I know that it was going to carry some sort of melancholic energy because of how the last film had ended. But I didn’t think it would make me this emotional either. Even though all marvel films make me emotional, honestly, this one has affected me the most. I don’t know whether because I’m starting to have my own worries and insecurities as an adult or whether it was because every scene of this film was addressing my negative thoughts.

Spiderman: Brand new day was the film I needed to see this summer. I needed to understand every word that was being said and truly digest it. For me, I came out of the cinema with more profound advice. And maybe I knew that advice, but I needed to hear it again. It was also a way for me to understand all the emotions that I’m going through during my 20s. And in this essay, I would like to share with you all the lessons that I took from this film.

~Always listen when your body is trying to warn you.

At the beginning of the film, Peter Parker is having constant headaches and can feel his body changing. He ignores it because he has a job to do, because he believes that there can be no rest for him. And clearly, Parker knows that there’s something wrong with him, but he doesn’t want to face it. He tries to repress it more and more to the point where his body forces him to deal with it. This happens to most of us when we’re overworked or stressed, or we’re going through something that we still haven’t processed yet. We keep ignoring the signs that our bodies are trying to signal us. And we ignore all the warnings. But we can’t do our best if we can’t take care of ourselves.

~You will always be stronger than you think you are.

When you face loss or disappointments, you begin to think that you will never come out of that hole. You think that everything is ending and that your world is falling apart. There were a lot of times where I wasn’t the most hopeful person ever. I wouldn’t have much faith. But everything that I thought I couldn’t face made me stronger than ever. In the end, Peter overcomes everything even though he was faced with loss and failures. Every bad thing that you were brave enough to face has made you a better person.

~The significance of the sentence “A brand new day”.

The way I look at this sentence is that tomorrow could be a new day where you choose to see things differently. You don’t forget easily, not quite. And you still haven’t learned how to move on. But you keep going anyway. That’s what I felt Peter doing. He kept going anyway. He knew he had a purpose and that being present mattered, not stuck in the past. The past will never be something that defines who you are and the things that happened to you will also never define you. What really defines you is how you choose to deal with your problems. You won’t be able to control everything that happens and that’s okay, what matters is how you choose to accept that fact.

~We need someone to help us see the light.

I could go on and on about the scene that had a conversation between Jean Gray and Aunt May. Jean has been alone for a while and abandoned by her mother, she really never had guidance. She never had someone embrace her qualities, except her sister. In Peter’s mind, Jean was able to see what it feels like to have someone be there for you and really understands you. We always need someone who knows how to embrace us and accepts us

for who we are.

“We love you not because you’re special, we love you because you’re you”

When you have somebody who truly loves you for who you are, it changes a lot of things. You feel more supported. You don’t feel like you’re alone. When Aunt May said those words to Jean, it healed something in her.

~You don’t have to fear change so much.

Nobody really likes change, and we always want some things to stay forever, but we can never guarantee that. Parker was so afraid of the changes that he was going through, but he learned how to control them, how to use those changes for his benefit. It’s okay to feel sad that some things are changing, but you’re going to come out of those changes a better person.

Written with love, Angie..

I spend a lot of time in my head. Maybe more than I should. Sometimes it’s a good place where I could daydream and think about my life, and sometimes it’s an endless battle of rumination. A moment of daydreaming can instantly turn into a vicious anxiety attack. What was a moment of peace can suddenly feel like an alarming wake up call. I could be thinking of a goal that I have and how nice it would be to achieve it, but it takes a minute for my mind to think of all the things that could go wrong. This feeling almost drowns me and I have to catch my breath to remind myself that all those things are just in my imagination.

I feel as if I live in two kinds of realities. The one in my head and the one that’s truly happening. If someone is being cold in texts, in my mind they immediately hate me, when they could just be having an off day. If I get rejected from something, I’m immediately not good enough. If I compare myself on social media, I immediately feel behind. When I make a small mistake, I immediately feel that I ruined my future forever. My mind creates storylines that are far from my true reality and this creates a reality of true pain made from illusions. All those things are simply not true and could be stopped if I can control my way of thinking.

Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said that “We suffer more in imagination than we do in reality”.

We are constantly thinking of worst-case scenarios, bad things that didn’t happen, and bad things that could potentially happen. I don’t think there’s any day that passes without me thinking of all of the things that go wrong in life. It’s like whenever I’m alone my mind instantly chooses to ruminate itself away.

We’re always going through big events in our lives and that tends to feed our anxiety a bit. But what feeds our anxiety more is our way of thinking. What fuels the anxiety more and more is our constant rumination.

We all worry, right? But can worrying have levels? Are we training our minds to worry more than they should? I feel as if I made my mind normalize this level of anxiety and worrying. It’s like whenever something new occurs, my mind can’t help but ruminate.

I don’t think I have ever gone through an event without the company of anxiety. I feel as if anxiety likes to exist both in good and bad moments and I can never escape it. I place it in every emotion and I think about all the negative aspects that could come out of a situation. And this ruins our lives, it ruins our experiences, and it ruins our memories. When we constantly think negatively about everything, we train our minds to always think this way and we fear things that never really happened. We just invent bad things that could happen. We anticipate them a little bit more than we should.

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts” -Marcus Aurelius.

Nothing good can ever come from negative thinking, it will only distract you from all the good things that are already happening in your life. It will fool you into thinking that all those bad things are real. We shouldn’t let all our worries and anxiety fool us into thinking that we’re falling apart.

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened” -Mark Twain

I think we all relate to this quote a little bit too much. I think we spend a lot of our time worrying about the silliest things and we waste our days because we’re too anxious to really live. We all obsess over things that likely won’t happen. And I always wonder what my life would look like without all this anxiety and worrying. I wonder about the person I could be without the black clouds of worry that hover in my mind.

I also believe that our daily social media usage has fueled our worrying. Social media has created for us things to worry about more that we didn’t really need. We’re comparing lifestyles, houses, opportunities, and everything else and thinking that we actually lack something. This can make us forget all the beautiful things that we already have in our lives.

The mind can be our worst enemy if we can’t control our way of thinking. And we must know that the things we continue to obsess and worry about will end up controlling us. We can’t truly be content with anything if we keep worrying about it all. Sometimes we should listen to our instincts and sometimes the mind can play tricks on us.

Written with love, Angie..

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It has occurred to me lately that waiting around to be chosen will never feel good as I always make it out to be. All the love and attention in the world can feel good for a while, but the slight absence of it makes me feel like I alone don’t exist. But we shouldn’t wait around for others to make us feel like we exist.

Choosing yourself will always be the ultimate act of love that you can ever dream of having. It means that when people or the things that you want most let go of you, you accept it and you cling to yourself more. Choosing yourself can appear in many forms: letting go of things that abandoned you, moving on from some people, focusing on yourself, chasing the right things for you, and walking away from things that are too much sometimes.

Sometimes we’re so convinced that certain people were meant to stay that we try to change everything about ourselves to make them stay. We allow ourselves to go down rabbit holes and solve mysteries of why they can’t be there for us and we forget to show a little compassion for ourselves. We’re so convinced that some jobs are the right jobs for us and when we get rejected, it feels like we’re being abandoned. But choosing yourself over any person or job or anything that you were starving for means that you respect yourself enough to accept the fact that those things aren’t meant for you and there will always be better things tailored to who you are more.

-You’re the only one capable of saving yourself.

We always tend to listen to others more and wait for them to come and save us from our thoughts and ideas. But no one really does. And no one can have the same power that you have over yourself. You’re the only one who knows what can heal you better than anyone. Surely, sometimes we need advice from others, but they don’t know you like you know yourself. You’re the only one who is truly capable of getting out the holes you dig for yourself and of curing the waves of sadness that wash over you.

-Things change when you choose yourself.

Your relationship with yourself becomes so much better when you choose yourself. You stop feeling the need to please everybody and you get to focus more on what actually makes you comfortable and at peace. You begin to understand yourself more and more instead of trying to figure out everyone else. You stop worrying about missed opportunities and what ifs, because no matter what you still choose yourself. You stop worrying about others’ opinions and expectations of you. You also find yourself more forgiving and more graceful as you continue to grow. When you choose yourself, you trust your inner voice more and you’re able to make quick decisions. And you respect yourself more. You tend to lose people who want you to stay the way you are, always choosing them. You get rid of things and feelings that give you temporary contentment. You also begin to live your life the way it pleases you and seem interesting to you. It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.

-It’s okay to walk away when things feel too heavy.

