Hai Beautiful!
It’s Important To Practice Self-Care!
I’ve been a little lost in my head this week and need to ground myself, so I’m writing this post as a way of self-care, both to myself and to remind you all how important self-care is.
Aesthetic/ Study “Pinterest” Photos
I spend so much of my time on Pinterest. Whether I’m just chilling on my phone or (not) doing work, you can bet I’m on Pinterest. I love to create all kinds of boards, from character to fashion inspo, but my favourite pins to peruse through are Study Inspo.
You can see my board via the link above or by clicking on the image.
I also love creating mood boards for the year, printing them out to inspire me visually, and talking about them in posts and videos such as the one I made about my 2020 Moodboard.
I’d love it if you could give my mood board video a watch, I’ve linked it above. This kind of stuff is like organisation for me, a form of planning that just sits right within my bain and makes my brain produce the happy juices.
My Friends ✌🏼
The thing I’ve missed the most while being holed up inside during quarantine and the lockdown has been catching up with my friends.
For my uni group, it took me a while to adjust to online games and online chats. It’s so very different from our board game/ D&D sessions where we bounce conversation off of each other, laugh together and demolish a New Yorker sized pizza + medium chips.
My bookish group have caught up over video call, motivated each other to write and just generally kept in contact via messages. But I really miss our coffee catch-ups, in-person chats and hugs!
I’m just glad that we have the internet as a form of communication. It is anxiety-inducing to reach out to people and ask to catch up either via phone or video call but it is so so so worth it! You can still hear people’s laughs and to me, that makes it all the more worth it.
Hanging Vines/ Fairy Lights
Okay, I kinda deviated from talking about calming things, but hanging vines & fairy lights are literally the cutest and most soothing decoration one can use!
The cafe near me, the one with the really good coffee and absolutely stunning wall mural has THE CUTEST decorations! There are hanging vine plants that are draped around the exposed pipes in the ceiling and agh! It makes me so happy!
I personally am not allowed to have plants in my bedroom (or hang/ mount anything on my walls) but I just adore draping fairy lights around my room to make it feel like a magical wonderland where I am able to relax and unwind.
The colour PINK!
I probably don’t need to say any more on this, although if you yourself have a favourite colour, you’d know what it feels like to look at the colour. I honestly don’t know why we have favourite colours or what draws us towards a specific colour (and I’m not going to do that research because that is not my kind of self-care). All I am sure of it that our brain does some happy dance whenever we see a colour we like and we instantly gravitate towards it.
Like all good things, this comes full circle back to Pinterest in which I have an entire board full of pink photos. I am also wearing a pink jumper while typing this, and I filmed (but am yet to edit) a video where I purchase and wear an entirely pink outfit for a day!
High-Resolution photos, taken in natural light.
Idk why but they are just so aesthetically pleasing and make me happy 😍 I love looking back on photos I’ve taken and thinking that they look absolutely stunning because I took them in nice lighting with my phone or camera.
Lists & Organising My Day!
If there is one thing I relate to about being a Capricorn ♑️, it is making lists!
If I am feeling off or jittery for whatever reason, I’ll for one, go through my mental list of parts of my routine I haven’t completed. Usually, the unsettling feeling will be because I haven’t made a plan for my day or week.
I use a weekly planner chart, my phone calendar, a daily planner, to-do list templates, and sometimes a mobile to-do list to keep myself in check. I update these weekly/ daily depending on what I have planned.
My favourite self-care planning activity is sitting at my desk at the end of a long week with my weekly planner in front of me and writing down all my high-level plans for the week, making sure I’ve listed off my multiple projects and things I’ve scheduled prior. Then I cross-check everything with my various other planing methods.
This may seem excessive to some, but having multiple planners for various things and at varying levels of detail, literally makes my little Capricorn heart SING!
Playing my guitar & Singing
Something I’ve picked back up during quarantine/ lockdown/ self-imposed physical isolation/ (whatever you call it), is my guitar!
I absolutely love the fact that I chose guitar as my compulsory instrument in high school and that my hopeful, hoarder ass has held onto it for so long. I felt confident enough lately to pick it up again and have been playing and singing along so some of my favourite, easier to play songs.
I mentioned this in my post A Positive Post To End An Emotional Week! where I talk about positive things that happened in my life recently and list out the songs I have been teaching myself. I tend to stay clear of strumming patterns because I’m not the best at keeping a beat and have little to no practice, although anything else is perfectly fine.
Lo-fi music when I’m studying
I only reserve listening to lo-fi music for when I’m studying or working with a deadline/ something I’ve been procrastinating. This way that genre of music puts me into that mood by association and it is the most calming form of music ever.
I’ve linked my Spotify playlist below if you want to listen to the lo-fi I’ve compiled. I’ve named the playlist Austin Got Me Addicted To Lofi Hits I Even Made A Playlist, as a lil ode to one of my best friends from uni who literally carried me academically through our course.
Here’s my playlist 🥰
I, personally, love hearing people talk about things they enjoy for self-care, so I hope you enjoyed this and maybe it brought you some calm, hearing me chat about things I love.
In what ways do you practice self-care?
Do you recommend me to try anything new?
Leave your opinions in the comments or alternatively on my social media channels!
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