Yet Another Life Update

    Ciao, y'all. It's been a long time since I've last posted on here, and honestly I don't have much of an excuse other than... I'm lazy and tired. And fairly busy, but also not? Life's been weird lately, y'all.

    At the point of me writing this, a lot has changed. I last posted in May of this year, so it's been a solid few months. Currently I'm sitting in my living room, while my mom & sister are both asleep in their respective bedrooms, my brother is live streaming himself playing Roblox in the computer room/kitchen, and my dogs & boyfriend are all three asleep next to me. 

    I've grown a lot as a person this year, in some good ways and some bad ways. I've grown to be a lot more honest about what I'm feeling- and right now, it's really depressed- which has been helpful to me, but I can also be a bit of a downer to be around anymore. 

    I haven't seen any of my friends much due to the virus and just general insanity, and it's definitely taken a toll on a lot of my relationships. I've also lost a lot of 5+ year friendships/relationships in the past few months which has been a really hard pill to swallow. I'm trying to make piece with it, but it's a lot easier said than done.

    I've been writing a lot of poetry, it's been helping me clear my head and get things down on paper. I've also been drawing and painting a lot too, which has been helping as well. Dance for me has been a hard thing to really do due to some trauma (which is also related to the aforementioned lost friendships) but I'm trying- it's just been a struggle to find joy in the art form much anymore, even though I do love it. Covid's also made it hard for my lovely friend Sophia and I to find meeting places for our company which has really put a lot of things at a stand still as well. 

    My siblings and I did unfortunately have to drop out of our acting group as well, just due to safety worries/precautions and Covid scares. We're still enrolled in dance classes though and those are going well. We're going to do a recorded version of the Nutcracker which should be fun too. My brother is a piece of taffy as well as the Mouse King. My sister is the Candy Cane Ambassador (which we kinda made up for our version of the show, she's on par with like Sugar Plum, Mother Ginger, etc). I'm playing the part of Mother Ginger. Sophia is going to be like the Flower Fairy or something similar, and our friends Ava and Ella are playing Clara and the Nutcracker respectively. 

    I've had 2 legit jobs, I've worked at Sally Beauty and Torrid in the past few months. I quit at Torrid after a couple weeks because I was working 2 (3 if you count pet sitting) jobs at the same time and it was exhausting. I worked at Sally's from June to sometime late September, due to some personal issues and not enough hours/trouble at the store. So I am yet again on the job search- but it could certainly be worse, I suppose.

    I'm currently taking an art appreciation course for school, I'm back on track for Associate's of the Arts because I realized I am NOT cut out to be a theatre major, lol. It's boring but I only have like, 5 weeks left of this course so I can't complain too much. It's just a weird class.

    We've adopted 2 more kittens, Maui and Moana. Originally Maui was named Te Fiti until we realized that Te Fiti was not actually a girl... so then he became Maui. They're really sweet cats, Moana is my little baby. She likes to try to come lay on my laptop whenever I'm typing anything at all.

    I met my boyfriend in August, and we've been together for over 2 months now. He's an amazing guy and I'm really blessed to have met him. Other than Instagram, I've been refraining from posting too much about him just to maintain privacy and such but he's a huge part of my life and I love him lots. He even gets along with my family, which is no easy feat.

    We recently went on a trip (meaning my mom, brother, boyfriend and I) to Cincinnati/Newport. We went to the Newport Aquarium, did a few escape rooms, hung out, and just had a good time in general. It was nice to get away for a bit and do something fun.

    There's honestly not much else to say right now. Life is still pretty boring- reasonably so- because of the virus and everything, so this is about the most dumb life update I've ever done. But it's all good, y'know? Things could always be worse, so I'm just riding things out.

Ciao for now,
Hannah

Dreams: the Good, the Bad, and the... Weird?

Photo by Kinga Cichewicz on Unsplash

Hey guys!

 I don't know if it's being cooped up at home that's causing it, or lack of being around people, or just my overactive mind- but I have been having intense dreams lately. Good ones, bad ones, funny ones, sad ones- and really, really weird ones.
 I've considered starting a dream journal just to recount the weirdness of them all. I only vaguely remember some, and some are vivid memories, but regardless, when I'm actually asleep, they're so intense that I wake up in a daze because it feels so real (even if it doesn't make any sense within the confines of the real world).

