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amphibeans · 7 months

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October 8 - laid-back

October's leaves are starting to fall, the days become shorter, darker, and more spooky this time round. And this will reflect into the writing. Welcome to another blog of mine, this one is one of the more personal ones I have written. No pictures this time, I want to be real for a moment. So, I suggest preparing yourself before reading this, because I go into a lot of heavy topics in this post. Got it? Perfect, have fun reading.

On my own again

The biggest news I got this week and probably this year was that my only classmate I have in science has decided to not follow the lessons anymore due to personal reasons. I won't go into much detail what these reasons are. This news hit kinda hard with me, because that classmate of mine didn't seem like they had issues with the thing that led them to drop out.

So from now on I'm on my own most of the time in class, luckily not all the time but atleast two thirds of it I am. It felt weird at first, since I knew that all the responsibilty of talking to the teacher and answering their questions to exercises was now in my hands. But at the same time it felt normal, since the times that my classmate wasn't here, I did the same thing. But now with this new knowledge, it changed a whole perspective in me.

This moment led me to think like I usually do about something that I learned from, this time it was about feeling lonely and being on your own. I myself have had these feelings of loneliness before, long times of talking to people and losing contact with them, and they never felt so strong after I broke up with my boyfriend. Being now more accustomed to it, the realization of getting to do a school year mostly on your own didn't hit as hard as it usually does for me. Constant exposure to a certain feeling has led me to not feeling anything about it anymore, just a cold broken heart if you will.

As someone who is introverted, I've told people about how I feel lonely even though I don't like contact with people. Most of my newer friendships have happened online, and with some counter movement against it (mostly from my parents who haven't grown up in such an environment). I myself struggle with keeping real life friendships afloat, but this buoy seems lifted if it all happens through a screen. It might seem dystopian thinking this way, but it has had tons of positive effect on me in the last years.

If you ever feel lonely, you're never alone. There will always be someone who cares about you, and loves you, and appreciates you. If you have the courage to talk to them, I highly recommend doing so. They might have the same feelings as you can have, and therefore it's a win-win for you both.

Dreaming about bigger things

That was a lot to pack in, so now I'm gonna talk about something more upbeat. And that has all to do about dreams.

If I could explain my dreams concretely, I would not be able to give a proper answer or give it justice. They are very abstract with a lot of things always happening in them. Sometimes they feature people, other times they don't feature people at all and it's just shapes, sometimes they go beyond the supernatural. It's a mess, and I have been thinking of saving them after hearing a friend does this as well. Perhaps I'll do it one day.

Dreams can be very fun, but of course nightmares exist too. One moment where they can get really spooky and sometimes go on the border of hallucinations is when I have a migraine. I wanted to be more upbeat about this section so I'm not gonna go into detail what they contain.

Anyhow, this section is dedicated to those dreams that begin to shape a career or story in an individual, and sometimes even makes them legends in the process. A great example of this is the dreams Kendrick Lamar had of another rapper 2Pac; and which let him to create his now classic album To Pimp a Butterfly centered around that story.

A recent dream I had had is meeting Adrianne Lenker from the band Big Thief, whose album songs I recently listened to. In the music she made she seemed a kind soul, and I filled the gap this way by thinking she was the same in real life. We held a great conversation, and she gave me a ton of music advice. I still think about that dream, and it inspired me to perhaps send some demos to the label she is signed to. So just like Kendrick, this might become something big for myself. Perhaps a dream you're having might influence your life later on.

My point with all of this is is that the concept of thinking about your future career points through the act of dreaming can be very important to shape. The reason I started doing this blog was through the act of dreaming it and having a vision for it. Of course, nothing is 100% how I wanted it to be, but the core values are still there. Your visions shouldn't be perfect, but if their main point gets across that's more than enough to strife for.

What are some dreams you might be having recently? Try tapping into them, perhaps they might give you meaningful information about yourself.

How you're seen

One thing that has always been fascinating in people is the way we present ourselves in front of others, and how we adapt to certain people.

At school, I'm a different type of me than I am in my music, or at a party, or at my volunteer work, or online. They're all different personas: they all act different, they sometimes even speak another language that differs from them. But in total, they are still all a part of me, my identity as a whole.

When I always meet people and get to know them more, I try to tap into their own personal feelings to try and understand them more. This makes me so linked to people and why I always feel sad when we don't talk anymore. All my friends are a part of me, and losing a piece of them is for me losing a bond. Through the years I got to learn from it, but it's still a character trait that runs deep through me.

Which comes back to my classmate, because their persona was shown to be different depending on school and not-school. They present themselves as kind, well-spirited, happy, and loving life, but to see them be slightly different from that is what made me think about the way we present ourselves.