It’s really important to know that walking away or choosing to quit something isn’t a sign of weakness. It isn’t something you should be ashamed about. Knowing when to walk away is a type of strength that not everyone is lucky to have. Knowing when to quit what is causing you anger and pain is a strength, not a weakness. Some people are comfortable with it, so they expect you to be comfortable too. But it’s more than okay if you choose to walk away. It’s okay if you realize some things aren’t meant for you and that they don’t bring you happiness anymore.

-When you choose yourself, you win.

When you stop looking for the answers in others, when you stop looking for the cure in their love and attention, you will win. You win because you put your needs first and you listen to your guts more. You win because you don’t get disappointed when others don’t choose you. You don’t get disappointed when others don’t show up for you the way you expected and you definitely won’t get disappointed when others choose to abandon you.

Choosing yourself must be bigger than what you feel. It must be above all feelings and urges. It must be our biggest priority. Choose what helps you grow and what makes you feel alive. Choose the things that make you feel good about yourself. You will never look back once you choose yourself.

Written with love, angie..

I think there are a lot of times that I have had really close people to me who didn’t really know me. They couldn’t see past the surface of who I am. They didn’t know my true perspectives on things, my hobbies, or any of my passions. I used to think that this was my fault or maybe I never talked much. I never let anyone get to know me. But it seemed that no matter how much I talked or explained, I still felt misunderstood.

There are people in our lives that seem like they exist forever in our hearts and there isn’t a day that you would like to live without them in it, but they still don’t know you. Even worse, they still don’t understand you. And if anything mattered more to me than being loved, it is to be understood. For me, being understood is a form of blessing that not everyone is lucky to have.

It is like a weight being lifted from your chest and someone’s helping you lift this heavy weight.

There are friends, partners, parents, and siblings that can love you so much but they don’t know who you truly are and this makes you feel very estranged from your surroundings. And there are people who I don’t talk to anymore and I never got the chance to make them truly know me. To make them understand who I was.

I think being perceived in a way that isn’t really you is one of the most heartbreaking experiences ever. There are people that have made up their minds about you no matter what you choose to do. They brand you as false adjectives and traits that never really suited you. They will never know you from the inside.

We all want to be seen. We yearn for it the day we are born. But when people see you in a mismeasured frame, it destroys you. It destroys how you view yourself and it makes you unsure of everything. It’s as almost as one day you know who you are and then someone characterizes you in a way that makes you question everything. It’s so scary to not have someone know us truly, to not have someone understand our inner architecture. Because a lot of the things that we choose to do, we do it to make us feel seen.

And it seems even worse when people imagine you in a projected way, in a way that they have made up totally in their mind because that’s how their experiences with other people shaped them.

I don’t think I have ever hated a feeling more than getting misunderstood and mischaracterized by people who I loved and thought that they understood me more than anyone. I don’t think I have felt more empty than when someone places me in a personality that doesn’t fit me or my standards. It’s the loneliest feeling in the world, to be misunderstood. It almost makes me not want to speak at all out of fear that they misplace me again. Some people will just continue purposefully to perceive in a way that isn’t you, because that’s what they truly believe in.

Maybe we keep too much to ourselves or maybe people have limits to how they observe others and can only view them in a shallow way. But being inaccurately perceived by someone you shared everything with will always feel like a stab to the heart.

Lately, I have been trying to find peace in allowing people to perceive me wrongly and still choosing to believe in who I am. And that it is okay that not everyone will understand me and who I am. We can’t let others’ perceptions of us stop us from being true to ourselves. And maybe it’s enough that we know who we are. It could be a magical thing that we only could know who we truly are.

Written with love, angie..

Ever since we were little kids, there is one question that has followed us most: what do you want to be when you grow up?

And usually we came up with some good answers. We wanted to be doctors, engineers, teachers, athletes, artists, and astronauts. And some of us lived up to those answers, and some of us are still trying to come up with answers. Some of us are falling short of who we expected to be when we grow up. But couldn’t there be more answers out there? Couldn’t there be still more time to discover who we are and we’re not actually falling short?

There’s a quote by Oscar Wilde that I cherish with my whole heart and it says: “if you know exactly what you want to be in life, you will become it. That is your punishment- actually not knowing who you want to be, reinventing yourself every morning, not being a noun but a verb, being moving in life, not being fixed in life is a privilege”.

There is a kind of beauty to this quote, it makes me understand that I shouldn’t limit myself to one path only or one passion. I think it is very important for everyone going through an identity crisis to memorize this quote by heart and to know that it is okay to know what you want to be in life and to know what to do. But it is also more than okay if you still have no clue what you want to be.

It is a blessing and a privilege if you have the opportunity to explore more paths that you may want to take. You get to wake up every morning and find more about who you are and the things you like and dislike. It can only be anxious if you keep setting non-existent deadlines for yourself to become something. It can only be scary if you trap yourself somewhere that you do not want to be.

You’re not a brand. We sometimes feel the need to stick to a certain niche because we feel it fits our brand but that just takes the magic away from us, it takes away all the wonderful things that make us who we are. The more things we are passionate about, the more we find a lot to live for in our everyday lives.

You don’t have to be so afraid of changing paths. So many people are afraid of changing paths that they keep living in a prison that they created for themselves. They would rather be stuck than freeing themselves and discovering other things that could actually be better for them. When you change something about the journey you were taking, it means you were brave enough to let go of something that wasn’t working out for you. And it means that you are getting to know more about who you actually are.

We also have to realize that no career defines us, and no job title will ever be enough to describe everything that is special about us. Your purpose was never about the career you chose, it’s about how you behave everyday, how you choose to be kind everyday despite everything, and how you treat yourself and others. Your purpose will always be higher than just a job title.

I know that there’s so much pressure on you to figure things out. And there’s anxiety that lingers around every decision you take. But it is okay to not know who you are. Because if you have the opportunity to get up every morning and try again and again until you find yourself, then this is more than enough.

“To define is to limit” -Oscar Wilde.

I also carry that quote with me all the time. We were not made to have definitions or to be reduced to a certain niche. We are so much more than that. We’re much more than a description of a job title or a brand. We can be passionate about multiple things. I have seen doctors who love painting more than medicine. I have seen people in corporate who love writing stories. Engineers who love taking pictures and scientists who love film-making.

What matters is that we do not limit ourselves or keep ourselves in an open cage.

Written with love, Angie..

I don’t know when it happened, but somehow art began to be perceived as a hobby and nothing more. Every practicing artist right now knows what it is like to be asked about their current profession and how it leaves them speechless. Saying that you are an artist in this current society is almost blasphemous. Artists these days are often asked to be more realistic or to just practice their art as a hobby.

While having hobbies is more than healthy, some people aren’t content with just having their artistic desires as hobbies only. Some art consumes us and throbs at our brains until there’s nothing to think about except this feeling. It vibrates our core and our hearts pulses to it. To someone who’s generally not artistic, this will be utter nonsense. But people who continually go on practicing it everyday will understand. It’s like they just can’t help it.

Art became an inevitable force through the 1850s. It took many forms, whether in impressionism, realism, or romanticism. And it started getting more and more appreciated. Impressionism started appearing as artists like Claude Monet and Edgar Degas began practicing and drawing more freely than the traditional ways of previous artists. It was considered the beginning of a modern era. Then came the fauvism (wild beasts) movement which had a sweeping effect on art as fauvism artists were considered bold in their color choices and method in drawing. The art movement didn’t stop there. There were a lot of significant changes throughout the history of painters. All these painters ,during these eras, were brave enough to try something new and they inspired so many others.

Art can take as many forms as it desires. It’s not just paintings that changed over the years. There are many brave artists who changed the course of literature. From Shakespeare to Dostoevsky, their storytelling techniques and writing style inspired so many people. There are artists who were courageous enough to trust themselves and created new genres in literature. Like the one and only Mary Shelley who wrote the famous novel, Frankenstein. By creating this character, Mary Shelley invented the science fiction world which would then inspire so many others. The mystery genre was also hugely impacted by Agatha Christie. She’s the original queen of the ‘who done it’ theme. And we can never forget Charlotte Bronte, the Victorian novelist of Jane Eyre. Bronte always made her female characters experience and address strong, troubling themes. And I must mention Virginia Woolf, as she was one of the first authors to take us as readers through the consciousness of her characters. It was like they were thinking aloud with us.

James Baldwin is also one of the most heroic writers to ever exist. He used his talent and voice to speak up for the things that were unjust during his time. He spoke against everything that didn’t correspond with his beliefs.

One of the most prominent novelists to also have a major impact on Literature is Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky always focused on psychological issues when writing his characters. He focused on self-destruction, religious guilt, insanity, and murderous tendencies. His work would later on greatly influence politics and philosophical ideas. Dostoevsky was someone who felt everything deeply and he demonstrated this empathy in his novels. He wrote with all of his soul. Dostoevsky was brave enough to face his deepest fears and all the hard questions that no one wanted the answer to, and he wrote about them.

