Megan Dennis: emotions

Experiencing A Global Pandemic: surviving the crisis + the impact on mental health

March 19, 2020

Experiencing A Global Pandemic: surviving the crisis + the impact on mental health

I never in a million years thought I would be experiencing something like this. When I was younger, my biggest fears were getting kidnapped, my house catching on fire, and missing my favorite TV show. Now, I’m currently living with the biggest fear I never knew I had: a global pandemic.

My brain is trying to comprehend everything. How this situation evolved to what it is currently. The first time I remember even hearing someone mention the word “coronavirus” was probably back in January, when the news first broke about the outbreak in China. To be honest, I was one who thought maybe it would just stay over there and be merely some “foreign disease.” I was wrong. It didn’t take long for this thing to find its way into our country’s borders. That was when I knew it wouldn’t be long before it came to my state. And it did. It continued to spread and become the crisis it is now.

I have never seen gas prices so low.

I have never seen so many of my favorite places close their doors.

I have never seen the shelves at the grocery store so empty.

I have never seen people fight over toilet paper.

I have never seen so many lives turned upside down.

But this is our new reality- for the next few weeks, months, and possibly years.

As a side note, being a business student, I am quite intrigued with how this pandemic will affect the economy in the years to come. But I am not here to talk about the economic impact of this situation. Maybe the next post will be about economics, but right now I want to talk about mental health. Mine and yours. For some of us, this is going to take a huge toll on our mental health over the next few weeks. I personally am not one who is easy going when it comes to change. Change is my worst enemy and I have been fighting it for the last several months as I adjust to the new lifestyle I have. Now I must fight it in the face of a global pandemic.

It feels as though everything is turned upside down. I cannot go to work, I cannot go to school, I cannot see my friends and the people I love the most. It’s hard to believe this is a new reality for all of us. What scares me the most is how long it is going to last. Already it’s been months, and the virus does not show signs of slowing down anytime soon. I hope and pray that is gone by the time summer comes around, but everything is so uncertain right now. That’s another thing that is making me anxious- the uncertainty of the situation. I feel very nervous and worried not knowing what might happen next. I keep telling myself that it cannot possibly get any worse, but we have been warned the worst is still yet to come.

However, despite these thoughts and fears, I am still holding onto a thread of hope. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. In the meantime, I want to share with you guys some of the things I have been doing while being self-quarantined.

1. Get up at your usual time

Sleeping in is actually not good for your body. Get enough rest, but try to get up early and start your day as you normally would

2. Get ready for the day

This was a big one for me. I have found that I feel better if I still get dressed and do my makeup and hair as I would if I was going out for the day.

3. Work on projects you didn’t have time to do before

Now that you have all the time in the world, pick up a new hobby or do a house project you’ve been wanting to do for a while. I’ve been using this time to work on my blog and YouTube channel (subscribe for quarantine vlogs.)

4. Get outside

As long as you social distance yourself from anyone you may encounter, getting outdoors will help unleash those stuffy feelings and allow you some fresh air.

5. Reflect

I’ve been taking this time to look back on the last several months and evaluate some things I need to work on as well as applaud myself for the good changes I’ve made. Use this time away from other people to work on and take good care of yourself.

I hope this was helpful to some of you who may be experiencing the same feelings I am. I hope that we will all be able to return to normalcy soon; but in the meantime, wash your hands, stay home, and stay healthy.

#HowISurvivedHighSchool

#HowISurvivedHighSchool Part 3: The Truth About Friends and Friendships

May 29, 2019

Hi there, welcome back to the blog!

Today I’m back with another part of #HowISurvivedHighSchool. I’d like to know, are you guys enjoying it? Is there anything specific you’d like me to talk about at some point during the series? Leave me a comment or connect with me on social media and let me know. Also, if you aren’t caught up with the first two parts, I’ll link them here:

As always, I’m going to copy and paste the “rules” I posted in the first post. It’s important for me to mention them every time because I don’t want anything I say here to be taken out of context.

1. This is a 6 week series and a new part will be posted each Wednesday (so mark your calendars.)

2. I am NOT here to call anyone out or speak poorly of anyone I’ve encountered throughout my High School career. That’s not my vibe and my intentions of writing these posts are to encourage; not to bring anyone down.

