An Apology (That thing about having a writers block…)

Dear Blog readers, dear everyone else,

I was basically non-existent on this blog for at least a month, maybe two and I wanted to say sorry for that. I’ve been really stressed out living in a new place, making friends, catching up with university and that made me kind of have a writers block.
I still have a writers block but I wanted to make sure you knew about it! I also owe the girls and apology for really letting them down.
Right now I’m at a stage where I cannot find time to really do anything apart from uni work. I am constantly in the library and it really stresses me out. Thing is, I just don’t have time thinking about topics that I think would interest you.
BUT! I am trying to make you a promise. I’ll work hard on my uni stuff but I will also try and commit to this blog, to my youtube channel and to my Instagram account again. These things are fun to me and I WANT to do it, but I also want to make my mental health a priority and my heads been a bit crazy during the past month. I just prescribed myself a 2 week holiday and I am back and better than ever. Sometimes it’s important to listen to your body and your mind and just take a break and hopefully it will help me out of my writers block.
I didn’t want to leave this blogpost without any advice or content so here are 7 things that lead to a writers blog and how to get out of it…so it’s more like what you can do to avoid getting stressed about essays and that kinda stuff but it doesn’t sound as important…:D ENJOY!

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The wondrous, extraordinary, mind-blowing stages of writers block:

1.Your head is empty

So when the writers block starts kicking in, your head just stays as empty as the word file you’re working on. It starts off by thinking you just need a break so you’ll make yourself a cup of tea, if that doesn’t help, you’ll tell yourself you just need a nap or watch an episode of Downton Abbey to then realize you finished 2 seasons and are full on hysterically crying cause someone died (I won’t tell you who died, in case you haven’t watched it yet…it’s such a good show!). All of a sudden the day is already over, you ate a whole jar of Nutella and look like Cruella DeVille in her menopause.

2. The pressure starts

Stage two will probably start a couple of days after your failure to complete an assignment, an essay or a blogpost. You will wake up early, be really determined to start and so you do. You write about 500 words until you realize that what you’ve written doesn’t make any sense whatsoever so you’ll delete it all, promising yourself that better research will make the situation better. Therefore, you set off on an adventure to the library. WOOHOO! You conquer your way through millions of bookshelves to then be so proud of yourself for finding that one book that has everything you need and then…never finishing it. If you’re lucky you’ll half heartedly flip through it, only look for quotes that look like you’ve read the book when in reality you didn’t.

3. Denial

At this stage there is no turning back. You abandoned your social life – actually your life in general – you stopped caring, you started googling “farms for sale“, informed yourself about how to breed huskies and how to build sleighs to then check on the next flight to Canada – Not talking about my own experience in any way. You will deny you ever took any seminar, or that you have a blog at all and you will tell yourself there are more important things after all…your blog doesn’t really exist. It is some numbers somewhere inside the system of technology. It is not even real, because if you cannot see it, how can you be sure it is there? What even is there? Is it real? Are you real? Who knows, as far as I’m concerned I could be some laboratory experiment and they implanted everything I know about my world into my head… maybe I live in a matrix, maybe I’m part of a dream and it’s all about inception.

4. Accept you failed at life

Basically the end of everything. You accept your failure, you surrender.

(I have a thing for cheesy gifs, so let me have some fun..taken from tumblr)

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*Insert drum roll and dramatic X-factor announcement voice* Now you wanna know how to turn your life back around? Then read on!

5. Allow yourself an actual actual break! Not a procrastination break

Seriously, sometimes you just need to get away from everything and breathe some fresh air. Whether you just take a walk through the forest or by the ocean or get away for a couple of days. It will clear your head and give you a new perspective on things. Who knows, maybe inspiration will come to you when you’re enjoying a nice cup of tea in one of the cute cafes in your town you never got a chance to go to.

6. Take away the pressure

This is the hardest part if you ask me. How are you supposed to not put yourself under pressure when you have to hand in an assignment in 2 days. But creativity cannot flow if you’re under pressure, it just won’t work. Try getting a new perspective on things. Maybe change your approach on the topic you’re writing on – make it more interesting for you.
You’ll be fine but not if you keep telling yourself how dumb you are for not being able to write an essay.

7. If it’s not helping ask someone for help

There’s nothing wrong with admitting to people that you need help. In fact, it will give you an excuse to meet a friend and discuss what you want to write about. It seriously helps to get your topic sorted out and if you can explain your essay to others you’ll be able to understand it. They might help you by recommending sources or just be there as mental support! Don’t let them write for you though…would be kinda mean.

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There you go! Writers block isn’t all that bad after all. It gave me an excuse to write about it so that’s something. Let’s hope genius strikes me and my head lets me write something for next Friday. If you have any suggestions please don’t hesitate to message me on our social media!

