Want exciting news? On Saturday, it's my...
BIRTHDAY!
(Just replace "next week" with "on Saturday".)
I'm so excited for it, for various reasons. There are the obvious ones, such as "PRESENTS, WHOO!" (sounds childish, but c'mon, gift-wise, it's more personal than whatever winter holiday you celebrate, and don't lie, you get excited too when you know you're getting presents, even if it may not be your favourite part); also, a lot of people don't think of this, I think, but why wouldn't you want to celebrate the day you "came into being", if you will? It's the ultimate celebration of YOU! Sure, getting older can suck sometimes, but it's also proof of the fact that you survived another year! Don't say "Ugh, this time next year I'm turning 30/40/50/60/whatever", say "I can't wait until I turn another year older, it means I would've survived a possible zombie apocalypse, getting drunk out of my mind on New Year's, family dinners with the very extended family during the winter holidays, and a possible world apocalypse in December as predicted by the Mayans!"
See what I mean? Birthdays are awesome.
Also, I love partying with friends, and on Saturday night I'm going out with close friends to a very festive Mexican restaurant - so exciting!
...What to wear...
Then, there are the not-so-obvious reasons for wanting this particular birthday to come. I'm turning 20, which is a very big birthday in Europe, or at least France, according to my Grandmother. For me, however, it's very significant because I'm finally getting out of the "teenage" range. My teenage years were good and bad. They were riddled with high school - seriously, high school was like pestilence or something, haha - but I also went to college during them, which was quite nice. I had petty drama at sleepaway camp in the first few years of them, and then missed it in the last few years of the teenage range. I had braces, which was awful, but I also had beautiful teeth for the remaining 2 or so years of my teenage years.
Overall, it was a sucky few years, but I felt like I've come out of it pretty ok, and I've definitely learned a lot from it.
However, I'm definitely not sad to see those years end, learning experience nonetheless!
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So, you know how people make new year's resolutions? I do that, too, but I very much prefer making birthday resolutions! I feel like there's less...commercialization than new year's resolutions, so it's easier to reflect on yourself.
My birthday resolutions:
- I didn't lose 10 pounds by the time I turned 20, like I hoped at new year's, but I did lose a little bit - which is a big deal for me, since I have an awful metabolism and my hormones aren't great, long story short. I'm going to keep on keeping on, and aim for health, not weight loss. Though, for me, they're pretty much synonymous (though they're not for everyone!), aiming for health feels more...real.
- I'm not saying I'm going to get over my procastination - I don't even think it's possible to permanently get rid of it, though there are ways to curb it a little.
I will, however, say that I'm going to try very hard to get rid of one of the root causes of procastination - probably the main one, in my case - which is fear. Fear of many things: fear of failure, most notably, fear of humiliation, fear of unknown (and possibly good!) situations.
I think too much.
I need to throw myself into things. It doesn't work out? At least I tried!
- I'm going to be more open to the culture around me. I went to see Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, based on the novel by Antoine de Saint-Exupery) at the ballet last night, and it was fabulous. It wasn't a traditional ballet - I don't think there was single pointe shoe in sight - but the dancing was beautiful, like ballet but more fluid, almost lyrical. I really enjoyed everything about it - the score was especially fantastic, and the sets were innovative and beautiful. However, because they didn't necessarily read the book (or do a basic wikipedia search on the story, for some reason?) they didn't understand it, and instead of being bored in silence, they checked their phones (so distracting and disrespectful to the performers!) and spoke with the people sitting next to them (so distracting and disrespectful to the performers!) The whole time, all I could think of was: "Oh my goodness, they are missing quality art here because they didn't take the time to find out about it and because their minds aren't open enough to appreciate a style of ballet that isn't completely traditional".
This led me to this resolution: take the time to investigate and appreciate all the art around you!
- This leads to my last idea, and possibly the most important one:
This is extremely important to me (duh, it means being happy!), but it's also the hardest to carry out. Because doing what I love and doing it often? It means actually making time for doing what I love to begin with, let alone doing it often. It means balancing doing what I love with school, family, friends, jobs, etc... Which kind of relates to the procastination resolution, especially with balancing doing what I love with school commitments, haha.
Which bring me to:
What do I love to do?
As crazy as it sounds, this isn't an easy question to answer considering I've put what I love to do on the backburner quite a bit, especially because of school.
I love art history, which is convenient because that's what I'm doing next semester at school.
I love dancing and exercising, together and separately. In comes...ZUMBA! Also, 10 minute dance breaks will definitely play into this.
I love museums and galleries. Seriously, I'm an art history student, I have a museum VIP pass, my school is pretty close to all the major galleries, as well as the museum itself...but I almost never go! WHYYYYYY? Why do I do this to myself? My goal is to go to the museum, at least, once every month. Galleries can have more iffy opening schedules and are sometimes a bit harder to get to, so even if I'll be visiting many this summer, my main goal for the rest of the time is to at least go to the museum. Once a month isn't too hard if I put my mind to it!
I love to read. Seriously, that's probably my biggest love ever. I have no idea how I'll implement more reading time, but I do know that, in most of my free time this summer, I'll have a book in front of me. Maybe I'll start a book club? What do you guys think of a book club on this blog? We could even read fashion books, like that really good Chanel biography I read last year, I think by Justine Picardie? And The Beautiful Fall, I forget the author, but it was mostly about Yves St-Laurent, Karl Lagerfeld, and their world. We could even do fashion magazine reviews, each person would have a turn reviewing 1 fashion magazine, and there'd be a rotation every month, aka Jane reads her choice of fashion magazine in January and reviews it, Mary reads her choice of fashion magazine in February and reviews it, I read my choice of fashion magazine in March and review it... We could divide the September issue into a few parts, haha...
And finally, I love this blog. I'm hoping to have an easier time of it by keeping a list of every single entry idea I can think of - the biggest learning curve in terms of blogging, for me, has been having enough to write about and to stick to a schedule - so we'll see how that plays out. I want to have fun with this blog!
I love travelling and reading about travel. As odd as it is, something as big as taking a trip has been easier for me to implement than most of these other goals. I discovered a few
awesome websites which I'll talk about more in the future, I'm going next week to read my library's copy of National Geographic Travel (I hope they have it, they used to!), and I'm getting a job in order to save up even more for a trip I want to take next summer. I for sure have enough, more than enough, but this summer isn't quite right for travelling, and having a little more financial cushioning before taking the big trip would be really nice. Also, I have a ton of travel-related blog entries planned for this summer, yay! Two goals in one!
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Do you place a lot of importance on birthdays, or have any birthday traditions? I'd love to hear about them!
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Thanks for reading!
XO,
Laura
