Um...

Dear the readers of this blog... more like the only reader,

I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts. I've been sick and far too lazy to keep up with my journaling. Having this blog kinda pressures me into doing one, though. I actually have an entry in my journal, I just don't know if I want to share it.

Anyway, good night.

By the way, Alice in Wonderland by Tim Burton is a good movie. :)

I've decided!

I've finally made up my mind about what I want this blog to be about.

...journaling.

Yes, journaling. Plain old journaling mixed with a bit of art journaling.

I've always been an avid journaler. I still have a bookshelf full of journals I've kept from elementary school and I have my fair share of moleskines (absolutely adore them!). It's something I will never get bored of and something that combines everything I want to talk about, so I imagine blogging about journaling will be pretty easy.

But first, what is art journaling (also known as visual journaling)? I found about this at the end of last school year, and I was so thrilled. Journaling is a form of art? Having an artist mom (and consequently been dragged into so many art museums with her O_o), I've always been interested in it. That being said, my interest was never great enough to actually pursue anything "artistic"- aside from occasional painting for fun and playing with colors via endless art supplies piled up at my house, I never had a formal training in art: no art class in high school or from my mom. I've always told people who ask me if I, too, paint like my mom that she does art and I do music.

That doesn't mean I don't want to do art. Oh and have I mentioned, I love writing? Not necessarily stories, but just... writing in general. So... something that combines art and writing? Heavenly.

Now, I'm by no means one of the more accomplished and practiced art journalists. First off, I'm a junior in high school. An ASIAN junior in high school. That translates into ACT and AP exams. I definitely don't have enough time to pour my heart into art journaling, because it takes time. In fact, the period I've art journaled the most was summer. Secondly, I've just started dipping my toe into it. There are some really amazing art journalists out there, and I'm nothing compared to them. But... there is no right or wrong when it comes to art journaling, and I've created some pages I really like. That's all that matters, right? The biggest reason I love the idea of art journaling so much is that it's the ultimate form of self expression, anyway. Plus on some days, I just want to write instead of doing collages or painting or whatnot. Sometimes I'm okay with pages completely filled up with words. Sometimes I just color. Sometimes I cut and glue and write and stamp. It all depends on what I'm feeling and thinking. Again, the ultimate form of self expression.

Now that my blog has a "theme"-ish kinda thing, I'll try to post pictures of my pages... for now, my memory card for my camera doesn't work for whatever reason so it may take a while. And as I put some of the pages up, I will get a chance to talk about things I wanted to talk about, like perception of beauty (that actually is one of my favorite pages that I created). Or how I feel about the four seasons. Or Korea. Or my boyfriend whom I adore. :)

Oh, and I'm starting a new journal soon, so I'll get that up as soon as I get to it.

Hi, nice to meet you.

So I googled around to find a survey template I like, but I couldn't find any. Instead, I'm forced to be creative and talk about myself. I think I'm going to try to make a list of things about myself as they come to my mind.

Here we go.

1. I really like my name. I always have, and I probably always will.

2. But I'm not going to reveal my name here.

3. I'm paranoid. (See above)

4. I am a Christian. I try to live by the word of God but be as open-minded as possible. I hate the stereotype of narrow-minded, judgmental Christians, because that's not what Christianity is about. I will probably blog about this topic at some point.

5. Yellow is my favorite color. I love bright, warm, sunshine yellow! It makes me happy. :)

6. I'm Korean. I moved to the States six years ago.

7. I love flowers. My favorites are sunflowers, orchids, and tulips.

8. I really adore beautiful things, whether it be a person, an object, words, paintings, actions, or anything, really. Beauty is something I'm very interested in and I will probably blog about this a lot. I've been trying to find the societal definition of beauty and somehow come up with my own definition.

9. Speaking of beauty, that is one of the biggest reason I wanted to blog. There are so many makeup/beauty blogs out there, and I wanted a place to talk about the essence of beauty. What being beautiful really means.

10. Oh yeah, I'm still in high school. Junior, actually. So I'm still pretty young.

11. I love history. The more we know about it, the more idea we'll have as to where we're going.

12. I've been richly blessed with loving, yet firm, parents, supportive family, and amazing friends. Overall, I live a very happy life. :)

13. Talking about people in my life, I have an amazing and amazingly nerdy boyfriend. This makes me sound like such a typical teenage girl, but dating him has really helped me grow as a person and I definitely owe him big time. Our one-year is almost coming up! I love you, chou. :)

14. As you might have guessed, I'm a nerd. It is my firm belief that more nerds = better world. :P But I'm not the nerd archetype. I can't play videogames to save my life and I actually have a pretty active social life. It's just that my interests aren't exactly too similar to other high school junior girls.

15. I feel like this list is getting too long.

16. John Steinbeck is my favorite author... which is slightly ironic, because his beliefs are nothing like mine. He had a very man-centered view of the world. :P

17. I love music. I mainly play the clarinet and piano with other little (?) instruments like ocarina and recorder. I also love to sing.

18. Reading and writing are one of my favorite hobbies. You'll never catch me without a pen and paper. I write whenever I'm not doing anything else, haha. And it's not like I write stories, either. I just like writing down words that come to my mind.

19. I. love. cotton candy. a lot.

20. I don't drink pop. I love water. And tea. Asian tea. Like green tea and jasmine tea and oolong tea and barley tea and chrysanthemum tea and all that good stuff. Without sugar. :P

I'm going to end the list here. :) This was a lot longer than I thought it would. This is obvioustly a very fragmented picture of me, but hopefully I'll be able to portray myself more holistically as I keep up with this blog.

And now... I'm off to bed! +-+ bed sweet bed...

First Post- Blogging

I've been toying with the idea of getting a blog for a while now.

I always laughed off this thought in the end, though. I figured it would be pretty pointless, because 1) no one would read it, and 2) I'm extremely paranoid and I wasn't sure if I really wanted people reading my blog, even if I got one.

Buuut today I changed my mind. Why? Well... 1) my bf convinced me to get one, that no one will stalk me and kill me if I did, and even if no one read my blog, he would, and 2) I realized it doesn't matter if people read my blog or not.

Is the mere existence of ideas enough? Or do ideas come to life only when they are shared?

I want this place to be somewhere I can express my thoughts with a potential to be shared with others.

Okay, for the next few days I'll be posting get-to-know-you posts. :)