Maddison's Musings

Hello friends! Yes, I know it's been over a month, and I'm sorry, but I've been so busy lately. Procrastination is a huge problem I deal with, because if we're being honest here, I've simply lost all motivation to do homework, so I put it off until later at night before I eventually do it. It's a horrid cycle that I really need to break. But I think I'm on the way to breaking the cycle because today I started my homework earlier (around 1 pm ish) and was done by 4 pm (I took a few small breaks while doing it), and it felt so nice being able to have fun for a few hours. Instead of spending my night in my room in the fading light doing homework, I played Lego Batman with my little brother and hung out. It was so nice being able to relax. I'm even blogging, granted it's nearly 10 pm and I still have to shower and journal, I'm blogging none the less.

While I still procrastinate a ton, I thought I would share some tips to help you (and myself) procrastinate less and not get too overwhelmed.

1. Get a planner or notebook and write down everything you have to do. You will not remember everything you have to do unless you write it down.

2. When you get home from school/work, allow yourself half an hour or so to wind down, get a snack, do something you enjoy, whatever.

3. After your thirty or so minutes are up, start pulling out your homework and get ready to start.

4. Before starting homework, put on some soft background music (I like solo piano music/classical/anything without words), grab a snack to have nearby, and fill up a cup of water and set it nearby. Try stretching a little before starting as it might help a little.

5. This step is so important, that I'm giving it it's own bullet. Before you start homework, make sure you silence your cell phone. I can't tell you how much this helps. Not hearing your phone keep going off helps you to finish homework faster because you're not constantly checking it.

6. Now time for the hard part. Open up your planner and get to work. I tend to work by my schedule (I'll do first period's work first, second period's second, and so forth and so on), so that If it ever gets too late, I can work on any work I don't finish at lunch (although I usually tend to force myself to finish it all anyways).

7. Take a small break after you finish each class' work. I tend to allow myself to check Twitter for a few minutes before I start on my next class.

8. Before you know it, you have all of your homework done and a bit more of your evening to enjoy. Try to keep this cycle up as much as you can.

Hopefully this has helped a little. I have so many blog ideas floating around my brain, and I hope to update more often, but I'm not making any promises because life is pretty busy for the next little while.

~Maddison

Hello friends! Yes, I know it's been a month. I'm sorry, but I've been super busy, I promise. I had my birthday since the last time I've written. I don't feel any different, and sometimes I still call myself fifteen before backtracking and reminding myself that I'm now sixteen. Although I'm sixteen, I didn't do anything like a "typical" sixteenth birthday would be. I didn't go and get my license because when I moved here, my Texas driver's ed didn't count a diddily squat, so I have to restart it all here. So for my birthday, I got driver's ed. It's a super generous gift, don't get me wrong, but when I already did most of driver's ed back home, it's kind of annoying having to relearn things. Also, I didn't have a giant "Sweet Sixteenth" party, in fact, I didn't have a party at all. I've still yet to find a decent human being here, so no friends equals no party. I'm not that disappointed about not having a party though, as I still got lots of money. Something that my mom did (without my knowledge) was that she had asked some of my friends and other people back home to send me a card for my birthday. I got so many sweet cards, and that meant so much more to me than a party right now. Although it wasn't my favorite birthday, it definitely wasn't too terrible.

The day after my birthday, I had to take the PSAT, but I was actually kind of excited. I signed up and wanted to do it. It was easier than I thought. I went in with the mindset that I wasn't going to know it all and that it would be super difficult and that's totally okay. The English portion wasn't too bad, I only didn't know a few of the things, and the math portion was okay too. Since the math portion went to the end of Algebra 2, I didn't know how to do everything, so I didn't answer a lot of the questions, but they said that whatever you don't answer doesn't count against you. Overall, I hope I did pretty well, and if not, then there's always next year.

Other than that, I can't really remember much else of what I've done in the past month. My memory is so weird. I'll have the hardest time remembering what I did the other day, or what I've said, but I can remember things from months or years ago perfectly. It's weird I tell you.

Oh yeah, Halloween was a thing that happened since I've last written! I didn't go trick or treating, but I did stay in my room and watch YouTube videos and watch everyone tweet things about Halloween. So it was a pretty good night, if I do say so myself. It was also pretty funny watching everyone's Twitter layouts going from Halloween to Christmas the minute it was November. That's a thing I'm excited for- Christmas. I love Christmas so much, I'm not even going to try to hide it. Between candy canes, two weeks off of school, eggnog, cocoa, warm jammies, fuzzy socks, fires, and presents, there is absolutely nothing wring with Christmas. And don't forget about Christmas music. I love Christmas music, in fact, I'm listening to some right now (the Pentatonix Christmas album- literally go listen to it right now, I am obsessed).

I have a few ideas floating around my head for future blog posts, and I hope to write some of them out and save them as drafts or something so I have something to post for those weeks when I'm super busy, but no promises. Talk to you next time!

~Maddison