And great writing makes great films. There are great directors who brought many stories to life.

I could list so many: The Godfather, Harry Potter trilogy, Lord of the rings, Little women, The princess bride, the hunger games, No country for old men, etc. There are directors who took stories and changed how we view the entire cinema industry like Ingmar Bergman, Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Sofia Coppola and Paul Thomas Anderson.

In a way artists connect by their love for art. They connect as filmmakers, as poets, as musicians, as dancers, as painters, as actors, as storytellers or as novelists. They inspire each other and continue to inspire us. A painting could evoke a certain feeling in a poet or a filmmaker. A poem could write an entire screenplay for a film. A song could inspire writers to write a certain feeling. I know I enjoy writing most when I’m listening to music. A composer could change the way a dancer moves. All art is connected. Art can change over the years, but the way we feel about it will remain the same.

I find that there’s so much bravery in the way artists portray their projects. There’s so much courage and empathy, whether you are writing a book or making a film or drawing a picture. Art can have so much meaning and it can be so special no matter what anybody else tells you. It’s just as important as other worldly aspects.

There’s something so extraordinary about humans using art as a way to make sense of something. They use it as a way to find meaning and if they can’t find it then they create it. Artists are brave because they are willing to try something new and they love it so much that they don’t care if they fail. They are brave because they are letting their passions lead them where they need to be. And they are standing against anyone who tells them that art is a waste of time. That art is a waste of who they are, when art can be who we really are sometimes.

I also believe that art IS political. It can show many injustices. It can remind us how history can be so cruel and why we should avoid repeating it. It can tell the story of those who can’t. Documentaries and films can spread awareness and help people realize false propaganda that is being pushed on them. There are writers who wrote about politics and how they really view them and their fears regarding how government works and leadership.

So many people resort to art as medication for their mental health. Some rely on a good film to make them feel better. Some have comfort sitcoms. Human beings have a need to belong and relate to something that makes them feel more real. And films make you feel a part of something and their characters can make you feel seen. Music, too, can make you feel seen. A songwriter could encapsulate all your emotions in one song. I can recall all the endless times that I felt bad and was in need of a good song. Or all the times I went to the rescue of a good book to forget my current reality.

Artists are so crucial to society. They protect and preserve our feelings. They make us feel emotions that we didn’t even know that we have. Everyone asks them to let go of their dreams but they just keep going forward with only a dream in their hearts. There is no life without art, because art exists everywhere whether you like it or not. Artists choose to voice their opinions and they choose to share it with the whole world. They let go of every obstacle holding them back, they let go of shame, and they let go of others’ expectations and opinions.

Art is brave because it gives you a chance to know yourself truly and intimately. It is brave because by pursing it, you defy society and maybe even try to mend it.

We need more people to chase their artistic desires. We need more people confidently engaging in their artistic side. Because they will find themselves only in art and by doing so, they will save so many people. By expressing themselves, they will find a place that they can belong to. All the flaws and imperfections that an artist could have is what makes their art so beautiful and relatable. Everyone needs art when they are mourning, or falling in love, or feeling happy, or going through a breakup. We need the bravery of all artists to make the art that can truly save us.

We need them now more than ever..

Written with love, Angie..

And then I saw this film, and this was the kind of film that really makes you feel seen. Fantastic Mr. Fox is a film directed by the brilliant Wes Anderson. It tells the story of a wild fox that feels down because of the way he lives his life and how it makes him feel poor. So he decides to steal from the three evil farmers who live in his neighborhood. This puts his family in danger as the farmers are aggravated and feel the need to hunt them. But what pulled me the most to the story was Ash, the son.

Ash is different. “ He’s too short”. “He dresses like a girl, he’s just different”. His family and friends were always aware that he’s different and even made him feel that he was different. Ash felt that he was always an outsider and someone who would never fit in in his surroundings. Throughout the film, you can observe how different Ash is. He dresses differently and his physique isn’t similar to other foxes. Everyone drinks apple juice and he chooses grape juice. He’s just different. Ash is also constantly compared to his athletic and confident cousin, which makes him feel worse about himself.

“I know what it’s like to feel different” -Mrs. Fox.

I know what it’s like to feel like you don’t belong. That you don’t like where you are right now and you don’t really know where to imagine yourself in the future. You sit in conversations where your mind drifts and feel like you can’t relate to anything that is being said. I know what it’s like to have really close friends and still feel misunderstood around them. You constantly feel like an alien around them. You don’t look like them, you don’t dress like them, and you don’t talk like them. You have different tastes in everything, music, movies, art, and sports, but you’re afraid of judgement so you stay quiet. You want to share a different opinion about certain topics but you don’t want to be the misfit. I know what it’s like to feel more sensitive than others. You react more emotionally, you think way more deeply, and you overthink and analyze every situation more than you should.

We spend all our lives trying to fit in. We spend all our time in school worrying about fitting in more than anything. We want to belong somewhere so badly that we strip ourselves of everything that could be unique about us. We let go so much of ourselves just to feel the validation of others and we let go of everything that makes us who we are. We let go of our nerdy hobbies and our taste. We let go of our sensitivity and empathy because somehow society deemed it less cooler. And feeling different usually morphs into pleasing people. We do all we can to satisfy them in terms of agreeing with them or doing what they want, just so we can feel less different.

But here’s the truth, we all feel different. No soul or consciousness can resemble you as exactly as you would like it to do. We all carry different types of experiences and circumstances that contribute to who we are. We all feel scared that we won’t fit in. We feel like we belong somewhere else at some point in our lives. I guess it’s part of the human experience. Feeling different is scary, but there’s nothing wrong with it. You shouldn’t feel like getting rid of all the good things about you, just because it makes you feel different. We have to always remember that whatever we possess or lack is a blessing to us. Everything about you was made purely for your character and imitating others only drains who you truly are.

At the end of the film, Ash rescues his cousin and his family and he was able to rescue them because of his ‘small physique’. In the beginning, Ash was bitter and jealous. He constantly compared himself to his cousin. He was insecure around his friends and he felt like his parents weren’t proud of him. We can all say that we felt like this at some point in our lives. But then Ash understands that he doesn’t always need to feel this way. That there’s something wrong with him. He can use his distinctness to his advantage, and that this distinctness can make him a winner sometimes.

When we stop trying to fit in and when we start embracing who we truly are, the right environment finds us and so do all the right people. The funny thing is people spend their entire lives trying to be more similar to others and then suddenly they grow up and desperately wish for a different life, an adventure, or a new niche. This is why you should hold on to everything that makes you feel different from others, because you now possess the life that everyone later yearns for. The adventure of being different.

Feeling different is an inevitable feeling and it will happen to you eventually.

And there’s something kind of fantastic about that…

Written with love, angie..

I believe that all of us are haunted by this fear of falling short behind all of our friends and families. We think we are in some kind of race with our loved ones, and that life is measured by our milestones. We think that our age determines where we should be in our lives and if we didn’t achieve certain things by a certain age, we consider it a failure. It’s an inevitable feeling. It’s like we can’t ever run away from it. One small achievement we hear of and we think our whole world is falling apart. We are always rushing to blame ourselves and blame our past. We always blame the past like there could ever be a possibility of returning back and fixing what we think needs to be fixed. But that shouldn’t be the case.

We are so quick to judge ourselves and be hard on ourselves. But at that time, we did the best we could with the resources we had at the time. We can reminisce about our mistakes and learn from them, but I can never see the point in breaking our hearts over and over again because of our old mistakes.

We must always remember that the only thing that can save us is doing our best each day and the rest is not in our control. The rest is destiny. We must also erase this silly idea of feeling behind in life, because there is no such thing. It simply does not exist. How can we be behind in our own lives? How can we be late to our own destiny?

We all fall into the same mistake of comparing our journey to others, but no one will ever have the same journey that you have. No one will have to make the same decisions that you made. Comparing yourself to others blinds you from seeing all the progress that you made. It makes you fixated on all the things that are right with them and wrong with you, when in fact you could be doing a whole lot better than you think. I used to compare myself a lot, until I realized I’m comparing myself with people that have different resources, different principles, and different circumstances. It made me see that comparing myself with them doesn’t even make sense when we were given different sets of cards in life. I’d rather compare myself to my old self, see what I can change or where I have made more progress.

