One of my favorite things to do when I’m finally picking up my speed is to sit down and write. Even when I take a break from blogging for just a second to see where I’m at with everything else, I’m writing pages in a couple of my journals and trying to break down better what I have to digest. It’s like, I have a few different blogs with different styles of writing behind them, but I can’t write on them too often yet because I’m still revolving after getting sober off of alcohol & the rest of it, and my brain has had some time to settle as I go. I think about how I used to write and I really see my strides from over the years, but I’m really excited to get back to writing more and more on my blogs as I go because I will always love making this progress and seeing myself grow on here and worryjustenough.com as well. That’s of course, for more of my lifestyle blogging, but it’s been a couple months since I last blogged on there, which is interesting compared to going to NA (narcotics’ anonymous) meetings all the time now. I’ve been doing that (as well as some IOP meetings for my outpatient treatment) really consistently since July and it’s been really cool to see how everything’s changed for me since then. I’ll definitely be writing more on there later after I publish this blog post, so within the next couple of weeks, so that’ll be cool to get back to. I have a good consistency on here though, Shop For Days, that I’ve kept up with with posting this year that I’m pretty proud of, but at least once a month I get a photoshoot and blog post up here and I love where I’m getting to with them these days. I’ve actually had the concept of Convenience Fee up on my whiteboard and in my journal and stuff as an idea for me to post for a few months now too, but I just now finally got down to working on it, and it ended up being this totally perfect all-black outfit that I’ve worn in a few different sentences, like with this shirt and everything, but the boots were a perfect wrap up and even surprise to it. I found them in the corner of my closet, behind a big white bin I have in front of one of my shoe shelves, and I wasn’t even sure I still had them until I dug them out recently! You’ll see those later in the blog post, I’m glad I got these boots into the shoot this time. For now, the last thing I wanted to point out was this layered lock necklace. I got this last year actually, from Dolls Kill, and it’s pretty big and I love it a lot. It’s pretty perfect that I chose locks for this post/outfit and everything, I’ve done some posts with silver key jewelry (which I collect!) from time to time but I have hardly any locks really. I love the concept of both, I have a lot of things I relate to those that I have a bunch of and eventually I’ll do a big post on all the keys or something. I thought that for this shoot though, I could do the other side and get this big chain necklace of locks into the all-black outfit, and it seemed to balance it out perfectly. These came together really well, even if I waited for so long to get working on this concept, but I think it ended up timing out really well too. This is a good one to be doing for October I’m thinking, and I’m glad I’m here where I’m at in life as well! I feel like I always have some sort of direction or solid ground at least when I get to write or work on something like this, so I’m glad to see where I’ve been getting to creatively these days! I can make so much progress on myself and my blogs (as well as my journals) in a couple of months, so reflection will be a good one to hit upon throughout this post. Hopefully I ramp up with my content more as I go, but where I’m at is looking better finally so I like and my words and topics and ideas these days. So much I’ve worked on over the years, but I’m making such better personal progress now finally!

I’ve gotten to a point where I have less meetings to go to a week, for my IOP treatment, and I have more time to spend in my room by myself. Of course I can’t drive and don’t have a car, which I’m far from for some reason, so it’s just a lot of extra time to spend working on mostly myself and things like that. I do a lot of thinking, and am excited about my journaling, but it’s just for me anyway so I see that kind of self-reflection and I appreciate myself. My favorite thing to do used to just be to go on car rides once in a while when people got home from work, but that’s pretty much all I did other than getting alcohol for myself a few times a week. That was earlier in the summer, and in like June I got back together with Matt but we only saw each other once or twice a week really for these first couple of months. Then, after I started IOP (I’ve mentioned some of this before) I stopped drinking and smoking weed by myself and with him completely, and then I had all those meetings 5 times a week for so long and it was busy but I had somewhere to go almost every single day of the week for a while and I LOVED it. It was easy to be sober at this point with how much I had to go out and do so often, but then months later I switch to 3 meetings a week and now I need more to do outside of just that. I loved getting ready everyday and putting on an outfit and doing my makeup for a meeting all the time, and I still really love and appreciate those times these days too, and I see Matt like an extra day or so of the week often. So that’s still time out of my week that I keep busy enough, other than my downtime. But at least I feel like my life kind of seemed more defined after a while of those meetings, I really liked keeping up with all of it. I still do keep up with it but I have more time to think of myself and what I want out of life. There’s so much I could express and put into these posts, I just have to find that energy and use it more when I can and just get it into my words for some way to explain it. I have so much in me, that’s not the problem, but without an outlet I forget for a second what I could be channeling and neglect some of me for a split second. That’s not as bad as it seems sometimes with what I eventually get to express, but with the way I think sometimes I think it’s gold and I think it’s worth it to spend my time lost sometimes. I really get what it takes out of me to put so much of me into a lot of this.