3. I will be talking about certain people I’ve encountered and things I’ve experienced, but please know that NO NAMES will be mentioned; if a name has to be used it will be changed.

4. All the things I am going to tell you are true and are my stories that I have a right to tell.

5. Please read/listen with open ears and hearts.

6. Some of the topics I will be discussing are mature and very series at times so if you can’t handle the intensity, please feel free to click out at any time.

So today I wanted to talk about a very important part of high school: friends. Friends play a very significant role in your life so I think it’s important to build ones that last. Unfortunately I’ve had very little luck with that, especially in high school, and I’ve learned that most people are going to come and go out of your life but there will always be those few people who come into your life and stay for a long time.

I remember at the end of 8^th grade I saw this post online and it said “the people you hang out with in middle school aren’t going to be around for all of high school” and now at the end of high school I can fully confirm that saying is 100% true. During high school everyone goes through so many changes and sometimes people don’t change with you. Furthermore, high school is vastly different from middle school; it’s almost like a totally different world. Everyone is basically trying to figure out themselves and who they are as a person. Sometimes this creates tension in your relationships.

So in high school there are these things called “cliques.” What that is essentially is a group of people that gravitate towards each other in large groups. In a sociology class I took a while back, we learned that people with similar personalities tend to form these cliques. However, from what I’ve seen, cliques are just another way to stereotype. You’ll see where this information comes into play when it comes to friendships in a moment.

Something I haven’t talked about much on here is my experience at co-op. Some of you probably don’t know what it is, so I’ll explain quickly. What it is basically is a group of homeschool families that meets weekly to have classes like art, science, and drama, in addition to the work at home. I was involved in my co-op for 8 years. Looking back, there were a few pleasant memories made, but for me it was just not a good environment for me to grow up in. Out of all the people that were there and friends I made, on this current day I am not in contact with any of them. I’ll get to why in a bit.

In my grade there were 3 cliques. The first one was made up of the “popular” kids, if you will. The second group was the kids who were the quiet, more introverted ones and the last group were the kids with disabilities. It sounds so stereotypical, but for the purpose of this post you need to know. As the years went on and we got older, it only became more stereotypical. In the beginning it was easy to do group activities because everyone talked to everyone, but the “popular group” only became more distant from everyone else.

You might be wondering where I fit into these groups. To be honest, I really didn’t fit into any of them; I just bounced around between all three because I really tried to get along with everyone. My longtime best friend was in the popular group so I spent a lot of time with them, but I didn’t really fit in with them and was often left out or in the back of the group. No big deal at first, I still hung around the other groups.

Then something happened in summer of 2014 that changed the course of my friendships with these people. I’m not going to take the time to explain what happened, but long story short me and one of the populars had a very public falling out on social media. It resulted in most people taking sides, and everyone pretty much took this other girl’s side. The situation itself is not significant anymore but the tension never left. Life went on though, this girl and I never reconciled (even after I made 2 attempts) but everyone else seemed to get along just fine.

There were some big problems with these people. The popular ones. There is a reason I eventually chose to distance myself from them. At co-op they were constantly having attitudes, making unkind remarks to other students, and just flat out acting stuck-up. There is no better word for it. There were major bullying issues and the adults did next to nothing about it. Some of them even contributed to the problems. People were skipping out of gym because the teacher always favorited the populars and the other kids weren’t treated fairly. Some of the behavior I witnessed from these kids makes me sick to my stomach to this day whenever I think about it. One time, one of the said popular kids said to my friend (and I quote) “I’m better than you.” I’m.better.than.you. No other context, just “I’m better than you.” I will never be able to erase that from my mind. And her attitude that came with it, her parents should be ashamed.

One thing I’ve learned after all these years is that sometimes you don’t realize how badly you’re being treated until that person is out of your life. The way things ended with these people was far from good terms, but I’m so happy they are out of my life because I have people in my life now that made me realize how bad these people were for me. I haven’t spoken to these people in two years. However, I have ran into them a few times in public since then and I have to say, for people who proudly call themselves “Christians”, their behavior towards me was far from Christian like. Little or no eye contact, pretending I’m not even there at all, not even a wave or smile. It’s really hard to believe they were what I once called my best friends.