We don’t need to compete with the people in our lives. We don’t need to measure our progress according to their achievements and standards. I think that this is one of the main reasons why we tend to feel behind in life, because we measure ourselves according to others’ success. We look at what they accomplished and we feel like we are late for something that we don’t even want. You don’t want what they have, you just want to feel as good as they do. You don’t even think about what they achieved, you just wonder about what it would feel like

.We also tend to analyze the past a lot and worry about the future more than we should. We think about the things that we should have done and the things that will go wrong in the future. But this just tears us down. Don’t dwell on the past or obsess over the future. It will always end up destroying your potential. Dwelling on the past haunts you and destroys your future. I feel like I grow weaker the more I agonize over the past. You can repeat the past over and over again in your mind and everything will still remain the same.

Something else that we need to keep doing in order to move on is to erase the ‘what ifs’. No good ever comes out of that type of mindset. We have to get used to the idea that some things are just out of our control and maybe there’s something comforting about that idea. We don’t have to bear all of it, we just do what we can and hope for the best. We do our best to avoid regret, but not everything is going to go our way. We need to stop wondering about what could have been because that just sets us backwards and distracts from our current present.

You are not behind in life and you are not late for anything. Life could begin again and again for you everyday and you could find your second chance.

Written with love, Angie..

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I wasn’t much of a reader when I was younger. I knew I liked to write, I liked to make up stories, and rhyme words. I liked writing how I felt and I liked writing poetry. It wasn’t until I started taking literature classes in school that I actually began reading fiction. It was like a new world for me. It took my enjoyment of writing to another level. I got inspired by so many stories that I would have to imitate or embed sometimes in my own writing. I didn’t take it as seriously at first as I should have. I just enjoyed consuming great writing. But then I realized how much literary analysis affected my mindset. I was not seeing things my own way, I was seeing them through the author’s eyes. I was thinking about characters and change of settings. I was thinking about choice of words and big vocabulary.

My teacher would constantly try to convince me how reading a book is so much more beneficial than watching a film. I’m a huge cinephile, and I was the type to want to watch the film, instead of reading the book. So I didn’t understand why reading fictional work would help me more than watching a film. I didn’t understand fully how much reading good literature has actually impacted my critical thinking abilities. I didn’t understand fully how powerful reading actually is. It requires minimum effort from your body, yet it is so powerful.

These days I resort to reading more than often. In a world full of ads, algorithms, social media, and influencers telling you how to live your life, I want something that is quiet, yet carries so much meaning. A book tells you an idea, a story and it leaves space for you to formulate an opinion. It helps you develop a taste. It’s not an argument or a conversation. No one is telling you how you should think or feel. You can think freely without influence and all feelings are genuine.

And critical thinking skills are always developed best when you are reading fictional work. When you’re reading a well-written book, you’re also analyzing it. It’s almost like you are engaging with the characters. You’re trying to understand their actions before judging them. You’re also having an opinion about them and how they are engaging with other characters. There are no external noises or someone telling you what is right or wrong. As you keep on reading, you get to decide what you consider right or wrong. You have all these different perspectives from each character, and they aren’t just shouting their opinions at you, you get to actually understand slowly and carefully where they are coming from and their different viewpoints.

After I notice myself consuming a lot of short form content, I always find myself running back to reading. It’s like I’m trying to relax my mind from all the overstimulation that occurs during social media consumption. But it’s not only relaxing my brain, it’s actually fixing it from all the toxic content that I often consume from social media.

I feel that a lot of social media platforms steal my attention and my ability to think about other important things. But books don’t do that. Books don’t mess with our attention span, they increase it. Books aren’t filled with ads or propaganda for huge corporations. A well-written book allows you to think deeply, you slow down, you think with care and curiosity. You develop more and more empathy, because here you are sitting down and trying to understand why this character feels this way and how it would feel to be him. A well-written book can save you. It can save your mind, ease your soul, and make you feel understood. We get all kinds of benefits from reading a good book. We get entertainment, critical thinking skills, and a break from all the loud media out there. I’d say reading a good book is my current therapy.

I’d argue that reading a book instead of spending endless hours on social media is a kind of a rebellious act. Because you are choosing how to spend your time, you’re choosing the kind of content that you want to consume. You’re not just scrolling endlessly and seeing ads everywhere. Reading will allow you to perceive things better and be open to other perspectives. You are always analyzing and trying to understand hidden meanings. When consuming short form content, I almost feel like a zombie. Scrolling like I’m just chasing cheap dopamine. I feel that I was slowly losing my ability to even read two pages, because I had overloaded my brain with too much content. I began to realize how much I needed to bring back reading into my life. I needed to control what I allowed my mind to consume.

My teacher always used to ask me what I inferred about certain paragraphs and lines in the story, and I did not understand why that was always a repetitive question. Why was inference important? But as I got older, I understood what it meant to see something or read something, but with more care and I look for evidence now everywhere. I look for evidence so I could come up with my own conclusion. These days opinions are being scattered everywhere and with no solid ground to stand on.

I think everyone should read to take back all the time that was stolen from them. To stop consuming so much ads and propaganda. Allow yourself to slip into an unknown story and come up with your own conclusions. Allow yourself to slow down and think more deeply. Allow yourself to think about how the characters feel.

Reading a good book will always nourish your soul.

written with love, Angie..

There isn’t a more haunting story than the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. For me, it is the saddest story in Greek mythology. It is both a tale of love and tragedy. It begins with a musician who falls in love with a nymph, and shortly, after their marriage, the new bride is bitten by a viper and dies. Struck with deep sorrow and grief, Orpheus realizes he cannot live without her. He cannot bear a life without her. So, he uses the magic of his music to make his way into the underworld in hopes of retrieving her once again. He charms everyone with his music, including Hades, who rules the underworld. But Hades does not make it easy for him. To take back Eurydice, he must never turn to look at her as she follows him for three years to come out of the underworld. But Orpheus turns around. Growing more and more anxious and doubtful, Orpheus turns and looks at Eurydice. And Eurydice stays forever in the underworld.

Some question Orpheus’ actions. Why would he turn to look at her, knowing that it will punish both of them in the end. Why would he sacrifice the life they would have together? Why would he turn and lose her forever? But I believe that we would all turn and look back to all of those whom we love deeply.

To me, the act of looking back to those you love is the greatest thing you can ever do for them. It means you care about them and it means you notice them. We are always looking back at everything around us. We look back at our past. It’s nostalgia, it never goes away. We look back to tend to our anxieties that everything is okay. We look back at airports when we are leaving the people we love, because even though we’re leaving, we still want to look at their faces. We look back at school memories, at childhood friends, and at silly crushes. We look back at college and old jobs. We look back at old hobbies. We look back because we once cared about all of those things.

We all mimic Orpheus in our own little ways. We care so much that even in our hardest times, we still choose to look back sometimes. Although looking back can have its dire consequences, and everyone is always telling us to move forward, to keep going without turning our heads, like how Orpheus just should have kept going without looking back at Eurydice, but we can’t help ourselves from turning one more time and looking back at the things that mean so much to us.

Sometimes going forward requires us to look back to not forget ourselves, to not forget those we love, and to not abandon the things that once meant a lot. Maybe looking back from time to time helps us move on a little bit easier than not looking back at all.

It’s not just love that makes us look back. It’s also grief. It’s the fear of losing somebody and never seeing them again. Grief makes us stuck and wanting to look back more than ever. It makes us want to preserve and cherish those memories more than ever. And there’s also the fear, which makes all of us turn our heads more and more, scared that we will lose or miss any moment of them. Scared that we won’t have much time with them. That’s what was occurring the most to Orpheus. He was grieving Eurydice and he was scared that he could lose her any second.

Looking back wasn’t a cowardly act or a vain decision. It was an act of love and loyalty. It was an act of noticing. Orpheus used his art and music to go back and save Eurydice, because he truly loved her and not looking back at her is just as hard as losing her again. The feeling of doubt that he didn’t know whether she was behind him or not was stronger than everything else. Maybe the story of Orpheus teaches us that we should trust more, but we have all been Orpheus when the doubt of certain things was eating us alive.

“Eurydice, dying now a second time, uttered no complaint against her husband. What was there to complain of, but that she had been loved?”

― Ovid, Metamorphoses

This quote struck me the most because as we all try to figure out why Orpheus turned to look back at her, knowing the punishment, Eurydice forgave him. There was nothing to say or do but knowing that she had been truly loved by Orpheus. He looked back to make sure that she was behind him and she knew this. She didn’t complain about him, because she understood him. Orpheus’s mistake was not looking back, it was falling in love deeply with Eurydice, and she knew this. Orpheus’s love for Eurydice can’t be questioned. He recklessly traveled through the underworld to get her back. Even in his death, he still sang about her.

Hades knew how much Orpheus loved Eurydice, and he trusted that Orpheus would turn and look back at her.

