so it’s looking promising!

I think I’ll leave it at that for now, short and sweet, as often I get over-ambitious with summer bucket lists which makes it even harder to complete them!

I hope you liked this post, let me know in the comments below what your plans for the summer time are and whether you have any of the same goals as me!

Love,

An inspired teen 🙂

Contact me: aninspiredteen@gmail.com

Instagram: @aninspiredteen

 

I Almost Quit My GCSEs

Hey guys, guess who?!! So, I am finally back in the blogging universe! I know what you’re thinking; you’re thinking that it’s a total lie, that I’m teasing you and I’m going to publish this post and then not publish anything again for a couple of months… which… considering my track record over the last few months would be a reasonable conclusion! But… this time I truly am back – for a while at least. I have so many blog posts planned out, I have been storing them in the memo on my phone for the last couple of months my fingers just itching to finally type them out and publish them on my blog, but I’ve had so much going on and there simply hasn’t been time. One of two things would have happened if I had continued blogging over the last two months:

1) I would have spent too much time blogging and not enough time studying and revising for my GCSEs and ultimately would have ended up with bad results (but it hasn’t been results day yet so let’s not get too confident!)

2) I would have found a way to do both revision and blogging but my revision would be less effective and I wouldn’t do as much which could result in worse grades and the quality of my blog posts would pay the price because I would be blogging quickly and not spending time to actually get my thoughts and points across and, I would speed edit and speed tag and everything would just be worse.

So, for those two reasons I had to take a break and I have been really sad because I’ve had so much that I’ve wanted to blog about; but it’s okay because today I sat my last GCSE! I am officially free from compulsory education! I’m no longer home-educated… which is really weird and quite sad… but it does mean that I can finally blog again! Be prepared for lots of exciting blog posts over the next few weeks!

Anyway… I guess that was kind of the intro? Quite a long one but we’ll go with it.

Firstly, I would just like to say this isn’t clickbait to those of you who might be thinking that. The title is actually true and I will expand and explain soon. Secondly, this post is going to be a general overview of my experience studying and sitting my GCSEs which might interest some of you or it might just be a chilling feeling of deja vu – in which case feel free to stop reading now.

Okay… where to even start. I guess the first thing would be to quickly tell you my subject choices. So, this year I did maths, economics, chemistry, human biology and English literature. Last year I did three GCSEs and the year before that I did one. So that’s what I was working with and boy do I have some dramatic stories to tell!

My first exams were human biology (10th and 12th of May), I thought they would be really easy and that I would enjoy studying the textbook because I found the subject quite interesting and it was very relevant to me because it was about how bodies  – including mine – worked, there were elements of it that I found really interesting and wish I had been able to learn more about (such as inheritance and genes) and there were elements that I really, really hated and wished I didn’t have to learn at all (such as digestion and diets). So I thought it was going to be easy, despite the fact that the textbook was relatively big and had more material to learn than I had ever had to learn before in my life, including all the complicated scientific terms and names for things and what they did (such as mitosis, osmosis, homeostasis blah blah blah) but I found it quite enjoyable and at first I actually did have fun learning it! Then, it got to about a week before my exam and I did my first past paper – I know what you’re thinking, I should have done one way sooner right?! Well, no. I’m the kind of person that leaves it until the last minute and then gets really stressed about it. Anyway, I did my first past paper and I think I got a D grade. This really upset me because I had put so much work in and had studied really hard and I thought I’d understood it really well and I think my mark was 90/120 or something along those lines and I just couldn’t understand how 90 marks could be a D, so I studied really, really hard and then did a second past paper – this time my grade was an F. Which just made the whole situation worse. I studied some more, did a third paper, a D. This was the Saturday before my first paper… I was an absolute mess. I was honestly, at that moment, at the lowest point mentally I had ever been. And physically maybe. I was so tired and upset and stressed and I felt sick to my stomach every waking second, I felt like I could cry at any given moment, I was cold constantly (I blame that on the anxiety and the tiredness), I could not fathom why I was doing so badly even though I had studied so hard and had pretty much memorised most of the textbook… the Sunday then rolled around, by this point I hadn’t showered in maybe three-four days, I hadn’t changed my clothes in just as long… I was a wreck. But then I discovered something that changed my life around! I discovered that unlike with previous exams I had sat myself and previous past papers I had marked myself, instead of marking the exam papers separately and then adding them together for an overall grade, this paper was marked by adding both of the exam papers together first to find out your final grade – so you didn’t get graded on the papers individually. I found this out through looking at the grade scheme and discovering that full marks for the subject were 180 even though paper one only had 120 marks available. It was then that I realised, honestly I could have sobbed there and then because it turned out I was actually getting Bs, not Ds and Fs. It was quite possibly one of the happiest days of my life. So, that’s my story with human biology. Oh, and I sat the papers and they went okay, well enough but not as well as I had performed in past papers I don’t feel.

