Happy Four Years!

Hello loving friends and fans!
Alright, so I wasn't planning on starting this post with an update. But quick update.
As many of you have heard already, last night I went to Basic Academy's theatre awards and I really enjoyed my time in the theatre and I did a lot of performing in high school (and in my life really but high school was really something else) and as high school has been coming to a close (more and more rapidly, it's kind of crazy) I have known that my days as a performer are over and something about that just didn't feel CORRECT. And last night I realized how stuck I got, and how much it didn't seem that I was ready to be done there. And so I decided that I will be pursuing theatre in college.
Now I must clarify, because many of you were confused as to whether I was changing my major. No, I'm not, I'm still a creative writing major. I can't stop writing, guys. That is what I was born to do. But I really feel I need to continue performing as well. I will be auditioning for stuff; I'm going to try to continue to get in the theatre. I am going to try to get a job in there doing something just to get me more exposure and then start auditioning for shows when I return from my mission. And right now I am minoring in theatre due to my stage and screen Jumpstart class, and I think I may go with it.
And you guys have been really supportive of that decision, so thank you for that. Many of you messaged me personally congratulating me and showing a lot of love. A lot of you were even highkey waiting for me to make that decision because you knew that I needed to stay in the theatre as well. Thank you so much.
I am honestly really happy about this decision. After I made that decision I genuinely felt happier than I have in weeks. Life used to be the coolest thing for me but for awhile now I've just kind of been discouraged. Like, nothing seemed exciting. I haven't wanted to be here because I'm running out of things to do, but then when I thought about moving I wasn't excited either. Nothing's really been able to satisfy me lately. Everything was so exciting and now for weeks I've been running out of reasons to even stay awake. And now I made this decision and I'm highkey just really excited to be alive again. And I think it's because I finally made the right choice, and I haven't been for months. I wasn't going to perform and I still need to. I really just need to, maybe we'll find out why later. But I'm happy. I'm not done yet.
Okay, now for the actual point of this post.
Many of you have been following the blog for a really long time, and many of you have just joined us within the year. However long you have been with us, I welcome you in joining us in the celebration of this special day! This is the blog's FOURTH birthday!!!
And these can be the hardest posts to write, but it's a very special day for me, so I always feel like I need to do it.
First, I would like to thank you all for your support of the blog. I remember on the All State trip I was writing a piece for the week (it was a Fame Friday) and I needed an outside opinion on something, and so I asked Angelo (choir fam) about it, and Selena (also choir fam) said it was special when Lizzo asks your opinion on a post, and it made me so happy because I love that people see how special it really is. This blog, this is the beginning of my public writing. It really is that important. And so thank you, thank you because you make me feel like by some miracle maybe I'm not just writing for myself. Thank you for letting me know when I introduced you to a new book, or when I helped you understand your social anxiety and made you feel like someone understood, or when you guys tell me you read my long paragraphs on Instagram even though you usually wouldn't read those, when you tell me I can produce anything, when you tell me every idea I have matters, and many more things. (Yes, all real things I have been told. I am beyond grateful.)
Thank you for every time you've told me in some way that I can write. Thank you.

My dearest, It's an Adventure!,
I can't believe how much we've done in our fourth year. I can't believe how much we've learned. We've experienced so much, and grown through so much. Remember the beginning of our fourth year? We were coming out of a hardcore depressive state. We were planning our sister's wedding. We were never quite happy. And here we are, getting ready to leave high school, with so much we did and so much more to do. We're excited to be alive and do stuff.
I think that's wild. The blog has pretty much been a high school story up until now, and its fifth year is going to be a college story, and in its sixth year it will be a mission story. The adventure really does only get better from here.
And this time it's really exciting, because in high school you were the choir's go-to leader and a four-year member of color guard and very well known and kind of even popular in the music hallway. (Strictly the music hallway fam, don't feel special.) And you were the person to know and on top of everything and you WERE everything and you were all that, and guess what? You're going to college and none of it's going to matter and you'll be on the bottom and you'll be NOTHING. And it's actually kind of ridiculous how excited I am for that! It's going to be a tragically humiliating experience, and that's going to be a really exciting adventure, to be absolutely nobody, to have to reidentify yourself because of the things that no longer make you special; like, the things you identified as you won't be you anymore. Maybe we can even try to build ourselves up to something.
Think about all the things we learned about writing! We learned about motif (Hamilton) and dramatic irony (Jurassic Park).  We learned how to really develop a character, and how to understand them by seeing where they stand in every part of the story (Fame). We really did learn a lot.
We learned a lot about everything, actually. We learned we are allowed to be who we want to be now no matter what happened in the past. We learned we're allowed to love ourselves. We're allowed to love our own work and our own heart and yeah, we're allowed to call yourself queen.
We had a lot of firsts. We had our first gym membership. (Our workout soundtrack is lit.) Our first guitar concert, and quartet, and festival. Our first name character in a musical. We had a lot of lasts, too. But we regretted those pretty much not at all.
We made so many good friends, and we got closer to the ones we had. We analyzed more art and got exposed to more art. (The Picture of Dorian Gray is golden and I don't understand why people find it boring.) We discovered we want to write poetry professionally! Can you believe that? We've grown so much.
Can we talk about how much we improved as a performer, too? Our performances got noticably better, on all accounts. We really just slayed the game this year.
We got a little crazy, too. We auditioned with harder songs. We performed bigger than ever. We wrote riskier. We asked people out just because we wanted to. And those are just a few examples. I swear we just act insane, honestly I can't even handle us sometimes. And we do all that because we know pretty much everything that happens in Henderson isn't going matter in a little over a month. We live like we are dying.
That's why it's been the best year we've had so far.
We really are so strong, independent, single, and beautiful.
Don't stop. You can't. You have a pace to maintain. You have so much left to do.
I really love you.
--Lizzo
Facebook: It's an Adventure
Instagram: @itsanadventur
Twitter: @Itsanadventur
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Youtube: Elizabeth Day

