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As a girl who loves her tech, the Wi-Fi going down can throw me for a bit of a loop, and cause me to panic for a moment. But after saying a few choice words, I am generally able to entertain myself without using the internet. However, when the power goes out, it's an entirely different story. Not only is there no Wi-Fi, but there is pretty much no anything, and you're quite literally in the dark. Granted, during the daytime you can use natural daylight, and at night you can use candles and battery-operated lights. But still. Every time the power goes out, it's a potent reminder of how much I appreciate something as simple as being able to turn on the lights. Let alone watch TV, browse the internet, or charge my phone.

That being said, our power has gone out twice in the last month. Well, actually, I should say it's gone out one and a half times; we'll discuss that in a minute. Anyway, even though neither outage lasted for more than a couple of hours, it still got me thinking, what can I do when the power goes out? What should I do when the power goes out?

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First of all, I would like to thank my friend Mari for nominating me for the Mystery Blogger Award. Mari was actually the one who encouraged me to finally start my blog back when I was having issues with my Tumblr account, and she has been very supportive of my blog once I got started. I honestly can not thank her enough for that, she is absolutely the best! If you have a love for beauty, lifestyle content, and you have an interest in tarot, then I highly recommend checking out her blog. Mari has a lot of great content on her blog, and all of it is definitely worth a read!

That being said, it is an honor to be nominated for the Mystery Blogger Award. It has been about a year since I have launched my blog, and in 2020, I really want to put effort into creating more content and getting my blog out there more. I am hoping that I can make something special out of doing what I love, and I have always had a passion for writing. I also have a passion for graphic and web design, so naturally, I love blogging! Blogging does take a lot of work, as I had anticipated when I started my blog, but it's certainly been worth it.

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There have been many times where I thought that if I just ignored my emotions, they would eventually go away. I believed that if I maintained good habits, avoided bad ones, and kept busy while still focusing on self-care that the issue would resolve itself. I actually thought that it was better to avoid what I was feeling and distract myself. I didn't want to feel as if I was dwelling on it. But the thing is, even if I'm not facing an emotion head-on, it's still there, and it's trapped. So I am dwelling on it. Rather than letting it go, I'm allowing it to stay, and to build up until it reached a point that I can't ignore it anymore, and I snap. Usually, at the worst possible moment, at the smallest thing. It doesn't even have to be related to the initial problem. 

Seriously, there have been times where I'd cry over something as silly as dropping and breaking an inexpensive eyeshadow pallet that I hardly ever use. There have also been times when I'd go on an all caps rage because someone had the volume on the TV just a little too loud. Things that would typically be disappointing and slightly irritating, at most, become enough to send me into a fit of tears or uncontrollable anger. Or both. All because I had pent up emotions over something else that I never allowed myself to feel, and therefore never let go of. And unless I find a healthy way to actually face my emotions, it's bound to happen again. I might not want to face unpleasant thoughts and emotions, but I'm not doing myself any favors by trying to dodge them or push them back. Sometimes self-care means doing what's best for you, even if it's unpleasant. So that being said, allowing yourself to feel and release your emotions in a healthy way is self-care, and there are many ways that you can choose to do so.

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As humans, it's easy for us to pick ourselves apart, and to be overly critical of ourselves. For many of us, it would be easy to create a list of things we don't like about ourselves and the things that we would like to change. I'm all for working to be the best version of ourselves that we can be and giving ourselves constructive criticism that can help us grow as individuals, but a lot of the time, we're our own harshest critic.  And let's be honest, our criticism of ourselves isn't always constructive, and it's more negative self-talk than anything else. I find myself being hyper-critical of myself on a pretty regular basis, and focusing on my shortcomings, or what I view as my shortcomings. It's rare I ever take a moment to focus on what I love about myself. So in honor of Valentine's Day, I have decided to sit down and create a list of 14 things that I love about myself as my own little way to celebrate this holiday of love.

