When you’re overwhelmed and/or stressed, it can be difficult to be able to sleep. Stress is actually known to keep you up. Anyone can find that out with just a basic Google search. But that doesn’t mean you can’t give it a try.

I’m not encouraging taking a sleeping aid, but if sleeping is your method of relieving stress and you struggle to actually fall asleep; try something light like jasmine tea, or melatonin. There’s even some music that is designed to help you sleep (not saying that it will work 100%).

A little note on my behalf. Whenever I go to sleep in a bad mood, I usually wake up with it as well. Again, not everyone is the same, but I have heard from other people that this happens to them to. But it doesn’t hurt to try, right? If it doesn’t work out, at least you know for next time.

Times can get tough, we all know that. The least I can do is provide a list that might help you stay positive:

• Maintain a positive mind
• Surround yourself with positive people (if possible)
• Accept your emotions/learn from experiences
• Take care of yourself
• Find inspiration in success stories

Maintaining a positive mind can be hard quite often just because of the world we live in. So many people fester in negativity. As long as you keep yourself happy, that’s all that matters. Keeping that positive mind can be a simple as having those little positive note things that people normally make fun of.

For example: those sticky notes that say stuff like “You’re beautiful!”, “Today is going to be your day!”, etc.

Surrounding yourself with positive people is easier said then done. A lot of what I’m typing out is that. I struggled my whole life with this one, feeling like I was trapped in a cage.

I constantly switched schools so I didn’t have friends, there were bullies as well. My family that I lived with were just bust bunnies full of negativity, constantly beating each other down. Depression ran high along with trauma. The family outside of our household despised my mother, so we never associated with any of them. My only option was either to rely on myself, or to go to literal strangers. Of course I didn’t do that. I’m sure everyone is familiar with the typical child lecture of talking to strangers.

I haven’t found a way out, but maybe you can.

I would have tried joining a group or club of some sorts, but I didn’t know of any until I got older. Those groups still require a lot of money to attend to, so I kind of scratched that off of my list. Every group or club basically revolves around money, so that in general is difficult. I’m not even narrowing it down to just my city either.

Whenever you feel any sort of strong emotion, just let yourself feel it. Let the emotions run through you, don’t hold them in. It’s not good and it’ll only bundle up and make it worse later on. Feel what you have to, then move on.

Dwelling on emotions, or anything, will only make you a miserable mess. You’ll end up holding onto a lot more useless things that most people would’ve forgotten about. So just let it go after a while.

With that in mind, if a situation makes you feel such strong emotions, usually there’s something to take away from that situation. Whether it be a break-up, a fight, a missed deadline, a loved ones death, anything.

There’s always something you can learn and take from the situation; you just have to find it. Sometimes the lesson from the situation will be clear.

Surprising as it may seem, taking care of yourself has a huge impact on your mood. Sure you’ll still have bad days here and there, that’s just being human. But if you take care of yourself and the home you reside in, you’ll slowly see a change.

That can be as simple as making your bed everyday, to brushing your hair everyday. Showering everyday, to keeping up on the dishes. Maintaining a proper meal schedule, to brushing your teeth daily. The list goes on. It all starts somewhere.

To help prove my point a bit, I’ll share a bit of my experience. If you don’t want to read anymore about me, you can skip down to the procrastination section.

Continuing from earlier. Since there was no outside help and everyone under the same household as I was growing up was miserable, the house was always dirty. Nobody took care of themself, so it was pretty stinky.

The dishes were always piling up. So much dirt was caked onto the floors that our supposedly white floors were a darkening grey, basically black. Crumbles of food accompanied the floor throughout the place. Build up caked the drains. Piled garbage bags. Eventually we got new neighbours and had an infestation of roaches.

Cleaning was scarce whenever I hadn’t the energy to do the chores.

Nobody cleaned themselves, so there was always shampoo and body soap. I felt basically foreign living there. Everyone was always cooped up in there room, moulting to their beds. The only time they moved was to turn off the PlayStation and tv. Fast food/take-out was always the go to. So much literally made me ill.

I joined cooking class in high school and it feels almost like a blessing to be able to cook. As sad as that may sound. The garbage would still pile up faster then what I could take out, but at least the kitchen would be a bit more maintained due to it actually being used.

The house getting more trashed as the days go by, only caused their misery to spread like black mould. My efforts were never acknowledged. It got to a point where I got fed up and moved out. I wanted to better myself and not follow in their footsteps, and I can’t do that while living in their misery.

I was just lucky enough that a co-worker/friend allowed me to live in their basement. The hunt now is for my own place.

The point I was trying to aim for is that after I started to change and take care of myself and my surroundings, I became more lively and started to care a bit more of myself and my living space. A chore didn’t feel like much of a chore anymore, but more of something that should be done.