Moving on… so, the next exam I had was chemistry (18th May). This was definitely not my strong point. I hate chemistry, more than I ever thought I would. The main issue was that I didn’t have time to learn or revise it – the issue with my human biology resulted in a major set-back in the revision of all other subjects. I was less inclined to study chemistry in the first place because it was the subject that mattered the least in terms of my future education – maths and English literature I had to do well in and I enjoyed economics so I was naturally more inclined to study that. Because of all of these things, chemistry was ignored a little bit. Which resulted in me being really stressed when it came to the actual exams. To be honest, I definitely could have put more effort into it but, particularly in the last few days once all my other exams were over and I simply had chemistry left to sit, my motivation was in minus figures. It was awful in the sense that I knew I should be working and I wanted to work, in fact I did work just when I sat down at my desk and read the textbook it was literally going in through my eyes and straight out of the top of my head. I was failing to retain any information at all. I’ve successfully sat both my chemistry papers but I’m not holding out much hope.

Now onto the part where I almost quit. First, I would like to quickly add a disclaimer to say that I am in no way trying to portray my GCSE experience as a worse experience than anyone else, and I’m surely not going to be playing the whole “I’m home-educated so it’s harder for me!” act in an effort to make you feel sorry for me. Because I don’t think it was necessarily harder for me and I definitely don’t think my GCSE experience was as bad as other people’s, in fact I know it wasn’t. I am simply telling you the experience I, as an individual, had in my own circumstances. Anyway, so, it was Saturday the 20th May – by this point I was almost halfway through my GCSEs and I hadn’t socialised with anyone outside of my household in weeks because I was too busy revising (or procrastinating but with every intention to start revising) and I had a maths exam coming up… Now… if you had told me at the time that I was actually going to end up hating chemistry more than maths I think I would have cried with laughter for about three hours, anyway, I had two English literature papers coming up that week and slap bang in the middle of both of them I had my maths exam, this made me insanely stressed because I had to make the decision of either: entirely ignoring revision for both English papers and just pray that my English abilities were good enough and that my knowledge of the books when I’d studied them was good enough to wing it; or, I had to decide to avoid revising maths in the hopes that I would get a really good English literature grade and I would just have to live with the fact that I had failed my maths and re-sit it (something which made me feel so stressed and sick); or I would have to find a way of juggling them both over one weekend in the hopes that I would get good grades in both of them… as a result of this really stressful decision and the ever-shortening time I had left to revise the material, I had a cry – a long, long cry which I think lasted about 2 hours… it was awful and embarrassing and despite the fact that I was really upset the only thing I found myself thinking was how much time I was wasting through being upset. That every second counted and I needed to get my act together and do some work rather than sitting there crying. Eventually my Mum heard me crying and came in and told me to come downstairs and we sat on the sofa and she gave me a hug and I was sobbing and I told her I didn’t have enough time, that I felt I was going to fail all of my GCSEs, that I was so stressed and so tired and I just didn’t want to do it anymore and my Mum, being the amazing person she is simply said that I could stop. That I could decide not to do the rest and whilst it wouldn’t be ideal it wasn’t the end of the world. And in that moment, I genuinely, truly considered giving up. I was so close to saying I quit, that I couldn’t do it. That I hadn’t prepared enough, that I wasn’t ready, that I was an idiot but that I didn’t want to sit them if I was going to fail them all. I felt truly awful and despite what I said earlier about that weekend before my human biology exam this was honestly the lowest I have ever been. Never in my life have I felt so done, so completely exhausted that I felt I just couldn’t go on with the situation. That I just simply could not see a way of getting through these GCSEs and maintaining my physical and mental health. The genuine desire to give up at that moment terrified me. I have never felt so helpess like that, so tired and stressed that I would do anything to make it end. I don’t know how I got over the feeling and decided to continue with my GCSEs, but I did and I have come out of the other end and I’m feeling positive about all of my subjects except for chemistry (I’m even feeling optimistic about my maths! And if you knew me really well you would know that, that is an absolute miracle!).