For some reason, I used to love my journals for their certain pages I wrote when I was particularly high all the time. I read them now and I kind of laugh a little but take it seriously, because they are all really good pages but they’re so ‘scriptic’! They don’t make any sense sometimes, this word association used to be my favorite in my Shoot for the Stars blue journal that I have, and I’d just take the most interesting pair of words and put them together and relate them to more words. Then I’d take these cool words I’d think of and start writing paragraphs on them, it was really interesting. I even had these few pages dedicated to run-on-sentences that went on forever, and it was fun to keep up with! Made enough sense too. It’s really an interesting journal, but sometimes the pages fall out because of the way they’re tear-out-able so we’ll see how far I take this journal. The point being, I want the pages to stay inside of the journal, without falling out, so I can keep these pink-ink pen pages together. They’re all in pink pen for this journal, every page except for one where I used like black and yellow for a second. That page is fine how it is for some reason! My other journal, Bright Ideas, is famous for my Lost & Found lists that I used to make all the time, and other kinds of lists and stuff too all over the board. This is my bigger and more practical journal, not with having fun with words but making really cool lists and things that I love and will use forever (for like makeup I want to re-purchase eventually and stuff)! I did end up using a ton of the pages in this journal for my IOP online classes (we started out doing a couple weeks online before I went to the in-person meetings all the time) so there’s a ton of pages in there about recovery, but that’s not too bad! I guess I like that it’s in there for some reason, like the pages answering questions, but then I got some really good pages written in there actually about my recovery and stuff and it all made sense. Like last year my family wanted me to make this recovery list of all the things I needed for that, and then I get to come back to this list a year later and write a summary of it on the back, with how things went after all that. It worked to be sober, I’ve been sober most of the time since last December from the ‘rest of it’ but especially from everything ever since I started my outpatient treatment. So I’ve had a lot of time to toss the idea of recovery around in my head like a ton of different ways until finally I ended up liking being this sober. I’ve felt so many different ways but I really see myself well in this light and I get why I have journals I still work in, for that reflection that I love so much, especially from over the last year or so.

This lipstick that I used is from Too Faced, it’s Melted Latex liquified high shine lipstick in the shade Hot Mess. I thought that was pretty perfect for the look, it even looks pretty good against the green nails (SinfulColors press-on nails or something! I’ve had these for too long, finally used them) and with my really faded hair as well. I love that my hair is fading to blonde, but I do need to eventually get back to my red again! I wish I had done some sooner photoshoots with my red hair but I didn’t really catch it well enough in time as it kept fading. I’ll be better about it next time, but I just really love that my hair is getting longer after cutting it on the last day of the year last year. Anyway, I’m happy of how much I’ve gotten to do my full faces of makeup (including lipstick most importantly) and all that this year, starting a few months ago. Plus, nowadays (ever since like August) I wear (usually black) eyeliner every single day that I wear makeup now, and I love it. I might rarely ever use eyeshadow, but I used to just never wear eyeliner either and it’s crazy how much has changed for me. So I definitely always wear eyeliner now and I do better and better with it, I’m glad about that. Anyway, back to ‘rest of the’ faces of makeup, I also finished one of my foundations I had for a long time, but I actually had like 3 foundations from that time back in the day and they all were different colors on me. This Tarte one (that I used for this photoshoot) fit me the best this whole summer, but after the one I finished (it was Airflash by Dior) I had this MAC Cosmetics one left over that is a little light for me, but I’ve had it for so many years it was like it was invisible in my drawer. I kept not using it apparently and got tanner in general, but regardless I’ve been determined to use up the whole thing so I’ve been using it a lot the past few months and setting it with bronzer usually. It’s kind of funny actually, I’m almost out of the Tarte one (and this one other one I got from Ipsy) but almost halfway finished with this MAC one! And MAC is good makeup too, so don’t get me wrong this is a good product, but it’ll be fun to for some reason use the entire thing up even though it’s slightly too light. So that’s for some reason something I have these feelings for and about, so I wanted to express my love for utilizing products every day. Every day I do my makeup these days, even still, and I love that. So I’ll keep continuing to use that fucking MAC foundation!