I think we all tend to look back from time to time. At people, at memories, or even at places. It doesn’t necessarily mean weakness or doubt. Maybe it’s our way of admitting that we cared. That we loved something more than ourselves. That we can’t move forward sometimes without taking one last glimpse of the people and things we loved. Maybe it means that we honor our past lives and relationships and we keep the memories forever with us. Looking back like Orpheus does not mean weakness. It just shows how much we care.

Written with love, Angie..

It is honestly all a blur after college for me. No one really prepares you for what happens after graduation. No one tells you what the world is going to look like. No one shares their saddest moments or bad experiences, you just take a glimpse of their superficial lives. You are going to see every person you ever knew in school or in college moving on or following a certain path that maybe you don’t like the directions of. Everyone is going to try to give you advice and convince you that it somehow magically transformed their lives. They will try to sell you a dream that only belongs to them and will try to get you to believe that this is the right path for you. And you will end up trying to copy their lifestyle thinking it would save you. You will end up searching for traces of their actions so you could start following those traces. But suddenly, you feel lost more than ever. And the traces that once acted as guidance are now becoming distractions from what you truly want to do. You tried things that didn’t fit you and it suffocated you. This is what always happens when we trust other people more than our guts.

It took me a while to understand this, but following your dreams and working towards your ambitions requires you to be brave. You need courage more than anything else to go after the things you want. You need courage to believe that you are going to actually create the life you need for yourself.

Some will try to get you to follow a ‘safe path’ and something that they trust, that they can understand. But there is no such thing as a safe path. There are things that worked out for others and things that can work out for you only. We need to be braver than to fall into the mindset of following a safe path. Being brave means you chase curiosity instead of stability. It means you welcome life and its mysteries instead of hiding behind comfort and traditions. No good experience ever existed from a safe path.

I completely and wholeheartedly sympathize with anyone who felt like their dreams were out of bounds, that all they felt was fear when they were thinking about their future. And I know what it’s like to have no one support your dream, to have everyone telling you ‘be realistic’. But following the things your heart yearns for is as realistic as you should be because what else are you going to do if not the things you actually want. I used to get really scared when I would imagine myself having the life I dream about because as exciting as it sounds, it can get a little bit overwhelming. But I would rather be scared of chasing those dreams than to be full of regret and scenarios of what ifs.

Being brave does not just mean following your dreams, it means learning how to let go of people’s opinions and expectations of you. We are not meant to satisfy everybody and we never will, everyone will always point and judge your actions. All that you can really do is to be good towards the people you love, but still create boundaries and space for your own life choices. As long as we are not hurting anybody, the way we choose to live our lives is completely up to us only. We can’t create the life we dream about while listening to all the noise outside.

You have to be braver than this. Braver than everybody’s opinion of you and than society’s expectations of you. In a society that doesn’t make any effort to understand you, don’t make any effort to please them. Because they will always find a way to make you feel small or incompetent. Like all things you dream about are out of reach. They are going to tell you that you are too sensitive or you are unrealistic because they are either too afraid to dream or they can no longer dream about anything. It doesn’t have to be the same for you or me. Even if we face a million failures, at least we were brave enough to try and risk it all. At least we were brave enough to dream in the midst of all of this.

Written with love, Angie…

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When I went back to journaling, I started thinking more clearly and I started writing better. It didn’t even matter what I was writing down, I just wanted to write it down. I decided to use my journal as a method to trace my own patterns, to know what makes me anxious and what makes me stuck in a cycle. I decided to write in it deeply and honestly, without being influenced or having an algorithm created for me to influence the way I perceive certain things. I decided to write by hand again, because I want to feel again what it is like to spell all my emotions on a piece of paper that was once blank, and now it is full of me. It is full of my feelings, my insecurities, my flaws, my fears, and my hopes.

I was so curious as to why writing by my own hand feels different, in a good way, than typing on a keyboard. And I found an article by the National Library of Medicine explaining the neuroscience facts behind handwriting and typing. It mentioned how modern technology has created new paths for us to express ourselves other than writing by hand. The traditional ways of writing on paper or writing a letter have grown less and less each day. So instead of letters, everything is now being typed and sent in short texts. It is discovered that handwriting is involved in activating certain regions in the brain that control motor, sensory, and cognitive processing. The neural circuits in your brain are more engaged than when you are just typing on a keyboard. It is also mentioned that writing by hand would equal more memory retention. It is a complex neuropsychological process that works on cognitive and emotional elements in us. Your handwriting is a process connecting linguistic functions, motor abilities, and visuospatial functions which is the ability to analyze and study things visually. (Marano, et al., 2025

Another really important point in this article is that brain activity can differ depending on whether you are writing in an alphabetical based system or the hieroglyphic (ancient Egyptian) and logographic (Chinese). Using a normal alphabet system engages the left hemisphere of our brain, while writing in a logographic system engages the right hemisphere of our brain, leading to you having a better memory and better motor cooperation.

Although it is still an ongoing study, a theory in graphology, the analysis of handwriting, suggests that your own handwriting can tell so much about who you are. What you are truly like, your emotional and mental state, and all the things that really move you. They analyze the pressure with which you write, the size of your handwriting, the spacing between words, and when you decide to stop a sentence. It is extraordinary to me how such a skill can tell so much about someone. It is extraordinary that writing will always be a huge part of who we are. We write to say how we feel, and how we mean, and to say the things we crave to say out loud.

Based on much research, some say that constantly relying on keyboards to write leads to less engagement of our brain’s neural circuits that are related to learning and memorizing. The article also mentioned that writing by hand goes at a much slower pace, which allows you to think and ponder deeply. It allows you to explore your thoughts intrinsically and let it flow into depths of creativity. There’s no one telling you what to write. It’s just you and a piece of paper. When you write by hand, you tend to reflect more and think about what you are going to lay out onto that paper.

People are starting to write less and less by hand, and what’s even more concerning is that children are not writing on paper. Everything has become digitalized in education. This may affect their cognitive skills and development. By neglecting the skill of handwriting, it can affect their ability to engage in other manual activities such as drawing, cutting, or even learning to play musical instruments. Their visual awareness decreases more and more as they don’t practice writing by hand. And like mentioned before, writing helps you memorize better, so as children are not taught to write more by hand, their ability to memorize can be at risk. Today we are teaching children technology, efficiency, and doing things faster instead of prioritizing creativity and healthy brain development. Writing does not just affect one thing in your brain, it affects multiple aspects such as motor skills, coordination, dexterity, and cognitive development.

There are so many advantages to writing by your own hand, and I fear that we are stepping away from those advantages more and more each day as we rely on modern technology. In this new world of AI, social media, and computers, we are starting to forget the beauty and significance of writing in a notebook. So many people have begun journaling, because they saw how writing down how you feel by hand holds so much power.

I don’t want to forget my own hand writing. I don’t want everything written in my notes app. I don’t want to forget what it’s like to hold a pen and think deeply about what I want to write. I feel that my hand writing serves as evidence that I was here and I used my own hand to prove my existence, my emotions, and who I was. I don’t want everything to be typed on a keyboard. It can sound silly, but I feel more connected and engaged when I hold a pen than when I use a keyboard.

I hope that writing by hand will not cease to exist as we continue this adventure of digitalization. I hope when I grow old, I find my journals and reminisce on what it was like to hold my pen and let it spill all my feelings on the paper until it drowns. I hope my mind never forgets the ways of writing and how good it always made me feel. This is why I will always prefer journaling over writing in my notes app, once I start writing I can go on and on for pages. It’s almost as if my mind can no longer hold itself back from letting out all the toxins and once I write it down, I immediately feel better.

I want to leave pieces of who I was, what I did, and why I did it on paper and not on machines. My hand writing is a mosaic of everything that shows who I am. It is a mosaic of my emotions, my nature, my core, and my mentality. If I ever stop writing by hand, I feel that I will slowly lose all my abilities to express who I am.

Written with love, Angie…

References

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/

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If I had to begin with one film that inspired so many people, including me, I’d begin with Dead Poets Society. I’ll never forget the first time I learned the phrase ‘Carpe diem’ , which translates to ‘seize the day’. At Welton academy, Mr. John Keating was the new English teacher. Not only did he leave a good impression on the first day, but he also taught the students how to fall in love with their passions. He taught them how to take a chance on themselves and go after the things they want. But I can’t talk about Dead Poets Society, without mentioning the tragic events of Neil Perry’s character. Neil was raised by conservative parents who wanted him to become a doctor. He wanted to be an actor in theaters, but they just never really bothered to ask him what he wanted. Neil knew that he could never talk to his father about his dreams. He knew he wouldn’t understand him. But Keating did. Mr. Keating understood what it’s like to have dreams and things you are passionate about. He was a true father figure to all of his students, who needed his guidance and help throughout the movie. He taught them how to think for themselves and how to see things from different perspectives. He didn’t just teach poetry in his class; he showed his students how poetry exists in real life. Students need brave teachers who think with an open mind and who are willing to hear them.