Okay, I’m going to end this post here because I feel like it has been very long! I really hope you got something out of this post or that you enjoyed it in some respect, if you did please make sure to give it a like! If you’re new around here and you like what you see then please feel free to follow me! Let me know in the comments what your experience with sitting your GCSEs was – whether you sat them this year or in the past. If you sat them in the past I would be interested to know how you did in terms of grades compared to how you thought you had done!

If you want to contact me, you can reach me using my e-mail – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

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Summer Bucket List Review 2016

Hey guys, so some of you may know that back in June I wrote a summer bucket list , if you weren’t aware then you can go and check it out here. Basically this post is going to be me reviewing my summer bucket list and how well I did at achieving it all.

Let’s get right into it!

• Start running everyday – I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t run at all this summer (maybe once) but for good reasons! I have thought about running every day but realised that it probably wasn’t something I should be doing without a sports bra and I just never got round to buying one. There was also the fact that it was insanely hot for lots of the summer and I felt like if I went running I would probably die. But in my defence I did find myself doing a lot of fitness things anyway, such as dance and working out. For fun ways to get fit go and check out my post!
• Cook more things – I didn’t do too much cooking this summer as I was always so busy my diet kind of consisted of pasta and things from the freezer that I could quickly throw in the oven for 15 minutes. However, I have done quite a bit of cake baking. I made many birthday cakes all of which were delicious and all of which took a lot of work. I’m cooking another cake tomorrow so that will be more cooking. When I originally wrote this down I did mean more healthy vegetable based cooking but I will slowly build up to that – I really struggle with recipe books is the only issue, I quite often have to adapt recipes so that they suit me and I find that really difficult.
•   Blog everyday – You probably all know that I completely failed at this and I guess I was quite ambitious with putting this on my list but I thought that it would really motivate me to keep writing posts even with a busy schedule, but I guess I never properly realised how busy my schedule was going to be. The thing is if I had gone on holiday then I would have kept up blogging for the entire summer it’s only because I was busy with work experience and drama rehearsals that I didn’t get the opportunity to keep writing. I have this dream that one day I can write a blog post for you guys whilst sitting in Paris. It will happen.
• Take more photographs – I am so happy to say that I actually completed this and I think the main reason is because I got a new phone and it was really easy to take photos with it and the camera was so much better than the camera on my old phone. I also got Instagram for personal use and that was kind of motivating for me as I had been wanting Instagram for ages but couldn’t get it with my old phone. So yes, I have been taking loads more photos this summer and I’m really pleased with myself for it because I absolutely love taking photos and framing them correctly etc.
• Have at least three sleepovers – Unfortunately I didn’t get the opportunity to have three sleepovers although I tried desperately to arrange some with my best friend all summer we only had one – it was amazing though! I feel happy with only having had one sleepover though, especially given how busy my schedule was, I feel like if I had added anything else to my schedule (especially things involving late nights) I would just end up unhealthily tired. And the one sleepover I had was really, really good!
• Sort out my garden – Not gonna lie, my garden isn’t as pretty as it could be, it’s not overly terrible, it just doesn’t look how I one day hope it will look. I’m quite a big fan of pretty flowers and lovely wood stained furniture, our garden does have furniture but a bit more grass and less flowers than I want at the moment – it does have some lovely trees that blossom beautifully though! I didn’t overly work on the garden over the summer because the weather has been so freakish; one day it’s been too hot to even dare going outside and other days it’s been pouring down with rain – neither or which are good days for gardening. I did dedicate an entire Sunday to doing the garden with some friends and family members mid-August though and we got loads done and so much more than I ever imagined we would and it’s definitely getting there! Hopefully in the next couple of months to come when it’s not too hot but not too cold I can get it finished (hopefully).
