Lack of motivation

Do you ever have those days when you just don't do anything from the moment that you wake till the time that you go to bed? I mean of course you eat and drink and take care of everything crucial for living, but you just don't do anything well productive. That was me almost every day of this summer holidays. Luckily I wasn't at home that much, so there were only like two weeks of me spending my days on you tube trying to learn new dance moves and ending up watching Dance Mums. Yeah, that happened...

I know we sometimes just need a lazy day to give our brains a rest or something, but why so many days? The thing is that just for a few days it actually feels nice catching up on everything that you've missed during school, but than after a while it gets to the point where your head hurts, your eyes hurt and you're basically bored of watching other people's life instead of living your own. Makes sense, right? So why do I still do it? During school year I always have so many plans for the summer holidays, how I'll hang out with all my friends, do a bunch of cool DIYs and basically be very  productive. See, this words just keeps on haunting me? It must have been on my mind a lot. As you can probably guess I hung out only with my best friend, did zero DIYs and we could talk about me being productive...

Summer holidays are almost over and again I have this terrible feeling of regret for not spending them differently. I had a great time in Scotland, Norway, Denmark and than Croatia and I did get some rest, but I just feel that I could do so much more. We're constantly surrounded with successful young people who have already achieved so much. You tubers who make videos for their jobs, young actors and actresses star in movies based on books that I absolutely love, singers are worshipped by millions of teenagers just to name a few. Not to mention tumblr, pinterest and other websites packed with photos of amazing DIYs, drawings, paintings and other creations of very talented teenagers. Maybe that's the reason why I am being so hard on myself, always comparing my life to life of just a small percentage of people that should never ever even be considered as average. I'm not saying that I want to be exactly like them, famous, rich and with no privacy, because we all know that their lives aren't just rainbows and sunshine and that fame has more disadvantages than advantages, but achieving something, that really appeals to me. I've been an overachiever for my whole life and my parents trying to stop me from being a perfectionist too, stopped complimenting me for my grades and good placing on different competitions quiet some time ago. One of my theories is that that's why I am trying to succeed outside the school today. I feel almost pressured to do things that I would actually love to do, but this pressure makes it forced and I lose all my motivation. It almost feels like doing homework or studying for an exam, something that you have to do and not want to. Since during school I do things that I really have to do for the sake of my education, I perhaps  get this sort of rebellious response to do anything that would include my brains and have a purpose in the summer. I just needed to completely get away from any obligations and sadly challenges as well.
I'm 100% sure that I am not the only that feels this way. I've seen so many ''relatable' posts about being productive lately that it seems like everyone experiences a lack of motivation sooner or later. Like I've mentioned before the media is bombing us with messages that all have the same idea: Being successful equals being happy. What I want you to remember is that being successful represents different things to different people. Some people don't have a big appetite for fame and fortune and they consider themselves successful when they have a loving family and friends. Those kind of people are truly the happiest. My mum always says that health comes first and that if you have enough to support your family as well, you should be happy. It's better to set yourself a more realistic goal and achieve it than to always yearn for something bigger and better that seems impossible and therefore takes your motivation away. Going on a walk with your dog and reading a new books is productive as well, your dog is happy, your mind is clear and reading almost equals learning. See? You don't have to write a novel to feel good about yourself and you don't need to have 3 million subscribers to feel successful. It's all about how you comprehend things. I also have to mention this: Little things are the ones that count. If you don't see little accomplishments as basically steps that are taking you up to your goal and you just completely ignore them you will give up, because you won't realise how far you've already come. So don't be so hard on yourself. You should always be your own biggest supporter.
It definitely helped me to write this post as everything seems much clearer and understandable when I write it down, but I do hope it helped you as well. I would love to hear your thoughts about it, so leave a comment and we can chat. Thank you so much for reading!
                                                                                  xoxo

Presents that we either cherish or leave to the dust

Presents are one of the hardest things to choose. You can either make the person absolutely adore you or really dislike you with what you choose to wrap in a shiny paper. With my birthday only one month and a half away this is more than an appropriate topic for me to write about. It might sound weird but I'm quiet obsessed with surprises. I think my family is pretty sick of it, because I insist on not seeing any of my presents before Christmas or my birthday or even telling them what I wish for. I mean of course I eventually have to spill it out because they usually don't get my hints throughout the year (surprise, surprise), but I always ask if they can add something that I didn't wish for. On the other hand, I'm mostly not very happy with gifts from my other relatives as they don't know me that well and in consequence I end up with multiple board games, books about history and shower gels. The hardest part is definitely smiling and faking the excitement while ripping off the wrapping paper with them standing right next to you waiting for your reaction. I guess making a wish list really does make sense now that I think about it...

