Lingering effects of my semester abroad

My days have been filled with a lot of motivation and inspiration to turn my life around, partially because a new chapter is on its way and I am starting my masters in a few weeks. After coming back from England (which feels like such a long time ago) I have gone through steep ups and downs. People's lives have moved on without me here and I had a lot of time to think. Ergo a lot of time for self-growth at the edge of my sanity...

Those 5 months abroad have felt exhausting yet enriching. I have gained a lot of confidence in myself. Lost some too. They showed me that no matter where you move to, you are still you. Changing the country you live in can offer some opportunities to reinvent yourself. However, you will need an abundance of resources to find enough comfort in your new environment to act on your plans to create a new you. I did not really have that strength and my first few months in England were nerve-racking and I had problems eating, feeling at peace, finding joy. Germany was a snowy wonderland when I left to live in the greyest, windiest, wettest place ever.

Finding out that you become yourself again once you settle in a bit feels comforting as well. Proof you aren't designing your whole personality according to who is around you (just a little bit). But the great life-altering super duper fun and sexy experience of a semester abroad was a utopia. To me at least. Maybe it's just England. It really made me realise that to reinvent yourself, you will have to start with your habits instead of your environment. And it is different to have felt that first-hand instead of reading or hearing it somewhere.

Because living in a shared dorm on campus took its toll on my mental health I locked my introverted self in my room a lot. My social battery was constantly drained by the simple fact that I had to share a toilet with people (I am very spoiled and have lived on my own for a while). I spent a lot of time distracting myself with social media and TV shows on my off-days. This is not to say I wasted my time away (I did go out!) but I certainly had a bad habit of doomscrolling. There is a lot more to say about England but maybe another time.

Anyways, this kind of severe scrolling addiction stuck with me up until a few weeks ago. I had to relearn what to do with my time now that I don't have to compensate for my draining living situation. I found new appreciation for my comfort at home, I am grateful every single day (not exaggerating).

On outsourcing to algorithms

So I am actually on Day-6 without any exposure to Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest. I decided to delete these apps off my phone because those algorithms in particular have way too much control over my time, opinions, interests, taste, etc. And that realisation horrified me so badly that I got rid of it all. It leads to so much financial irresponsibility for me and makes me itch after a new shiny item to purchase with every scroll of a "My July Favourites" video. So... let's see if I can manage to keep away from these devilish things. Social media hails from hell.

I particularly find it sad to see how we all look the same and like the same things while carrying this belief that we are individuals with personal taste. When it's actually an illusion of taste. We think we like very niche things when actually, the algorithm has known this thing before we did. Like how a girl has her signature nail color (usually burgundy) or is interested in poetic minimalism. Like how every aesthetic has a name and everyone finds the same brands iconic, thinks Chinese culture is the next big thing to learn more about and how reading the "East of Eden" is a must. You might be confused as to what I am talking about but this is quite literally my bubble and I have seen many videos featuring these exact things and I fear that I am becoming a copy of everyone else. And all of this leads to a flattening of culture, to less interesting conversations, and to more consumerism. I am sick and tired of wanting more makeup and a new fragrance to try because a gorgeous lady on my FYP told me it's everything she has ever wanted. I don't want to be exposed to all of this anymore and come across what I like and what inspires me more naturally. And enjoy the process of it again. These thoughts have been largely stimulated through a Substack called The Taste File" by Anne Valois.

Now I know I will still be exposed to what is trending in some way or another but I want to battle this exposure with exposure that is curated by largely me. So I plan to seek out physical media again, I want to watch movies and TV shows I have never heard about and visit art museums, find/create my own references for paintings etc.! If you have any ideas how I could engage in this practice please let me know!!! I am itching to find more ideas on inspiration treasure troves that are as far away from the tech giants' algorithms as possible. Doesn't that sound fun? I feel like I'm on a mission for the rest of my life where I get to be as active as ever.

Anna Howard talks about the outsourcing of answers and advice in my very favourite podcast "Wild Geese". You don't necessarily come to Youtube with a question but you click on a recommended video that resonates with you right now. Content creators serve you advice on pretty much anything on a silver platter. The problem is that it becomes very easy to stagnate into only listening and solely planning on how to do something instead of actually going out and doing the thing they advised. The most memorable answers might be those that come to you yourself through being proactive. I think that is likely what happened with me in England: I have heard it many times that only you yourself can change who you are by the way you live your everyday life. But now I lived through that experience and arrived at that answer on my own, and only now I feel that I truly understand.

My 1st notebook!!!

I have less than 20 pages left to finish my notebook/journal! It's a premiere for me, my perfectionism has always led me to abandon notebooks once I disliked something about them. I am so ridiculously proud and flip through my little treasure at least once a day! Hehe.

The notebook was once a bullet journal in 2022 that I stopped writing in 2 months into the year. I picked it up again in November 2024 when I learned about commonplace books. A commonplace book is really just a notebook where you collect everything that interests you. A quote, a thought, a definition, an image you came across and that made you stop in your tracks for a second. The concept doesn't really want you to use it as a journal but it turned into that for me. So between notes about Hedy Lamarr or quotes from Fleabag I also just wrote about my day or a list of things I want to rearrange in my apartment. It was difficult for me to separate one from the other because I felt that life can't be easily divided in inspiration and the rest. It's too intertwined. Kind of going hand in hand with how you arrive to certain answers unexpectedly because you don't know what form that answer will arrive in. Most of the time, you can't seek an answer out directly but will have to trust that it finds its way to you. In your everyday life. My notebook became something I take with me and is the first stop for anything I want to write down, no matter how significant or insignificant.

But for creation or to explore your own taste, it can be helpful to keep everything you like pocketed in a single place without the noise. But where to do that if not on your Pinterest board or constantly consumable through a swipe on your social media app of choice? Anne Valois talks about creating your own "reference library" on Notion or simply your files on desktop. I have been thinking about how I want to go on my active inspiration mission as well and it's been fun.

I thought about keeping a separate commonplace book and journal again. But I dislike it. 1) because I would hate carrying two notebooks with me at all times and 2) I don't want to become paralysed by the idea of not knowing whether something "belongs" in this notebook or that notebook. But since I don't want to collect inspiration or knowledge digitally, I really only have one choice: to use my notebook for everything. This might be a bit chaotic, but I figured that that wouldn't really matter. Anything I want to extract and organise, I can put here!!! On my website! And remove the noise that way. What a blessing, huh! This would also be a way to stimulate actual creation from what I learn and collect. I could write an informative blogpost here or create a new section on my site for a topic altogether. I could also design a moodboard, draw or paint and put it here. Like a little museum of my brain. I actually meant my site to be a digital garden in the first place.

I am actually revisiting my journal entries right now to articulate these things. So I guess I have already started!