Okay let’s try this again. The first draft of this post turned out horrendously so I simply decided to delete it all and start again.

Sometimes that is what we all need to do. Have a fresh start. Wipe away all the negativity, step back and take a look, then dive back in with a new mindset.

I can’t even begin to express how amazing it feels to do. Especially when it appears you are going down a negative spiral of no return. When you’re in deep enough, it seems like there’s no going back. Except there always is.

We decide our fates and we have some iota of control. Our thoughts have such a large impact on our outlook of life.

I started out writing about how homesick and sad I am. And I am all those things, but they are by far not the worst thing in the world. I am thankful that I have so many wonderful things in my life that I miss them so much when we are apart. My mom, my sister, my friends and my fur-babies.

It’s true what they say that sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s gone (even just for a short while). Or maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder and every other sappy little cliche. It hurts to be gone. It hurts to miss people and places and scents and sensations.

Regardless, I stepped away from my laptop and took a good long look at myself. I looked at what I wrote and it didn’t make me feel better to have said any of those things that were in this post before I pressed the backspace button. It made me feel worse in fact. I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish by making myself feel even worse about life.

It wasn’t going to fix anything, so I stopped that train of thought. I do believe that all emotions should be acknowledged and accepted. They are real and they are there. But they aren’t the only ones that should be there.

I am living abroad with new friends and new adventures and some more self discovery and self improvement on the horizon. There is work to be done, books to read, stories to write. So much more that I can occupy my time with until I can go home again.

In  Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she talks a lot about creativity and how to reach your own. I read this book a while ago but some things have stuck with me. One of the most interesting things she mentioned was about when you feel a creative block. My most prominent one is writer’s block, as that is my main creative avenue that I like to play on.

While dealing with some anxiety and depression creeping in every now and then, I have a tendency to not want to do anything at all. Except for some emotional eating when I have an appetite or mindlessly watching Netflix or YouTube, and the not-so-occasional scroll down Facebook.

At time like these I know it’s important to take care of yourself. Do what you need to do to make it through to another day of repetition. I tried to describe my emotions in one of my poems by the name of Imaginary Demons. It becomes slightly overwhelming and it’s way too easy to go into hermit-mode. Hiding away from the world and myself.

Big Magic holds a treasure trove of advice regarding how to find your creativity when you feel like it has abandoned you forever. One way is to do something else that is also creative, but not the kind of creative you are looking for. For example, if you are trying to finish a novel but you are stuck you may try attending a pottery class or colouring in.

Lately I have be determined to remember that there are infinitely more productive and fun things to do that can snap me out of it a little. Hopefully sparking the desire to fight the seemingly overwhelming negativity and sadness.

My studies at University are very technical and more left-brain oriented. All the computer-jargon, programming and mathematics. Even though I am not always sure I belong in that side of the world either. I’m not the most technical or practical person but to me, maths and computer programs are like languages, just with a different set of patterns. Just like music is also a language. There are certain symbols that make up meaning and they all have their own set of rules and regulations.

It helps to balance all of the structure and rules with some creativity from the right-brain. This year I received a keyboard for my birthday after years of not playing piano and it is one thing that makes the creative part of me glow with happiness. Another joy of mine has been my bullet journal, which I elaborate on in my post about My First Bullet Journal. I also have a more traditional Journal wherein I complete daily prompts and practice my cursive with a fountain pen. In the holidays my weakness was completing adult dot-to-dot pictures while listening to audio-books. Experimenting with brush-pens and doodling has occurred on more than one occasion and my water-colour paint set is waiting to be tested out.

It is so much more fun (for me at least) to study a 1,731 page textbook about a programming language when you make notes with some colourful pens, or drawings or anything that makes it more ‘pretty’. It also helps to stop me from becoming bored, distracted or discouraged.

This career path is not something that I have always wanted. It seemed boring to me at a stage. Until I remembered how I created a maths game for kids with a wizard as their guide, way back when I first learned how to program in Scratch. Life is only boring when you let it be.

We all choose where we go in life. I, for one, am aiming to have some fun along the way. When Anxiety and Depression decide to rear their ugly heads again, I’ll aknowledge them but I won’t let them control me.

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