• Sort through all the junk and reorganise my room – I think I did this really soon after writing my summer bucket list so I can’t specifically remember how it went. I definitely have my room organised in a way that I’m happy with and I did clear out a lot of my junk – including a clutter corner full of paper shredding which has been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for literally about five years so I was really pleased with myself for that. I took some stuff to the charity shop and I was pleased with myself for that too, in this area I feel I did pretty well this summer!
• Give up Netflix for a month – It’s very easy to say you’re going to do something, it’s also very easy to think something is a good idea when actually it’s not a good idea at all. This was one of those occasions. Although, I didn’t use Netflix half as much as I thought I was going to this summer – I think it’s because of how busy I was. I more often than not watch Netflix when I’m going to sleep as that’s really my only opportunity. I also don’t generally like watching TV during the day because I always feel like there is so much more that I could be doing; such as writing a blog post or doing some actual revision etc. and TV just acts as a distraction – I also get bored of TV pretty quickly so yeah, I didn’t give it up but I certainly wasn’t as addicted as I thought I would be this summer.
• Practise for my music exam – I was doing so well with this for the first couple of weeks of the summer and I practised for an hour or more every day and was feeling really good about myself and then everything else started happening and my music practice stopped being quite a big priority and so my practise really suffered. I’m going to pick it up again on Monday and really work for it up until April when my actual exam is because at the end of the day it’s grade 8 and I really don’t want to muck it up, but I’m one of those people who don’t really think how serious it is to not revise/practice until it gets to about a month before and then I start to panic but I know I can’t do that with this exam so I’m going to actual work harder for it.
• Do work experience – I did do this! And I’m so pleased that I did because it was a really great experience and I really enjoyed it! I did two lots of work experience, one at my local theatre and the other doing some filming at a festival and that was really fun and I feel like I learnt a lot from it! I’m proud of myself for doing two lots of work experience along with everything else that I’ve been doing this summer! I feel like it’s a real achievement, especially given that I’m trying to build up my CV at the moment.
• Read more – I feel like I did do this, not hugely but I certainly read a lot more than I have been doing in the past months and definitely prioritising it over TV which is something I haven’t been doing for a while. I feel like my reading drags a bit if I’ve been reading books that aren’t all that good lately, even once I’ve finished a bad book I feel like because it was bad it doesn’t really motivate me to start reading another book and I’m always really surprised when it turns out that the book I’m reading actually is a good book, even though the majority of the books I read are, in fact, good.
• Save some money – I feel like I didn’t do too well with this, I was planning on having about £20-30 at the end of summer but then things popped up that were insanely reduced and not possible to say no to, I had a friend round and spent money that I didn’t strictly need to on biscuits, I bought a lipstick that wasn’t necessary but that I fell in love with and then I bought my sister a little gift today and I also pre-ordered a book and now I have almost no money left; but I feel okay with that because I don’t feel like I have wasted the money that I spent, I don’t look back on it and regret buying a particular item, I’m pretty happy with the money I’ve spent and how I’ve spent it so I consider that an achievement, not the achievement I was expecting but still an achievement.