Another film with a great teacher example is the film, Matilda. Matilda is about a young girl who is the complete opposite of her family, so she feels like she never belongs with them. She’s kind, caring, and she likes to read. But she never felt like she could share any of her thoughts or activities with her family. She looked for comfort and visibility in books only. When Matilda was sent for school, she met Miss Honey. Miss Honey was kind and nurturing towards all her students. She was the first one to ever comfort Matilda.

“You were born into a family that doesn’t always appreciate you, but one day things are going to be very different”. -Miss Honey (Matilda)

This quote means a great deal to me. Because if someone feels left out or different from the environment they were born in, they should not feel shameful about it. We don’t choose our families or the place we are born in. We can never control if our family members will accept us as who we truly are, but one day we will find those who will.

Miss Honey showed all her students that uniqueness holds a type of strength, it was never a weakness. She believed that a nurturing and empowering environment was really important for young children. She also believed that children should be able to stand for themselves, without fear from classmates or adults. Miss Honey is one of the finest examples of what teachers should be like with students. She was a symbol of kindness, compassion, and empathy.

I would also mention one of my newly favorite films, the holdovers. The film begins with the boarding school principal asking professor Paul Hunham, who teaches history, to stay during Christmas break with the students who aren’t going on holiday with their families. Professor Hunham is one of those classic teachers who are grumpy, but good natured. He is strict with his students, so none of them are really fond of him. Especially Angus Tully, a student who is forced to stay in school during the break because his newly married mother is spending some quality time with her husband. Angus also is mourning his alive father who is battling with mental illness. The film shows the dynamic between a teacher who quietly hates his life and a student who’s afraid of life. Mr. Hunham is not your conventional teacher, but he does teach Tully a lot of things.

“If you truly want to understand the present or yourself, you must begin in the past”. -Professor Paul Hunham (The Holdovers).

Hunham shows the importance of history, that the past serves as a way to understand the present and possibly save the future. We shouldn’t just dismiss certain things just because they only exist in the past. History teaches us how to avoid certain mistakes and how we can learn from them. However; Hunham shows us that although history is important, it does not decide who we are.

He also teaches us that we are not just our parents’ children. We are our own selves. And we have always got time to become what we wish to be and change for the better.

Another favorite of mine is the classic coming of age film, the edge of seventeen. This film encapsulates all the roller coaster emotions of being in high school. It includes Nadine who struggles with her relationships, a complicated mother, and the constant tension and fights with her brother. But of course, it also includes a good teacher, Mr. Bruner, who shows her that there’s more to life than what she is going through in high school. Nadine sees Mr. Bruner as a loser who surely must detest his own life, just like she does. But there’s this one scene, where Nadine calls Mr. Bruner and he picks her up from the most terrible date ever and she waits at his house for her family to pick her up. In his house, Nadine was surprised to see he had a family of his own. She saw him happy and with people he loved. Suddenly, life wasn’t so fearful and Nadine saw that things could always change for the better. Nadine always felt comfortable sharing with Mr. Bruner, because he always created a safe space for her, even if he didn’t talk much to her.

Last, but not least is one of my top favorite films, the perks of being a wallflower. This film made me feel seen in so many ways. Like any classic coming of age film, there is Mr. Anderson, the English teacher who just makes you feel seen and heard. There’s this one scene where the main character in the film, Charlie, asks Mr. Anderson on why people choose the wrong ones to date, and Mr.Anderson says this bewitching quote: “We accept the love we think we deserve”. This quote stays with you for a while, because what if the way we perceive ourselves can affect whom we choose as life partners. What if we don’t love ourselves enough to believe that we could deserve better than them. Mr. Anderson’s quote made me see that being with people who truly deserve us begins with truly appreciating ourselves and loving ourselves enough to choose what is good for us.

Written with love, Angie..

Note: if one of those photos belong to you, feel free to reach out for credit.

I find myself thinking about the past more than I think about anything else. I think about my old self, my old friends, high school, and the summer vacations. I leave no space for the present to happen and I don’t acknowledge the future. There are so many memories that haunt us. Things that we want to remember and things that we don’t want to remember. But I was wondering, is it a privilege to want to remember some things or is it better to forget they never happened.

Is nostalgia a privilege or a curse that will forever haunt us? will remembering heal us or bleed us more? And when do memories stop being beautiful and become more haunting. I fear that nostalgia will always attend with me everywhere I go.

It was said that nostalgia comes from a a combination of greek words ‘nostos’ and ‘algos’ which translates to ‘homecoming’ and ‘pain’. It was a term used by Johannes Hofer to describe the state of swiss soldiers who were fighting away from their home. That really stuck with me, because nostalgia literally means the pain of wanting to go home, of wanting to go back. It is the pain of yearning for some things in the past or even people of the past. You suddenly miss how you were back then, or how some people made you feel back then. You could look at someone you no longer know and become extremely nostalgic for how they used to be and the way they made you feel.

The feelings of nostalgia always hits like a thunder and never when you expect it.

Sometimes I pass by a street or hear a song or watch an old film, and suddenly I get overwhelmed with the waves of nostalgia. I remember what it was like for that old version of myself. One glance at memories from the past and suddenly I am that old version. It’s as almost I can feel what she felt. I don’t think I have ever known a feeling as bittersweet as nostalgia. They say that nostalgia is proof that you have lived a life worth living, but what if it’s a reminder of what has perished. What could never return.

When I was younger and before my family and I moved cities, we lived in this big house and it was my childhood home. It’s been years since I have been there and every time I remember it, it breaks my heart. I remember all the good memories there and I remember what it felt like to be a child. I get so nostalgic every I time I think about it, but I can tell that I am starting to forget all the tiny details that I have loved about this house. Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if I don’t remember that house anymore. If I forget about it, I would be done with all of this nostalgia. I would leave those memories where they belong, in the past. We can never really move on if we keep carrying the weight of our past.

I believe that nostalgia can serve as protection against forgetting all the good things in life. Maybe a lot of things changed and you lost some people. But nostalgia preserves the memories of them. it preserves the good memories of the past. Sometimes I wish I could never feel nostalgic or miss the way things used to be, but nostalgia will keep me from losing all the moments that made me who I am today.

Angie wally..🕯️

Having goals and ambitions is not for the faint hearted. It really isn’t. Going after the things that I want has really got me wondering about how much I can endure. It’s been a test of my patience and my willingness. I always would romanticize the idea of it. I would romanticize the way things would look like when I start working towards my goals. I would picture myself doing every step and with great detail. I would romanticize how things would change so much after I take the first step. I would go off running and telling people about everything I wanted to do and how things are going to work out just the way I want them. I would tell them my ideas and wait for the applause. The applause for things that didn’t even occur yet. But I wanted to feel good about myself.

After endless daydreaming and spilling out all my goals and ambitions, I realized slowly that i did not feel so good about it after all. I told myself and every one of all the great things I was going to do, but nothing happened. well not nothing, but not the way I pictured it. I had built this false image in my mind and when it didn’t come to life, I was quickly disappointed. I was disappointed that I was doing what I love and really want, but seeing no quick results. Sometimes I would see results and I would daydream some more and forget that the journey isn’t done yet. But now I’m even more disappointed with myself, I had forgotten all the love I had for my passions and was only searching for gratification. I was searching for the applause. I had forgotten the purpose of it all. Success meant to me that people should tell me how great I’m doing. But that could not be further from the truth. This was not success of any kind.

I was focusing too much on the results and what will people expect of me. I romanticized the results but I didn’t romanticize the journey. I saw the journey as this ugly path that I have to endure until I get what I want, but that’s not true at all. No one cares about your beginning or your end. Like any film or book, what we care about most is what happens to the characters who chase their dreams and how they overcome their fears and doubts. We care about the ending, but the things in between the beginning and the end are what matter the most. The things you do now, in your journey, are what make up your ending.

Our brains are wired for instant gratification. We want results, we want tangible evidence, and we want the applause. we get so caught up with the outside noises that we forget to embrace every effort we’ve made to reach our goals. We look at the lives of others and compare aggressively, while forgetting the beauty of our own paths.

Falling in love with the journey means embracing every inch of yourself. Every emotion of excitement, sadness, stress, and relief. Fall in love with every step you take towards your dreams. With every pen you pick up to write something, with every brush to draw, with every note of change you make, with every minute of studying, and with every minute of trying again.