Physical Health and Mental Disorders

Hello all! I went to check to see what's happened since the last time I've posted, but honestly, it would be easier to ask what HASN'T happened since the last time I wrote. I performed in my last pop choir show and I still miss it; it's my favorite show every year, a super intimate and fun performance. I sang my last choir concert and had a lot of great large and small performances at those various concerts. I went to my first and last prom with one of my dearest friends. I went to a luncheon for a scholarship I was awarded. I'm highkey still trying to catch up on life. Life has been a huge blessing lately. I am so lucky.
It's still May, and it's still mental health month! And today's story is a story of PROGRESS!!!
Today isn't a personal account, it's just a statement that needs to be made. And I've been planning this post for a few weeks, and I think it couldn't have come at a more appropriate time. A lot of my friends, and I mean a lot, are being worn down by life right now. They're going through things that are kind of causing their mental health to take a decline, in some cases small and in some cases large. Like, legit, it's kind of breaking me. So many things are happening to them and I can't make it better.
I once saw this post someone wrote about depression, how their doctor told them in order to fight their depression, they needed to get plenty of sleep, eat nutritious foods, and exercise frequently. Which they pointed out were all things their depression was preventing them from doing. And everyone was agreeing with them, which I understand. Because it's true.
But guys. That's exactly the point.
Your mind controls your body. And so when your mind is sick, that really throws things off. Your body does not naturally want to do things it should naturally want to do. So yes, you can't sleep, you can't control your eating, and you can't make yourself exercise, or whatever else your specific illness is preventing you from doing. Because those are symptoms of your illness. But doesn't it only make sense that you try to do the things that will cancel your symptoms out? The way to kill something bad is to combat it with the opposite good. So you have to do your best to do those things your illness is preventing you from doing, the things your body needs to do to remain healthy.
Sleep. Sleep enough. Even if you can't, don't do anything that will help keep you awake. Which might not make sense to you since you can't sleep anyway, but you shouldn't do anything that will prevent you from getting what you need. You need to make sure you're eating enough, and you get a lot of good food in that will help your body feel better. And make sure you do something to exercise every day. Working your body makes happy chemicals flow through it, and makes it feel better.
And those things that you need to do to take care of your body, they're what makes people frustrated. Because your mind won't let you. You can't do it. And that just drives people crazy. I can't do it, so why are people telling me that to make myself feel better I have to do this thing I'm not even capable of?
But when someone tells you to take care of yourself so you'll feel better, they're not expecting you to do it perfectly right away, or honestly ever. The illness is inside you, and that makes it way difficult for you to fix these things that your body doesn't want to do but still needs. But if you give in to the illness, it won't ever get better. You don't need to be perfect at taking care of yourself. You just need to do your best every day. Take all measures you can. Even if you end up lying in bed all night unable to sleep, even if you eat too much or too little one day, even if you don't exercise for a few days, you don't need to be perfect. Just try the best you can every day. And you won't be perfect, and you will have setbacks, and they aren't things to get frustrated about. It's something glorious about humanity, the fact that we're able to have downfalls and then recover from them, and imperfections and then perfect them. We're so flawed, and it's so human. It's so alive.
It's okay to be alive. It's good to be alive.
So I guess the point is, don't give up. Really, don't. Just because it's not working. Progress takes time, a short time or a long time, and maybe that's what's frustrating because we can't tell which one it will be, whether it will be days or weeks or months or years. But that's what this post is about. Don't stop yourself from progressing. Be okay with small victories and small downfalls. They're the only way you're ever going to get better. Don't stop yourself from getting better. Don't do nothing.
I love you. I really do.
--Lizzo