I know I have written a few of these now but nothing new has happened in my life so why not write another blog on driving. Since I have had my permit I have driven so much and I love it. While driving gives me a sense of freedom it also makes me crave that freedom. I wish I could just get my license already and be able to play my music loud and drive without my parents. I hate backseat drivers and my friends all have negative things to say about my driving skills but I have literally been driving for a week. I understand helpful suggestions but when someone is just constantly critiquing your every move gets extremely annoying. My dad already told me I am getting my step moms old car and every time I leave my house I just see it sitting in the driveway and I imagine myself just driving with my friends to the beach with the sunroof open and no parents. My dad said that he would buy us (me and my siblings) all one new car and my older brother just got his brand new car. While I am happy for him I don’t want a new car like I said earlier I am not a great driver and in 6 months when I can get my license and my own car I don’t want a new car. The pressure of having a. new car would drive me crazy I want where I can practice my driving and not worry about scratching it.
This year feels like it’s going by so fast. I almost feel like it’s slipping away from me. Like each passing year feels shorter and shorter. When I asked my mom why that was, she said that it’s because when each year passes it’s a smaller percent of your life. That is so scary to me. If you’re two years old then one year is half your lifetime so it feels longer. Now that I’m sixteen, one year is only one sixteenth of my life so it will feel shorter. I wish I would’ve appreciated my longer years more. But all I can do now is appreciate it more now in the future. The thing is that when I was younger, people would tell me all the time to not grow up and to appreciate everything I had and I never listened. I guess that kinda is a cannon event.
I told Alvarez I would shave my head if he lets me join Track. He told me to spare the world from seeing that.
So I didn’t shave my head, but will still be running for OVS.
Today is my first official practice and I can’t wait. I can’t wait to nearly puke my guts out after crossing the finish line. I can’t wait to wake up from a hellish cramp in the middle of the night. I can’t wait to not be able to sit down on a toilet.
But running can give me something that volleyball couldn’t. It has been too much standing and waiting. Now is time to run
The pain will suck, but that’s some real buddhist sh*t.
This school year I have noticed that I have been a mess. I used to put my self-care over everything. I have fallen out of my routine and must start picking up my old habits because they used to bring me so much peace.
I used to be very strict about hair care. For my hair, I would always oil it before I washed my hair. I would specifically use rosemary and castor oil on my scalp and argan oil on my ends. I would leave it in for two hours in a claw clip and would use my scalp massager to stimulate hair growth. I would always go to bed wearing a silk cap to prevent gaining split ends. I was so psycho about it that I would refuse to let my hair rest on my pillow without my cap. I would never use heat on my hair to make sure I was getting dry hair with split ends. This year, I never oil my hair, use my silk cap, and use heat on my hair every day. I have noticed a significant difference in my hair and it feels so much more damaged.
Last year, I struggled a lot with acne. My skin would look horrific and then it would begin to clear up and break out bad again. It was a never-ending cycle. I had listened to what my dermatologist told me exactly but it didn’t seem to work. There wasn’t one day I would miss my skincare, even when I would go on camping trips. I wouldn’t put any makeup on my face because I was concerned it would make breakouts worse, even how badly I wanted to cover it up. I refused to touch my face without freshly washed hands. I always wore sunscreen when I would go out. I finally switched to a different dermatologist months ago and it has significantly improved my skin. Now that I rarely break out, I don’t take as good a job with my skin. I use makeup products on my face that aren’t that clean and I don’t clean my face three times a day anymore. During the day, I rest my face on my pillow although it isn’t freshly washed which is something I never would have done last year. I never wear sunscreen now. Although my skin isn’t bad anymore, I’m not taking good care of it and overtime I will be able to see it’s damage.
There is so much more self-care I used to do last year that I don’t do as often now. I am an a very clean person still, but putting my self-care first gave me clarity in my life and brought me joy.
As you lie there in bed in the midst of some of your deepest sleep, lying comfortable and in contempt, you let your body rest and recover when the alarm you set mere hours ago at 12pm goes off 5 hours later. As you lay there in your dream, being bombarded by the “by the seaside” alarm, when you find the strength to roll over and turn off your alarm, you lay there, your body begging you to go back to sleep and get a good night’s rest for the first time in months, you remember why you wake up in the first place. With barely enough energy how, you get out of your bed still in your pajamas. You go outside into your garage, grab your cold and wet wetsuit and your board, load up the car, head inside for a muffin and a Diet Coke, brush your teeth and finally head out at 5am. The car drive is quiet one. Trying your best to not fall asleep at the wheel, you pop the Diet Coke can open and make the drive to venture. Rolling into the parking lot, you start to feel the energy of the ocean. Stepping out of the car into the cold, opening the trunk to grad the coldest and wettest wetsuit known to man, and forcing yourself to put it on. Despite the cold, you hike out to the beach prepare your body with some light stretches and head out to the water. The first wave hits your feet as you tread amongst the slippery rocks, trying your best not to fall and ding your board. After walking the most painful and annoying walk of your life on the rocks, you manage to get to waist-deep water, where you can start the paddle. As you hear and barely see the first wave coming, you perform a duck dive; as the water submerges your entire body for the first time, the cold hits you like an avalanche, cold and almost breathtaking. As you emerge from the depth under the wave, still in shock, you continue the paddle as the next wave rolls towards you. After repeating the process of duck diving and paddling and getting pushed back you finally make it past the break. Sitting out there on your board, ready for a wave to appear from the darkness, is a feeling unlike another. After time passes and waves roll by, the first light appears, and with it, the waves truly emerge from the dark. As light comes to the sky, if the clouds are just right, some of the most amazing colors emerge, and the sky looks like a fake painting you see in a art gallery. Sitting there on the smooth water with the waves rolling is really the best feeling of your life.