Results will come always. No one’s effort is ever lost in vain. But we should never focus on the outcomes. I know that I no longer want to think about what will happen. I know that I want to embrace this version of me right now. The one that’s taking all the hard steps, all the tough decisions. Our journeys will be messy and difficult, but they can also be meaningful and rewarding. You must fall in love with the way you work hard everyday to achieve the things you want, with the way you carry yourself everyday, and the way you keep going despite the noises. Fall in love with the way you give yourself a break and then keep going the next day.

I think that to really keep myself sane and to keep myself composed, I must fall in love with what I do. I must remember every day why I do what I do. If I keep thinking about how things will turn out in the future, I will lose sight of everything. I will lose my purpose. Fall in love with your journey because the meaning exists in it, Not your ending or beginning. Sometimes I lose perspective when it gets too fearful, too lonely. But loving the path you’re on protects you from losing who you are. If we give in to these fears, you begin to hate it all. As long as I’m in love with my path , I will never give in to despair and fear. We should all appreciate the journey on because it’s all we’re going to remember. Things will never turn out exactly the way they are in our  romanticized versions of dreams. So we might as well focus on the things that we can actually control and the events that are happening in our journey right now.

-Written with love, Angie wally🕯️

Photos are all from Pinterest..🤍

White Nights was the first book I have ever read for Fyodor Dostoevsky. I can never forget the way it made me feel. I can never forget how I saw pieces of myself in the protagonist, who was so brilliantly written by Dostevesky. Some might think that they would find romance in White Nights, but it is so much more than that. In fact, It is anything but romantic. It is a story of loneliness. Daydreaming about everything and doing nothing about it. It is a story of yearning for someone you can’t have and for a life that you know isn’t yours.

This story is for the ones who fall in love at first sight, the ones who feel lonely, the ones who daydream too often, and the ones who know the wounds of unrequited love.

The story takes place in Saint Petersburg, Russia and in one magical night there, an alienated man, who prefers dreams to reality, meets Nastenka. He meets Nastenka during the white nights, and the white nights in Saint Petersburg is a phenomena that happens during some time between late May and early July. During the white nights, the sun sets but barely, causing a midnight twilight. And over four white nights, the protagonist immediately connects with Nastenka, and falls in love with her. Only she is in love with someone else. They share meaningful conversations, they talk about their lives, they take walks together. But only one falls deeply in love with the other person. White nights explores the themes od instant connection, yearning for someone, daydreaming and accepting the things you don’t want to accept.

“Your hand is cold, mine burns like fire. How blind you are, Nastenka!”

Excerpt from “white nights” By Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is one of the quotes that stayed with me the most in this book. The protagonist feels so much for Nastenka, but she does not reciprocate the same feelings. It is almost like when you connect with someone and you feel over the moon with them, but to them you’re just talking and taking a stroll somewhere. They do not experience the same twilight that you experience when it’s a white night. They do not burn like you. Nastenka’s name is mentioned 138 times, but we never discover the protagonist’s name. Only she exists, only she matters. She is not a dream, instead she is the realest thing that the protagonist had ever experienced. He mentions her name 138 times because he has never felt the same way about anyone else. Nastenka’s hands are cold because although she connected with him and maybe liked him, she does not, however, ache like him.

“But how could you live and have no story to tell?”

Excerpt from “white nights” By Fyodor Dostoevsky

During one of their strolls, Nastenka asked our storyteller about his history, but as a daydreamer, he had nothing to say. The consequences of daydreaming is that we live so much in our minds that we forget to create our own real stories. We live through the things we want to change and the things that seem so far away, and we forget our current surroundings. The protagonist did not connect to anything or to anyone. He didn’t feel deeply for anything or anyone, except Nastenka.

“I don’t know how to be silent when my heart is speaking”.

Excerpt from “white nights” By Fyodor Dostoevsky

This quote is for the people who love loudly. The people who don’t know how to hide the way they feel about someone. They are the ones who feel the true necessity of loving deeply and letting it to be known. The narrator could not hold back the emotions he had for Nastenka. He has been restraining himself from a life, from a real love but he could not restrain himself from falling in love with Nastenka. Some people are okay with being in love from afar and never being honest about the way they feel. Some people just believe that if they keep the love they feel quiet and suppressed, nothing could ever ruin it. Our narrator did not feel the same.

“I am a dreamer; I have so little real life that I look upon such moments as this now, as so rare, that I cannot help going over such moments again in my dreams. I shall be dreaming of you all night, a whole week, a whole year.”

Excerpt from “white nights” By Fyodor Dostoevsky

Our narrator tells Nastenka that he is a dreamer, that he can’t help but dream because he had nothing in his life. He dreams about everything and stays close to his whims. He dreams about happiness, contentment, and love. And after meeting Nastenka during the white nights, he will, now spend all his nights dreaming about her. Meeting Nastenka meant so much to him, because it is a rare thing for a dreamer to instantly connect with someone and fall in love with them. A dreamer can only imagine those things. But this profound moment was worth dreaming about over and over again for our narrator. It was not something he imagined. Nastenka was real, the meaningful conversations were real, and the white nights were real.

“May your sky always be clear, may your dear smile always be bright and happy, and may you be for ever blessed for that moment of bliss and happiness which you gave to another lonely and grateful heart. Isn't such a moment sufficient for the whole of one's life?”

Excerpt from “white nights” By Fyodor Dostoevsky

At the end of the book, Nastenka reunites with her true love. It is something that narrator always knew would happen. He knew that Nastenkq was in love with someone else. The end encapsulates the bittersweet feeling of relationships ending. Over four nights, the narrator’s life was changed. Meeting Nastenka was the best thing that has happened to him. But in a moment, she was gone. He can only find comfort in remembering their moments together, in the way she made him feel, and the way he connected with her like no one else. Nonetheless, He still feels grateful for this short yet beautiful interaction with Nastenka. He feels as if this moment could give him a lifetime of happiness. Even though he will feel lonely again, he could still dream about her. There are people that disappear from our lives and we may never see them again, but their memories can last a lifetime.

I find the themes of white nights to be incredibly relevant to the things we experience daily in our lives. The loneliness we feel in our big cities, the nights we spend daydreaming about our lives, and the people we love deeply and mourn quietly. The dreamer lives within us all, he knows what it’s like to feel empty. What it’s like to yearn for someone you can’t have. The dreamer can only live and love in his dreams.

“Or was his destiny from the start to be just one moment near your heart” -Ivan Turgenev.

-Angie wally 🕯️

There’s a desire seated deep in ourselves to be accepted and validated by others. From ages ago, all we really wanted was to fit in, to belong somewhere. Our insecurities deny us our thoughts and makes others seem like higher beings. We think that others are doing everything perfectly well and we believe them in a divine way because we are too scared to be alone. We constantly fear being different because we don’t want to be outcasted, we want to belong and have others agree with the way we make our choices.

We live our lives being measured and assessed. We spend every second trying to prove our worth. It’s been this way since early youth. We never questioned it, we just always thought we had to prove our existence in some way. Whether in school, universities or in your new job, you are constantly trying to seek value from others. Always hoping to gain the confidence you never had from them. But it can never be about them. It’s always been about you and how you perceive yourself. Value should never be given and taken from you, it should be nurtured by you.

I learned shortly after graduating from university that no matter what choice I make, people were always going to judge it. They never look at what you achieve, they just look at what you lack. It all came rushing to me that I had been way too focused on others opinions and experiences, that I forgot the path I was supposed to be on. I thought to myself that they did everything right and i did everything wrong. They had found their way and I was lost. But it occurs to me now that everyone is lost. Some just pretend better.

So, I decided that the only validation I needed should come from myself. It should come from my resilience. It should come from my consistency and the fact that i’m willing to try my best and not choosing to give up the second someone doubts who I am. The minute I started doing more of what I love and what I want for my future self, I began to feel confident in myself again. I realized that the more I listened to what people had to say, the more it was erasing any assurance of what I was doing. When I stopped looking for my value in other’s eyes, I started seeing it in my own reflection and that made me proud.

When you focus too much on what people have to say about you, you begin second guessing everything. what was so natural and worthy to you, was now a place of doubt and emptiness. I had to understand that not everyone was going to value what I value. Not everyone was going to see the beauty in what I find beautiful. And not everyone is going to appreciate the things that I look for everywhere I am. People are going to be cynical and dismissive anyways, so might as well take a chance on doing the things you truly believe in. When we listen people’s opinions often, we doubt what we want to do and we doubt our work and we doubt our art and you will never know that someone out there could be waiting for you to take a chance and give them what they are looking for.

our worthiness can only depend on how we perceive ourselves and our actions. Our worthiness should not come from other’s perceptions or the way they slowly watch your choices. I decided that I don’t want to look for my value in other people’s eyes. I don’t want to look for it in their actions. I don’t want to look at them like higher beings who always know what to do and I don’t. Our value does not exist in their perceptions, it exists in ours. It exists in the way we try again and how we overcome our fears.

