I feel like I'm about to do like a State of the Union or something.
Hello wonderful humans, welcome back to The Bliss Bean, I hope you're doing well.
I've been feeling a bit down because of social distancing so I thought this week
it would be good for me to get in touch with my inner self a little bit, I think
it's really easy to, like, forget all the progress that we're making when we're
busy chasing success, and I'm definitely the kind of person that likes to just
keep going without stopping to look back at the past. But one sentimental thing
that I do hold on to, something that is so precious to me and I can never
imagine throwing away, despite how many times I might declutter my room, is my
box of journals. I nearly die every time I try to bring it down from the top
shelf of my closet. Oof. There's stuff in here that I wrote when I was five and
then from about 2017 and onwards I was consistently journaling every single day.
There's a lot of information here, I don't know how many boxes I will
eventually need to store all of these, but these are just the kind of memories
that you can't throw away. If you want to learn more about journaling, I have
this video that is a guide to journaling along with 75 prompts to help you spark
some ideas. So yeah now that I've amassed all of these journals I thought it would
be fun to take them all out and reread them. It might not be fun it might be
cringy or sad, but we won't know until we try, so let's get into it. I actually had
an idea for this process to give it some more structure. I haven't seen anyone do
this but I thought it would be fun to do like a old journal challenge or tag and
so I came up with a bunch of categories and as I'm doing this process I'm gonna
try to find a quote to fit each of these categories, feel free to use these same
categories if you want to reread your old journals. Alright so this is going
all the way back, I think this is a notebook that my mom brought home for me
from America. So I started writing in here when I was 4 years old and all of
it is in Lithuanian, so I don't think I knew any English at that point
Aš dvėju metu buvau labai graži, aš varda sakiai Becytė o pavarde Naulelytė.
Aš kai buvau didelė su baba rinkau grybus. Mama gryžo tai
parvežė man daug dovanu. Aš galėsiu žaisti ir mes visur važiuosim kartu.
Okay, this is kind of boring honestly
five-year-old me did not have any interesting stories to tell. About me:
Favorite books: the Pharaoh's secret, When You Reach Me, The Giver, The Hunger
Games. Those are pretty good choices I'm not, I'm not judging myself for that.
Movies though? *questionable* Despicable Me, Fred, Gnomeo and Juliet, and The Hunger Games okay. So here
I was on a field trip and someone had an iPod Touch on the bus and they were
letting everyone play with it for 10 minutes... "so I timed her with my watch, she
tried to play Temple Run but it wouldn't load so she was like, 'you have to give me
an extra minute', but I wouldn't cause that's totally unfair, don't you think,
future me?" March 25th, 2013, so yeah, I did start playing Neopets again. Kayla
continues to bring home the bacon as a superstar athlete. Stanley, my lazy guy,
still doesn't have a job which I regret sometimes but I wonder if it's not too
late. He was a stay-at-home dad before but if he gets a job now I'll only have
to pay for a babysitter for a couple of days until Tyler becomes a child. That's
about the Sims, by the way. I wanted to do NaNoWriMo and my book idea is like, every
single dystopian novel that's ever been written. "So there is a girl who lives in
a dystopian city, there's a big electronic dome-shaped barrier around it.
Her mom is an important government leader." I'm not even gonna read the rest
cause it's so stupid. "Usually in the mornings I'm excited to
go to school but today is different. We're getting our Spanish listening test
back and I'm so worried that I had a nightmare that I got a 2.5." "When he
smiled he looked so genuinely happy and his eyes crinkled and I just melted, it
made me so happy." What grade was this, eighth grade?
Pull it together Beatrice. that'll be the cringy one. This is when I had one of
those little artsy phases. Sunday September 7th "Well hello, I am now a high
schooler. I'm listening to Control by Halsey". That was like before Halsey got
very popular, I was listening to Halsey before Halsey got big. "I feel like
I'm teetering on the edge, trying desperately to keep from slipping back
into what happened in 6th grade. I'm crying so much, so often, I just need
someone to hold me really really tightly and steady me." I don't even remember
struggling at the start of freshman year. This was leading up to my first round of
AP exams, I think I was talking about the AP World one. "I hate it so so much it's so
stupid that I have to take this, I have no passion for it whatsoever and the
essays are ridiculous. Will a 4 versus a 5 really make a huge difference? I
don't think so, but if I get a 4, I will feel so
guilty about how much more I could have studied, but didn't. I hate this, I hate
this, I hate this." that last one was in all caps. "We'll be
paired up randomly and will be given questions to talk about while walking.
I'm secretly hoping I get paired up with *censored to hide names hehe*" Oh yikes... "I worked on planning the
Chicago trip a bit, posted on Instagram which is finally getting followers, yay."
