My life has always been some combination of change and consistencies, the things that kept me balanced or taught me some skill to stay on track. Recently a lot of things have piled up, but at first I really thought it would be something I couldn’t handle or shouldn’t have to deal with. I’m stuck doing these meetings all the time, two different kinds, and I wasn’t expecting to be busy 5 days of the week every day for a while but that’s what it looks like. Something my dad was talking to me about recently was how life throws so many things at you that are unexpected but obviously this teaches you resilience and him and I both agree that we’re good at those kinds of throws from life, just knowing the ground we stand on and how stable we are through the most of it. We also talked a lot about regret this past month and it really said something to me, the way these things would pile on top of me. I’d like, go through all of it and wonder how to sit there and look back at it without it pulling my hair, really. Those two things are something I’m talking about here, but I’ve really relieved a lot of pressure in my life and in my mind by having these conversations with him. Now I love going to these meetings, with every piece of my heart, and I’m back to wearing my heels all the time and putting on my lipsticks. My outfits rock these days and this is my 4th week in a row that I’ve had something to do and somewhere to go every single day of the week. I really absolutely love where I’m at, where I’ve finally gotten into in life, and I’m just having so much fun and actually getting things out of these meetings! I love that I get out and do these things, and even if I haven’t blogged as much recently I still post every fucking month, so I’m not slacking too hard even though I’m way busier now. I feel like I really can create this direction in my life with these toolkits I have gotten from all these meetings, and I have this persistence now that I want to keep up with as I go. I’ve made a bunch of good decisions in the midst of the stupid mistakes that I’ve been throwing in there to tag the regret, but I really see what I chose in life and what good it brings me to be here at this point in time. I believe I’m the person I am because I could be, and because I want to be, every single day of my life and that helps a lot when I’m building myself. I spend a lot of time working on myself these days and I really have everything I need finally, and I’m really proud of this photoshoot! I called it Death Row after the Bebe Rexha song, because I have finally hit a point in my life this week where I really understood and just got it, what I’m doing here. Something clicked in my brain shortly after doing this shoot and I am definitely excited about my future. I see what making changes in your life does, and I feel this positive energy that I keep loving and wanting to express, so I will creatively finally. I really see why I got to this point in my life.

Something that I thought was hard for me ended up being the ‘only couple places to go’ for a while. I had to bail on smoking weed and drinking alcohol for it though, it being outpatient treatment, but with how my brain finally is doing I really finally see why. I wouldn’t have thought to quit those things, as little or as much as I even did them this summer mostly, because of the fact that it helped me pass the time in between all those days where I didn’t have something to do. It’s been a little over a month though since I stopped those now and I now actually have this productivity to me that is growing with the time, and I just really found a place where I can express so much of myself finally. I like my time alone, I keep thinking things over and over and it gets better finally, less with the petty shit I struggled to get over and more with the content that I’ve always needed. It took me until this photoshoot, but the last one I did was before any of this happened really. I was rapidly going through these motions getting through each day, noticing everything on the surface but not digging as deep to find all these things I forgot about. It’s so interesting, looking at myself in the past vs. looking at myself these days and I just know how I’m doing. I see how well I’m doing and I’m making such progress and I know what to do with it! I feel like this week is this complete new era that was gradually ramping up with all these little things that made me happy throughout this month, but now I’ve reached this point already where I’m just proud. I like this photoshoot a lot, and it was easier on me to even do this than the last one. I even went and saw Diplo on the 15th and that was a crazy first concert after like two years of not going to one, and my adrenaline is just at this point where I flow. No matter what I’m putting in effort for it’s easier on me now and I just keep passing my time and seeing all these things come out of me as I go and I get it now. It’s a combination of things but I’m somewhere now!

I freak out sometimes about small things that have this timing that hits me at points these days. It’s really interesting, like all the sudden there will be this moment where I realized I forgot to get something after going to a store, and it was usually. a big thing of water bottles. Our kitchen was being remodeled so we didn’t have a sink, but I really ‘train’ my water as I’d say it, so I go through a ton of it. It’s like, I’m always waiting on someone to give me a ride somewhere since I don’t drive but I kept inconveniently forgetting to get the big thing of water bottles. That happened to me like three times and it made my blood rise or something. I have this energy to me that is easy to suddenly spike and turn into a moment where I have to make this call to figure out the next best plan because I forgot something or missed some detail, and then I like call my dad and pour it all out to him explaining what I just left out and forgot. Or like, when I called my brother yesterday asking if he was taking me to my meeting and then he brought up this other plan and I like snapped a bit. I was like “Wait, but will you be here in time to take me? It’s important that I go today! I have no other ride.” And then like a repetition of the same thing as we’re trying to figure it out. Then I called my dad and he called my brother and they canceled their plan so that Reese could get home in time to take me to the meeting. It’s like anxiety but it’s just this moment that snaps in me and I’m trying to word my way through it to try to get this plan across to someone but relax! Everything eventually worked out and now I’m just at this point where I’m really calm about my plans for this weekend, but I still seem to rely on all these other people. I really see where I’m at in life and it’s just a lot that pours out of me and I let it, express it, and spend time breathing and rewinding myself back ‘up’ again to handle the masses and I end up loving my life.

