Entry #10 ~ Stress

Dealing with school and what can feel like almost endless assignments can be difficult, especially when trying to stay on top of multiple classes, and can cause a lot of stress. However, what exactly is stress, and what are some ways you can counter it?

Stress is experienced when you feel pressured and can't manage a situation. For example, if you have a lot of assignments due, you may feel stressed because you think you won't be able to get them in on time.

It isn't always bad to experience some stress; feeling under pressure may be beneficial for some. However, if you are experiencing stress over a long period of time or it feels overbearing, then you should seek professional help. But what are ways to counter and or deal with stress at home?

There are many ways to deal with and alleviate stress, but they don't all work for everyone. We all have our own needs and preferences, what might work for someone else might not work for you, so it is important to figure out what best suits you. According to Adam Felman’s article Why stress happens and how to manage it, some ways you can manage stress include exercising, managing priorities, and talking to others. (Felman 2020)

This article compiles everything you need to know about stress and dealing with it and is a good source if you want to learn more. I found it very useful. It taught me that using priority management to organize everything I need to do helps me manage my stress and focus on my assignments. I suggest looking into this article and exploring what works for you to manage your stress the next time you experience it.

Entry #9 ~ Topics in Food Quest

For a discussion response in my class, we looked at two sources related to the food industry, and the article we had to look at was intriguing. It is by Michael Pellman Rowland called "Here’s How We Solve Our Food Waste Problem."

This article aims to inform people about food waste and its issues. The article wants to persuade the audience to take action and do what they can. However, instead of just persuading people, they also provide various solutions, including what anyone at home can do to help lessen food waste. I feel diving further into this article would be interesting since we only did an overall analysis and hadn't gone further than that. This article is relevant because of what's happening in our environment and climate change.

Food waste is a definitive issue and affects everyone and everything on our planet. Being more aware of the problems in the world is imperative to finding solutions and helping solve the problem. In this article, they discuss various issues surrounding food waste, including world hunger, loss of resources, and cost. I never thought any of these could be related to food waste, but this article provides evidence and sources that make it impactful.

Now not only do they tell us the issues revolving around food waste, but they also provide various solutions to help alleviate and lessen the amount of food wasted. These solutions cover each issue and give statistics to back up how they could help. One important one that I should note is the solution for consumer behavior. He says that by changing what we are eating, and avoiding the foods attributed to the issues like animal products. (Rowland 2017)

This solution is crucial because it means anyone can help lessen food waste by eating differently and picking more sustainable products like fruits and vegetables. After reading this article in class, I realized that even though I am one person, there are things I can do to help alleviate big problems.

Entry #8 ~ Delving into Self Care

I find taking care of myself especially important since I spend most of my time staring at a computer screen as I work on school online. The topic of self-care has always been intriguing, but it is an expansive field, so there's always more to learn. Since life can be stressful, taking care of yourself physically, spiritually, or mentally can help ease stressors like school and make them less overwhelming.

First off, what even is self-care? It is the process of taking care of yourself to better your health and make day-to-day life more manageable. Researching it further, I found it is vast and unique for everyone. There are many ways people could take care of themselves, such as taking breaks from working, getting a healthy amount of sleep every night, and even drinking enough water.

From small or massive changes in everyday life, you could greatly benefit from paying more attention to what you do every day to care for yourself and maybe asking where you could improve. I found an article by Elizabeth Scott (Ph.D.) titled 5 Self Care Practices for Every Area of Your Life that talks about how utilizing self-care can have many benefits, including, but not limited to, lessening burnout and increased energy.

Through trial and error, I have learned it takes time to get into the habit of caring for yourself, and I still struggle with it sometimes. Through this, I found that by paying attention to what is necessary for me and prioritizing myself, every day feels a little easier. I encourage you to read her article and look at her last section about developing a self-care plan. It could be a great place to start and learn more about what you could do to help improve your day-to-day and take care of yourself.

Entry #7 ~ FRESH

In my English class, we recently watched the film FRESH in preparation for our third essay. Before this, I never was interested in agriculture or understood anything related to its field. This film provided insights into the current agricultural situation and its issues. 

