-> Growing up, I frequently found myself hating the present situation I was in; whether that was my environment / friends / family / school / job ... just anything that I could fixate on at the moment of time. It presented itself in a lot of my outlets of life & I couldn't really figure out why I was struggling just being ok. When I was going through a rougher patch about a year ago, I did a lot of reflection about my current state of life at that time. I was so lost & alone. I felt like I had no control over my life & how things happened right in front of me, but with that knowledge, I began to think about how I could react to that. I started to view it differently: almost everything about the desire for control over a minute thing would drive me away from the rest of the good. I let go of this grasp of control I was holding onto & started to focus the control on my reaction to any event. No control over something didn’t mean I had to fight myself to gain control (maybe for some things but not all).That’s when everything kind of made more sense. Instead of expecting myself to be / to do / to output something that I think I should, I let myself be the person I was being at that moment & let things flow. It was such an abstract switch, but it made me feel so comfortable with myself for the first time & "be happy with what we/(I) have". 

-> r o s e - stability!! : my life has been stable recently! Its a win to celebrate~ I remember last year almost every week there was something new happening or something I had to deal with & it was so exhausting... so now that I'm having a routine to rely on, I want to celebrate that! Definitely having something to fall back onto is comforting.
-> b u d - creating this blog : my blog is a step toward the right direction! It’s my “working for what you want”. It an accumulation of my hobbies in my life while being able to share them to anyone that’s willing to listen!! There’s not much to say yet about it, but its something to look forward to. 
-> t h o r n - work : my career is something I’m so grateful to have & also proud of myself for achieving, but with this job comes a lot of stress / expectations / external opinions that I need to consider when I do my day to day. It gets really suffocating when things build up & I feel like I have to internalize it. There’s been many days this month where I felt like I should just quit, pivot, do something else with my life, but like the quote, I need to try to be happy with where i am. Not necessarily that I shouldn’t quit, but I should appreciate where I am with my career, how I got here, how much I’ve achieved instead of looking at the negatives of my job. Allowing myself to feel the negativity, but making sure I balance it with the positivity. 

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

book
-> book : Conversation with Friends  (3stars out of 5) 
This book was interesting...
I didn’t like the main character (Frances)... at all until maybe the last 50 pages. She was so flawed as a person, but that wasn’t why I didn’t like her. I thought she was just self deprecating & played the victim in her own self inflicted issues. France would be get sad & angry about her not so traditional monogamous relationship with Nick because it was... well not monogamous / one-sided; it got tiresome to keep hearing about toward the end of the book. This book became really relatable when I took into account her age & relationship experience. She hits a moment of self reflection when everything goes to shit; the way she handles it seemed so realistic. I think everyone at some point will go through a rough patch & come out of it really learning something more about themselves. It just felt like a teeny tiny step forward for Frances even though at the end she ends up staying in this not monogamous relationship with Nick... she’s at least more in tune & at peace with herself while being in it. That’s why this book was not 1 stars haha. I kind of hated all the characters, but all the hate was that their flaws were their whole personalities & Sally Rooney really likes to highlight the character’s flaws & let their strengths burn slowly. It’s definitely not the most rewarding read, but it just reminds you that life is exactly like this book : knowing people equally as flawed & maybe even relating to it yourself.