Perhaps you struggle with trying to please people like I do, and presenting yourself differently than you really want to. We tell ourselves that being yourself is part of a happy and prospering life, but as with many life lessons we encounter problems in them. We are complex creatures, and our philosophical language keeps evolving with time. So finding a way to be ourselves is tricky, and there might as well never be a proper and well-rounded solution to the question of "Am I being myself?"

One thing you should not be afraid of is thinking you are not you. One time a friend of mine told me they worried about presenting themselves to other people, but that was a non-issue to them now. The solution they came up with is that it's their life and we can do whatever we want to do. And when I knew about this, doors started opening up for me.

The last two paragraphs might seem contradictory to each other. At the one hand there isn't a proper way to be yourself because of our complexity, but at the other hand it's what we decide is good for us that makes us unique. In the end it's for you to decide these rulings, and if it seems like you struggle to find who you really am, the mid-point might well be to be less harsh on your definition of being yourself.

Routines update

Two weeks ago I told you about a way to get your best routine by trying out different routines and seeing which ones feel best to you. I told then that I would do the same thing I gave as advice, and I tried my best to keep up with that promise.

I have tried many ways to get on with the day. One of the most prominent ones I did even before starting with giving this advice is studying at school instead of at home, and this routine has worked marvelously; I feel more productive in working on something than I did at home. However, there are of course the caveats where change has been slow and not well thought out.

One of these things I still struggle with is the way I wake up and go to sleep. I usually wake up at 6 AM every day except on weekends and go to sleep at around 11 PM, which for my age is too little sleep, and my body can feel that sometimes. Days to me are working phases: I need to do work without many breaks in a continuous fashion, be that working on music, school, or another of my top secret projects that take years to finish. And while that has worked for a very long time without issue, today that has led to a lot of stress on my part. And I need to work on that a lot.

I tried to work on getting that self-care that I need but unfortunately I haven't had any luck yet. However, what you should not do in a situation where all hope seems lost is to give up. Giving up leads to more problems than it solves them. Keep on trying and sooner or later I will get there. If you feel like you're also stuck somewhere, don't give up. Before you know it, it might be resolved, and sometimes that resolution is at the palm of your hand (quite metaphorically and literally). You got this !!

I hope this situation might paint a good picture into trying to solve a routine issue. I know my writing isn't perfect and mistakes can slip through the cracks, but my main point with this blog is to inspire, not to be a guardian trying to criticize your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, learning from them and adapting them is part of what makes us human.

Song of the week: ingdyar by Adrianne Lenker and Will Anybody Ever Love Me? by Sufjan Stevens

This week's blog post was more on the rambly side of things, and if some things aren't as clear-cut as they usually are, feel free to message me about it on my Instagram. Critiques help make me fix some mistakes I might have in writing. Thank you for reading. - Acacian

#blog #thoughts #thinking #self care #student life

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amphibeans · 7 months

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October 2 - busyhead

Hey hi ! This blog post came out on Monday instead of usually on Sunday. Very sorry if you were excited to get a new blog post of mine that day, but I was really really really busy this weekend and couldn't finish this blog in time. Currently writing this Monday evening actually. The title of this week's blog post is dedicated to some friends of mine who are big into a musician named Noah Kahan. They recommended me a ton of their music and started listening to him to see what all the fuss was about. Today (reminder that it's a Monday I'm writing from) I listened to his debut album 'Busyhead'. I loved it a lot, it's lush folk pop and it reminisces feelings of nostalgia to me. I am quite the victim of nostalgia, so that's why this appealed to me in a big way. Shout out to my lovely friends who recommended me this, I hope to meet them sometime. Listen to the album here

My first experience working at a venue

The big event I did this week was working at that venue I've been chatting about for the past week. Well that day came and went and was awesome, nay scratch that it was legendary ! Let me get you an overview.I arrived at the venue after taking a 2 hour train ride to there and it started pretty quickly getting ready for my job, which was stagehand. What that includes is basically building and breaking apart the stage for the acts that were playing; which were two bands and a DJ booth. The band (which was Glasvegas) arrived at about the same time that I came to work, and I helped with getting their material upstairs to where they were set to perform. They were very nice, just 5 dudes (4 were the band, one was their sound techician) from Scotland having certain doubts if people were ever to come to their gig or not. Their show sold about 300 tickets, and I'm confident most people came in the end.

Glasvegas performing on the tiny stage of the club surrounded by spectators.