One thing I’ve noticed about myself is I have a lot of drive in me despite my restrictions and ‘confinement’ I sometimes feel when I’m at home for the whole day, and I can really find something to do with that. I love that I have this focus with my drive and I’m able to work through these tasks in my head and ways to express all of it the best I can as I go. The worst that happens when I’m stuck at home is that I can get stuck in thought though, like when I’m fueling something I’m thinking about and I get stuck/end up with regret. I regret little things that I do sometimes, like the smallest mistakes, and while I’m thinking of my life and everything in it I end up stuck on a thought of something I did that bugs me repetitively. The cool thing about my concept here convenience fee is that I almost use those as a way to get past things that stick to me too hard, but I can change the subject pretty easily with thinking of some next task or a hope or dream that I love, and I get past it and onto that next wave length. There’s so many different waves people can feel or think on as they go and grow, and I love it and I can only get the best kind of lost on some of these waves. Others of these waves I get the kind of lost where I forget about what’s happening for a moment just to think about something I suppressed casually when I was drunk with my boyfriend one time. Regardless of if it’s just something I thought when I was with him that time or something about him and I as an issue that we didn’t get to resolve or work on enough, I love things like this. I think it’s cool conscious behavior to think about things like this, and to consider alcohol capable of suppressing certain thoughts that could pop-up or resurface on brain’s normal cycle into sobriety, and you can recover thoughts like this and figure the rest of it out. I just think concepts like that are worthy, especially because things like that happen to me all the time. Back to noticing that I have a lot of drive, I love thinking and listening to music, but it’s more fun to get to work on a blog post more often. I’ll get back on that as best as I can, I’m getting somewhere with myself though! I might as well continue to do what I’ve been doing with living here for so long, it’s worked for me as my creative outlet and to my favorite ways to expression for the same ‘so long’ of time in my life. I’m unraveling everything really well in my head as I go day to day, and I’m glad to what points I get to in life as I go. I’m 22 by now but next month is finally my 23rd birthday, so that’ll come with some cool kind of turn in my life finally. Or at least place a good milestone somewhere, with things to do and to look forward to coming up to the end of this year! That’ll be good for me and I’m glad I’ve done so much in the past year with myself, I love this progress.