To explain anything else in regards to this film would be difficult without introducing you to it first; however, I recommend watching it yourself if you have not. To summarize, FRESH is a documentary film by Ana Sofia Joanes that dives into sustainable agriculture, whose goal is to provide for society without jeopardizing natural resources. Its purpose is to inform the audience about industrial production and show them a better, more sustainable option. 

They do this by explaining what industrialized agriculture is and what sustainable agriculture is as well. Throughout these portions, they give various views of farmers and journalists to help the audience better understand the situation. By giving perspectives of the situation, they establish a tone of urgency through vocabulary used to describe situations. For example, how pesticides and fertilizers are destroying the environment. 

The tone helped me connect with the purpose of the movie. I noticed this when the film talked about the conditions inside factory farms and showed it visually; it made me feel horrible. Then when they showed Will Allen's farm, where he explained what he does, I found it interesting and wanted to learn more about urban farming. 

Overall the film made me question our current conditions especially concerning food production. The purpose and message of this film are important because they help cast light on the current situation and provide a potential solution for fixing it. Its message resonated with me, and if you decide to watch it yourself, I hope it does too. 

Entry #1 ~ Delving Further Into Blogs

I have never been drawn to blogs of any type nor interested in seeking one out until now. Whenever the topic of blogs was mentioned, it never was something I cared to discuss more or look further into. However, since having to start a blog myself, I want a better understanding of how blogs may look and catch interest from a reader's perspective. So, I looked into various blogs and can now say I am very interested in this type of format and want to delve deeper into the different ones out there. Some of the blogs I looked into included one about skills for productivity and management, a review blog about gaming, and a more personal blog about lifestyle and health topics. (Some varying topics, haha) 

The life skills blog I found provides various life hacks for busy people who want to be more efficient and achieve a more fulfilling life while also being productive. This blog intrigued me because I am a big fan of ways to improve my life, whether it's by finding new motivations or adding new things to my routine to better myself. I quite liked this blog because it's simple but at the same time very detailed. It didn't throw a lot at me when I first went to the site but provided detailed titles and summaries for each topic it wanted to present. One thing I appreciated about this blog is it gives a start here section that provides life hacks about various things like focus, motivation, and even learning. 

Lifehack Blogs Start Here section

 

The blog allows you to scroll downwards to view various overall topics like the purpose, relevant life hacks as of 2022, and an introduction for all the experts who have written an entry with links to what they wrote. Each topic's summary was straight to the point but also engaging and hooked me by relating to everyday life or asking an enticing question. The titles were also simple but gave the exact information, and made me want to click on them. However, as much as I like this blog, it also had things I was not a big fan of. 

 

Lifehack Blogs Best of 2022 section

Its format was nice because it didn't overgeneralize or give way too much information but how it was set up was a little hard to understand at first. This was due to it not having everything close together. Instead, you had to scroll down to find various information, but it didn't give a way to jump back to previous sections on the first page. In total, the first page has six sections for each overall topic, but with no way to jump back to the first topic, you would have to scroll back up, which is a little inefficient.

 

Moving on to the second blog I read, Wolfs Gaming Blog, a review blog about video games on various platforms, including Xbox, PlayStation, PC, and VR, as well as technical topics. Personally, I am a huge video game fan, so I was intrigued by what this blog had to offer. However, I was very intimidated when I first went to its site. The overall format was simple, but it provided a lot of images and contrasting colors, which made a lot stick out at once. Due to this, I decided to check out his about me page first to learn more about the author and the content they were writing. 

Wolfs Gaming Blog front page

 

His about me page was very interesting to read because of how he writes. He refers to events in his life in a very specific way. For example, when he talked about when he was born, instead of saying I was born in this year and so on, he says “I was summoned into this pitiful mortal realm in 1991 and raised by marauding wolves.” Another thing I noticed is he refers to himself as “Wolf” and refers to his parents as wolves as well. For example, in paragraph four he talks about the first platform he got to play games on, which was thanks to his dad. He says, “my four-legged father was big on technology and so we had computers fairly early on.” I found this very interesting, and I am confused why he decided to refer to things this way. (Ronie, Baden. "About." Wolfs Gaming Blog.) 

 

Moving back to the first page, you will see a banner that showcases recent or popular game entries (Shown in the image above). Underneath this banner showcases each entry one after the other starting with the most recent ones, in this case being a review on a game called Serial Cleaners (I can't say I've heard of this before). While I scrolled through the various entry titles, it was apparent that Wolf reviews games he likes, not just popular ones. I like that he does this because I could use some new content to play, and it is a good way to entice any reader. 