Back to setting up however, it was extremely fun and interesting doing this for the first time. Setting up cables, giving the band their material, seeing it all being built in front of me was awesome. It took us about 4 hours setting everything up and at that point most of my work was done. Another band, The Christian Club from Belgium, came in later but couldn't set up their stuff due to Glasvegas having tons of technical difficulties with their soundcheck. In the end the Belgian band only had 30 minutes to do soundcheck before they were set to perform.

The Christian Club perform their aura in the Club (not Christian).

After all that was finished I ate some dinner with the latter band and they went on to perform. They were honestly really really good and I also bought a tape from them. Pure vibes, and the main singers' voice was deep and pure. I unfortunately couldn't see Glasvegas' complete set because I needed to catch the train back home. It's a bit of a bummer because the songs they did perform were bangers, and I would've loved to stay.I had an amazing time and I hope to do this more often. In fact my next one is already planned as of writing.

Halloween creatures?

With Halloween around the corner, I have decided that it's finally time to start releasing some new music again. And it's coming in the form of a reimagining of an earlier track. One of my favorite tracks I've ever produced is 'Pumpkin' from my debut EP. Before I made the track I was figuring out how to create the perfect string arrangement plugin to use to program violins. At the time I didn't know how to play the instrument (I can do it now but still with a bit of trouble) and was fighting teeth and bone to create something that sounds like it. One day, it finally worked out, and the end result was the track. My vocals weren't as fresh and lush sounding back then, and my singing was sub-par. With this reimagining of the track I'm hoping to fix this issue.

The cover of the new single, I took the photograph.

It's gonna drop on Oct 26. And it's gonna start a brand new era in Acacian. One thing that not a lot of people realize is that all my songs are connected with each other. I got hugely inspired by twenty one pilots and their huge lore that they have and I decided to do the same for my projects. Just for clarification, CALMUS is not connected. The story of Acacian that I'm trying to tell is really deep, and it's still in a lot of its early stages. I think once I have an album this will become more and more clear, but for now what I can only tell you is that it's inspired by tons of folklore I read and that the things happening in the songs aren't quite as real as you might think. They're inspired by the abstract dreams and ideas I'm having everytime a revolution happens around the earth. But to answer the question of a brand new era in Acacian, it's coming. A new story is forming. One with a lot of creatures, and one which will take some time to write and to conceptualize. I'm taking my sweet time with creating this new world, and I hope that in the end it'll be worth it for you reading this blog. Thank you by the way for reading, you are very special to me.

A look back at September

To end this blog post I wanted to look back on what I've accomplished in September. I want every last day of a month to be a sort of thinking point on what I've done that previous month, and to see what nice and not so nice things I've done to take with me next month. I want you to try and do the same. Think about the things you've done this month. Most people tend to look at the bad things they've done and not the great things they really accomplished that let them grow as a person, so I want you to focus on the positives. Of course, we shouldn't disregard the negatives, but see them as opportunities to learn. For me my positives can be big and small; the big things I've done is starting this blog and working for the first time in a setting I'm comfortable with. Small things for me are going out with my family to a couple theatre shows and enjoying being with them. For things I want to take with me to approve are definitely my school grades for math and get better at starting routines. I still struggle immensely with getting everything on time, having a schedule, and believing more in myself. I want to work on that more and that could be my focus for this month. Writing down what you want to change about yourself or what you want to stay the same helps you to better understand yourself and know what's really going on when doubts start to arise. I hope that these tips might help.

I took this photo after my parents and I went to a musical. It was awesome. The sun shining was a nice touch.

Song of the week: I Might Bore You. by milk. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have an amazing spooky month. - Acacian

#blog #student life #lifestyle #music blog #musician #photography #musicals #new music #concert

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amphibeans · 7 months

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September 24 - lo-fi

Hello ! Another week has passed and therefore a brand new blog post by yours truly. You might notice not many photos this week. That's because I didn't take many this week. Hope you don't mind ! Let's get into it.

Adult me is happening soon

The more time passes around me, the more I'm feeling the struggles of becoming older and not being a teenager anymore. I'm currently living it up until that faithful day happens and it has given me mixed results. On one hand I'm proud to finally become an adult and be more recognized amongst peers, because many people I have talked to still consider me young and perhaps not knowing enough of the ropes. On the other hand however, I'm gonna miss the time I had whilst being a child, the heartache, the growing and blossoming of myself, and the fun times I had that I can never get back. I think most people wish to be a child forever or still have that spirit in them, but in today's day and age that line between being an adult and a child gets blurrier. All of these thoughts about becoming an adult started when I went with my mom to someone working for the government about my child support. Because in the system, I'm considered a child with special needs due to my Autism condition. I'll know the result in a few weeks if that child support gets changed or not. If not, then I'm considered an adult by the tax system. To me this is amazing stuff to think about, but I can imagine it to most people not being that pretty.

