I had been studying at Hussian College for almost 2 years and I was in their Pharmacy Technician program. During this time my advisors and my professors were always able to be in contact with me. I received a message a week ago about a summer break due to new leadership. Then, later I contacted my advisor and 2 of my professors about it and I only got two replies back. My advisor said he’d been fired and to contact my professors. My other professor said to enjoy my break. Since then I’ve had no replies from anyone anywhere about anything I’ve inquired.
I have called every department on the campuses and it all leads to nothing. On the colleges Facebook it says closed. I’ve been left with nothing. I can’t get transcripts. I wasn’t informed this was going to happen. Upon research the college has had finical troubles in the past and even lawsuits for not releasing student funds back to the students.
All I’m left with is to start alllll over again. I don’t even know how to feel. I was supposed to be done in January. I was supposed to have my internship then move on from my current job which has been a disaster for many years. I feel bound up and at a complete stand still once more.
The shock has somewhat left me and now I feel anger and sadness. My anxiety is so high and all the time I spent, all the early mornings studying, all the hope that I was almost done I just needed to push a little more, a little bit longer, it’s all done. This is the biggest setback I have experienced in a long while. I feel all over the place and my thoughts are scattered and I don’t really know what more to say at this point.
I will leave it here for now and I will update in a new post later on when things have settled and I have a plan going forward. This set me back years in time and I am so overwhelmed.
When I was younger I was obsessed with dragons. They were my favorite mythological creature. I thought they were powerful, majestic, mystical, and misunderstood. I truly believed if you cared for a dragon and gave empathy to them they would befriend and protect you to the very end of your life. I wanted to have a dragon friend so bad I sent a letter to the fake address in the dragonology book I had that claimed to sell dragons.
Dragons were special to me and I spoke of them to my mom constantly. We had a shop nearby us that carried all kinds of Knick Nacs and a lot of them were dragons. My mom would by me one whenever she could and I had a small collection of dragon figures I adored and cared for constantly. One of my favorites held a sword in its hand and stood majestically.
However, because I was adopted by my grandmother and the person I called mom wasn’t my biological mother, but a baby sitter turned parental figure that I would eventually escape to live with permanently when I turned 18, she didn’t have a say in what my grandmother did with my things, even if she’s the one that gave them to me.
One day all of a sudden, some of my things were being sold in a garage sale all of a sudden and others were given to a different child my grandmother favored. I wasn’t told till after the fact. I wasn’t asked for permission. My things as far as my grandmothers concern were hers to do with as she pleased.
It was so awful for me knowing that I was like my things that were objects that she owned. She owned me. I was not her granddaughter. I was her toy. I was an object that she’d tell friends about when I excelled at things and at the same time constantly shame me behind closed doors.
Nothing that was mine was ever mine when it came to my grandmother. It wasn’t something I truly understood until I told my partner one day how much I loved dragons and he kept that info and decided at a later time to buy a dragon puzzle which we built together.
The whole experience of it was a look into our relationship itself. We tried to make it once but didn’t have enough time to finish it so we had a second date where we decided to finish it and we were laughing the whole way through. I have never worked with someone to make something and it feel as easy as it did with him on that date. We were joking and taking our time and we’d follow the video we were watching looking at which piece was next and the other holding the previous parts together. It was such a blast. When I got home with this precious prize I looked at it and I cried. I realized that it was the first dragon figure I’d had in years. I’d built it with someone I love and no one was ever going to take it away from me. It was well and truly mine and it meant the world to me.
In that moment I wondered to myself why I hadn’t bought any dragon Knick Nacs since my grandmother was no longer in my life and all I could think was I still somehow felt anxiety that nothing I owned was mine. That I wasn’t allowed to keep things for myself because it’d eventually be taken from me. With this beautiful dragon puzzle a part of me fully reflected and healed.
Maybe 8 or so months later my sister was dusting and she broke my dragon and some pieces were forever missing and I can’t rebuild it. However, the effect of it has never left me and my partner and I still plan on getting another one one day and building it together this time putting some glue. With the original pieces I want to make either a book mark or an ornament with it in resin one day. For now I have the pieces saved.
Christmas of last year my partner remembered it once more with buying a gorgeous dragon Christmas ornament which I now am setting up way too long after on a stand to be able to display it all year long.
A picture truly does not do it justice. I remember when he gave it to me and I opened up the Styrofoam box it was in and I gasped at how sparkly and beautiful it was. I looked at him in awe. It was so thoughtful and so beautiful and I was so happy my next dragon came from him.