 

While I was scrolling through the various entries, an image from the game Nobody Saves the World caught my eye, so I decided to read this one. How he has each entry set up is easy to follow and understand. He provides the game's description, what platforms it's available on, and various images showcasing gameplay. I found this blog interesting, but it has a lot of information compiled closely together which made it hard to understand what was going on and therefore didn't catch my attention as much as the last blog I want to talk about had. 

Nobody Saves the World Review – Saving the World is a Good Time review page

Finally, I want to talk about a more personal blog called “Lee From America.” The writer, Lee, discusses various topics she is interested in or has connections to, including ones about lifestyle, music, health, recipes, traveling, and products. I must say this blog surprised me the most. You see, at first, I wasn't very interested, but after exploring it and reading various entries, I found I was quite invested in its contents. While it is a more personal blog, I felt drawn to the cozy vibe its style presented. The images she uses further expand on this more personal feel because she uses pictures from her life instead of random images on Google. However, she doesn't let them draw away from the entries, which she does by using pictures that relate to the topic she is writing about. A good example of this is her post about Japan, where she showcases pictures from her trip to further explain the tips she is giving to anyone who might be interested in visiting Japan someday. In this same post, she makes use of various links to give the reader a more in-depth explanation of the different things she's talking about. However, her purpose is what intrigued me the most.

Lee From America blogs front page

The purpose in her entries is to share things she has learned about and share topics she is either interested in or believes others would benefit from knowing. She writes casually but provides enough information so anyone would understand what she is discussing in her posts. A good example is her post titled Updated Skincare Regime - Fall 2016. In this, she talks about her new skincare routine. I wouldn't have known she had written about this topic prior if she had not stated or provided a link to the original post.  

 

Overall, her entire style is comforting. Even though there are many entries compiled on one page, I didn't feel overwhelmed because she gives enough detail with images and titles to entice me to click the links to get a better understanding of what the entry is about. It's a beautiful blog that talks about an array of different things, some I haven't even thought about before. After exploring her page, I have found I am interested in her stories and the information she wants to share. 

 

After reading these blogs, among many others, I noticed that while some blogs could make various formats work others could not. However, I enjoyed reading them and looking into various types. I could see myself exploring more blogs and potentially following a couple closely like Lee From America. I found reading blog entries very intriguing, and I encourage you to look more into blogs yourself if you haven't yet and find some that interest you or keep you coming back! Let me know of some blogs that you enjoy, or have found interesting in the comments. Since I'm both new to reading blogs and writing one, I would love some suggestions! :)

#0 ~ Introduction

Welcome to Safe Place,

As the creator of this blog, I should introduce myself to you before getting started with any entries, so here we go. My name is Paityn, and I am eighteen years old. I love the color blue, butterflies, and the moon. I live in Arizona and have lived here all my life, but I prefer the cold and hope to move someday, but for now, I am a college student at GCC (first year here!). I am currently still figuring out what direction to go in my career, but I am interested in many different things like crime, psychology, coding, and astronomy. I know, some varying interests, haha.

Here is a picture I took of the moon!

Outside of career interests, I enjoy researching physical and mental health, especially when it involves topics like self-care. Some other hobbies I have include video games, skateboarding, reading, and anime. My all-time favorite anime is Jujutsu Kaisen, and my favorite character from it is Yuta Okkotsu. I am a huge video game lover and am obsessed with Valorant; however, I am not the best at it.

This is Yuta Okkotsu from Jujutsu Kaisen!

I am an overly kind person. I tend to put others before myself, which has caused some problems, but I am learning to care for myself more. It took me a long time to realize that to be there for others, I need to make sure I’m okay first, but now that I know this, I check up on myself when I can and prioritize myself more. Another thing about me is I have this pet peeve of when people purposely ignore your boundaries because it is disrespectful and uncomfortable.

My goal for this blog is to delve deeper into topics like self-care and ways to manage anxiety, stress, and more. I struggle with anxiety and want to share things I find or have found that could benefit you. Here is an article by Moira Lawler that gives an in-depth definition and overview of what self-care is, https://www.everydayhealth.com/self-care/.