Artsy with Mya

 I haven't posted anything on here for a long time because I honestly have been really in such a weird place of limbo for most of this year. So close to the start of this year, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life beyond the same old, same old. I was working at my parents store and living with them and my siblings.  I thought about what I could do to jumpstart my life (in a way) or at least what I could do to make a change in some way. So I decided to apply to teach English in a foreign country. Did I know what country? No - I figured that out later. And as most everyone probably knows - I decided to teach in Thailand.  Some people (including my parents) have asked me why Thailand? - why this job? - what made you choose this?  The long and short answer of it is that once I started preparing for this; I just never stopped. Over the past two years after I graduated from college I have thought about pursuing a lot of different things/careers/ideas with vari...

 Heartbreaking and healing - the odes to survival and living a life true to yourself is what makes this book such a captivating read. There are moments where you feel like the author simply took a mirror to your own thoughts and feelings and made you really look at them.  But at the end, the paper girl survives and the knives that tried to kill her and destroy her did not do so and no matter what happens, they will never destroy her.  There are content and trigger warnings at the beginning of the book and they are well-deserved as there are topics in this work that are hard to read and deal with - so please pay attention to them.  I received this book free from NetGalley and Central Avenue Publishing to review and this is my honest review.  Five out of five stars 

Content warning for depression, anxiety, discussion of self-harm  Have you ever tried doing stuff when you just can't do anything? I honestly thought that it was semi-normal for years to go through life with periods where you just can't do anything and the thought of doing anything - even something that you were excited for and ready for and you just didn't go. There were times in my life where I would be laying down waiting to go somewhere - a bible study group or a friends hangout and I would watch the clock tick down to the time I needed to leave by and I just never moved. It felt like I didn't have the mental or emotional strength to get up and go through with my plans. And I thought that it was kind of normal for people to feel and maybe it is, but other people just know how to deal with it better.  There were weeks at a time where I would just stop my entire social life without even thinking about it - it would just happen and one day I would look back and notice ...