I can’t express enough how amazing it is to be in a relationship that shows you how you can begin to heal yourself. Now three years into our relationship I’ve begun to collect things that I love again. I’ve began to think about my insecurities and to be more secure about relationships with him and with my family and friends and to have them become more healthy and comfortable. Slowly and surely unraveling the negative patterns I have kept from the trauma my grandmother caused me and deciding to move forward in a more joyful way.
I will never get back the dragons that I collected back then, but I can build a new collection of loved things that I can keep or give away by my own choice. Through that I can begin to fuse pieces of me that will finally find peace and love given by myself and for myself. In the future I know I will always strive to be a positive force in peoples lives in a way my grandmother was not and I will be happy in spite all the pain, depression, and anxiety I had grown up with.
In spite of it all I will always be that girl who loves dragons. I am happy I found a knight who lifts me up and supports me in me finding in myself the warrior Princess he always saw in me. Also, helping me to learn to laugh even in the hard times that you cannot control.
I cannot change the events that have past me, but I can move forward with dignity and love for myself and do the best that I can. As for my grandmother she will always have to live with the many many things she did that lead to me never wanting to be in her life again, but I, I will build in my life one where I won’t have any regrets. I will live well and with compassion and love.
In my life I feel like every time I take a step forward another crazy awful thing happens. Each thing hits me again with emotional turmoil and so much stress and I feel paralyzed to move forward. I have so many people in my life that believe in me and every-time I decide this is the day I move forward, because I’m so damn afraid of another awful thing happening there I stand frozen. I know that people see me as capable. I know people see that I have the potential to do great things. Yet when I get up in the morning my body gets all tied up in itself and I find myself saying just one more hour of sleep and when I finally do get up I accomplish a small fraction of what I wanted to.
Yet, because I do have moments where I do accomplish some form of something I have so many people believe in me. When I think about those people. Especially when I think of my partner and his unwavering support of me it brings me to tears. My family believes in my ability to write too and they just get frustrated with me because I get so frozen and I give up.
Just this blog is a perfect example. How many times have I told myself todays the day I promise to keep this blog going? How many times have I thought to myself, this is the day I start to write again. Then I sit down and I try to get myself to simply open up a document and begin writing and the amount of excuses that come up instantly it’s too much.
Yet I do not know any other way then to keep trying. I keep being pulled back to it and back to it. Internally I know if I do all that I need to that I will feel so accomplished. That I will feel healthier. That I will feel better about myself because I decided to put the effort into something and look where it took me. I used to feel that way about my blog all the time. The people I’d met through here. The authors and publishers I built a relationship with. The excitement to read. It’s a hole in my heart I let get bigger and bigger because I didn’t want to accept the one painful situation out of this that ever came out of it and to accept the other painful situations that are happening in my life currently.
I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of denying myself things out of pain. I’m so tired of disappointing myself. I’m tired of disappointing my family because I can’t get my shit together and write because I feel frozen in an emotion that doesn’t serve me one iota of good. I’m tired of the anxiety of worrying that I’ll disappoint my partner even though no matter what I do he consistently just believes in me and comforts me through all of my feelings. I am so tired of feeling tired. I am so tired of feeling unfulfilled. I am so tired of feeling stuck in a time where absolutely nothing of value feels like it’s happening.
I’m tired of feeling sad and depressed and of looking at all the damn books on my shelves I’ve refused to pick up. I want action. I want to dedicate myself to myself. I want to fucking feel better about myself. I want to support myself in a healthy way and be proactive and to be more.
The problem with Freezing is you cannot completely control it and you see yourself like a statue in a snow-globe and the storms just happen to you and you can’t move because of them. I want to release myself from that glass dome. I want to fucking hurl it against the wall and move again. I want to be free from being frozen.
This blog fills me with unbridled hope and a desire to be the person I once was. Through this back and forth of starting and failing and starting and failing again and again and again I realized that my stress response is to freeze because there feels like nothing else I can do. I have learned that understanding this feeling and responding to it kindly allows me to get back up and try again.
Through this I understand too I can never be the person I once was. I have evolved. I have lived more life. I have discovered new things to love and new ways I wish for things to be. I have loved deeply and I have lost deeply. I have tried. That’s an important bit, I have tried. I have a great desire for peace in my life and peace in my relationships. Things that have worked. Things that have failed miserably and made me miserable.
My mental health is a constant battle because I face the same core things everyday and even if I know they will someday change right now it’s hard to face it all every day. However, I do do it. I do try. Ultimately through it all I am drawn back here.
So once again I’m going to get back up and try again. I will not pressure myself as far as what I post about. What makes me happy to speak on at any given time is what’s right for me to speak on in that moment.