It was much easier when I was younger. Firstly,  I would write a letter to Santa Claus and secondly,  I was being pretty obvious about my wishes, usually some toys or DVDs or something like that. I would also get new clothes as well but nowadays my fashion taste couldn't be more different than my mum's so there's no point in her buying me new clothes. Getting clothes that you don't like from your parents is a nightmare, trust me. You actually have to wear them in public and not just occasionally on birthdays and holidays, because you see your parents every single day unlike your aunties and uncles. Eventually they'll say something like: ''Honey, did you forget about the lovely fuzzy sweater that I got you for Christmas? I really thought that you like it.''  Now you can either wear that fuzzy sweater in a horrible bright pink colour the exact same day or hear about how ungrateful you are until you do something worse than disliking your Christmas present so they forget about the whole thing*. On the positive side,  they won't try to buy you anymore clothes. To be honest, my parents would probably love to just give me money, so I can buy whatever I want, but they know how much I would hate it. I just think it makes a difference when someone really makes an effort in choosing a present that is the most suitable for you.

I really don't know how to explain my love for surprises, but I love the excitement and warm feeling that I get when I don't know what I'm going to get as a present or what will happen next in a book or  in the next episode. Maybe my ''obsession'' started in the fourth grade when we were on holidays in Florida. We flew to Miami and all I knew was that we were going to Walt Disney World. While we were driving towards Orlando we passed a cruise terminal with Disney Cruise Line ships. Being huge Disney fans me and my brother were really excited to even drive pass them, because we had this idea in our minds that cruises with Disney chips are really expensive and practically only possible for us in our dreams. So when we drove to the terminal's parking lot we had no idea what was going on. When our mum told us that we're going on a cruise with Disney Wonder to the Bahamas there were probably fireworks exploding in my mind. Just imagine a nine-year-old girl finding out that she'll spend next four days on a cruise ship with Mickey and all his friends. No wonder I'm such a huge fan of surprises now, though it would be really hard to surprise me more than that. Dear parents, friends, future boyfriend you have a challenge now. I drifted away from my main topic again, didn't I?

There is one thing even better than receiving gifts though, at least in my opinion. Don't you just love the feeling when you give a gift to someone that they didn't expect at all but were secretly wishing to get?  The happy and excited face that they get just makes my heart melt with happiness. Well, sadly it doesn't happen that often, because like I've said before, it's really hard to pick out a gift for somebody that you don't know very well. I almost always get something great for my best friend because I know her so well, but it's much harder with everyone else. I hope I am not the only that asks birthday girl/boy's friends for some hints before hitting the shopping centre. Although you can't really completely fail when it comes to girls. You can always get her a new lipstick, earrings or any other accessory, of course according to her style.  But when it comes to buying gifts for boys, phew, that's hard. I think  the easiest way is to find out which  computer/PlayStation game they want (if it is not too expensive) or what sport they practice, so you can get them like a new soccer ball or something. iTunes gift cards are a good idea for girls and boys as well, just make sure that they own any of the apple devices (basically everyone nowadays).

I think that's about all about presents that is on my mind right now. I hope that you got some useful ideas for gifting your friends and family or that you at least enjoyed this post. What is your ''safe'' present choice?
                                                               xoxo


*Please keep in mind that I'm exaggerating a bit and that my parents would never do something like that, but than again they refuse to buy me any more clothes on their own anyways. Probably because something like that happened. I'm just not good with disappointing people.

Relaxing vacation in Croatia

Hello! As you know I've been on vacation for this past two weeks in the sunny Croatia. I'm not sure if that's common in other countries, but here most of the families go on a vacation somewhere near the sea in the summer, so they can go to the beach every day and stay there till the evening with food and drink and even tents for a shade. There is always a competition who will get the "natural" shade so my dad takes our beach towels to our spot under a small tree when he goes on a walk with our dog at around 7am (yeah, you read right, that early) to reserve it. Our dog is a German Spitz Klein and he gets hot very quickly, so we need shade for him and of course we also go back to the apartment before 12pm to avoid the heat. I think everyone should do that, because you get sunburn very easily from 12 to 3pm. Not to mention the fact that I'm allergic to all kinds of sunscreen, natural ones as well (trust me, I've tried them all), so I can't really risk being out there when the sun's the strongest. Even though I've never been sunburn in my life, thanks to my very concerned parents and a bit of luck with my skin type.