It doesn’t take long either if you keep up on it. I can say that I have been the happiest that I have been my entire life so far, and I know that it will only get better once I finally get my own place. I don’t have to worry about anyone except for myself.

Procrastination

Seeing actual progression always feels good. But getting to the stage where the progress is actually noticeable is a different thing. Mainly things can get in the way, but most of the time, it’s you. A lot of people (and the numbers are only increasing) procrastinate; It’s basically just nature at this point.

But I’ve learned from experience that not having to do something “later” or at the very last minute, actually feels better than doing it right in that moment. You could even finish it faster since it’s still fresh in the mind! Breaking it into portions is always an option too! Take about 20 minutes or so to focus on that new hobby, then take a break and return to it later. You’re still making progress, but it’s just like everyone says “baby steps”.

There really isn’t a time span for learning a new hobby, but your excitement of learning that new hobby won’t last all day! And sometimes if you put it off for later, you have to re-amp yourself which ends up taking more effort.

I know life can get in the way, it happens to everyone; including me. I wanted to have this blog posted back in October of 2024. It’s been four months and I’m still lying in bed, at a very weird hour, typing my thoughts away.

You’re not always going to have time in a day to squeeze in that 20 minutes, unless you count learning a new hobby as “me time”. Not everyone does. But there’s also regular things you have to balance like, friends, family, work, school, relationships, etc. obviously they vary per person, but everyone has at least one of these. Sometimes these balances can be overbearing, or require more time. You’re not always going to have time, and that’s where sacrifices come in. In order to do what you want to do, you have to make sacrifices.

Weigh out the top priorities, and manage the rest. For example: I was stressing out about how much I had to do until I sat down for a moment and laid out everything I had. Since I’m currently trying to start up a blog AND write a novel, (on top of work and getting ready to return to college) it feels like there’s never enough time; that’s after cutting back some of my tasks! So I put my own priorities on top of the regular priorities. Obviously work is #1, but then I alternate each day with writing the blog and novel, unless an idea really screams at me for one of the two.

I write until my fiancé comes home, we cook dinner, then usually watch a show or a movie before going to sleep. Sometimes he’ll play video games which sometimes allows me some free time to work on something, or just relax and recollect myself.

Sometimes balancing everything can be a challenge, specifically relationships. People tend to be quite needy people, so in the case that there’s an event (such as a birthday or holiday gathering), your family and/or significant other will want you present at the event. Pulling you from both arms, your friends might even try to steal you for a hangout or something. Even if there aren’t any friends, significant other, or family to pull you from every limb, interacting with people can get pretty exhausting.

Maybe I’m too much of an introvert, but I know someone will be able to relate to this situation. And if you’re here, there’s a possibility that you fit into the introvert section. I say that because all the ‘ambiverts’ and ‘extroverts’ I’ve encountered, didn’t seem to deal with procrastination as much, or they were just really good at hiding it. If people ever get to be overbearing, just take a day for yourself. It’ll be hard to find that day at first, but it’ll work out; even if it means missing a day going to the movies with family or friends.

I personally can’t speak too much on relationships with friends and family because those were almost scarce growing up, and still to this day. I’m still putting it out there because I know some people have great or even some sort of relationship with their family, and tend to have friends. All I’m really trying to saying is, put yourself first. Just don’t become arrogant and ruin the relationships you do have, or want to improve on. Make time for all of them, but don’t burn yourself out in the process because in the end, you’ll only have you.

Inconsistency

Procrastination could also lead to inconsistency, so when you are trying to learn something, it won’t stick. And if it does, it takes twice as long! You don’t want that, do you?

This is more than just learning a new hobby. This is life in general. If you continuously put things off to the last minute, you’ll miss out on a lot of things. Eventually it’ll lead to not arriving to things on time. Life will feel like it’s a constant rush; more than it already is. Then you’ll fall behind. It’ll feel like life is escaping you.

Inconsistency will make it feel like you’re not making any progress and that will end up discouraging you, and probably cause you to just quit the new hobby in general. Or turn into a floppy stressful chore of learning it for a bit, then stopping for an extended period of time, then going back to learning for a bit, then stopping, “rinse and repeat”. This usually stops your progression since you have to review what you already learned in order to continue, which usually discourages a lot of people.

The discouragement will more likely cause people to stop learning in general. Stopping will only lower your progress until you are back to the very beginning, then when you’re ready to go back to learning, it’ll just seem like a waste of time because you have to restart all over.

While on the topic, not progressing fast enough will also seem like a discouragement.

Normally people like to see progress pretty quickly, but unfortunately you won’t see progress yourself in the later stages. This stage progress is usually spot by others, since you’re constantly at it and are already familiar with your new growing position.

A method to help with that is to take a step back for a breather and look at your current position. It’ll help best if you’re able to compare it to your previous learning phases.

