One Year Later

One Year Later

One year ago I sat down and decided to start a blog. I debated names with my mom and sister for hours that day and still didn't settle until after I hit "publish." Now Scribbling in the Margins finds itself closing in on the first 100 subscribers and 63rd post. I haven't spent as much time blogging as I hoped when I started it. School took up a lot of my time and I struggled to develop new and creative post ideas once a week. I became really discouraged with my lack of progress and motivation. I wanted to push myself to be creative again and write for fun. Yet I wasn't able to keep up.

All that changes now. Scribbling in the Margins is going to look very different in the next couple weeks. I'm moving blogging platforms, completely redesigning the site, and rebranding. I like my blog fine as is, but I'm ready to make it look a bit more serious and a bit more me. I want to create something I'm excited to work on everyday.

It's still a blog about writing and books. But it's going to be more personal and more reflective on my young adult life. As of tomorrow, when the Class of 2015 walks across the stage, I will be a senior in college. A lot of changes are coming and I want to be able to blog about them, before and after.

I'm hoping to have everything up and running before June, but May is a busy month and I make no promises. If anything starts to look weird or posts don't show up, please let me know. I'm hoping this will be a smooth transition, but a part of why I'm doing it now is I have little to lose and time to learn.

Thank you for everyone who's been reading Scribbling in the Margins in its first year! I hope you'll continue to enjoy it as I make these changes. I look forward to hearing what you think and seeing where this next year takes us.

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The Quarterly Update

Back in January, I wrote down my five goals for 2015. I thought today I would revisit how I'm doing so far on those goals and what I need to do to keep moving:

1. Prepare for a job in 2016. I've made progress in this, simply by realizing I don't have to have a job after college. I could do a long-term paid internship, volunteer for a year, work at Disney. I like the idea of not jumping straight into a job after college, but there's still research that needs to be done.
2. Read 50 books. Not doing so great on this one. I've only read 9 books out of the 13 I should be at. I know I'll catch up some over the summer, but I need to pick up the pace. Part of it is my lack of interest in books for some reason, but that's a discussion for another post.
3. Waste less time on the Internet. Cough cough... I'm failing at this. I've got to get better. Any tips?
4. Consistently post on the blog. LOL we all know how this is going. Again, I haven't been reading much and therefore don't know what to say a lot of the time. I'm in a slump kids, a slump so bad that when I sat down to write about it a couple of days ago I couldn't think of anything good to say.
5. Run 5 miles. I've been making progress on this goal. I'm up to 2.5 miles right now. I was really excited, because I thought my goal was a 5K, not 5 miles. But if I can make it to a smooth 5K by the end of the summer, I think I can be near if not at 5 miles by December. We'll see!

So, two out of five are going well. That's something! I really need to get on my reading game; hopefully the other two will follow after that :)

How are your New Years resolutions coming along? Any advice for me?

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Below the Line:

• If you want to keep up with my writings elsewhere on the Internet, check out my professional Twitter @lesausser. I tweet every time something I write shows up somewhere on the web!
• Less than four weeks of school left. Terrifying, exciting, and incredibly sad. All at the same time.

Mantras

“Don't spend your precious time asking 'Why isn't the world a better place?' It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is "How can I make it better?" To that there is an answer.” -Leo Buscaglia

I found this quote in a box my friend Jordan keeps on her desk, a square little thing that allows you to switch out a quote whenever the mood strikes. Buscaglia's quote, the first one I came across, really struck me. A part of it is recent events in my life, but also after seeing the Cinderella movie last Saturday.

"Have courage, and be kind" is the mantra of the movie, the words Cinderella lives her life by. Yet they seem to fail her, causing her to let others bully her around while she just waits for something to happen. Instead of working to better her predicament, she just accepts it in order to remain "kind" and "courageous."

When I first left the theater, I wished I was more like Cinderella- always kind and never letting others affect my character. Which is fine, but I've realized since then that you have to be more than that. Wishing is not enough; you have to act to get what you want.

That's why I like Buscaglia's quote. Constantly when I'm faced with horrible things, whether they're happening to the world or to my friends or to me, I feel helpless. What can I, just an almost 21-year-old in Indiana, do to help? Frequently that little voice in my head says, "nothing."

That's where mantras come in. Cinderella's might work out for her in the end, but it doesn't help me to understand why the world can be so cruel sometimes. I've been trying to find the right one, something that reminds me that all is not lost. I don't have to lose a positive attitude in order to care about all the hurt that happens. I still haven't found something yet, the perfect mantra. The perfect solution to an impossible problem.

But there's something about the thought "how can I make it better?" that I like. One of the most important things I've learned in college is to ask "how can I fix this?" whenever I'm stressed or have a problem. It allows me to handle the problems in a tangible way, and almost always makes me feel better. And even if the problem is "everyone is starving" and not "I have a paper and a presentation due the same day," this idea can still work.

It's going to take some time. It's going to take some effort. But I hope that, with that time and effort, I'll be able to create a solution all my own. One that allows me to create a mantra that's personalized, memorable, and, most importantly, mine.