 Like, a few weeks ago, I had this weird dream about my Grandpa. I actually had to text my Grandma to check in one him because of the severity of the dream. I don't remember much about the actual dream itself, I just remember weird, psychedelic swirls, like a tie-dye shirt, and my Grandpa in the middle of it all one minute, and then he was gone the next. And it just kept happening, with various weird bits thrown in here and there.
 And then just a bit ago I had a migraine so I napped half of the day away, and kept having recurring odd, sorta romantic dreams about this guy who was kind of a bad boy, but we had to keep sneaking away even though we weren't doing anything bad, but it was taking place in, like, this really long  mansion-style house with tons of stairs and rails and weirdly-shaped rooms. And we'd end up in one room, and have like a date, our parents would find out and get mad, and then the dream would like... start over? Like a video game of sorts. It was bizarre (and for some reason the dude looked like Devon Bostick but I couldn't begin to explain why).

 Essentially, my dreams get progressively weirder and weirder each time I fall asleep. I have dreams that I'm trapped in a shopping mall and keep getting arrested for shop lifting even though I didn't shop lift. I have dreams about my family. I have dreams about my friends. I have dreams about Stranger Things (not even the characters, just the world they live in??). I have dreams about dance and about sleeping itself, which is really trippy.
 It's just so weird to be totally chill, and then fall asleep, and wake up feeling like I've been transported to a different world. Especially the dreams where it feels like I'm actually living it instead of watching it play out, if that makes any sense. It's all just very peculiar.
 There's not much of a point to this post except to ramble about my dreams; so comment down below what the weirdest dream you remember having is. Let me know I'm not alone in the weirdness, haha!

 -Hannah

Finding My Voice

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality"
-Desmond Tutu-

Hello, my dear readers,

 In this post I'm going to be discussing something that I've struggled with for a long time: my own opinions. Now, you're probably thinking; 'opinions? How do you struggle with your own opinions?' and my response to you is this...

that's a loaded question, friend.

 You see, opinions were never hard for me to form- I knew what tv shows I thought were good, I knew what animals I liked, I knew my opinion on certain foods, all of those things were well, and good, and okay. However, I had no strong opinions on anything else- politics, events, people, anything that could be considered treading on people's toes- I just smiled and nodded and silently agreed/disagreed with whoever was talking, including people you should feel comfortable sharing opinions with, like my therapist, or my mom.

 As I've gotten older, especially once I turned fifteen-ish, I started to grow my own ideas and opinions. It was like culture shock to my entire being. Suddenly having an opinion on anything that wasn't what movie we should go see was terrifying. Even more terrifying was when I didn't agree with something a friend had said, or even worse, something my grandparents had said, or even worse, something my mom said.

 Some things I've always had strong opinions on; abortion, helping people out, animals in shelters, & obviously rude, bad, or downright evil things. But until probably a year, to a year-and-a-half ago, that was it. I did some volunteer work, basic things, and I had some semblance of caring about people- but I didn't truly have any idea of why I was doing what I was doing or if there was one thing I should focus on.

 Now as I've gotten older, I've developed strong opinions on lots of things. Sometimes they're not the most informed, sometimes they seem silly, sometimes they might border on conservative-in-a-bad-way, but I'm still growing as a person, and I'm still learning. I grew up around (majority) conservative, white, Christian, homeschooled families. And not that there's anything wrong with any of those things, but being around one group of people only doesn't really help you grow as a person.

 I'm not going to lie: most of my close friends are/were homeschooled, are Christian, and white, and conservative. But the thing is, we're a generation with internet access, and we can learn more about other people. I read articles all the time, written by & about people of color, and people with disabilities, people of other religions, and all different walks of life. Learning about other people is how you learn to be a better person. Once you see what your privilege is, once you learn about what other people have experienced, it helps you realize: wow, I need to work on this.

 It's the same way with politics, laws, history, and important world figures. I know who I'm voting for during this presidential election* and I know where I stand on health care, and still stand on abortion & gun issues, and where I stand on protecting the rights & lives of all people from all kinds of lives & beliefs.

 *Which is another opinion I've formed: that voting is good. Growing up, I believed what other people around me believed, until I got older and did my own research, and decided that if person after person decides one vote doesn't count, who's to say that one candidate won't win just because enough people didn't show up that day to vote for them?

 I still struggle sometimes, don't get me wrong- I hate confrontation. I talk a lot of talk but I find it troublesome to actually take action on some occasions, because I don't want to rock the boat. But you have to. If people dislike you because you've made your own opinions, then they never liked you anyway- they liked the version of you that made them happy & comfortable.

 But the thing is, now that I'm older, and I see that my generation is going to be the one that has to change things, I've decided that my voice matters. Every single voice (person) matters. The loud ones. The quiet ones. The non-verbal ones. The signed ones. The typed ones. If you have something to say, let it be your truth. Let it be known that you stand for what you care about.

 I've spent too long, staying quiet, silently being an ally to racism, sexism, and discrimination in any & all forms and not even realizing it that I now know that you have to speak up. I've found my voice- and if you're struggling- I'm here to help you find yours.

-Hannah