If it’s a sport, you could write down points or timing; record if it need be. If it’s more artsy like drawing, writing, photography, singing, instruments, etc., you can always store your old stuff away and look back at your old work and compare it to your current.

This even gives people hope when they tend to lose it due to not seeing any progress in their current position. And by chance there is no change from your previous to your current, then try a different route in your learning or push yourself to gain more knowledge in different areas in your new hobby. Just never give up.

Twenty minute trick

It’s not easy to set up a consistent schedule if your schedule is already inconsistent. But trust me, if you take at least twenty minutes of your day to do that new hobby, it could grow into more than twenty minutes after some time. It could eventually turn into a habit.

I’ve learned this “twenty minute” thing from other successors. I thought it was a load of crap before I actually tried it. I’m not “consistent” or “in the habit” of it yet because I just began to try it out not too long ago, and now if I don’t work on the blog or my novel, it feels wrong or as if I’m not at ease by the end of the day. I get miserable and struggle to sleep. That could just be me, but I know I’m not the only one.

So if you give the “twenty minutes” thing a try, I want to promise you that something will come from it, but I don’t want to give any false hope; just an open mind concept that has worked for others before, and is currently working for me.

Mental health

Mental health seems to be increasing in numbers and effecting a lot of people. I can’t say what’s wrong with me, and I refuse to self diagnose because a lot of mental illness tend to blend in with one another; but I know something isn’t right. For example, I would be in a good mood, making quite a bit of progress at a decent pace, and then for no reason I will become all gloomy and all my motivation dissipates. Or some days, it’ll be like getting out of bed is a chore. My body feels heavier then an elephant, all I want to do is sleep, but even that’s a challenge to achieve.

Never self diagnose. Why? Well, a lot of mental disorders tend to share symptoms and/or mask symptoms of other disorders. A big one that I’m pretty sure is still a struggle today is autism and ADHD. You can easily look it up and get many results, but they will all align in some way.

Having flip plop moods has caused me to succeed in life pretty difficult. I have mentioned already that I was in the midst of writing a novel; well this isn’t the first attempt.

I have completed a full unedited version of a book that is about a friend group that goes on a camping trip and in the middle of “crap hitting the fan”, one of the people get some weird powers from a very ominous cave.

Had a self publishing company in my grasp and everything. I would blame not having time and being too overwhelmed to continue, and eventually the incomplete book became a thing of the past. Now I’m left with wondering what ifs.

I tend to think back and wonder if my excuses were legitimate or not, and being strict towards myself now, I kick myself in the booty cheeks for constantly making excuses. Many people will think they are good excuses, but really they aren’t.

Grasping and understanding the lesson too late in life that you will always have time for something, you just have to make the time; that means making sacrifices. I don’t want to steal the words from others, but it’s honestly true.

Technology

Since technology has deprived everyone of actual time and having an actual brain with common sense, we’ve basically become addicted, living bare minimum, zombies.

What I’m saying is, if you wanted to start that new hobby but constantly get in a rut of “not having time”, you have to sacrifice something that doesn’t need so much attention, or any attention at all! For example, it seems that a lot of people still watch TV, or even bigger, TikTok. People used to joke about having a scrolling bug, when TikTok first came out, which was basically the fact that they couldn’t stop scrolling or they’d literally lose their mind. Who knows, maybe they’re right, especially with how often people continuously scroll endlessly on that platform for hours. It’s also not good for the brain.

Instead of doing a mindless activity like scrolling forever, watching short videos for a small amount of dopamine for about ten seconds, why not start that new hobby. Make that your new addiction, per say; Make good use of your time.

Now, this is just an example, not everyone has TikTok or even likes it. But a good first start is breaking repetitive cycles that normally are a waste of time, especially if it’s not benefiting you in any way.

repetitive cycles

Life does get in the way and some days feel almost impossible to make that extra time, and that’s perfectly normal. Some days do feel more overwhelming and chaotic then other days. Not only that, if you do take the push to break a time wasting repetitive cycle, your brain will try its absolute darndest to make you slip back into that cycle. But don’t. Whether people like to admit it or not, it’s an addiction and it’ll do anything to make you feed it.

If you feed into it, you’ll only follow the pattern that I did and get nowhere in life. I constantly start things that would benefit me in the future, or even for fun. I’ll start it for a few weeks, maybe even a month. Then stop for maybe a couple months, maybe more. You take acknowledgement to that hobby you stopped and convince yourself that you want to continue it; so you do. You continue for a while, then stop. Rinse and repeat. But you never get anywhere.