After going through a very, very dark and scary period of my life in 2017, things finally started to look up. I wasn’t feeling depressed anymore, I actually wanted to leave my house, and I met some new amazing people who have changed my life. People who genuinely care about me, make time to spend with me, and aren’t ashamed to be seen with me. They helped me get to a better place in my life and allow me to be myself. I thank God for giving me the strength to let the bad ones go and for bringing better people into my life.

There’s a quote by Alexander Graham Bell that I think beautifully illustrate this: “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” I like to remind myself of this whenever a relationship ends or an opportunity falls through. There is always a reason and most of the time it’s because God is making room for bigger and better things. So if things aren’t going well right now, just remember that it could be a sign that there are better things coming.

I want to be completely honest with you for a moment. I recently celebrated my graduation (which I’ll be talking about in an upcoming post) and I had three friends show up. Now I had plenty of other people too, but my point is, you can have all the friends in the world but out of all those there will only be a few real ones. I didn’t even think about the people who didn’t come because I’m thankful I have three really good friends that took the time to celebrate my graduation with me. I’d take that over having many fake friends any day.

So if you take away anything from this post, here’s three main points I want you to remember. First, don’t hangout where you know you don’t fit in. Second, let go of those unhealthy relationships in your life! Remember, when a door closes another one opens. Third, value your close friends. They are the ones that are going to be around for a long time.

changes

Twenty Eighteen: Year In Review

December 31, 2018

Twenty Eighteen: Year In Review

Welcome back!

It’s been awhile, so have you missed me? Probably not. Much has happened since the last time I posted and I plan to do a life update post soon, but not in this post. I hope your holidays were as wonderful and tasty as mine. I’ve been on Christmas break for almost two weeks now and this is the first time I’ve gotten to sit down and work on some projects I promised myself I would get done during Christmas break (weird how that always happens...) Alas, that did not go as planned but no worries because here I am now, finally accomplishing some things and writing a new post.

As you may have noticed, another year is in the books (is it just me or did it go by extra fast this year?) I really enjoy writing these year end review type of posts, so that’s what I’m going to do today. Hopefully this won’t get too lengthy, so my apologies in advance. Enough being said, here’s how 2018 went for me:

For the first time, this year I made a list of New Year’s resolutions. Normally I don’t do this, mostly because I don’t want to fail them (I’m that kind of person.) But this year I tried it out so I wanted to share some of them with you and talk about how I either failed or succeeded at them.

· Wake up early
· Eat Healthy
· Exercise more
· Read the Bible everyday
· Start a journal
· Be organized
· Read at least 15 books
· Spend less time on devices
· Be more positive

Waking up early

When you’re homeschooled, waking up in the mornings isn’t so easy. I could sleep until noon if I absolutely wanted to. In fact, I used to do that and it actually made me really unhappy because I would wake up and the day would be halfway over. So this year, I made it a goal to wake up early/have a good sleeping routine. I think it’s safe to say I succeed at this goal because I have a much better sleep routine and it’s made me so much happier because my days are so much more fulfilling, versus sleeping through half of it.

Eating healthy

I’ve never technically been a “bad” eater. My mom was never the mom at the grocery store with a cart full of junk food with packs of energy drinks hanging over the sides. But I still wanted to do better this year and I actually ended up giving up all red meat (pork and beef.) Not only for environmental reasons, but because I never liked eating those foods in the first place. I would eat them if they were put in front of me, but this year I completely gave it up and I’ve never been such a happy eater in my life. I like to call myself a “partial-vegetarian” and someday I hope to cut out all meat completely. I’m extremely happy with the progress of my diet this year and I hope I can continue good eating habits in 2019.

