“The beginning is the most important part of the work.”
– Plato
It has been months since I last wrote a post on here. Although it makes me feel decently ashamed of myself for not keeping up with something I truly love doing, I need to accept that this whole blogging/writing/journaling thing will take a bit of time to get the knack of. It is a learning curve, after all.
Excuses for why I haven’t been writing are unnecessary. Life happens, priorities get off track. All that matters is that I’ve come back to it and have not given up blogging for good.
This past summer, my body was in the absolute best shape that it has ever been in. I was exercising regularly, eating well, and just giving my body some much-needed attention. It was definitely the definition of a self-care summer.
So, to no surprise, I spent the summer taking a record-winning number of mirror selfies. And, not just any mirror selfies. I had my (almost) abs exposed and my leg muscles flexed. I felt good, baby! During those months, I actually enjoyed wearing crop tops and never passed up the opportunity to take photos at the beach.
Seeing genuine evidence of my personal growth made me feel incredible.
Some street chalk-art that I came across in Boston 🙂
This summer, my boyfriend and I got lost driving through Canada. And, I mean lost. No cell service, no maps, and very little knowledge of the French language.
This may sound like an opportunity for adventure, an opportunity to just throw our heads back and have a spontaneously care-free drive until we somehow stumbled upon our destination.
But, that’s just not how life works (at least mine, anyway).
My mother was an incredible gardener, filling our yard with gorgeous flowers season after season. And, to this day, my father works wonders in our vegetable garden, growing all of the beautifully delicious vegetables that feed us all summer long. Yet, even with their talents in tending to plants, I have never been one to have a green thumb.
I bought a cactus and another small succulent last summer to have as decoration in my dorm room. However, I over-watered my cactus, rotting it out only a short two weeks after buying it. Then, I almost killed the remaining succulent the exact same way (because I clearly didn’t learn anything from it), until my dad came to the rescue. Here we are a year later, and he has kept my little “succy” alive and well. Though, he did not let me take it back to college with me.
So, inevitably, this summer I got three new plant friends as replacements. Does my dad know? He sure does. Is he going to end up caring for them when I begin to kill them off? Absolutely not! I am determined to not let it happen again.
Transitions are tough. Whether you’re going into your second year of high school, your first year of college, or even your fifth year of college, the transition from summer break to the fall semester is justifiably difficult.
Some people do have an easier time with adjusting than others, but I, on the other hand, am just awful at change. I like having all of my ducks in a row and knowing what step is coming next. However, when you’re starting brand new classes with new classmates and new professors, you can’t exactly align your ducks ahead of time.
Now, there are plenty of ways to prepare for the transition back into school that truly do make the adjustment period go by a bit more smoothly, but… I still get overly stressed about it.