We've been going to the same place in Croatia for my whole life and to be honest I quiet like it in some ways. For one there is no Wi-Fi except for the one at the reception-room, so I really get to do other things than spending my days on the Internet, for example read (I read five books in those two weeks, one of them in French which I'm very proud of) and swim a lot. I don't know about you, but I really don't like public pools, because they're always crowded and I don't know why I always have this feeling that the water isn't very clean. Maybe it's just me being weird about it haha. But I really do love swimming and it is very helpful with my blood sugar, so I always spend as much time as possible in the water when we're on the beach. The sea was also very warm, it had 28 degree Celsius! Some people weren't so happy about it, because they thought it was too warm to cool down in it, but since I get cold all the time it was basically perfect for me. I didn't quiet like the air temperatures though as we had more than 33 degree Celsius every day and more than 25 degree Celsius at night. Of course mosquitoes had no mercy for me either, so just imagine sleeping in these kind of conditions.
 Over all I was very active there and I spent much more time with Medi (that's our dog not to confuse you) and my family. Don't get me wrong, I take him out for a walk every day even during school, but with studying and other activities I don't get to play with him that much and teach him some tricks. 

Socialising with other people was a bit difficult though, because there were mostly families with little kids and a lot of German speaking ones. Sadly I don't know much about German beside " Guten Morgen" and "eins, zwei, drei ", so I couldn't really make conversation with anyone. That's one thing that I did miss, because I'm kind of in that phase where I really want to meet new people even though I'm very shy. Doesn't make much sense, but I guess I need to practice approaching them.
All in all it was very relaxing and fun vacation. I forgot to mention that the sea was also very clear. On the days when it was calm you could see the bottom just like through a window. I will add some of my attempts capturing it, because it was truly amazing. I hope that you're having a great summer vacation too wherever you are. I would love to hear about your experiences and let me know if you ever been to Croatia. Thank you so much for reading!

A French movie you need to watch

Hello loves! I know I should continue with my travel posts, but I'm on another vacation right now. We're in Croatia in my grandpa's weekend house that is very near the beach so we can go there every day. It's hot and sunny and the sea is very warm so we're really enjoying ourselves. Sadly we don't have wifi except for the one at the reception-room which is not very good either and I can only take my iPad there. I have all my photos on the computer and there is no point in publishing a travel post without photos, am I right? On the other hand I don't want to leave you without a new post for the next  weeks, so I decided to do some kind of a recommendation of a very good French movie called "Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au bon dieu?". We have this habit of watching a DVD every night so we always take a bunch of them with us, usually some new ones or classics that we love. I don't know about you and your family but we always take too much stuff when go on a vacation with a car. Naturally you have to follow the rule of a maximum luggage weight when you travel by plane if you don't want to pay extra of course. If you go with a car you don't have any rules to follow and we well ehh we tend to go a bit overboard while packing heh. I mean of course I take my whole wheat toast and rolls and my coconut pancakes and cookies with me oh and sugar-free mustard and paté, but you know I'm diabetic (that's just me trying to convince myself that I'm not as guilty as others. Not working.). And it's not only food, we also pack gazillion books and magazines like we're only going to read for the rest of the vacation. Forget eating and all the food that we brought, we have books to read! Though I actually do read a lot here I admit mostly because I can't go on my computer or anything, but it's nice because I finally get to cross off some of the books from my "Reading list" which just keeps getting longer and longer. 

Oh gosh, I've been babbling again! I'm so sorry, back to the movie. I don't know any of the actors, but honestly I don't really know many French actors, so that's not really surprising. I just loved the fact that it is French, because I'm learning it and in contrast to English with which I'm surrounded all the time (movies, books, internet), I'm not really in touch with French. Naturally we watched it with subtitles, because my French isn't good enough and they speak pretty fast, so it's hard to understand. The story is about a French couple with four daughters, three of them married to a Muslim, Jew and Chinese. The youngest daughter is still single and her parents are really hoping that she will marry a French Christian. I won't tell you who is her secret fiancé (if you intend to watch it and I really hope you do, because I was cracking up the whole time) but let's just say he's a big surprise for her family. The movie goes on with the "unlucky" parents helping with the upcoming wedding and trying to adapt to their multicultural son-in-laws. The end is really nice and not typically cheesy like in American movies, so of course I enjoyed it even more. The setting is also gorgeous, a big and old-fashioned house in French countryside with a huge garden, looking exactly like a weekened house that I would love to own in the future if I'll have enough money.

 I highly recommend this movie and if you do watch it or you already know it, please let me know what you think. I would also love to hear your recommendations as I'll have two more weeks of summer holidays when we get back, a perfect time to see a few more movies before school takes up all my evenings again. Thanks for reading!

                                                                            xoxo