• Start my Gold Arts Award – I did start my gold arts award and I feel like I have achieved so much with it and done loads more than I thought I would! I’ve done some of the work experience, I’ve started creating my arts piece, I’ve sent some e-mails, I’ve had meetings. To be honest, I thought I was going to achieve this when writing it down because I knew that I was going for a meeting about it with the group I’m doing it with but I never knew I would do this quantity of work – I still need to actually start putting some of my evidence in my portfolio but I’m still doing really well, I have all the evidence stored in different places but I just need to put it all in the right sections of my portfolio.
• Practise singing – I didn’t do this a huge amount, I did sing a couple of songs (I even sang a duet with my sister a couple of times and I have to admit it sounded pretty good!) and recorded myself and I played the accompaniment but I didn’t do a huge amount of singing. I started rehearsals for a musical production I’m in and I guess that counts as me practising singing because it’s only in the rehearsal stages at the moment. I don’t feel confident yet though and I was really hoping that I would feel confident singing in front of people by the end of the summer but that hasn’t happened. Oh well. I think I’ve done this enough to tick it off though!
• Use my Sundays more wisely – I definitely did this and every Sunday that I did this I gave myself a little pat on the back for actually achieving it as I really didn’t think that I was going to, if I’m honest with you! I was so set in the routine of doing nothing on Sundays, lying around procrastinating until it got to the end of the day and I realised that there was no point in actually trying to do something with my day but I found that during this summer I did wake up and get up, I did things that were a good use of my time such as get out in the garden, work on my fitness, tidy and clean the house and I am just so pleased that I did this because it made me feel so much better about Sundays! I really hate lazy days where I don’t do anything because they just make me feel really horrible and disgusting and like I’ve wasted a perfectly good day doing absolutely nothing of use and when I look back on my childhood in the future what am I going to remember about all the Sundays I’ve experienced in my life? Probably not a lot. I always try and get out as much as I can, even if it’s quickly popping to the shops because it makes me feel like I’ve actually done something of relevance in my day.
• Be more spontaneous – I wanted to do this but the opportunity to be spontaneous never really arose, I know obviously every moment in life is a chance to be spontaneous but I feel like at the age I am now it’s very hard to be spontaneous and there does kind of need to be a moment where you can be spontaneous. When I’m older and I have my own house and my own money and a car etc. I will have the opportunity to be a bit more spontaneous because I could decide to random go somewhere and actually be able to pay to go there (I don’t mean like going on holiday but more like getting admittance into a tourist attraction etc.) or I could spontaneously decide to go and have a cup of coffee in a café and then spend an hour reading in the library for example but I can’t do things like that at this stage in my life, so as much as I would have liked to, it just wasn’t possible.
• Think less about objects – I feel like I’ve really overcome my obsession and desire for objects over the summer, I think when I wrote my summer bucket list I was going through a particular stage of thinking about objects and having them dominate my thoughts and it was kind of consuming and destroying my thoughts in a way that I didn’t want it to and I was literally just always browsing the internet for things to buy and thinking of things I could sell in order to buy more objects and I was thinking about what I wanted for my birthday and maybe even for Christmas and over the summer all of those thoughts have gone away. Without trying to sound too ridiculous I feel like I have really matured this summer and started thinking about things that really matter, or at least I have stopped thinking too strongly about things that really don’t matter and I’m pleased with where I am in this area. I feel like I’ve properly come to terms with what is worth money to me and what I feel is important for me to have in my life etc. I feel like I’m in a really healthy place mentally at the moment. I never feel like I am in an unhealthy place mentally particular but when I’m thinking about objects etc. I never feel mentally as healthy as I do when those things aren’t dominating my thoughts.