How these repetitive cycles effected me

I always wanted to start writing and eventually publish my own novel, but I got engulfed in the endless, time wasting loop. I kept starting new stories and never finish them. Switched to short stories, then poetry, and as you may assume, they’re all left unfinished. After too long of an endless loop, I finally caught sight of the loop I was stuck in, and set off desperately for a change. I finally signed up for a short story contest that caught my eye and finished the short story and published it back in November of 2024; the results come in January of 2025. Being able to finish something, even if it doesn’t get chosen to be a winning story, actually helped me to get out of the loop. The feedback from the judges allowed me to grow. They let me know what they liked and where I could improve.

Sometimes I would start a new hobby, in hopes to make something out of it, more like a career. I know that’s not a good mindset to have when starting anything new, because it’ll feel more like a chore to learn rather then something fun. But I had this mindset going into a lot of new hobbies. It may be because of that but there are a lot, and I mean a lot of times that I would lose interest or lose hope, which made me not continue the hobby.

I wanted to continue but the thoughts in my head got the better of me, so I quit learning the hobby. To finish the horrible cycle, I would start a new hobby, then quit it. It became an endless hobby jumping cycle, but never spent enough time with that hobby to actually learn anything from it. So it ended up being a waste of time.

Don’t take this as a diagnosis in any way, because I’m no expert and I’ve only ever got most of my information from Mayo clinic. But these could be signs of something being off. It is possible to break these cycles and become a better person of yourself, without freaking out thinking you’re mentally ill, and/or immediately jumping to get your brain checked for illness.

Sometimes these cycle can be adapted from a parent that you admire. Either way it may be, there can be a solution.

Mental illness has effected so many people in so many ways. Whether it be the person who has the mental illness or someone they are in contact with, such as a family member. Studies of 2022 have shown that about 23.1% of adults in the America are effected in some way by it. That’s about 59.3 million people! That’s insane considering it’s only the statistics of America.

As obvious as it may be, depression is one of the big ones. But from what I have witnessed in the younger generation now, it seems as though mental illness’s like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is increasing in numbers. I’m probably just getting old when I say this, but I kind of blame technology and the parents/guardians.

Children relating to mental illness

If you compared how different generations were growing up, it would seem that these younger children aren’t really getting proper parenting. They are put on electronics (specifically watching short clips on Youtube), so they’re out of the way and not causing trouble. These short clips are not good for the brain’s development. This stuff can easily be research. But I’ll give you a brief summary.

Quoting National Institutes of Health (.gov) as my quick research. Those who watch short clips consistently have shown to have more attention deficit while watching the short videos. “AND have impaired attentional concentration during process of interference”.

Adding my own piece of information: Anything that happens during the brain’s development stage, usually sticks as it develops. So that impaired attention that is happening while watching the videos, could have a long lasting effect as their brain develops; especially since it’s in such long doses.

Aside from that, parents seem to be giving these children less and less of their time, which is not good for development either. Children, babies, toddlers, they all need attention and love while they’re still developing, or it can mess them up. As little as it may seem, the lack of love and attention from parents can cause childhood trauma, and other issues later in life.

The children these days almost resemble animals, and I’m not the only one saying this either! I’m not a mother, but I live with two young children. But some of my co workers even tell me stories about their children, or even the children at their child’s school. They even said they’re like animals! They’re all wild, one would say senile. Nor do they listen; they are moving bouncy balls of destruction. And if you don’t believe me, then go into an area where there might be children, such as a grocery store or a fast food establishment, and just observe. There’s a possibility that you’ll hear or even see what I’m talking about.

Every mental illness impacts individuals daily life’s in some way or another. Whether it being, struggling to get out of bed, being overly organized, easily overstimulated, needing stimulations, and more. But don’t let that stop you from achieving what you want to.

If you’ve been properly diagnosed, there’s treatments/medicine that can be proscribed to help live with mental illness. I know a lot of people say it but, you really aren’t alone. There are others who know what you are going through, and even some are going through the same thing. It’s just to find those people.

The examples that I mentioned above of ways some mental illness’s impact a person’s day to day routine, isn’t something to freak out about. If you find yourself struggling to get out of bed, it doesn’t mean you are mentally ill. These are similar routines that some people may experience, if they have a mental disorder.

Which kind of circles back to procrastination, if I continue with the example of struggling to get out of bed. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you, it’s just something you choose to do. It’s just harder for others.

But mental disorders does effect those around them, such as family members, people they live with, and whatnot. It’s uncontrollable, but don’t feel bad about it. They love you and are there to help you. Sure times might get tough, and you may lash out at them, or they might lash out at you, but it’s completely normal. Just don’t let that tear you from the ones that care about you. Let them help you. It could help by accepting other loved ones help. Ignore that thought that you’re burdening them. In reality, you’re just making them worry more.

I won’t touch on this much longer because I’m not a professional. I just want to open people’s eyes to the fact that a normal act maybe mistaken for a mental illness, and vice versa. And how some mental disorders are similar to one another, and that if you suspect that something maybe wrong, to seek professional help.

Like they say, “It’s the small things that count.”