Lili xx

Instgram: @castawayminds
Twitter: @castway_minds

PS.: To cheer you up, here’s this super cute gif of Charmander eating a Marshmallow and if that doesn’t count as and Apology I don’t know what does

Someone on tumblr made this! But I forgot who…

How not to fall into a back-to-school-blues

Hey you lovely person,

As school soon begins again or even has started for you already I thought I should write about some tips how you can avoid a post-holiday-blues or a back-to-school-blues. Okay maybe also because I only have less then 1 month left until I’m back at Uni myself and I need a pick-me-up to get not totally frustrated in how fast this time has flown by.

Tip 1: Your friends

Beside of be able to broaden your horizon, school is good for one more thing (or if you don’t like school like I did sometime, the only good thing): your friends.

These are the people who make school bear and actually fun. When you’re on holiday, sure you have fun times with your family exploring new cities, countries and cultures (even if that means you’re just visiting a different part of your country, damn are these people different to the ones you’re around usually). But having your friends around talking about the newest cute classmate, the new annoying teacher who takes her/his job way too serious or why did Holly cut her hair and dye it this awful colour? In my experience your friends are the ones who make your school-life fun, entertaining, bearable and also memorable. And after like 2 months off you have plenty to talk about, because let’s face it because of different plans and timings you’re never able to see all of them or as often as you would like to. So there is some major talk to catch up to.

Tip 2: Try to see the good in every subject

If you’re like me and you hate maths, physics, chemistry or whatever subject with a passion, it is extremely hard to keep awake whilst the lessons, homework are an absolute nightmare and I’m not even starting on revising for class-tests or exams. But every subject has some positive side as well, or these wouldn’t be subjects chosen by the government you should learn about.

Math for example, most students hate it and to be fair I still have no clue of most of the things I actually should know about in my dreams, but it also has some positive expects. Like you need to know how to sum up things if you’re at the supermarket and you need to know if you have enough money with you, as the poor uni student you are. Or you definitely need to calculate the sum of two matrices together on a daily basis in order to survive your day. Also don’t forget how important it is for you to know what happens if you put vinegar and baking soda together, one day you need to prank your sibling or your room mate and knowing the proportion is very important. You will be glad that you actually listen to your teacher for once. See Caspar Lee, he actually makes money with doing pranks on his old room mate.

So even though it is an absolute nightmare and you much rather would spend your time daydreaming about your current celebrity crush, it has some reasons why all these stupid subjects are chosen by the government. Who knows one day you might be at ‘Who wants to be a millionaire’ and you would only win the 1 Million question because you listened to your absolute boring teacher who also could be Albert Einstein judging by how you would guess his age. But hey at least he taught you something useful.

Tip 3: Soon there will be other holidays

School isn’t forever and sooner than you can think, you’re laying back in your bed all day, binge watching another series on Netfilx. School terms aren’t actually that long if you think of it.

Tip 4: Don’t leave everything till the last minute

If you’re like me and a major procrastinator you will leave ll your all your homework, projects, proposals and you have to stress about it all night whilst you try to finish it in time with a half decent outcome. Truth is, if you don’t leave everything to last minute, plan your work (and actually stick to your plan) school isn’t that stressful as you might think. After school there’s always a certain time which you should spent on doing things for school and if you would actually spent this time doing things for school and not play Sims or watch all PLL episodes from the beginning you actually should be able to get through the year without such stress and actually with quite decent marks. Also revising all the things you have done in school that day and re-reading the things from the day before will help you at the end of the year with your exams, because believe it or not but the human brain can only remember things if you revise everything again in the next day n the long-term.

But whom I am even kidding here, we all know that most pupil will binge-study and do everything at the last minute as usual and hope that it will turn out alright.

Tip 5: Don’t stress yourself too much

That’s what I always did. Each year I told myself: ‘Okay Jenny, this year you’re actually study for tests, you stick to your organization plan, write everything in exercise books and not on random pieces of paper which you’re actually losing in the end’. Well, as you might already guessed this lasted for liked 2 weeks and then everything was out the window. But truth is, deep down, I always knew that I could survive school with less stress and better marks if I would have actually done so. So don’t follow my paths and be as stupid as I was. Yeah sure, B’s and occasional A’s are good and you can get through with that to some Universities but hey, if you actually get you’re shit done and stick to your plans you can actually get A’s as a normal thing and then you can choose to which University you want to go or what job you would like to do and you aren’t limited because of your marks.