Me at Newport beach in Belgium at one year of age, August 2007

Another reason whilst I've been thinking about my past is that when I was trying to make something (see next chapter of this blog) I stumbled across old photos and videos of me and my family that were visiting the seaside in 2007. I'm quite familiar with the place because I've been there many times in my life; it's my mom's escape from the countryside or the city and she would take us whenever she wants to. She still does that from time to time and I love her for that. Places like these make me remind of how sweet it is to be around and take in everything. They change a lot as well, as per usual places do. Things always need to be fixed, be better with the time, and be efficient. Every place you'll ever visit will never be the same like it was before. It's hard to live with that thought, because to me at least I'm used to what's normal to me. Hopefully you might have these feelings as well. Take a look around next time you go to a place you're familiar with, and come back after significant time has passed. You'll notice new things and appreciate things that might seem ordinary in the past as special in the present. It calms me in a way, and I hope it does the same for you.

Listening physically or digitally?

This week's title is a reference to my love of making CDs and collecting vinyl. In fact, I made a whole album to be used as background music in my room. The interesting twist however that this album has is that it was not 100% made by me but a program capable of making it (aka AI). And even though I would love to release it, it goes against my own morality about releasing music, so that's why I don't do it. I need to confess that I did release an AI album one time, but now no longer available to stream.

The cover of this AI project, a lo-fi hip hop album

When I made the CD for this album (and the frankly gruesome work that goes along with it) it made me reflect on the physical medium of music compared to the now more prevalent streaming model used in today's day and age. Because I'm quite polarized on it, as are many musicians I have talked to and their own vision on it. Today's streaming model has some very obvious flaws it it, mainly that it doesn't pay the artists' enough for their own work. I know about this a lot because I had some success with my music on Spotify. Yesterday one of these songs passed 55 thousand streams which is a huge milestone to get for an independent artist. And some might expect that that would pay a lot. In reality it made about $100 bucks across streaming, 80% coming from Spotify. You might think that that's a lot of money as an independent artist, and it is good as pocket change. But if I would sell that song as a single on Bandcamp for $1, I'd only need about 150 buyers (some of the money from a purchase goes to Bandcamp) and I would get the same amount of money as 55 thousand streams. That's why they're is a huge push to buy physically. And so this divide in how much you get from physical vs. digital is why I myself like buying mostly physical releases and why I'm gonna release a project soon exclusively on Bandcamp. On streaming platforms, you need a ridiculous amount of listeners to even make a living. I calculated that to be around 30k if you're an indie musician, being on a label with its contracts will be too low. And even then, most musicians I know make their money from gigs and selling merch. I hope that in the future more and more people advocate for a better paying model on streaming services. Apple has an advantage in this because they make most of their money from their mobile devices, and even make a loss on Apple Music to pay their artists' fairly. Spotify is only that, their streaming app, so that's why they don't pay enough to artists. So I hope that they can find a solution to this problem, otherwise more and more of my projects will be placed early on Bandcamp as compensation.

Creating systems of living

My final point of this week is all about systems of life and how to sustain oneself. When we like it or not, order is important for us to know about what's happening in daily life and around us. In fact, you probably woke up today like you normally would the day before, and the day before that, and so on. My point is is that we as a species have daily tasks we need to finish to get going with the day. Other mammals have this as well, just think about how a mother bird would go hunting for food to give to it's young baby birds. We call these routines. I think most people grapple with the fact that their routine can be a little better, I'm no stranger to that because to be honest my morning routine is horrible. We want to take our time to get better at something but that's not an easy step to do. Like I said a few blocks back, we are accustomed to what's normal to us, and something (be it a person, and yes even a routine) that changes in its behavior we find peculiar and peak our interest. One way that breaks this cycle of getting lost in a routine is to make it everchanging. Don't make one routine, try multiple and switch between them. As I said in last's week blog post, trying new things is never not a bad idea. You'll always learn something new and refreshing. Here's how you can start doing such a thing: 1. Your first routine should be your standard one, write everything that you usually do in that routine.

2. Your second routine is the one you think would fit in a perfect scenario. One that you always wanted to have

3. Your third routine is your craziest routine, one that you would never do in your life. Events from this routine might invoke the answer of "I don't have the time for that".