And there we have it! My summer bucket list review! I really hope you liked it and were interested to know how my summer went and how successful I was with ticking off the items on my bucket list. If you have any comments regarding this post please feel free to leave them below! Also, if you have written a similar post talking about the success of your summer bucket list please leave a link in the comments as I would love to read it!

If you did enjoy this post please make sure to give it a like and if you aren’t following me already then please feel free – I would really appreciate it!

Lastly, if you ever want to get in contact my e-mail is – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

At One With Nature

Hey guys, I feel like I am always starting my blog posts of with an apology at the moment – I have been terrible at posting this month and I am truly sorry! I will try and get back on top of it, I don’t even have a proper excuse as I have loads of ideas for posts; I guess my life has just been kind of busy at the moment which is unusual for the summer time as usually I end up doing nothing!

So today is Sunday and as you may have seen on my summer bucket list I am trying to use Sunday’s more productively, last week I used my Sunday more productively by doing loads of gardening and this week, given that it’s so humid and I feel like I’m slowly suffocating from the heat I decided I’m going to use it to catch up on all the blog related things that I should have done ages and ages ago – such as send in my guest post to L, if you’re reading this L I am so sorry for being so rubbish!!

Anyway, I as usual, had a different post planned for today but then something happened and now I’m going to write something else!

Yesterday I had a really productive day (even though it wasn’t Sunday!), my family were away for the day so I was all alone, I had work in the morning but after that I either had to stay in the house on my own for the rest of the day – which usually makes me feel really uncomfortable and quite anxious or I could make the most of the amazing day that I had as the weather was absolutely lovely! So after I finished work I went to the library to return some books and take some books out, then I walked back into town and tried on some clothes, then I went to the shops and bought some hay for my rabbit and once I got home I made myself some lunch and instead of immediately turning on the TV or using my laptop I got out one of the library books I had borrowed and started reading that instead! The most amazing thing is after lunch, instead of hanging around my house all day like I usually do I actually picked up my camera and walked to the big park which is quite close to where I live – it’s about one mile away from my house – and then I walked around the park taking photos.

I don’t know about anyone else but sometimes when I’m outside nothing looks properly real, it looks either too bright or too dim and I don’t really see things as being properly touchable objects but more seeing things through a TV screen or a window but yesterday when I was walking home from buying the hay for my rabbit I found that the weather was just so perfect and lovely that everything for the first time in ages actually looked properly real! And I looked up at the sky and it was so strikingly blue, it was absolutely amazing and just being out put a smile on my face and that’s why I decided to go to the park after getting home from work.

I think the world is such a big and beautiful place and we don’t spend enough time appreciating and enjoying the outside, enjoying what nature can provide for us rather than sitting in doors staring at computer screen or watching TV having them tell us what the world is really like! I think whilst electronic devices are amazing and so useful, don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t get rid of my laptop or my phone for anything but I do feel like sometimes they contribute to antisocialism and encourage us not to actually get out and about in the world, I decided yesterday to forget about the TV and forget about my computer – even my blog as difficult as it was  – and actually go out into the world and experience nature and life in it’s most natural and original form because let’s face it, 100 hundred years ago none of the stuff that we are now so used to even existed and if it did exist it didn’t exist on quite the same scale as we are used to now, I fear for the children of the future who aren’t going to grow up in the way that I did and I think it’s really sad to think of the way they are going to grow up – it will no longer be about playing hide and seek or ‘IT’ in the park but it will be more about tweeting each other and taking Instagram photos and I just can’t imagine how our current day and age is stimulating children in the way that they need to be able to mature and grow as people.