Exercising more

Okay so I already did a post on my fitness story (you can read that post here), but I’m really proud of myself for being a lot more active this year than I was before. I started to enjoy going on walks, bike riding, and other outdoor sports I never thought I would actually like. Fitness has become an activity I like now and I feel so good after a workout. I would also like to point out that I’m not working out to gain or lose weight; or maintain a certain body image. In my opinion, fitness and exercise should be about staying healthy in general and not trying to make yourself look a certain way. I’m definitely proud of the progress I’ve made this year, and although anyone can look at me and not notice a difference, I can clearly see the progress I’ve made since I started exercising and that’s what matters to me. For those interested, I plan on doing a workout routine post sometime; however, I like to change my routine up from time to time so I don’t get tired of doing the same workouts. In other words, I don’t have a “consistent" routine I stay with for a long time. Overall, I’m super happy with the progress I’ve made and I hope to be even more active in 2019!

Reading the Bible everyday

This is also an area in my life where I’ve made some big changes this year. To give you a short summary of my religious background, I was baptized when I was 9 (I think) at a church I had been going to for a while, but no longer attend. Since then, my relationship with God has been through some rough patches over the years; and until this year, I was not in a very good place with God. However, after many years of soul searching and church hunting (which is not easy), this year I finally found a church where I feel as if I belong and going there has really helped me deepen my relationship with God. I have not read the Bible every day as I said I would, but I have been reading it a lot more frequently and my faith has become so much stronger this year. There are still times when it gets hard, but I’m in a better place with God than I ever was so getting through rough patches is much easier now that I have a strong relationship with God.

Starting a journal

This is where I begin to fail. I’ve journaled off and on for years, but I’ve never kept up with it as I keep saying I will. I started out strong this year, but unfortunately I never made it to the end of January (I know, so far.) At this point I can probably conclude that journaling just isn’t my thing at all. However, I did start something else this year. Every day of 2018 (minus only a few days) I wrote down something on a piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in a Kleenex box. On the paper I wrote down something good that happened that day. Some days it was just little things, but even if it was a bad day I still had to write something down. I haven’t looked back at any of them yet so I’m excited to go through and read them at the end of the year. For this new year, I plan to do the same thing but instead of writing them on slips of paper, I got a gratitude journal for Christmas so I’ll be using that to write things down in there instead of the slips of paper. I would highly encourage you to do this too because it helps you to see the good in even bad days or situations. Doing this has helped me realize there is always something to be grateful for even if it’s just being alive.

Be Organized

I have always been a very organized person. Physically and mentally. For the most part, my room stays clean and uncluttered. This year, I also stared using a weekly planner to write things down in. Needless to say, it has helped me a lot and now I have an obsession with planners. Not that I couldn’t remember things before; however, writing things down helped me a lot to have a plan for each day as well as remember school assignments and such.

Read at least 15 books

I wanted to read this year more than I have the past few years. Recently I’ve had trouble focusing during reading which had caused me not to read as much as I used to. This year I really wanted to make it a goal to try to read more, which I did; however, I don’t think I reached my goal of 15 books. I did read a lot more than I did last year though and I’m pretty happy about that. I’ve recently been hooked on Sarah Dessen’s books (so cheesy but they make good easy reads.) I hope to continue reading more in 2019 because it’s such a good hobby to have and I’ve learned a lot from books. There’s nothing like the feeling of settling down to read a good book (and getting mad when your favorite character dies. Book nerds can relate.)

Spend less time on devices

I, along with millions of other people on this earth, am guilty of spending too much time on my devices. I don’t know about you, but this is something that annoys me because it can be a difficult habit to control. These days it seems harder and harder to put down your phone and live in the real world. What do we do when we’re bored? Check social media. What do we do when we need to speak to someone? Text them. What do we do when we look good? Take selfies on our phone. What do we do when…okay you get the point. I tried hard this year to keep some distance between me and my phone and I have to say, I’ve done pretty well but not as well as I would have wished. I could be better about putting down my phone and finding more productive things to do with my time. So this year, I’m making it a priority to decrease the time I spend on a screen. And I’d like to challenge everyone to this as well. Make it a point to be present and in the moment because sometimes we miss things happening in the real world when we’re too concerned about what’s happening in our digital world.

Be more positive

This is probably the hardest and easiest goal of the whole year. It was hard for me because I struggle with staying positive. I’m not the kind of person that’s happy all the time. There’s times where I’m depressed and it’s hard to even get out of bed and face the day. However, those moments did not happen as frequently this year and it’s probably the biggest change I’ve made all year. Looking back at how I got to where I am now, it all has to do with lifestyle choices. Primarily the things I’ve listed above, along with a few other things which I want to talk about briefly.