As I mentioned in Tip 4, if you do everything soon enough and you study every day you won’t even start stressing yourself about these things because your marks will improve and you don’t have to stress yourself too much that you have to do all nighters before your exams so you get good marks, so you actually have a slight chance to still be able to get into the college/ University you want to. And even though you get a bad mark, who cares?! Nobody is perfect and only because of one mark you don’t will end up living on the street with no perspective. A certain level of pushing yourself is good because then you can only develop the true potential of yourself, but don’t try to push yourself too much that you neglect your friends, family and your hobbies. These are there for a reason so your brain can rest and process all the information. In the end everything will turn out good. Look at me, even I was accepted at an University, so you will be too! 🙂

Lots of love,

Jenny

 

Picture Source

 

 

 

 

 

Monthly Favourites April/May

 

This feature of the Sunday Funday bit is going to be all about our monthly favourites. This can be anything from a song, to a thing we did, to something we discovered or something else. I am going to be the first one doing it and tbh I have never really watched any videos or read that much about it so bare with me. So as I have been studying and I am a poor student, I haven’t bought much new stuff and all I have been able to do is living in a library hoping I’ll remember some things for exams #funtimes. Because of that my monthly favourites might be all related to this.

Favourite Food: OREOS.

If nothing keep me going during exam time, Oreos will. I know it’s bad, I know they have a lot of sugar and so on and so forth BUT they make me go into uni, because our uni shop has them constantly on offer and makes library life bearable. Also as cookies often replace my breakfast as I am super lazy and I am more than happy to skip breakfast for that extra half an hour in bed, Oreos have been my staple food over these last couple of weeks. (Need to show off that I actually learned something. Staple foods are foods that make up the majority of your diet and are often storable over a long period of time, for most of the world’s population it’s rice, wheat or maize, for me it’s Oreos)

[Photo Source 1]

Favourite Band: MARIANA’S TRENCH

Not a new discovery, but my go to band when I am stressed, travelling, want to forget the world and just shut my brain off. Marianas Trench is a Canadian Band consisting of Josh Ramsay (lead singer), Matt Webb (lead guitar), Mike Ayley (bass guitar) and Ian Cassleman (drums). All of them play multiple instruments and sing and it is glorious. They have an overall pop punk sound and their lyrics are the best thing ever. All their albums have different themes and my all time favourite album is definitely Ever After as it is just an absolute masterpiece. Ironically, the most popular song Josh has ever written is not a lyrically great and musically complex song, but Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen.

Favourite book: AFTER YOU

After you by Jojo Moyes was something I had waited for quite anxiously. I was super excited that I was going to go on another journey with Lou, but at the same time I was super scared it was going to wreck my impression of Me Before You. But I can proudly say it didn’t. I loved it. It was so nice to see and it seemed realistic in the context and you could definitely see her do all the things in the story line. Also it made me even more excited for the film of Me Before You. ( I can’t wait like Sam Claflin, Emilia Clarke and Matthew Lewis aka Finnick from the Hunger Games, Daenerys from Game of Thrones and  a grown up Neville from Harry Potter all in the same film. What more could you possibly want???)

[Photo Source 2]

Favourite form of studying: MIND MAPS

I hate studying. At least sitting down and studying. I like making things up and just hope for the best and it worked well in school. Now in uni I feel like I should be more responsible and try to study. It wasn’t the best start realizing that I had missed about 20 lectures for each of two of my modules and I had to write a huge amount of notes just to catch up. * Note to self: DON’T DO IT AGAIN* (Probs will anyways) So after I finished all my notes I realized I’d get bored of them so I got my colourful pens out and made very pretty mind maps. They are not as terrible to look at as plain notes, so I don’t mind using them. My only problem will be having to throw them out, because I am actually quite proud of them.

Favourite excuse not to study: I AM COLD

I have in my time come up with some good and some bad excuses for why I definitely cannot study or go into uni for one day, but this exam period I think I hit a new low. Last week at some point I woke up and I was cold (the temperature outside had dropped and we hadn’t turned our heating on). But yeah, that was enough reason for me to stay in bed and not study, instead watch documentaries that may be remotely related to my studying and plenty of other things that had NOTHING to do with it.

*In my defence most days I was in the library for 9 am and stayed up to 10-11 hours.

Favourite distraction: INSTAGRAM

You know how you can just fall into a hole of looking at one picture that comes up in your feed and somehow 10 minutes later you are 52 weeks in into some account? Yeah happened to me more than once this week. Most of the time it is dog accounts! I am currently developing an undying love for Australian Shepherds because they are beautiful and gorgeous and cute and I want like 10. I’ll just start scrolling through their accounts and then imagine how great it would be taking your dog, your friends and your friend’s dogs and just walk up some nice hill and just generally having a fun time. (I also have a current obsession with hills and mountains, cause I can see them from my favourite spot in the library and I REALLY just want to leave and climb up the hill.)

 

 

Those are my favourites of this month! I hope you enjoyed it.  To everyone who is also going through exams: good luck and I sooo feel the pain.
Lots of Love,

Katie xx

 

Instagram: @castawayminds

Twitter: @castaway_minds