I spent a lot of my time in the past year (almost two) cycling in and out with people, out doing drugs. I had these friends a few different times that also totally had these clothes that they were okay with giving me, like this tye-dye shirt that I got from Gordon’s place last year. It was really cool that they had things to give me throughout my time with them, but I am done and out of those habits because of where I was put into life…by now. I still have all these clothes though and I’m definitely doing photoshoots with them as I go, and it’s just crazy what I got out of all that. The day of this shoot was yesterday and I was confident that I was finally ready to do a shoot, and just grabbed this shirt. I love the contrast of the blue boots to the blue-ish shirt that is long enough to be a dress on me. I even was surprised I got to finally do a shoot with this agate slice necklace that my stepmom made for me over two years ago, because none of these things made it into a photoshoot with me before. Perfectly I grabbed Snob by MAC (the lipstick I had on) and I was really glad it went so perfectly with the outfit. I tend to be bad at choosing lipsticks and a couple times this month I’ve screwed up wearing the wrong one but I still went with it, I love that I just keep the lipstick on and wear it even when I just don’t know a better one. I went so long without wearing any of my lipsticks so now I’m not as familiar with them but I still wear lipstick every single day of my life again now that I have somewhere to go all the time. Lipstick is very important to me and I will always love every second I’m wearing it, I have so much of it too! I even just twisted my hair back with three bobby pins and it looks amazing here. I had a really good flow for Death Row and I’m loving it.

Another thing with a lot of variables in my life was my purse. The backpack I got for Christmas that worked perfectly for me in size I used from the end of December into July. I wore a lot of sweats and simple outfits every time I would go for a drive or something though through that time, so the backpack really worked perfectly with it. Then I noticed that my outfits were changing as I finally had more places to go, and I finally started breaking out my dresses and skirts and wearing heels again so I wanted to change my bag. I looked through all the ones I had in my closet and laying around at my moms, but none of them even made any sense actually. Lol I had a few backpacks, a few giant tote bags and shit like that but that was about it. So I knew I had another bag full of purses in my dad’s storage so I called him and specifically asked for my Karl Lagerfeld purse back with the dustbag. He got it out of storage for me and I grabbed it from him but then I started worrying about how it’s such a big purse and blah blah, but THEN after freaking out just a little bit about ‘how big the purse was’ I got home and started filling it up, right? And I was able to fit my Bright Ideas journal in there (I LOVE that journal) so now I get to bring that around with me everywhere and it was the most PERFECT size for me. I hold it on my arm, not shoulder, and it looks really great with all the heels outfits and everything and I just love it. This was the most perfect purse to pick for the mean time. It fits me so perfectly right now, I’ve had it since like September 2016 so that’s 5 years later, but now is the time to use this fucking purse. I can’t believe I sit there with mini freakouts and contemplate all the things to do with this bag before I actually just get home and find out it works perfectly. I really understand myself and where I’m coming from but relax this one is perfect! I want to hug this purse for like a year or maybe half of one. I’m glad this worked out for me so perfectly, I’m happy I ever bought this bag! Things will always circle around, sometimes in higher favor than you were thinking. Never limit yourself first.

I’m the type of person who used to organize the way my room was a lot. These days I don’t spend much time at all anymore organizing around my room though, because everything has kind of finally found a place and it can’t get much neater than this. I really have been appreciating my room’s displays & shelves and such, sometimes I just listen to music and stare around my room. I have a nice CD collection to stare at as well as this other shelf full of stuff, and there’s some things on there I could never get rid of really because of how well it fills up the space. But I have been getting rid of some blankets and clothes these days too, my closet is something I actually go through the most these days. The rest of my room just stays still and I look around at it, and it’s crazy how many photoshoots I’ve done in this same room for so many years, with everything changing around me as I get older. I really love this new cheetah blanket that I got & was sitting on for a lot of this shoot, I needed something new to look at really. I have the perfect amount of everything but there’s always something to get rid of at some point, eventually. One of the other most satisfying things about my room and what I have is I keep hitting pan on my makeup products, using them all until they’re gone. It’s one of my favorite things to do now these days, use my makeup, I finally just love it and have all the motivation I need every day to do a cool makeup look to go with my fun outfits I’ve been finally getting through these days. I love cycling through stuff, using everything as much as I can and appreciating it until I get to get rid of it or throw it away. I keep finding things in my closet that I haven’t worn yet this year and pushing them to the front so that I wear them next. I’m not going to buy clothes for a while I’m just going to go through and shoot what I have when I can and I love it. So now I just have these looks to focus on and everything in my room is just perfect as is, and going through the clothes & makeup thing is finally what I pay my attention to with detail.

