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Honestly, I have always been a bit of an introverted homebody. I actually prefer to stay home most of the time. Even when given the option, I'll typically choose to do most things from home. Sure, I do enjoy going shopping at the mall every now and then, and I do enjoy going for walks to get some fresh air, but for the most part, if it can be done at home, I will almost always opt to do it at home. I workout at home, I do my work at home, I entertain myself at home, I do pretty much everything at home. I like home. Home is my happy place, my safe place. I think you get the idea by now, I enjoy spending time at home. At least most of the time.

I can't say that I haven't been missing the option to go to the shop, see the people that I care about, visit the park, or anything else I may feel like doing during the quarantine. I have a newfound appreciation for having the option to do what used to seem like the most simple of things. I have a newfound appreciation for ordinary life in general. But I also have a heightened appreciation for the comforts of home, even the things that may seem silly or trivial. Why shouldn't I take a moment to truly appreciate all of these things, and have a little bit of gratitude for them? Even if quarantine has been my lifestyle all along, now is the time to truly embrace being a homebody.

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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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I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Winter is NOT my favorite season. Winter doesn't even make the top five for me, and there are only four seasons. As soon as the temperature starts to drop and the leaves start changing colors in Autumn, I start dreading Winter. I absolutely despise Winter with every fiber of my being. And in Ohio, Winter loves to come early, and overstay its welcome. Seriously, you might as well forget about counting down to Spring, because it doesn't matter what the calendar says here. It really does not matter. You really can't trust that Winter is gone until at least mid-April, but even that is questionable.

Many people still look forward to the first snow of the season, though. Even if they do end up getting sick of it rather quickly. Yet I start complaining at the very first mention of snow. All I can think about when I hear that there's even a chance of snow is trying to shovel it, as my fingers are going numb from the cold through my two pairs of gloves. Let's also not forget about the ice, and having to use extra caution just to walk, let alone drive. Or, if you wear glasses, you know all about how your lenses fog up the second you step back inside on a cold day. All of that, combined with the lack of daylight, makes Winter absolutely dreadful. At least where I currently live. Honestly, I could go on a full-on rant about everything that makes me despise Winter, and that rant would be a mile long.

But the thing is, complaining about Winter is not going to make it go away. I also don't currently have the means to relocate to someplace warmer, so I'm out of luck there. Which means I'm going to have to just deal with it. So I might as well try to make the most of it unless I want to be in a grumpy mood for the entire season.

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It is the week of Thanksgiving in America, and if you're at all familiar with the American version of the Holiday, your mind probably goes to the food instantly. You also may think about the day after Thanksgiving when people line up outside department stores waiting to get in for the Black Friday deals, and all of the chaos that ensues on Black Friday. Less than 24 hours after sitting down to remember what they're thankful for at the dinner table, a sizable number of Americans wake up ridiculously early for great deals on the hottest products of the year. Or at least what seems to be great deals anyways. I have absolutely nothing against Black Friday shopping, you can actually get some good deals to kick off the holiday shopping season. Some people also enjoy it for the sake of tradition, or for the experience itself. It's just a little ironic that there are a few people who will start fights over material items, less than 24 hours of remembering what they're thankful for. As if they couldn't have found the item they were fighting over on Amazon, possibly for an even better deal. But I digress, I majorly digress.

I'm just going to get to the point now. Although the food and the shopping are a huge part of Thanksgiving week in America, so is gratitude, as the name of the holiday may imply. Let's be honest for a second too. As much as we should be practicing gratitude year-round, it can be easy to get caught up in the stresses of everyday life. So it's nice to have holidays like Thanksgiving that remind us to be thankful for what we do have, big or small.

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I was not exactly the most popular girl in school; as a matter of fact, it was actually quite the opposite, and I was more of a popular target for teasing. Or at least that's how it felt at the time anyway. Needless to say, I didn't really have many friends and I pretty much never got invited to anything outside of school. Heck, I wasn't even invited to much in school; as the teacher often had to assign someone to work with me whenever we had to work in groups or with a partner (even though I'd have very much preferred to just work alone), I sat alone at lunch on most days, and I literally never had a date for a school dance. So I think you can guess that my social life outside of school was pretty much non-existent. (And let's be honest, my social life as an adult is still pretty much non-existent, LMAO.) But looking back on that now, I don't think that was necessarily completely a bad thing. 

While I can't say that the bullying hasn't had any negative lasting effects on me, and especially on my mental health, I can say that there's definitely a silver lining to not being the most popular girl in school. While all I wanted at the time was to be cool or at least fit in, (I could seriously go on and on about the things I did to try to be cool before I realized that "cool" is subjective and that what society deems as being cool can change over time), I have certainly found a few ways that not being popular has actually brought some good into my life. 

Some of these ways are more serious than others, and some of them may seem a bit silly or pehaps even kind of sad to some, but I truly believe in trying to find even just a little bit of good in a bad situation or experience in any way that you can.