This year I cut out all negative influences in my life and people who were not making a positive impact on me and my life. Instead of investing in these unhealthy relationships, I chose to invest in relationships with people who are positive influences on my life and that’s probably one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I can legitimately say I’ve been genuinely happy this year and probably the happiest I’ve been in a long time.

2018 has been the year of healing and moving on. I moved on from things I was doing and going through that were not healthy. Was it easy? Definitely not. There were times when it got super hard, but I knew in the end it would and will be worth it. Healing is a process. I’m still in that process, taking things day by day and some days are harder than others. I know to some people it won’t seem like much, but to me I can see every small change making a big difference in my life. I know I have changed in the best ways possible and those changes are helping me live a life I didn’t even know was possible. And that was the best part of this year.

This year has been one of the best ones yet! Thank you if you’re still here reading this…your support means the world to me! I’m extremely grateful to be sharing my journey of life with you (for almost 2 years!) I hope that God has blessed you as much as He has blessed me this year, and I pray that 2019 will bring joy and happiness into your life and that you will have a wonderful new year!

emotions

Love Part 2: Friendships

February 11, 2018

Love Part Two: Friendships

“Walk with the wise and become wise, for a companion of fools suffers harm.” Proverbs 13:20

Welcome back! As you probably already know, today I’ll be continuing my series on love with part two. If you missed last week’s post, check it out here.

Last week I went over some things about what this series is, defined love as put in the dictionary, and talked about loving family. Today we’re going to continue along those same lines, but today we’re going to talk about your friendships.

In case you forgot, I’ll go ahead and insert the dictionary definition of love again.

Love- an intense feeling of deep affection

Of course one of the things we’ll be doing throughout all of these posts is to not only look at what the dictionary and society say about love, but see what God’s Word says. And maybe by the end you’ll even have your own definition of love.

Mark 12:31 says “love your neighbor as yourself”. Neighbor means your peers, the people around you. When we love other Christians around us, that means we are loving our brothers and sisters in Christ, which pleases God. It’s important to build friendships with good people. If we surround ourselves with good company, that will make a more positive impact on your life and you’ll be much happier.

Some people make friends easier than others. For me, making friends has never been easy. I’m a very shy and reserved person, not outgoing like others. But one thing I’ve learned is that it doesn’t take a lot to make a friend. Sure, it does involve stepping out of your comfort zone a little, but let me tell you a little story. So about a year ago, I was at youth group and we divided up into small groups of about five or six people. In my group one night we were going around and introducing ourselves and after I introduced myself this girl looked at me and said “you’re really really pretty”. Ever since that compliment, we’ve been friends.

You don’t have to think of a super impressive thing to say to someone. It can just be something simple like “hi, I love your hair”. I think sometimes we overthink and it prevents us from talking to people because we can’t think of something really good to say. Another thing I’ve learned when trying to make friends is to make yourself approachable. When you surround yourself with people you already know, there’s a less likely chance that someone new is going to talk to you because they assume you already have your group of friends.

I like going places by myself. I’ve found that by going alone, it reduces the stress of having to “impress” your friend or whoever you’re usually with, and it makes you more open to other people around you. It takes some getting used to, but you’d be surprised what all you miss when you’re busy with other people.

So enough about making friends, let’s talk about keeping them. This is the real key to having good friends, because you want friendships that will last, right? As I said before, positive things come from being around positive and uplifting people. Believe it or not, friendships can be just as toxic as some relationships if you “hang out with the wrong crowd”. But if you have good, positive people as friends then this part should be a breeze.

The most important part of a friendship is to talk. All the time. About everything. Okay maybe not everything, but keeping secrets that you’ve told someone else from your friends is what leads to those dreaded fights. I think communication is the most important thing when it comes to friendships. If you don’t communicate properly with your friends, you’ll eventually lose connection with them and they’ll drift away which is pretty sad.