Now finally I can get into these boots that I found and reunited with, and love so much this fall. After I found them in the corner/back of my closet, I wore them a couple different times to some NA meetings since then and loved it, I was so glad I found these. I got these from my mom years way back, maybe like 5 or 6 years ago, and I think it’s because they were hard to walk in for her back then. I can walk pretty well in them personally, but they’re not the most stable out of all my shoes that I have like that. After I was done doing this shoot though I had to switch into sneakers to see my boyfriend though, because all we do together is just go on various walks throughout town most the times when he comes and picks me up from here. I was sad I didn’t get to wear the hot studded boots in front of Matt, but on the bright side I never forget lipstick now when I leave the house. Still though, I’m sure he’ll just read this and see the boots, and I’ll wear them again to some other meeting (probably the same damn meeting with the same boots though but I love that for some reason) and that’ll be a good use of them. I’ve been pretty good with my heels and shoes in general these days too, other than some days with Matt I usually get to wear heels anyway, so that’s good for these days! I just used to spend so much of my time wearing sweats with no makeup and not utilizing all that I have, but nowadays I still even have this consistency of an every day general idea of what I have to do that day and I prioritize my outfits really well around it. Nothing too complicated but I love where I’ve been going with things, like how I always have pieces of my closet that I put ahead of other things to wear sooner than other things, finally breaking in my fall clothes into the mix. I also get rid of clothes all the time and I’m excited to finally break my closet down and buy more eventually, but that’ll be way into next year. I’m excited to finally start wearing long-sleeve shirts more often, I have a bunch that I’ve been loving this year or am ready to get rid of so I’m just going through them as the month goes on and making decisions and whatever. We’ll see what kind of photoshoot I end up with doing next month though, I might be getting a new surprise for my 23rd birthday. On my arm, but not in my famous pink-ink, just in some other ink. That’ll be super cool for photoshoots from then on, I hope it goes well. We’ll see how next month goes for me, my birthday is on the 15th and my appointment is on the 13th!

Well I’m glad I finally was able to put all these pieces together and get this outfit up. I think the thing about the locks has a lot to do with my reiteration of being trapped at home some of the times when I’m not going to meetings, when I don’t have somewhere to go at night or during the day. Of course I’m always at home, in the same place, sitting on the same chair for so many of these somehow ‘different’ photoshoots in the same room somehow ending up really good or different for some reason, but a good representation of the same room I’m always in and how things can change around me in my life but I’ll always be revolving in my mind in my room for some reason. I don’t feel trapped as much as I used to when I only had drives to go on everyday, with no actual thing to do, but I really don’t feel that much like that anymore. There was one day last week where I actually just stayed up all night and then wore sweats all day (with no makeup) but that’s like one of a couple days in the last few months or so. It used to be go-go-go (like I’ve always wanted for myself) every day of the week for a while and I could totally keep up and loved it, but now I’m back to more downtime and knowing just to work on a journal of mine or whatever when I get bored of just thinking. I love that about my life actually, especially the parts when I get up and finally start blogging again. I think I write enough on here for now though, I should stick to my journals and WorryJustEnough (my other blog) other than the one time a month I get a blog post up on here, because I do like where I’m going with that personal growth I keep figuring out more of every time I sit down to think. Thinking for me goes really well with my writing, but not in the same sentence, because I like this creative type of…writing, or thinking, but I can’t think more about what I want out of life at the same time I type a sentence or am journaling. The whole point is I could definitely coordinate those two, but working out issues in my head at the same time as writing something creative in my Shoot for the Stars journal because I like conflict, but it doesn’t go with all my pink-pen concepts as much! Seriously though, I one time bounced off of someone’s idea at an NA meeting about their anger and how they end up reacting to things that happen with that emotion, and my entire share ended up being about reactions and how people sometimes have these things happen to them in life just to see how they react to it. Like, maybe those things were put into his life just to see how he handles anger, or to make him feel the emotion in general, because so many other things that could happen to someone don’t get a rise out of people…There are so many reasons people react like that to situations in life and if you end up getting to know your responses and reactions to things better then you’re able to express yourself so much better depending on what happens with you. So I went on about that basically, and then a couple days later wrote “Reactions” in my journal because I liked that concept so much. I don’t always have something to say at my meetings, but I’m glad I get to write today before going to one tonight! I’ll always find my way back to the same paths that I love so much as I go, & I’m glad I’m paving a new one these past few months with all these good things that come with my life. I’m really glad about all my obvious examples of personal success and I love this blog post with all my heart, I think I did it really well, paragraph-to-paragraph these days. We’ll see how next month goes, thank you so much for reading! I can’t wait to see how the rest of the year ends up & I’ll keep pursuing things in my life!

PS – this is the concept blog post & photoshoot for my playlist that I started this month called Convenience Fee. I really love how that’s going and I’m excited about how all this turned out too!