I really liked that collage right there, I’m getting to the best pictures of the shoot! That one above, on the top right, is the most perfect pouty face I have ever probably gotten a picture of. I never look that specific for a facial expression! That was a good one, and the lipstick worked perfectly for it too. I love a lot of my facial expressions in this shoot, I think I did good on the makeup or something too. I’m getting better at complimenting things and I even wore this outfit out to one of my IOP meetings, with the bright blue boots in tact that you’ll see more of (in contrast) in the next few collages. I just love putting things together like that and I have the confidence for it anyway. I can’t believe how long I went without wearing any of my heels or really putting together an outfit with lipstick or whatever, but oh well. I’ve gotten so much better over the past year with all this work and my heart that I’ve put into my blog & shoots, and I really see the light coming back up into my eyes and reassociating with this passion of mine. I’ve been a style blogger for this long and I just have so much to put into it that I kept struggling to express. So many things are falling into place now though and I really see why things align like they do. I have so much left to go through with the rest of 2021 alone and I just hope that I can impress myself enough with my shoots this year, because I see where I’m going with all this energy and passion that is finally back. It took me a year of being active on my blog again to finally feel like I’m back or better, actually, than I ever really was on my blog. Different times and different betters, but I see where I’m going again. There’s also like 20+ different concerts coming up this year so I get to do some kind of inspired post about one of those or a few so I’m excited to see how that goes. So much to look forward to, finally, in life, so I see where I’m at and I love this ‘death row’ with all my heart.

I like my face these days & my skin is finally healing. Something happened earlier this year with my skin and it just was destroyed for a while but it’s finally coming back and looking better. Foundation is finally really perfect for it and I like how my face looks these days. My hair is also even getting better, and maybe that all changed with my atmosphere and attitude. I also really like how I dropped a lot of my stress when I started doing all these meetings and such, I think filling my space with that time where I sit there and relax better is good for me. I have these things to do with my mind like these workbooks that I love or just NA in general now, so now my stresses are little and don’t get to me as much. I like how I went into this thinking I’d hate it but now I honestly love it. ‘I have somewhere to be’ might be a good one for how I think through things in the upcoming future. I really love self-reflective things so I already finished like both of the workbooks we started in IOP so now I just sit there and twirl my pen during our meetings and I’m always like, the first one who wants to share their answers for whatever page. I did good on those workbooks actually. My anxiety has dissipated so much as I got older, I don’t even need much for it anymore, it stays off my back and out of my gut. I used to really struggle with things like school because of the environment but this is different and I’m 22 years old, I got put into this situation and now I’m going to actually like it, because I have better focus and breathing skills and such. I think all the sudden changing my life to be about all these new things is crazy but it’s working for me and I’m finding ways to stay engaged and interact through all of the meetings! A lot of healthy and happy things to appreciate along the way and I’m glad I’m at a place where I can do this and put my energy into blogging during the same months’ ‘schedule’ or such. I didn’t know how much things have changed inside of me until all this right now. Wow!

Then I get onto my bed and I love this so much. I just love my bed these days. I sleep enough but I keep waking up. I’ve had the coolest dreams that I’ve ever had in my life this month and I really just love waking up remembering them. Sometimes I wake up and think something’s changed or whatever, still half believing the dream was real, and that’s so different from my dad and his dreaming. He would never really believe a dream was real, and he used to do a lot of lucid dreaming. I do not, I have these weird dreams about relapsing or hanging out with old friends working at 7Eleven or something and I wake up and remember it, and believe it for a second. Then I wake up consciously and laugh because I thought I was really in all that for real but it was just a dream. I love how my brain works, and I love how comfy my bed is even when I can’t sleep. I don’t get up to smoke cigarettes or even vape anymore so I go and get snacks when I can’t sleep and then just lay back down for days. I really appreciate all of that too, I love my life when I finally get to the dreaming. I also used to drink Som Sleep or Zenify which were these really cool drinks that each had L-Theanine in them, and they were great! Som Sleep was my favorite, I drank it before bed and it was just the best feeling every night. I really love things like that, like Just Chills or Marley Mellow Moods back in the day. Those are gone for a while. I love the concept of those drinks though, they were always a thing of mine. I’m doing great with my brain and my states and stability and I just appreciate where I’m at. I’m getting better just in general, like actual progression and I can just tell by the way that I did this shoot or approach the rest of my days. I didn’t even sleep at all last night but I still did this entire post and it rocks! Just what I needed to say I’m thinking, and I’ll keep doing this for years after seeing what it does to me. There’s so much light in the world and just wait until I get to Seattle for another shoot, that could be months & months out for sure, but it’ll be a good one. I’ve got so much left in my closet to get pictures of so I’ll do this. A lot to do downtown for the rest of this year so I’ll get to it. I’ve got to breathe or relax sometimes but that’s only because of this energy I have inside of me that is constantly flowing and I love it. I’ve got it right and I love it so much.