The last thing is to tell them how much you appreciate them. By letting them know how much you appreciate them being in your life, it shows them that you still care and are making an effort to keep the friendship lasting and going strong. I’m really bad at this sometimes because I tend to get upset whenever someone isn’t talking to me as much and I wonder why but then I remember that to keep any friendship strong, you have to let the person know that you still value the friendship. Even if that means texting them first (which is something I literally hate doing), or getting over your pride and being the one to step up and say “hey I just wanted to let you know how much I value you as a friend”.

God told us to love others as He loved us (John 15:12). He told us to walk with the wise, and forgive others if you have grievances against them. Obviously it’s hard to top God’s love for us, but if we clothe ourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12-14), we attract people of the same character. That’s the real truth to making and keeping friends.

emotions

Love Part 1: Family

February 04, 2018

Love Part One: Family

“But if anyone does not provide for his own, especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” 1 Timothy 5:8

Hello and welcome! Today is a very exciting day because this is the first part of a series I will be doing for the month of February. Not only that, but this is the first series I’ve EVER done so I’m very excited.

I’ve seen other bloggers do this and I’ve wanted to do a series for a while, but I wasn’t sure what it would be about. I needed a topic that I would be able to cover in multiple posts and something that I’m passionate about . It came to me while I was lying in bed one night. I was thinking about Valentine’s Day and brainstorming for ideas of what I could write about for my blog. Then I thought “what if instead of one post, I make a series for Valentine’s Day?”

So here I am now. Over the next few weeks we will:

Look at what is love according to the Bible
Look closely at different connections with people in your life
Examine what it means to be loved by others
Examine what it means to be loved by God

This series will be weekly, so there will be a new blog post up every Sunday. Also, feel free to start a discussion in the comments. I would love to hear from you!

Now let’s finally dive into this thing called love. We’re going to start by defining love. First, let’s see what the dictionary has to say about it.

Love- an intense feeling of deep affection

Does this definition surprise you? I think it gets pretty close to the point. After all, love is a feeling, right? The thing is feelings are different for everyone. People also express feelings differently. Have you ever heard of someone talk about “love languages”? Love languages are how each person expresses love. For an example, someone might perform an act of kindness, like doing the dishes for your parents or cleaning the house for your wife. If you like to do things like that, that would be your love language. Some might like to give their loved ones gifts. That’s also an expression of love and a love language.

Some other common forms of showing affection (love language):

Words of affirmation
Physical touch
Quality time

Leave a comment below and let me know what your love language is! I’d love to know.

Now that we’ve talked about what love is and learned about the love languages, I think it’s time to talk about the real first topic in this series: family. I put family first because that’s obviously higher on the list than some of the others. Why? Because your family are the people who share your blood, who share your same last name (in most cases), that you probably live with, that you’ve grown up with. Your family is probably the people you spend the most time with. And let’s be real, we all get annoyed with our family sometimes. Okay, maybe a lot more often than sometimes. But that just goes to show that even families aren’t perfect.

What saddens me is that there are so many families that are torn apart in some way. Most of the time this is caused by the parents. Divorce rates are extremely high these days, and the worst part about divorce is that it affects the children just as much as the marriage. Children with divorced parents usually are more distrusting and tend to be more aggressive towards their peers (clearly this is not the case for everyone). There are other things that can tear families apart such as the military, and busy jobs or jobs with a lot of traveling.

A strong, healthy family is centered around God. The Bible says in Joshua 24:15, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” If a family serves and honors the Lord, they will have a firm foundation in their home.

Love takes patience, especially when it comes to family. That’s why I think the two values go hand in hand. I’ll be talking a lot about patience in this series, so get used to it now. It’s just almost like you can’t have one without the other. Just as it says “love is patient”. It takes a patient person to love, and love requires a lot of patience sometimes.

Your family should come before anything else in your life, next to your relationship with the Lord. It’s something that you should treasure and put effort into. Not every family is perfect, but if you put God in the center and foundation of your relationship with your family, He will bless you with good things in your life.

Pages

Experiencing A Global Pandemic: surviving the crisis + the impact on mental health

#HowISurvivedHighSchool Part 3: The Truth About Friends and Friendships

Twenty Eighteen: Year In Review

Love Part 2: Friendships

Love Part 1: Family

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