Right now my focus is on what brings me great joy. Whether that be a game, a anime, a tv show, or a book that is what I want most to give my attention to. So over the next few days expect some fun posts about things that make me happy and that I’m very proud of.
To keep this up I’m going to promise myself to get up at 7 every day. I will do my best to avoid unproductive arguments as much as possible. I will do my best to express myself in a way that I feel good about it. To roll with the storms and allow myself to have as much internal peace as possible.
Life can try to bring me down as much as it wants, but I’m going to do my best to thrive within it. To connect and discover more joy. To not overwhelm myself and flow with what comes and do what needs to be done when I need to. I will take things step by step and start to excel instead of struggle.
Through all of this I will just keep becoming a better and better more well-rounded person who values herself and her joy and promotes that in others too. In life that’s all I really want to strive for.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
The other day I got an email from a representative of St. Martin’s press offering a e-arc copy of S. Jae-Jones “Guardians of Dawn: Zhara” for me to review. This was unexpected and completely mind blowing to me as I have not been an active reviewer for quite some time. What also was unexpected was my reaction. I read the email and I sobbed. Not normal sobbing either, I was sobbing like someone who was grieving a loved one. I had thought this part of my life, writing, reading, being a reviewer, had been put behind me. Yet even after so long people are still remembering me as someone who’d they’d like to support and promote their books.
It pains me so much that I’ve left this industry for so long. It tears at my heart. I flooded with tears because I realized there was still a place for me here. A place for me to be a champion for books and to spread the love and passion for stories that has always lived inside me. Yet even as I write this I feel the drum of anxiety inside me. The desire is so true yet so is the idea that I’ve not done this for so long that I don’t know how to begin to return. I’ve failed so many times to come back for a reason. What if I can’t do it? What if I’m not good enough anymore?
Yet, I still got that email. I still had someone look at my other reviews of S. Jae Jones Wintersong and Shadowsong and they decided that I was worth reaching out too. Even with my poor Netgalley ratio of 56%. Even when I haven’t been in the game for several years. They still thought to give me an opportunity I’m sure many others are really hoping for themselves. Everything in me screams at me not to waste it.
Truth be told I’ve been afraid to be active on my blog the way I once was. To give so much of myself to this incredible community again because I know that there’s several tragedies in my life that have been coming for a while now and I’m afraid to start this again only to be blindsided by loss once again and feel forced to leave again out of my own grief.
I feel like I keep ignoring my call and the more I ignore it the more it contributes to my sadness. So for once I’m picking up the phone and committing myself once more and trusting that I’ve been called for a reason and things will be ok.
So I’ve decided and I know it’ll be a lot of work, but I think building this blog back up and expressing myself through writing once more is the best thing for me to do. I’m excited. I have a writing project that I’ll announce that’ll be up on wattpad for those interested to read for free. It’ll take a couple months for me to put it together and write it all, but I feel it’ll be worth it.
I’ll stream on the rare occasions that I’ll get. It’s pretty rare because after I started streaming my dad changed his sleeping schedule and I can only stream when he is asleep. I am a bit bummed about it cause I had just gotten a vtuber model to work. It is what it is.
I don’t have an excuse anymore and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be to continue here. It’s time. Time to be The Book Raven once more. I’m here to stay in both good and bad times. So you all will be hearing from me a lot once more.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
There’s something about the beginning of the month that makes me feel like I can start over. That I can decide to focus on making my life the way I want it to be. That past two years or so that feeling has been few and far in between. I’ve been doing my best behind the scenes for a long time. Quietly rebuilding and focusing on my mental health. I feel for the first time in a long time that I have the tools in me to reestablish myself and rebuild this blog into what it’ll become from now on.
I have been irreversibly changed in the past few years. Lost and found myself multiple times. Dealt with some of the most harrowing and painful things I’ve had to deal with in my life. Through it all, I’ve quietly focused and rebuilt on my joy and my ability to rest and recover. During the past few years I did not have the bandwidth to give of myself much more then I was giving to my work, family, and friends. I understand that now. I am not upset anymore that I wasn’t able to return here during that time. A lot of it had to do with my relationship with my anxieties and my fear.
Even now, I know that eventually one of the saddest moments of my life is coming. However, I cannot keep myself from doing the things I love to do in the meantime and after that point. My time away from blogging has been valuable. I am not the same girl I was when I started the book raven. I have grown. I have established a very loving and understanding partnership with a person who has been unconditionally supportive of me and my dreams and I to them. I have picked up the pieces over and over again dealing with the reality of my dads terminal illness. I have allowed myself to give myself the space I needed to breath and to rediscover and rebuild myself from a point in my life where I felt so lost.