4. Your fourth routine is your more lenient one, where you don't have anything to do usually. Just chilling, nothing else. Think about it nihilistically. These are just a few routines I came up with, but feel free to add anymore if you feel like it ! After you've tried and tested new routines for one specific thing (e.g. morning, evening, sport, study, work), the fun part then begins: you mix and match the best things about all the routines to that what fits you best; work them together into one. That in theory could be your best routine.Of course, I am not a scientist (yet) and therefore I don't know if that will work. However, I will try it for a few weeks and write down the results I'm having down in this blog. So I encourage you to try it out with me, and we can both see if it can work. You can talk about it with me on my Instagram.

Song of the week: FRANKIE MUNIZ by BLACKSTARKIDS Thank you for reading this more stripped back post ! And see you next week. - Acacian

#blog #student life #lifestyle #photography #art #music blog #musician #morning routine #daily routine #self care #healthy habits

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amphibeans · 8 months

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September 17 - small steps

Hi and welcome from the studio, glad you'd made it again to this silly website I'm constantly curating (or the readers from Tumblr!). I had many different talks with some of my kind and awesome friends about this project and I'm so glad to say that they're inspired to do the same kind of thing that I'm doing at the moment ! One thing I love about us as human beings is that we love using inspiration from each other. Sure, some of us take all the inspiration and therefore turns into plagiarism, but the ones with a way to learn new things have a good knack of taking the right amounts of inspiration to make something new and refreshing. It's not easy coming up with new ideas, because probably every single idea ever created probably exists today, but I feel that my friends who are inspired to do something similar to what I'm doing have their unique spin. And I support them all the way for it ! Now let's get into the thought machine, shall we?

The week

To be frank, this week was very uneventful. Mainly because it was mostly school that was starting up for real this time and that I had to put a lot of my hobbies on the side again. I still luckily have time to work on that stuff without worrying too much about school, but not as much as the week before. And I feel like this gap might shrink more and more as I get more tests and tasks I need to finish.But let's not get ahead of ourselves, looking into a future is never a good idea because you can't predict what will happen in it. One of my good friends told me this and I've been thinking about it ever since. Anyways, one thing I was really excited to start doing more full-time again every day is music lessons. I have it two hours on Monday normally but for a limited amount of time one of the lessons is replaced with a lesson about planning, I'll tell more about that later. At the moment of writing I was also tasked to read two books: one in Dutch (my mother tongue) and one in English for their respective subjects. The book I'm reading for Dutch is a biography on the life of Steve Jobs and for English it's Frankenstein.

The dream, being able to do this full-time

However, I still help a lot of the first-years here learning a new instrument and starting to create music together. It's a nice experience, albeit a loud one sometimes because if you give someone tools that really are fun to use they are gonna use it to death. But in most cases I find a peace within the music room where I can just play my heart out without being laughed at. I hope that I can later bring this more outside a music room and into a venue.Most of the week was fine, nothing really special to talk about. I had a chat with my friends and that's all that matters.

I wake up biking to get to school to these views every morning, they remind me of nostalgia

Whilst I was waiting on the train, I leant back and saw this cloud formation behind me, it reminded me of GLOW ON by Turnstile and I had to take a picture of it

Trying new things

This week I tried something that I usually don't do when school is finished and had thought that it would not work in hindsight. Every day after school is done I try to get home as soon as possible, to just get away from the stress I have of performing well in school. It however didn't work in the way I wanted it to work. When I went home I still was stressed and working on homework went very slow and was very tiring to say the least. But that changed after I had a talk with my planning teacher that I talked about earlier. He gave me the advice to study not at home but try to study at school for a bit. I followed this advice, and sure enough I felt much better going home. The only downside to this system is that I'm an hour later at home and far more hungrier. But my main problem that was pestering me a few years back now doesn't seem that big anymore. I learned this way that it's not bad to try new stuff. It might seem scary and perhaps have the opposite effect on what you're trying to strife, but in every occasion and perspective you look at it from you gain new and thoughtful information. Once you take this astronomical step, you're heading in a new direction and perhaps even an interesting one. To get there, repetition is key here. Say it out loud multiple times ! So don't be afraid to try new things that might change your systems for the better. I know it's hard to do so, nothing in this world is ever easy. Start easy and let it grow until you've fully committed. I send you all my encouragement.