This was the birth of The Bliss Bean. "Lots of blogging, took photos, edited them,
worked on social media. Honestly blogging is so time-consuming but I'm proud of
myself. I'm making it work." Don't give up Beatrice! "But then we were going home and
this feeling hit. The thought of everything I should do, the thought of
all of the blog stuff I didn't do, the chores, the everything. I feel sad. Maybe
it's a delayed reaction to the ACT. Maybe all the time I spend trying to be
super productive is building up gradual invisible consequences. I feel scared."
Oh that was the day I took the ACT. Yeah, I was probably really drained after
doing that. "I found out today my ACT scores. I got a 36 *all caps* I couldn't
*swear word* believe it, I was so happy I wanted to cry." That'll be my happy memory.
I do remember that, I remember the exact moment like where I was sitting, what
class I was in, I remember opening up the email and just being like... WHAT?
"The whole college culture just annoys me, everything that people around me do
seems done with the intention of showing off for college. I can forge my own path
and live the life I want to live." What a rebel. "Wow, it's almost New Year's and I'm
so old, seventeen, gosh." I don't know why but here I taped in, these are my brain
scans from a psychology study that I participated in. What a wonderful memory
to have. This is what I was thinking about being a flight attendant. "A very
serious thought I had today: what if I worked as a flight attendant?
Flight attendants travel a lot, get cool layovers, flexible work hours, you can
fly for free or very discounted rates..." Flight attendants please don't come at
me I know it's a lot harder of a job that I described it to be but I was just
young and naive. I was watching a YouTube video aboat
goals so my ultimate life goals: "Have my own business and be able to support
myself financially with the passive income, be creative, do photography, film,
design, help other people live their dream lives being productive, loving
themselves, and following their dreams, find someone whom I love deeply and who
shares my life vision, travel around the world and make it an integral part of my
life, and don't do what everyone else does." That's pretty good. I'm a big fan of
Best Dressed you probably know Ashley from Best Dressed and one of my, like,
claims to fame is that I watched her videos before she blew up, but I could
never find any proof of that. I remember one time I sent one of her videos to my
friends but I could never find that text, I probably deleted it at some point but
here I said, this is March 25th 2018, "This girl whose channel is called Best
Dressed OMG what's her name I don't even
remember, anyways, she is so inspiring, she's so fashionable, hard-working, has
such an artistic eye, she's going to film school, she got accepted to Stanford..." I
want to like go back and see how many subscribers she had at that point cause as
you know if you watch her video she now lives in her own apartment in New York
and she's doing so well, she's since graduated, that's so crazy. Oh my god oh
my god oh my god, "In video class I sat down to edit my yoga Club video and I
was just so surprised by how happy it made me to be editing. I didn't realize
I missed it. I wasn't even doing anything fancy but the footage was so satisfying
to edit and splice. Time flew. I was telling my dad about
this later and told him I was thinking I needed to start a YouTube channel and he
agreed. At the very least I need to try it, who knows, maybe I'll be like, holy
crap, I love this so much more than blogging, haha." Oh this is so... I need to
take a picture of this. "I set up my channel, uploaded my video, posted about
it in a few places." So that was like a big turning point cause on the same day I
uploaded my first video, someone discovered my blog which was like, my
worst fear coming true. But I just had to be like - no, I put a lot of effort into
putting together this video so I don't care if people see my blog and find my
YouTube channel. This is when I was really figuring out how to put in as
little work as possible into school: "I am such a slacker student, in a very
calculated way. I left my bio objectives all for Monday, I managed to get enough
done in school that they only took me 35 minutes at home
to finish and I also didn't do my English reading over the weekend but I
did it all at breakfast and during classes."*applause* Love to see it. "I love this whole
YouTube thing so much, I feel so creatively satisfied. I'm going
to bed late but my heart is full." I think it's really good to look back at how I
started, not just YouTube but anything really, and remember that I started
everything at square zero, and results were slow and kind of discouraging but I
kept going with everything. I think it's good to look back at that because it
reminds you that any project you take on now or in the future is gonna be the
same. You're gonna be back at square zero, it's gonna be difficult but you overcame
that in the past, so like, who's to say that you can't overcome that again and
find the same results that you were able to find in the past? "I'm gonna be honest
right now, stress levels are up right now, sigh" I literally write out the word
sigh in my journal "...but you know what? Stress means I'm doing shit, I'm pushing
myself, I'm growing, I'm not remaining stagnant. These are growing pains."