I am now focused on moving forward. On creating. On balancing the hardships of life with the precious joyous moments I can cherish. In this moment I can feel it in my heart that this is the best way forward. To balance living, work, and doing things that impassion me. Only a week ago I had started to dance to music again. To feel that blissful freedom of movement.
I am a woman who has been remade and renewed. It is time for me to once again shine in the new ways that I desire to. I am planning so much to share with you all. In writing, in books, in the world of video games. I am ready. I hope you all are ready to join me. It’s going to be a whole new world.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
A long time ago now, when I first started blogging, I used to blog practically everyday. I read like my life depended on it and I never let myself miss days. Then life happened and I stopped for a while and I’d restart over and over and over again and it’d be ok for a while, but it wouldn’t last. I haven’t gotten myself to make it stick.
In the meantime I’ve gotten myself so far behind as far as books to read and review and posts to create that a lot of the time it feels impossible when I try to come back.
In March in particular, I started college again. I am study to be a pharmacy technician and eventually to become a full pharmacist. I need a better job and the ability to increase my income for my family. Along with the heavy class workload im still working as many hours as I was before and honestly, I’ve just felt myself get exhausted and all I’ll want to do is watch a movie or YouTube or play Fortnite with my friends at the end of the day.
I’ve gotten pretty overwhelmed with life. I want to read and write and blog too, but I can’t seem to get into the mind frame I need to continue and it breaks my heart.
However, last night, I had a particularly awful night and my dad has deteriorated further and it causes him to yell and be angry a lot of the time. I’d just finished watching ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer’ which had already put me into a weird mindset and then I helped my sister put my dog into her harness and she bit me (it was my fault not the dogs). I felt this odd sense of going through motions and feeling the solid ground of life crumbling beneath me.
At this point I’d started to cry and I’d texted my partner all that had happened. Then, they started talking to me about this story they’d come up with a long time ago. It was about a hero who felt burdened by his power. His power that was so unique and special yet so fragile. A power that temporarily relieved ailments in a marble and the bigger the ailment the more fragile the marble. As I asked them for more details about it I felt myself calm down. Then, I’d said “You know I need a bit of that right now.” And they told me that my situation is what inspired this in the first place.
I was floored. I felt seen and loved and stunned when they told me that they’d come up with it a few months into us dating and hadn’t told me about it till now. It made me appreciate them for the person they were. It also made me want to write again. It reminded me of that feeling of discovering how a story is created bit by bit. It also made me feel that my partner is and always has been perfect for me.
My life has been in a lot of turmoil the past couple of years. I’ve had Abdiel by my side for over 2 years and they’ve given me a peace and a hope during all the crap I’ve been given for all of that time.
When I talk to them I realize that I can focus so heavily on the pain that sometimes I miss the joy that is standing right there in front of me. Abdiel who thought up a character that’d give me a short bit of relief from the life I live. That would give me a moment of joy. That is one of the purest forms of love I’ve ever felt in my life.
I want to blog again. I want to write stories again. To give others that feeling my partner gave to me in such a beautiful way. Things in life have been messy and it’s not really going to get any better. However, I can chose to give myself time for my passion and to give myself and others that temporary relief in life, because sometimes that’s all we’re really needing and searching for.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
The past few weeks in particular have been a lot for me. In a way that’s both very anxiety inducing, but also contrasted by times that were full of joy and love. I know I get caught up often in how hard things are. Life recently has been a lot of slaps in the face, but also in spite of that I’ve chosen to feel the joy of life too and it’s helped so much.
Two weeks ago my sister was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, pre-diabetic, and they found extra blood platelets in her blood relating to something with her bone marrow that they are still testing and figuring out. Last week, our car breaks sounded awful and we had to take them in to be fixed. We still need the back breaks fixed but we have to wait.
However, this past week was also really great too. I went ice skating with my friends like we’ve had planned for weeks. My boyfriend sadly didn’t make it on the ice very long, but he said that he was happy to support from the sidelines. His offer to have us do this again and he could just watch me enjoy myself was so adorable and he’s the sweetest. After we played a game of munchkins and my best friend Marble won which was perfect, because she fell and injured herself on the ice.
The next day my aunts came down to visit with my mom, my sister, and I. It was really nice. I always love hearing the stories that are never usually told around the house.
All of that got me thinking. I’ve been afraid to be productive and pursue my passions because I feel like I’ve been waiting for things to blow up. Knowing my family’s health isn’t great. Knowing that the job climate right now is so rocky. That my wrists are injured and I have to keep going and not say anything anymore so I can keep my job. Knowing that our dog Gypsy is getting on in age and her legs are now really weak and she’s always breathing hard when she gets excited.