A park I come across frequently whilst going on my morning commute, taken on the first day I felt calm after studying at school

Procrastinating

Many of us come across procrastinating in our lives. Sometimes we don't even notice it until it's specifically mentioned to us by someone else or the thinking machine sitting confidently in our head. Writing this blog is constantly a battle with procrastinating. I need to confess that writing it takes a very long time, and it's very grueling and time-consuming. But the reason I don't stop is because it lets me have talks like this where I learn new stuff about myself on the way. But yes, procrastination is seen as a bad thing to most people; because you're actively trying to not work on something urgent. And for a long time I have been sitting with that same mindset. My school expects me to study almost every day, even on weekends. I major in math and science and therefore this sentiment reigns even more supreme; I have atleast 4 tests a week on average. So actively avoiding work like this might seem like I'm digging my grave and I'm going to fail the school year. But that is not true in the slightest. Last year was one of the worst years I ever had growing up mentally. Mainly because a ton of teachers told me that "the second-to-last year before graduation is the worst year" and I take things literally on face value a lot of the time. Studying for me went like a drag and I expected to honestly do the year over again. Consider me shocked when I got my results back and went on to the next year. I procrastinated a lot a year ago, and to see me make it out (albeit barely but that's a story for another time) made me question how. For me now, procrastination is not really the bad thing that it is now. After really evaluating why I do it it's more of a coping mechanism. In reality, procrastinating is a way to prepare yourself mentally with the task at hand, but unfortunately a ton of that mental energy is wasted in worrying. Trying to get out of that worry-spiral is not gonna happen immediately, but telling yourself "I'm gonna be fine, this is good for my mental health" can be a good step into beating these blues. Life lesson therefore is to not worry, and let yourself rest when it needs to. Don't worry about people being mad about something else if you do, your mental health is more important.

Before signing off, I'm gonna introduce a new rubric to my blogs, and that is "Song of the Week" ! It's inspired by two things: The constant new songs I'm getting from my Discover Weekly on Spotify and one of my friends who does their "Song of the Day", which I find absolutely amazing. This week's song of the week is Thunderbird by Dessert and Still by black midi. Both beautifully orchestrated, the former having gorgeous vocal layers and the latter a climactic buildup with constantly something new to offer. Check those singles out in my playlist here. Thank you once again for reading, I'm sorry if this might be a bit more messy than the previous week, writing can be very hard sometimes. Hope you don't mind and catch you next time ! - Acacian

#blog #student life #lifestyle #music blog #musician #photography #outdoors #books and reading

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amphibeans · 8 months

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September 10 - from the start

Hi ! Welcome back to another blog post of mine ! This one is gonna be a lot larger and more full than the one from last week, so bear with me on it, but I hope you don't mind it. I have a lot to tell this week and I would like to go in detail with it. So let's do it from the start .And yes, the title is a reference to the Laufey song. I've been a fan of her work after discovering 'Love to Keep Me Warm' last year which features another all time favorite artist of mine named dodie. And now that Laufey is getting recognized for her amazing jazz tunes It feels good to me for becoming an early fan of her work. I highly suggest listening to her new album 'Bewitched' ! Listen to it here Now let's get onto my very eventful week.

Heading into a last year

This week was the start of the first full week of school for me. My final one as a high school student. I didn't know what I would expect from it because all the learning material was kinda new and some teachers were new as well. Sometimes having different teachers can be a good thing for me, but not all the time. One good new teacher however was my new Dutch teacher. She has a different kind of attitude towards the lessons than all the previous teachers that I have immense respect for. Previous teachers were keen on finishing the material that the government had set up for us pupils for the entire year, but she didn't follow that rule set. Her new rule for class was that: "If you have a topic you don't like or one you want us to cover in class, we can do it" Hearing that new vision on how to teach inspired me a ton. I think the lessons would be a lot more fun this way. Of course, I don't mind how teachers teach; they have each their own separate way to and sometimes I like that way. But if you want to make a lesson more fun, the model of my Dutch teacher is a great model. Many lessons apart from my Dutch lessons were just the same as last year, which is brilliant. Change can be good in many different settings, but in a school setting the opposite effect takes place. But looking at what is gonna change for me this year, it's all weirdly very positive. A lot of the time my class as a group will be celebrating the fact that this is our last year, so we will go do some crazy stuff with the teachers; one of which is doing a BBQ at school and then sleeping there as well. It's a nostalgic way to do it and I can't wait for it to happen. But let's not think ahead too much. It's still the first full week for me of school. I thought they were fine this week, apart from me having a heatstroke. Last day of the week was great because it was an excursion in the nearby city where my school lays. So all in all not a bad week at all ! Hopefully more weeks are like this.