I finally understand why I mentioned the word ‘develop’ a lot when I was telling people that I was working on myself. It’s like, I got to a point where my brain flipped and decided to start using all of it’s ‘resources’ to get me through an every day thing instead of just waiting for time to go by before my next drive. I kept saying there were things about me (like describing this to my boyfriend) that I was putting in effort with and trying to get to these key points that would finally say something to me. I did get to all of those points and it made sense when I did, like something that made perfect sense in it’s context…like people asking for signs. I only noticed these ‘Points of Progress’ after like a month or two, after all those things had happened. I then put them together and they led me right to this death row, where everything made sense with all the chaos included in August. I really see why I got here and why Bright Ideas is such a genius journal. I started that journal in like August of 2019 and made it this far, with some things in there I would never share with anyone. But now I’ve gotten back to using the journal again, filling in all the pages I left blank in between with this two year gap, and some of it is ridiculous. Other parts of it is just IOP workbook stuff that we did over zoom at first, but all those blank pages. I’ll have a kickstart one day that gets me to fill in the rest for that journal but dang, I really miss my Gelocity pens! Those were the perfect color of black and thickness so some of the handwriting in there is just PERFECT. I might get to a point where one day I do something on WorryJustEnough for Bright Ideas but who knows when I’m ever going to be able to do that. I just like to think about these things and get excited with ideas and my handwriting just describes that sometimes. I also love how I type, it’s cool when I get an idea. I’ve been blogging online since I was 15 though so this is just my thing and it always will be. I can’t wait to see myself excel past all these boundaries and limitations that I never set (for myself) but ended up really noticing as I went. It’s like, as soon as I see some sort of limitation in my life though I’ve already gone past it. I’ve already outsmarted it and passed it like a test on a timeline but I’m fantastic and I love my life so I really get where these things come from in life. You just have to grow past it and try not to worry about it before you realize how to unravel it beautifully sometime. That’s perfect.

I really adore that charm on that choker necklace that’s in that featured photo at the very top. It’s perfect for Death Row, I thought that for sure when I sought it out for what to wear with this. I think I did really good with the detail and even color-schemes with my hair here and I’m really proud of this photoshoot overall. I’m glad I just woke up yesterday and was ready to do it, like I said I have a really good flow lately and I’m working towards it. For good things to happen sometimes you have to be as ‘prepared’ as you are or just as smart as you are in that moment to work yourself in & out of a problem and into the light of the next best thing. There’s always one thing after another and it’s hard for me to tell when things are going to spiral verses hit the nail on the head with cycling, but with a lot of positive energy it just feels good to go forward as best as you can, and just understand what comes to you as it does. I really get myself and it’s cool to understand more about myself as I go, even learning from other people around me and getting a feel for what they understand themselves. I love learning and I love people, and I really get how to be the person that I am in different ways or situations, even though a lot of it seems like the same shit it’s always resonated with me differently. On a day that I’m feeling better than usual I never seem to have more to say or more to give but I receive so much relieving positive energy out of the world when I do. Other days I feel really motivated like I want to talk but I’m usually more drawn to writing or explaining myself out into text rather than putting into actual words to share in a meeting. I can write this much though, so that’s pretty crazy, one day I’ll get better at pouring my heart out that way even just a couple times, and get more out of my own energy I put into a room. My mind used to be really tangled and I liked sorting out my problems in all these different ways but that was like last week and this is like the week of Death Row for some reason, so I’m just going to learn more about myself as I breathe and find ways to express it. I can just continue to express it and then I’ll have more to say when I’m hanging out with my boyfriend even but it’s hard sometimes for me to talk enough out loud, I keep just sitting there reeling. There’s so much left to do with myself and the work I keep pretending I have, folded out in front of me, but I don’t always know what I’m doing with my mind when I wander with it. I’ll get better at it though because I’m doing better now than I ever really have been in so many ways. I really see who and where I am and what to do next as it’s handed out to me each day. Everything’s getting better and I love how time has been flowing with me now finally! So that would be the very last of it. Thanks so much for reading!