This is my perspective on surfing in the morning. Also, I imagine this being said while talking to someone who has never gone surfing before and telling them about what surfing is like, but the speaker is too excited to really describe it exactly how they want to. Also after they would say something like “you just have to exspeince it to get it”
Recently I have been trying to have a positive self image. I don’t even think I can comprehend what that means, but I’m just trying to judge less. People always think I’m a mean person but I am really working on it. I think I am like that because I’m so hard on myself. It’s easier to have a positive body image but it’s so hard to love your brain. I want to love my brain so bad because I think it would make me so much happier. Its unhealthy habits that make us have negative self perception. It sounds really easy to start good habits and positivity, but it really is the hardest thing to wrap my head around. I hate it when I feel like I’m moving forward and doing better and then I just have the most minor setback that breaks all my progress. But what can i do but start over
Usually, I try to write about something worthwhile, about my thoughts, feelings, or events that happened to me, and which would be interesting to share. But today is not that day; today, I want to talk about all sorts of nonsense that has been on my mind lately.
47 days. After precise calculations, I realized that I have exactly 47 days left to go to school. It seems like this number should be much larger, but definitely not in my case. I am the most vivid case of senioritis you can find on planet Earth. Immediately after receiving the acceptance letter from the university I wanted, unexpectedly even to myself, I just stopped worrying about what happens at school. I am absolutely calm about not doing homework, and it doesn’t bother me much. I won’t lie, I never really liked the process of studying in an American school, and the only reason why I truly strived and learned subjects was my admission to the university; now that the goal is achieved, the motivation is completely gone. In my case, trying to find opportunities to reduce my days spent in school buildings, I discovered that some camps take away as much as 5 days! I signed up for many, which significantly reduced my time spent at school this semester. I am glad that I have very little time left until the end of school. I won’t lie, I will be the happiest person on graduation day, during the ceremony I will definitely be crying, but not out of sadness but from overwhelming happiness.
The second thing I wanted to talk about is my sleep. Lately, I’ve been having terrible problems with sleep. I wake up every hour at night, and if I’m unlucky enough to start thinking about something that bothers me, then I can’t sleep for a couple of hours simply because I can’t stop thinking. It bothers me, but I can’t do anything about it.
I checked the mail every day for my paper and finally on Saturday after getting Starbucks I biked home and like usual I checked the mail and there was a letter addressed to me. At first, I was confused but after reading who the sender was my body was filled with a sense of excitement and anxiousness and sentiment. As excited as I was it also felt sentimental in a way. I love driving with my parents, honestly, I probably talk to them more during drives than at home. That’s something I can get over but the anxiety I had about passing my test and having a good photo. I hate my passport photo and I wanted to have a good driver’s license photo. I took over 20 practice tests and as I was falling asleep on Sunday night all I could think about was my permit test. I woke up and got ready for school and the only thing I was thinking about was the test. I was so focused on the test that I forgot to study for my math test and definitely failed it. Back to the exciting stuff I headed down to the DMV and got registered. I had to take a vision test and I passed, feeling confident it was now time to take my photo and this is where things begin to go downhill. My photo genuinely looks like I am being held at gunpoint. I shook that off knowing I could retake it when I got my license and headed over to the testing area. As I pressed start my heart began to race. At first, I thought you could see your errors at the end but then I got one wrong and I realized I was doing pretty good. I was 25 for 26 I finished my test pretty quickly and only had 3 mistakes as soon as the words “congratulations you passed head over to the window” appeared on the screen I was filled with joy. I finished up the paper and headed over to Starbucks. My mom let me drive to pick up my brother from school and then drive home. Although I have countless missing homework assignments that was the first time in weeks that I felt productive. This brings me one step closer to my license.
For the past few months, I have been doing my driver’s ed and I finally finished last Monday. To take your permit test you need a physical paper that states you have completed your online driver’s ed. This slip takes 2 days to 2 weeks to arrive and I needed my paper to come before March 4 because that’s when I was planning on taking my test. I’ve always dreamed of having my license and being able to drive anywhere I want to. As lovely as Ojai may seem I’ve lived here my whole life and well there’s not much to do. The freedom of having a license has always been something I have been excited about and getting my permit was moving me one step closer. I have many friends in Ventura and often go. there to hang out with them so being able to drive would make hanging out so much easier. Anyways today is Friday and I still don’t have my. paper but I’m still studying hoping it will come tomorrow or Monday.
I need to get off TikTok. It’s so entertaining but every time I am bored I find myself stuck scrolling and it’s becoming an issue. My sleep schedule is slightly ruined by my obsessive scrolling. It distracts me from doing my school work and focusing on things that are much more important. I did give myself a screen time limit on TikTok but every time my time is exceeded I just say ignore for the rest of the day. I don’t know. I need to delete it. But it is a time killer. It is also a major time taker and waster. I would much rather be watching a cute movie while baking but I loose my time from sitting on tik tok. But like at the same time… I learn while I am on tiktok. I learn events going on in the world previously and current. I learn recipes. I learn hacks and tips for classes I am taking in school. I learn a lot more too. My point is I am stuck. Should I cut down on my screen time hours and do things more productive or should I get trapped in the social normalities. I know the correct answer is to cut down on tiktok so I am going to make it a goal to be more productive.
OVS Journalism Blog 
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