Photo of the cloth hall where I played piano and ate ice cream (raspberry) on Friday in the city, it reminds me of Bloom by Beach House

Getting a job at a music venue

One of the things I looked forward to do was getting my volunteering job at a music venue where I went to last summer vacation. To get it was a bit of a doozy because I needed to get there after a schoolday, and it was about a 1:30 hour trip. That was on Monday, and it's a whole story. So let's start from the beginning: After school, I hurried to my bus, and went to the train station where I boarded a double decker train (standard train that was used for that kinda trip). I sat at the bottom viscinity and read a book because my phone had no battery. The train trip was uneventful, but when I arrived and ran to the metro station to catch a metro, I took the wrong one, and lost some precious time. Luckily however, I made it just enough to not lose much of the information given to the new volunteers. When I arrived there, people immediately began to notice my age. Many of the volunteers already had jobs (part-time or flexi) and were adults already. I was a high schooler and a 17 year old (which was the minimum age). However, the people were very kind when I arrived there, the coordinator explained every job we needed to do, and we had to sign a contract. After that was done, one of the volunteers asked me if they could drive me back home since it was such a far distance, but I declined. However, that was not a good decision on my part. After getting back to the station, 2 trains were cancelled to get back. I was stuck in the station for an hour with no battery. I however knew that there were powerbanks but they were very hidden, and I found them after 30 minutes of searching. It took me a long time to get back home, and it was already 9 PM when I arrived safe and sound, but it was all worth it. I'm very excited to start soon.

Before taking the last train home, I sat down and took this photo, the number of the platform (9) is illuminated behind me

"Who the f*ck is Alice?" theatre show

The sun shines bright before heading into the small theatre

The final event that I want to talk about happened yesterday evening. And that was a theatre show. The theatre show was a parody based on Alice in Wonderland, it was a retelling of some sorts with a lot of comedy and clever wordplay in it. 5 women played Alice, and each one of them had a scene that all had a significant impact on me. Also one of my favorite lines from the play was "Now kiss my ass" that all the Alice's said in unison. The whole production was very barebones, just a stage with a door that (spoiler alert) had a fully fledged obstructed table at the back of it that was pulled out during the scene with The Mad Hatter, the crowd gasped and laughed when they saw it happen, and I found that type of stuff brilliant. And speaking of that scene of the Mad Hatter, that was easily my most favorite one. They constantly cracked jokes like it was just normal conversation and it honestly didn't feel rehearsed, it felt like total improv. One of the jokes was the two actors playing Mad Hatter and his wife making a Belgian friterie snack where they smashed eggs and flour on the actor playing Alice. That was something I was not expecting. I wish I had a photo of it but events itself speak louder in our mind. The whole night was really fun, and even though I kinda felt a little sick from one of the ginger drinks I had that night I still enjoyed it ! The smell of the drink still lingers a bit now that I think about it. Art like this inspires me constantly, and I would love to do something like this in the future. My inspiration for everything always comes back to other creations, so don't be afraid to watch art and believe that you can make something like this.

One of the Alice's performs in full bright light

Car Seat Headrest and furries

Ever since the start of the new month, I'm listening to a lot more music than before, currently it's still in its infancy but with some more time I feel like I can get ready to discover a new project by a certain artist and review it every day. The current artist I'm listening to now is Car Seat Headrest, which was recommended to me by a lot of people; on the review website, and from friend input. As of writing I heard a few records from the band, mainly Twin Fantasy, Teens of Denial and How to Leave Town. As of now I'm starting from the roots of the Will Toledo-driven project with their numbered albums. I heard their first album last week and I didn't really love it, but I hope many other projects (that I haven't listened yet) are a lot better considering their maturity in writing and music. Now that I'm listening to this solo-project-turned-band's entire discography, and their main member being a furry, I would love to talk about those kinds of people more. Furries, if you don't know, are people who spent their time in a new character based on an animal, usually a dog or a wolf. They create a whole persona (therefore the term fursona) around themself and express themself as such in all sorts of art, including music like with Will Toledo and Car Seat Headrest. I myself have tons of friends that are considered furries. And I'm a supporter of what they're doing. I won't consider myself a furry yet, but I have an appreciation of their work and they've been very kind to me in return. Their appreciation largely stems from their creativity and the ways they express themselves. I'm a large advocator of that sort of stuff and it makes me happy to see how much fun they're having with it. Not all furries do this, but the furries having a fursuit (a costume where they fully dress as their fursona) spending ridiculous amounts of money to get one is dedication that I would love to strife for in my own body of work. Today, the reputation of their work and creativity kinda goes negative in a lot of ways: either unnoticed or hated. One of the reasons of hatred is the sexual route. My response to this is that with every community, they're are bad actors. They're will always be someone who legitimately wants to ruin a perception of a group of individuals just being themself. And we should not give a voice to these kinds of people. Most furries I've met are not those bad actors, they're quite the opposite actually. And I hope many people recognize that. We should not hate someone just because they're a part of a group who has bad people in it.