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As a young child, you would have thought I was one of the most positive and happy people in the world. But then, I entered the fifth grade, and life changed that for me real quick. Fifth grade was when it was determined that I would be an outcast, or at least this was when I started noticing it, as this was when the bullying began to really take off. Then came the sixth grade, and the bullying continued. Sixth grade also brought my first experience with mean teachers, teachers that were quick to crush your dreams. I went from bringing home report cards with all As and Bs, to practically straight Fs. Thus repeating the sixth grade. The second year of sixth grade was about the same, although the bullying seemed to be intensifying. Then seventh grade was hell. In eighth grade, I decided to stop giving a shit what other people thought and stop failing all my classes, and this was where things started to improve substantially for me.

But the damage had been done from the previous years. And even though I was back to primarily earning As and Bs, with a few Cs here and there, by 8th grade, I still felt like a failure. The bullying started to lessen as I stopped reacting to it, but the feeling that nobody liked me was still there. I had nothing but negative things to say about myself. My general outlook on life was negative. Woe is me, was my whole attitude up until my early 20s. But even as I started to take the necessary steps to change my life, I still struggled with negative self-talk. To be honest, I never actually paid attention to how I was speaking to myself until I was watching an episode of The Beautiful Life Of Jeffree Star, and Shane Dawson brought it up as a bad habit he has. At that point, I was so used to speaking negatively to myself that I never picked up on the issue. Or I didn't think it was an issue. Nor did I realize that, at that point, I was the only one holding myself back. I knew this was something I needed to work on correcting. Just because negative self-talk is extremely common, it doesn't mean that it should go unchecked.

But let me be very real with you. Correcting your thoughts is significantly harder than correcting an outward behavior. I don't think I need to explain why. My brain seems to have a mind of its own, and my thoughts sometimes seem to come out of nowhere. It honestly feels like I have no control over my thoughts, and maybe I don't. But I do have control over the direction that I take them in, and I do have the power to correct the negative ones.

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In my last post, I shared a few ways that you can practice a little bit of self-love for Valentine's Day, and make the most of the holiday, even if you're single. But obviously, expressions of love should not be limited to just one day out of the year, especially self-love. Yet, for myself and many others, self-love is the easiest to allow to fall to the wayside. Especially for those of us who are our own harshest critic, and struggle with negative self-talk. The practice of self-love can also quickly easily fall to the wayside and is often the first to go when life gets busy, whether with school, work, and/or family obligations. Perhaps, you may be the friend that everyone turns to for advice or emotional support, but you rarely take the time to check in on yourself. Or perhaps you're always hustling to try to meet your own expectations for yourself; I know I can relate to that. I also know that when I don't meet my own expectations, self-love gets thrown out the window.

I'll be honest, there was a time when I didn't think self-love was all that important. I had no issue caring for other people. I had always called bullshit when I'd hear someone say that you can't truly love others unless you love yourself, or that you can't care for other people if you're not taking care of yourself. I still call bullshit on that, to a certain degree. I'm not about to say that you can't love others without loving yourself, or that it's impossible to care for other people, even when you're mentally, emotionally, and physically drained. But what I will say is that when you do practice self-love and look after your own well-being, caring for others actually becomes less of an effort. So with that, I'd definitely say that practicing self-love is necessary, and you should never feel bad about practicing it. Especially knowing it can help you care for others more efficiently, and even be more productive.  

Oh, and by the way, you don't necessarily need a lot of free time to practice self-love. Nor do you necessarily need a lot of money. Or any money for the matter. 

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I am going to be 100% honest. I used to be one of those people that despised Valentine's Day and would pretty much dread February 14th. Even though I'm a hopeless romantic and I usually love holidays, I wouldn't even like walking past the aisle of Valentine's Day merchandise at the store. Even with all of the pretty pink items that don't necessarily have to just be for Valentine's Day, I would roll my eyes as I walked by the displays. So why did I hate Valentine's Day so much, you may ask? Well, while this is a little embarrassing to admit as my reason for being such a grump on February 14th, I don't think it's that hard to figure out. I strongly disliked Valentine's Day because, drumroll, I often didn't have a romantic partner on Valentine's Day. I know, shocking, right? That's only like, the #1 reason people who hate Valentine's Day are grumpy on Valentine's Day. Aside from the pressure to buy your partner a flashy gift if you have a romantic partner.

It wasn't until recently that I realized that not only do I not need a romantic partner to be happy, but I also don't need a romantic partner to celebrate love on Valentine's Day. Albeit, different kinds of love, but who says that Valentine's Day only has to be about romantic love?