I think it is a good thing to on occasion leave your devices at home, turn off your phone notifications, take out your headphones and just go for a walk out in the world, the only thing interrupting your peace being your own thoughts and you may be thinking that you do all of these things to avoid your own thoughts and I understand where you’re coming from as I too quite often do things to avoid my thoughts, for example, I always watch TV now whilst going to sleep because I get too distracted by my own thoughts to actually ever fall asleep but I think it’s important to sometimes face your thoughts because once you’ve tackled that thought it won’t dominate your mind anymore, for example, the thing that dominates my thoughts most is worrying about death and I think it is much more bearable thinking about death when you’re out and about walking in a lovely park in the sunshine surrounded by happy dogs and laughing children than it is to think about when you’re in the dark of your room all alone and everyone else in your house is asleep and everything’s dead silent (no pun intended).

Not only is being out and getting some fresh air really good for your mental health it’s really good for your physical health as well! In small amounts it’s really good for your skin and I find that the spots on my face reduce a lot when I’ve been out more, it encourages you to drink more water which is good for you, it helps exercise and move you body which is also good for your physical health, the vitamins provided by the sun are good for your hair, there’s a limitless list of why going outside every once in awhile is incredibly good for you! I also think it’s best to make use of the nice weather whilst it lasts because before long it will be horrible and raining again (or it will be in England!) and that’s very depressing to go out in. I also find that going out and having a walk, getting a bit of exercise and burning off steam is incredibly good for my motivation and concentration when I get back home, it encourages me to write blog posts or do something productive instead of sit around watching TV. When I was revising for exams I went for a half an hour to an hour walk every morning because I found that if I had been for a walk before sitting down to revise I actually remembered the information much better and revised much harder and got a lot more done.

I guess the point of this post is to really make the best of the weather and to think of all the great benefits that come with going out and enjoying the world, even if it’s the same town that you’ve lived in for your entire life like I have there is always something to be enjoyed when you step out of your front door. Once you turn old you will have years to waste sitting in a rocking chair watching TV so make the most of the outside while you still can, you’re not young forever and you never know what could happen to prevent you from being able to do things that you currently take for granted.

I really hope you understand where I’m coming from in this post, if you do then please leave a comment down below as I love reading and responding to your comments!

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That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

 

My Summer Bucket List 2016

I’ve seen lots of people doing these lately and I find them really fun to read and really inspiring, so, having been inspired by all the posts I’ve read I’m going to write my own summer bucket list. For those of you who don’t know what a bucket list is, it’s a list of things you want to do before you die, or in the case of summer, a list of things you want to do before the end of summer. You can go and check out my my life bucket list if you like which is my long list of everything I want to do before I die. This list will be everything I want to do before the end of summer 2016. When is the official end of summer? The start of September?

For me, my summer starts on Friday as that is when I will have finished my final exam for the year! I’m so excited!!

Okay, here is my summer bucket list 2016:

• Start running everyday – I started running everyday when I was on holiday in April and I really enjoyed it and I could see the change in my body by the third day but after we got back I was to busy with revision to keep it up, so this is something I really want to get back to!
• Cook more things – my Mum is an amazing cook and she’s always coming up with her own recipes and trying to think of more things to cook but I would really like to cook more things and learn to cook more things, I already have in mind a load of vegan cupcakes I want to try but I also want to experiment with actual dinners.
• Blog everyday – As you may know, I’ve been trying to blog everyday but because of exams that isn’t always possible because I’m too busy with revision, however, once exams are over I have no excuses!
• Take more photographs – I really love looking at photographs and I really love taking photographs, the former is easier than the latter but during the summer I am going to read photography books and really experiment with taking photographs and editing them because I really do love it! If I do take photographs and I’m happy with them I will definitely make sure to post them on my twitter and my tumblr – which I don’t use very often as I have no photos to post on it! I might even start a gallery on here…
• Have at least three sleepovers – I don’t have sleepovers all that often anymore as my schedule is so hectic and my best friend lives relatively far away there’s just never an opportunity.
• Sort out my garden – my garden is really messy and quite stressful and I dream of having a nice garden that’s all neat and weed free with lots of pretty flowers, so over the summer I’m going to work really hard at it and hopefully end up with a nice garden as a result! I also find it really rewarding doing gardening and you can see the result so fast.
• Sort through all the junk and reorganise my room – I only have a small room, it’s decent and a comfortable size but not as big as my dream bedroom would be. I’m a big fan of keeping things from my past but I’ve come to realise over the last few weeks that I can’t just hoard everything that’s ever meant something to me in my bedroom forever as the older I get the more things I’m going to want to keep. So I’m going to finally get on top of it all and sort through all the stuff I really don’t need. I might even be able to make a bit of money by selling some of the stuff! 🙂
• Give up Netflix for a month – I’m sure lots of you can relate to my obsessive binge-watching of Netflix but I don’t want to spend my entire summer sitting on my bed watching a new TV show obsessively while the lovely sunny weather outside slowly dies away, binge-watching Netflix is what the winter’s for! So I’m going to give it up for a month (or maybe even longer) and see how my summer turns out as a result! I can’t wait!
• Practise for my music exam – I have my grade 8 music exam next Easter and so I need to work really hard at it as I won’t get an opportunity to re-take it if I fail as my music teacher is retiring, so I really need to practice insanely hard!
• Do work experience – hopefully I can do this at my local theatre that I attend weekly and if I’m lucky even whilst a show is on so I can help with props and production!
• Read more – I absolutely love to read and do it a lot, but less than I used to. In my free time now I usually tend to turn Netflix on as I find it easier to sit down and watch something than to read something and it requires less concentration. But I have so many unread books cluttering up my shelves and so many library books out so I really want to get on top of it all over the summer!
• Save some money – I am always finding new things to buy and spending my money almost as soon as I get it but it always comes back to bite me later on because concert tickets always come up or I want to go and see a film in the cinema and can’t afford it, if only I hadn’t spent that £20 on that DVD boxset and that £10 on that other DVD I could afford it, so this summer any money that I save after buying people’s birthday presents and any money that I make from selling things I find in my room I’m going to save up for said occasions.
• Start my Gold Arts Award – This is a qualification that you can do in the UK  which is a recognised qualification in the Arts and I’m going to do it in acting and film-making and I’m really excited! And I hope to start it this summer (and possibly finish it this summer!).
• Practise singing – I really enjoy singing but I feel I’m really bad at it… however I want to be an actor and singing may eventually play a part in getting a particular role and I also really want to get a main part in the yearly musical that my theatre group does.
• Use My Sundays More Wisely – I always say Sundays are going to be the days when I get really motivated, really productive and do loads of things I keep putting off but then of course, I put it all off. Sundays are really a good day to get loads of stuff done because I have a completely free day so this summer I want to really be as productive as I say I’m going to be on Sundays.
• Be More Spontaneous – I love the idea of being more spontaneous but I don’t really have the opportunity but I guess being spontaneous is about making an opportunity not waiting for it to come. So this summer I want to be more spontaneous and see where it gets me.
• Think Less About Objects – This kind of fits in with ‘save up money’ because by thinking about objects I am then buying objects. I want to really experience life to the fullest and I don’t think I am doing that currently and I blame capitalism but I spend way too much time looking at things on online shops and looking round shops in my town even when I have no money. So this summer I’m going to think less about spending my money on objects that I don’t need and more time thinking about the things that I’m really going to remember.

I think those are all the things I want to do this summer, as we go through the summer and I work through my list I will hopefully write posts about my progress with it! If I think of anything else I will make sure to update the list 🙂

If you enjoyed reading this post please give it a like and share it with your friends and family, I would really appreciate it! If you’re not already following me feel free to check out some more of my posts and it would be really cool if you would follow me! If you are already following me I just want to thank you so much for all your support, it means a lot to me!

Lastly, if any of you have an ideas on tags, challenges or posts you would like to see me do please leave your suggestions in the comments or contact me on twitter: @aninspiredteen. And, as always, feel free to leave a comment with feedback to my blog and posts as I always love to read them and any discussions you want to start or just a comment in general!

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