That's pretty quotable. "My Pinterest followers grew a lot and my Instagram
following is rising steadily - I just need to do something about that pesky
YouTube." "BTS motivates me. Seeing them struggle, work hard, and succeed really
inspires me." That's still very true. "I feel like this week I spent a lot of
time on my blog and part of me is just worried that I'm not doing it right,
like why is progress so slow? Am I wasting way too much time on this? It's
definitely better to have tried it. I'm really proud of my tenacity and how long
I've stuck with it, especially over the summer. I know that if I hadn't blogged I
really would have regretted not trying it." This was the day that I posted about
my blog on Facebook cause I put together like this 30 day productive email
challenge and I just decided that it was time to stop hiding it from people so I
promoted it on my personal Facebook that evening. I wrote, "I've been seeing some
notifications so I know people have been liking and commenting and I know my
friend shared it, but I'm so scared, I'm literally so scared. I told my friend
that I was scared but that I would check what people were saying in the evening
and just now I chickened out. It's so scary, like even scarier than it was to
write and post it, and my heart was beating fast when I did that. I'm proud
of my content for sure, but like, on my blog, I show a different side of me. It's
very vulnerable and it's scary to think that people I know
personally see that." A few days later, "I read and responded to the replies on Facebook. I
love my friends, like how am I so lucky to have them." Aw, that's gonna be the
someone who means a lot to me, not one someone but a lot of someones. "I've
really grown up a lot during high school. I've grown so much it's absolutely
insane. I'm more involved than ever, more productive than ever, more skilled than
ever, more involved in creative pursuits like blogging than ever, more sociable
than ever, and honestly happier than ever. I'm proud to be able to say all of this.
It's taken a lot of hard work and personal growth but I have come so far."
Aw... I think that's a good note to end it on. I have a bunch more journals but
these are kind of recent so I don't think it'll be that interesting to read
them. So as I said, my journals are definitely more function over form.
There's barely any creativity in them and the format that I follow really has
not changed in years, so I thought I could use some of my extra free time
during quarantine, and I partnered with Skillshare to push myself to be a little
bit more creative and introspective in my journaling practice. So the first
class that I took to achieve this goal was called "Writing for Inner Calm". It's
mainly directed towards writers but as she says in the class, if you write,
you're a writer, so if you journal, then you write, which thus means you're a
writer. I think that's the transitive property if I remember anything from
geometry class. I really liked the class we talked about noticing everyday
moments around you, how to push past the inner critic, and honestly as I was
taking my little notes I realized that so much of the advice applied to more
than writing. So for example she talked about how when you get an idea to write
something, initially you might be thinking like, oh, that's a stupid idea, or
everyone's done that already, no one will be interested in that, why would I even
attempt it, and that's your inner critic and you just have to say like, okay, and??
I'm still gonna do the work, I'm still gonna write it anyways. She talks
about how you just have to say "I am a writer."
So whatever passion you're working on right now, I think that class is just a
good reminder, you have to like, own it, and if your
inner critic tries to persuade you not to follow it, then you have to just do it
anyways. For one of the exercises we had to write stream-of-consciousness
"I remember" statements which really reminded me to just keep my pen going
when I'm journaling, because something that happens often when I'm journaling
is I'll just stop and start filtering and thinking too much, just like
staring off into space, but if I push myself to keep writing then something
eventually does come out and oftentimes those end up being the most interesting
and insightful little nuggets. The other class that I took was Mari Andrews'
"Drawing as Self-Discovery" class. She is a freaking legend she has more than a
million followers on Instagram, and I have been admiring her work for so long.
So in the class she has a bunch of different projects where first, you start
out with some introspection, write out your thoughts, and then you put together
some sort of drawing based on that. I loved it because when I was little I
used to do a lot of drawing and now I don't think I've done any drawing for
years, partly because I feel like I'm always busy and partly just because you
get this idea as you grow older that you have to be good at drawing for drawing
to be worthwhile. So hopefully after this class maybe I'll get back into doing
some drawing. But yeah my point is that there's definitely more to Skillshare
than just like photography or business classes, like for me Skillshare is
basically everything in life that I'm interested in like photography, marketing,
business, self-improvement, but even if you don't consider yourself
a creative or "artsy" person I think you can still find a lot of value in just
trying out something new, trying out a new way to express yourself. Like I
mentioned with the writing class, there's a lot of crossover in different areas of
life, so like even though I'm not a professional writer or anything like
that, I found ways to apply the writing advice to my life, to my journaling, and
so for example, maybe you're not an "artist" but doing an art class might add
some value to your life. The moral of the story is, don't box yourself in. Don't box
yourself in, get it? So there's so much you can learn on Skillshare, Skillshare
Premium gives you access to more than 26,000 different classes on all sorts of
different topics, it's less than ten dollars a month for an annual membership
which is a small investment if you really take full advantage of it, but the
first 1000 of my subscribers who click the link in the description
will get a two month free trial of Premium membership so that you can
explore your creativity. I've also included the links to the two classes
that I talked about if you're interested in taking those. If you try any other
classes that you end up liking, let me know, I would love some recommendations I
hope you enjoyed this video and invading my privacy and reading my journal, just
kidding. I made this cute little journaling tag
that you can find on my Instagram Stories. If you fill it out be sure to
tag me @theblissbean and also be sure to give this video a like and subscribe
to my channel. Thank you so much for watching, please stay healthy, and I will
see you next week. Bye!!!!