I am sooo ready for spring. We are ready for warmer weather and to really start exploring our state! We know from our weekend trip to New Hampshire last year that there are so many beautiful towns and hiking trails – now we just need a little sunshine to get started 🙂
Change my hair
Read 5 books
Learn guitar (three seasons later, still trying to do this)
College is a scam. I think most people know that by now, but I hate the whole way college has been pushed on young people. We are presented with the idea that further education is the only way to go and to go that way you need to go into debt.
I went to school with so many people who went to college because that’s what they thought they were supposed to do. Only to drop out and work in a trade that they had an interest in before even going into college – which is perfectly FINE. But I hate that they felt they had to take out loans to go to school when they had a perfectly suitable career path lined up without it.
I didn’t learn anything about my current career in college. I learned almost nothing academically. My first two years were spent taking gen eds that I never used and even my major-focused courses were a complete joke. I can give props to two of my classes that I took for my concentration – New Media I and New Media II. These classes taught me how to blog and taught me html which was very useful. I will give an honorable mention to my online journalism class but that’s about it.
What I actually learned in college is how to make friends. I learned how to manage a schedule. I learned how to put myself out there. I learned how to be accountable for my actions. The experience of college taught me much more than the classes ever did – but I don’t think experience itself is worth tens of thousands of dollars a year.
I know that there are careers out there that need college. But everything I know about my field of work I learned while working in it or I taught myself. I know that most of the time in college, students are self teaching anyway because professors are overloaded or just suck.
I hate the scam that is college. I don’t regret college but I do regret paying that much for the idea of an education – for a degree that says I was taught something in their school when I could’ve done it on my own plus $300 for those other 3 classes I mentioned.
I really enjoyed March! We had so many opportunities to explore our city and dig our feet into New England. I’m really looking forward to spring and April because there is so much to be done and only so many weekends! 🙂
I’ll start this off by saying I haven’t met up with anyone in real life from Bumble BFF. And I’ll follow it up with saying that I hated dating and making friends is just like dating…so I hate this also.
If you’ve been following me for a few months now, you’ll know I’ve had little faith in Bumble BFF from the beginning. Trying to capture if someone will make a good friend from their photos and a few sentences on their profile is impossible. But for an introvert like me, it’s the easiest way to get myself out there.
So I tried. I swiped and widened my age range and location range to get a good group of people. I matched. I started conversations and let them be started by the other party. And they all fizzled within a couple hours. Shallow small talk makes it hard for you to actually get to know someone and if you’re anything like me, I hate texting in the first place so it’s hard to even get past that small talk.
Someone on the app told me that unless you make plans, real plans not just floating the usual “oh yeah let’s hang out.” Then you won’t actually become friends. This turned me off the app because it almost seems like you have to match someone, have a short conversation, then meet up with them immediately.
I haven’t given up completely. I didn’t delete the app from my phone. But I’ve been keeping busy on my own so it doesn’t feel like a good time anymore to try to incorporate someone else into my life.
If you have any Bumble BFF success stories, I’d love to hear them in the comments! Maybe I’ll get back to swiping one day.
Favorite memory: The weather warmed up and we were finally able to explore our little city. We went to a bar with board games and an amazing bookstore with great coffee and then just spend the weekend relaxing!
Love can change us. Young love shapes us, quick love pleases us, the love that’s here to stay grounds us. But I don’t think anything changes you more than the hate that can come from love when everything goes wrong.
I have loved people in situations that didn’t end poorly. We lost touch and I still hold them in my heart. Our interactions changed me, knowing that I always have and had a person who cared for me like that is warming.
But I’ve loved a lot of people that ended very very badly and nothing has impacted my life like the hate that stems from that kind of ending. It has happened with family, it has happened with friends, and it has happened romantically.
When I was young, I felt misunderstood a lot which resulted in me feeling betrayed by the people I put my heart into. The hate that stemmed from not getting along with my family followed me into high school. I didn’t put myself out there, I wasn’t a nice person, and I made it a point to not enjoy anything.
Which lead to more people betraying me – friends who didn’t care about me as much as I cared about them. Friends I dropped as soon as my graduation cap came off. Friends that hindered my ability to make friends in college. I didn’t know who truly liked me and who didn’t, I didn’t have anyone to confide in. Except a boyfriend who betrayed me.
A boyfriend who held me back for years. A boyfriend who wouldn’t let me end things with him early on. A boyfriend who shrugged me off his shoulders and never looked back when the relationship ended. And that resulted in the most hate I have ever felt, the hate that stems from really strong love. The hate that ruins your life.
For years, I carried it with me. I wouldn’t commit to anything or anyone but myself. And while I grew a lot from that, when I got out of it I realized how much I had changed. When my relationship was on the rocks, I still had high hopes and was in the process of meeting new people. The boys who gave me attention when I was in the relationship were shocked by the person I was out of it and the baggage that weighed me down after the break up. I had been happy go lucky, I didn’t have worries before the break up. I didn’t have to impress anyone because I had a person.
I didn’t have any security and zero trust. I let it change me for years, trying to love people while I healed and just returning to that same hate. Once I was past the phase of using people to make myself feel better and started getting used to make others feel better, I took a break to be by myself. I took a break and found that happy go lucky person again. And I hate that I carried that hate for years, let it change me, let it make me someone I’d never want to be.
But when you have a strong emotion like love and it ends, strong emotions follow and it’s not always pretty.
I started my blog a long time ago, mainly focusing on relationships and break ups and hoping I was helping other people through what I was going through. And since it’s transformed, it’s more general but I’m still trying to help people through what I’m going through.
I’ve always been a writer, I’ve always been better about hiding behind my words instead of standing in front of a camera. Being an influencer and a blogger goes hand in hand, so I started building my Instagram following and taking on sponsored campaigns. It was fun for a while, but now it’s just work.
I have a blogging epiphany like every 3 months and recently I was staring at my Instagram feed and was noticing what people liked about it and what they didn’t. I was mostly noticing that 90% of my following doesn’t even interact with my posts, but the 10% that do really care about what I’m doing. That’s when it hit me.
I don’t want people to follow me just because I’m following them and I don’t want to follow people just so they follow me. I’ve recently started unfollowing hundreds of accounts, from mommy bloggers, to people who don’t speak the same language as me, to style bloggers who dress a world’s outside my budget. And I’m actually starting to enjoy Instagram again and seeing people who actually inspire me.
Now my 10% who cares has my focus and they are who I really want to target and inspire. Even though my numbers will drop and that will mean less sponsored posts, I’m so much happier creating content on my terms. I’m hoping this will relieve the stress I feel from a stupid app.