The anxiety of knowing I’m walking up to the top of a mountain and at some point things are going to start falling off the edge of it and I know I’m not mentally ready for it all to drop. Yet, I’m still living and I have these wonderful friends that have treated me better then any friends I’ve had my whole life. I have a boyfriend that has been the biggest support and the fuel for so much laughter and peace when I need it most. My relationship with my mom and my sister has been better then it has been in a long while. We are hopeful.
So with that hope I want to put my best foot forward. I want to start to write again. To read again. To not live in fear because things are going to fall apart. Because it is going to happen. There’s no doubt. My dad is terminally ill. My mom is getting older and my sister has some unknowns in her health that could be serious issues. I don’t know how much time I have left with my family. That’s the knowing I face everyday that makes me afraid.
But I know that they all want to see me do well. I know my dad wants me to stay positive. I know my mom has been pushing me to write for so long and she wants to see me published. I know my sister wants our candle business to continue to do better. We all want to be happy. We all want each other to be happy. I’m tired of holding back.
So I won’t. When things get hard I’ll take the time I need off then, but for now I want to make a start. I want to live. So I will. You all will be hearing from me again very soon.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
A long time ago I talked about my dad being very sick. I haven’t mentioned it in a long time mostly dealing with it on my own, but the other night and yesterday afternoon my dad had two episodes that seemed to indicate new mini strokes. I don’t know for sure if that is exactly what it was he didn’t want to be taken to the hospital, but it reminded me all the same that my time on this earth with my dad is limited.
I don’t know how much time I have left with my dad, but I know I want to make the best of it. I know there are certain parts of my life he will never experience by my side. However, one thing I hope he does experience is me writing a book and seeing if I can get it published. My dad is a big part of why I love stories and it’s funny too because he doesn’t like books. Growing up he used to tell me all these fantastic stories.
The other love he taught me was for animals. Especially for insects and among them most importantly to have a love and respect for bees. So, I really want to write and dedicate my bee book idea to my dad.
I know my dad will most likely never read it. He’s blind in one eye and further loosing vision in the other due to his strokes. He never had much patience for reading, but I want him to know that I wrote something for him. Inspired by the love he passed down to me.
Yesterday when I got home from work he talked to me and called me his Angel. That morning he had told me to think positive. So as hard as that is for me I will try. I will put my dad energy into doing something that will make him proud. At the very least have a first draft I can print out and put into his hands. So he would know how much his love has always meant to me.
I love my dad so much. I know cancer and the strokes have changed him so much, but nothing has ever changed his love for me. Even when he’s mad at my mom or wanting someone or something to blame for his illness when I come into the room he still treats me like his little girl.
I know my dad wants me always to remain strong. To always think positive no matter what and to pursue my dreams. So that’s exactly what I’ll do for the rest of my life. During my time on earth with him and during the time he passes on and I will carry him living inside my heart forever more.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Writing this brought me to tears, but it also helped me feel a sense of resolve. My one wish is that this post inspires those reading to be there for their loved ones now and to think positive. Thank you all for being here.
For several months now I’ve been suffering the beginnings and then the full blown pains of tendinitis. It’s a work injury from doing the same things over and over again quickly without enough rest. Besides, also not having done too much besides ice it to help heal the injury.
Finally, my mom bought me a few things that all used in tandem will heal my wrist. The pain is all from inflammation in pretty much all the hand and wrist muscles.
First, I am icing my wrists with gel packs. This reduces inflammation.
Second, I will be using a blood flow stimulation therapy at the very least morning and night for the next coming months. This will allow blood flow while my wrist is resting and bring all the good stuff my wrists need to heal to the injured area. Also, allowing the bad stuff to be carried away from the area.
At work I’ll be using medical support tape to reduce strain on the tissue and prevent further injury. As well as taking Advil every 6 hours to reduce swelling and pain.
It feels daunting because I feel like it’ll take a good long time for healing to really take place. However, I have a plan. Which is well more then the just reduce pain as much as possible thing I was doing before. I’ve been pretty much just further hurting the injury for a long while.
Taking care of oneself is so important. Realizing your limits, mentally and physically and not pushing those boundaries when it’s only causing damage is important. We can do our best and strive for amazing things, but we also need to feel like we’re doing good for our bodies and minds too when burnout happens.
This is a lesson for myself as well as an excitement of finally.. one day soon my wrists will be pain free. I’ll be able to exercise with them again. Ill be able to do tasks freely without pain. I’ll feel like I can finally move forward and being more myself and doing things like yoga that make all of my body feel so good.
THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below!
The Book Raven 