Relationships and overthinking

Reading this part might get heavy, so bare with me. One thing that I'm really struggling with and have been for a very long time (so long that I actually wanted to tell about it in my first blog post but couldn't) is that I am an overthinker. And a very big one at that. I always have had a feeling where I don't know if people like me or not, this because I was in a ton of relationships that fell apart because people didn't tell me that I actually wasn't kind to them and that I didn't love them. Those type of events still hurt me, and you might also have a feeling like this, that's perfectly a valid feeling to have. We as human beings are complex and our feelings are all over the place for reasons unexplained. We like to be kind but we also like to hurt other people because it's something against etiquette. Rules are meant to be broken they say. And these rules that are broken hurt ourselves on a mental level and in rare occasions a physical level. And the only thing that we can do against it is to try to get over it and find new people, and you will always find new people that actually love you and trust you. And I know that it's not easy to do that, I myself still get regrets about certain things i said that led me in a situation of pain. You're never alone into thinking that you only have this problem, no one ever is alone. Don't be scared to talk to people about it like I did with my new friend groups. After two to three significant events in my social life that left me wrecked and feeling lost, I thought I would never get any more friends. I thought that every time I meet someone new they would hate me for the things I did. But that assumption is completely wrong. They're will always be new people, after a few months of not talking to anyone of significance, I met my first friend group that I still talk about to this day, and then another group, and another. One of the groups I came into was almost by accident, but now we're really great friends. And I feel like I can talk about my struggles to them. I feel very free for doing this. Of course I do it with a lot of caution, but it's not as restricted as I had before with a few other groups. In conclusion, you should never give up finding new friends that respect you and appreciate you. And even if they might not like you anymore, it's all about growing out of it and finding someone new that really appreciates you. Thank you for reading this week's blog, and see you next week. - Acacian

#blog #student life #art #furry #lifestyle #music blog #musician #outdoors #stories #mental health #theatre #photography

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amphibeans · 8 months

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September 3 - the beginning

Hello there ! And welcome to my first ever blog post. This is the beginning of putting my life down in posts that I then plan to look back at when I'm older. It's a way for me to see how I was feeling when I was a certain age, or what cool stuff I did that made me change as an individual. Because not only is this a way to put my life into words, it also lets me think about the world and certain topics in a way that I adore to do. How the blog posts are gonna work is fairly simple. All the key talking points are stylized as headers. The first headers are all gonna be events that have happened in my life, and the morals of the story that go along with it. After that, I give my humble opinion about certain topics that have recently gone into my busy head or that I've experienced firsthand. The meaning of this blog is not for it to be all about me. I want you, the reader, to feel how this might affect your own life. In small bite-sized chunks, I want to give slice-of-life content that might inspire you to start doing something similar like this. Perhaps you might also learn something new from this that you might have never thought about.Whatever that might be, in the end I hope you enjoy reading these posts. Thank you so much already for making it to here. Now let's get onto it, shall we?

The final first school day

September 1st, a day every student under the age of 18 despises. Letting go of summer is already hard enough, and to have it been made worse with the start of having a huge responsibility on your back is something that sits with people a lot I reckon, at least it has done for me. Starting school is never easy, during the summer I had quite a plan on how I wanted the year to go. I wanted to start getting to make summaries for each subject I'm having, which I had never done before at this point. I bought a bullet journal and actually tried to start using it. Of course, starting to do something that goes against your normal habits is never an easy task to do. That's what almost set me off for doing it in the first place. It could only work if everything must be perfect, right? That's what went through my mind when I started hatching this "first day of school" plan. Anyhow, the summer came and went, and so began the first school day, which would also be my final one.

The day was an incredibly rainy one, but luckily also a very short one considering I needed to be there more later in the day. In the end I only had 3 classes that I needed to partake in. Meeting my classmates from last year was fun, as was meeting my teachers. They all were a little agitated by the fact that school started again (apart from the teachers), but the atmosphere was great. Most of the day went great with getting the usual info and a few starting lessons, I'm very proud to be in a class where there is a sense of community between us all, and that makes the school experience good.

Having Friday as the first school day is a good thing, considering you only need to go there one time and then you can rest a bit, take everything in that you experienced, the flashbacks, the vibe, everything about it, and be ready when you're heading for a full week of this thing. And I believe I'm very ready for it. I hope that you were/are ready for it too. I have faith you're gonna do so good !! My weekend wasn't anything major compared to the first school day, but I did went to bike in the night with tons of lights, they are on my Instagram. That's where I'll leave it at now, I'm kinda not feeling well writing this due to a personal event, it happens to all of us. I'll be writing more next week. Thank you for reading.

#blog #high school #school #student life #beginning writer #writing

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