Life becomes much more clearer when you stop trying to prove yourself to others and you start really owning up to who you really are. When you start chasing your ambitions unapologetically. When you do the things that you believe in without convincing anyone why it means so much to you. There’s also this great relief in no longer trying to justify who you are and what you do. It’s a relief that is almost too close to freedom. It’s a relief that means you no longer depend on someone to tell whether or not you’re good enough to do something.

Written with love, angie 🦢

“Your suffering does not isolate you. Your suffering is your bridge” -James Baldwin

I was thinking about this quote by James Baldwin, and it struck me how much people can feel lonesome while struggling with their own lives. We go on suffering and thinking no one could have ever felt these weights before. We think that this feeling is alien and that we shouldn’t feel this way, that our experiences are strange. It can get really lonely, especially when the feeling is new yet persistent in our minds. You look at others thinking that they have it together, but they are just as tired as you are. But no one is saying how they feel. We go on to believe that no one can relate to how we are feeling and that no one has suffered the way we’ve suffered.

Everyone is hesitant to say how they’re really feeling. Everyone is afraid to share a bad experience, thinking they are going to be outcasted. Vulnerability is now being perceived as weakness. When you are going through something new and something that the people around you have not experienced, this feeling can come with a sort of unexplainable shame. We begin to think that there is something wrong with us that we have these struggles. But then I watched that Baldwin interview, in which he said that our sufferings do not isolate us, that we can hear or read something and find people experiencing our pain and grief in similar ways. The truth is that in our sufferings, we can find connection to others. Our struggles should not be something to keep to ourselves, it should be shared and taught as lessons.

your suffering is your bridge because it allows you to connect and relate to others. When you stop being in your head too much and you look around, you find other people experiencing life in different ways. Our pain is not something to be hid, it should be shared so we could try to shed a little light on each other’s lives.

Films, books, and music are all about sharing experiences with each other, whether of happiness or of sadness. These forms of art make us feel seen and heard and we realize that we are not lonesome in our struggles. We realize that we are not alone. I believe that when you share your struggles with someone and how you overcame those struggles, you make them feel a little bit less lonely and you give them hope.

When you see your pain painted, or hear it in a song, or observe it in a film, or even see it in someone’s eyes, your soul begins to rest, no longer fidgeting to explain the sadness or make sense of the emptiness. As long as you begin to feel seen, healing can really begin. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to overshare or tell your struggles to people you don’t feel comfortable with. It just means when you see your struggles in someone else, you just let them know they will be okay.

Struggles and painful moments are bound to happen and it is a fact that no one is ever immune. How we deal with them is our own business but we have to understand that everyone is carrying their own weight and everyone is trying to find their own strength, but from time to time, maybe we can rely on each to other to carry our weights.

Written with love, angie 🕯️

You haven’t been yourself for a long time and suddenly you start to notice it. you haven’t been doing the things you love. you avoid talking about it but you have never been furtherest from your soul. From who you truly are. Most of us isolate because we have this strange feeling that nothing we know exists, nothing feels real. We become so occupied with work, school, surroundings, and everything that we don’t notice ourselves fading. It hits like thunder, the realization that everything changed in you but you don’t feel changed, you just feel empty. I know because for the longest time, i have been feeling so distant from myself. I try to drown the feeling, to shut it down by engaging in nonsense and media that doesn’t really do me any good. But slowly each day, I am trying to reconnect with myself. It’s not that I mind growth, I just don’t want to lose what makes me myself.

There are a lot of things that can make us feel distant from ourselves. There are things that feel wrong but we do it because according to society, it’s convenient. We don’t want to feel the discomfort of facing our true desires. We stick to the safe options and the things that feel familiar. But even familiar now does not feel good as it used to feel. You know you want more. You know you used to want more. But the more you grew up, the more your energy got taken away by things you never asked for and part of that is just life and the other part is just you settling for things that won’t make you happy and you know that you deserve better. You have been letting go slowly and slowly of yourself. You left your hobbies on the floor to collect dust. You stopped believing in yourself, you just believe in others.

Feeling distant from who you are can be a symptom of many things. Trauma, anxiety, stress, or wrong surroundings, these are things that can make you feel stuck in an emotionally numbing state , if left unchecked. If we don’t deal with the things that are hurting us, we begin to watch ourselves from the outside just surviving, trying to get through the day, waiting for night to come or for the weekends. If we don’t deal with the things that hurt us, we unite with them. We become our trauma, our sadness, and our worst fears. And we don’t become who we truly want to be.

I know what it is like to feel like a stranger to yourself. I know what it is like to wonder about what could have been you, if you hadn’t been absent from everything. I know what it it’s like to be there, but not present. To listen to conversations and watch people, but you’re just in your own world , getting tortured by own mind. I know what it’s like to have the things you love doing the most, become the things you avoid because you’re just not sure anymore. You’re just not sure anymore. The answers that you were so sure you knew began to have more questions marks than ever.

I realized that it has been a year since I had been feeling this way. It’s a been a year since I graduated college and it’s been foggy ever since. I don’t know what I want and what do I want is misunderstood by most. With each passing year of college, I have been drifting away from myself, my ambitions, and my dreams. I, now, know that although I am grateful for everything that happened because it led me here, I still don’t want to feel lost anymore. I don’t want to keep looking for who I was, for who I should be. I don’t want to be scared of going after what I want.

Life is hard, and that is that. But it’s also really spontaneous and it can surprise in ways that you could not have imagined. I can’t promise you that things will work out exactly as you want. But I can promise you that it gets easier, that there is so much hope for all of us that it can almost make you cry. I promise you that if you cling to the things you love, to those you love and who love you back, and you make sure you never let go of them, you will be okay. You will be okay and you will learn to heal and mend until you find yourself again.

When you stop judging and being hard on yourself, you start to really see yourself. You start to see the things that make you flawed and the things that make you loved. You start treating yourself like you would treat someone you love. You take care of yourself with love and compassion and only then you can truly begin to go back home to yourself. After college, I started to see myself as this really old house that I have left messy and turned all the lights off. Now I’m slowly and intentionally trying to make it feel like home again.

Written with love, angie 🕯️

There are so many days where I would imagine how my life would be if certain things were different. If i did something and changed the way I feel completely. There are days when I imagine myself in a different lifetime, with different habits, and different surroundings. I imagine myself being the best version possible. But then I snap back to reality. I am not that version. I’m not even close enough. That version of myself makes me feel so behind, like she’s almost judging me for not catching up to her.

I keep thinking, what’s actually stopping me from becoming her? I keep thinking about her. What she would do and how would she react, but I fall short of that version. I think I disappoint my future self more than I disappoint my current self. I keep wondering what are the obstacles that stand tall and heavy between me and that version. I feel like there’s roads that I do not how to cross and woods that I get lost in just to get to who I actually want to be.

What actually stops us from being who we truly are. Is it the world constantly trying to make us smaller and conforming to things we don’t believe in. Sometimes I think the society I was placed in is not the place for me to grow in. Do peoples’ perceptions and expectations slowly wound our true core. Sometimes, we become less and less of ourselves because we are scared of people’s opinions and judgments. But I believe that no matter how good you are or how obedient you become, people will always have something to say. People will judge anyways so why are we not staying true to ourselves. I feel like the more we perform, the more we lose our way.

There’s also this inevitable fear of failure that no matter what step you take, you find it slowly creeping up to you. I feel scared that if it doesn’t work out, I wouldn’t know how to handle it. I wouldn’t know how to face failure, but I always try to remember that failure is a normal part of being human. I always try to remember that fear of failure should just remain a fear and not a reality that I should act on. Maybe we should do everything scared. Maybe learning how to do things with fear is the bravest thing ever.

Another great obstacle is that we always hate uncertainties. We choose “stable” and “safe” paths, because we are scared of the unknown. We don’t like the idea of belief alone, we want some evidence that what we are doing will eventually work out. Especially with creating careers, it can all get foggy sometimes that you don’t have any other option but to truly and wholeheartedly believe in your abilities.

The obstacle that creates the most tension is that instead of doing what we want to do, we overthink A LOT, so we create situations and problems that stop us from trying our best without them even existing. There are also parts of ourselves that want different things, because of our natural ability to enjoy multiple things and consume different perspectives, we find ourselves in an inner conflict, not knowing what we truly want.

Reaching our goals isn’t hard because we are unable, it is hard because we can get scattered sometimes. We overthink, we doubt, and we surround ourselves with people telling us we can’t make it. But I truly believe that if you believe in yourself enough to take a chance, to do good by yourself , and chase the things you truly want. You can make it.

Written with love, angie..