Life | Getting A Late Start

Hello there!

It seems so weird to be writing this post.

I have not felt inspired to talk about anything lately. I’ve been like this since the end of October. I made myself dive hard into Blogmas in December and I genuinely enjoyed the posts I did for those three weeks, but by Christmas, I knew I needed to take a longer break from blogging. At one point, I was even comfortable with the idea of never blogging again…

Technically I quit on the 23rd of December, so depending on when I’ll actually get this post out, it would be about two months of nothing to do with writing, publishing, and networking. This prospect is a frightening reality I am currently living with because all I know to do is blog. I may not get paid for my posts, but it doesn’t mean I don’t think of it as a job anyways, and I wonder if that’s also part of it; when I am “working” I feel like I have that constant need to do this or that and it has just taken away all of the fun it brought me in the early days.

I created this blog in May 2011, to give me a space to work on my writing style but the reason why I focused my attention on discussing disability topics is because I wanted to show people of various ages that you can have a wonderful life with a severe disability. I have fallen out of that a few times in the last 12 years of blogging, but I always found a way to come back stronger. The last five years, I have enjoyed how far I’ve come as a writer, I was taking chances and it felt amazing to see all of the hard work pay off.

For my birthday last November, I had this strange feeling inside and it felt like I was turning into a better version of myself. It was “strange” because when I began my 20’s, I sought out finding my soulmate, getting married and raising a family by a certain age like most young women do. It wasn’t until I hit 28 that I realized my overall dream of what I wanted to have as a life wasn’t going to come and although the realization hurt like hell at first, I felt like I could breathe better. Honestly, a lot of things changed at that age! I became an aunt for the first time, and I think it was a great wakeup call for me! I love babies and children, but I have never spent the day/night with them before so being around this little human has humbled me to the core.

This would somewhat happen again a year later, as I asked my cousins about how they knew they were attracted to others, and they proceeded to discuss being in relationships, and all throughout that conversation I wanted to throw up but ironically enough that was one visit I did not come home with the stomach flu… I was shocked that I really couldn’t sense myself entering a relationship and being comfortable about it at this point of my life, and I still don’t four months later! I’ve never been the type of person that would get married, I like the way of having a life partner instead.

Even though the new year is already here, we can always enter a new path at any time. It doesn’t always have to start on your birthday or NYE, and you can never make a mistake on your journey either. You can always come back after a setback so please try not to feel bad or foolish because tomorrow is a whole new day to begin anew.

If you have been reading this post all the way though, I appreciate you for your commitment. I would like to know how long you’ve been a part of my blog in the comments. You don’t have to say the exact date, but if you do indeed remember the day, you started visiting Got Meghan’s Blog, please list it down below.

Blogmas: Why I Decided on 8 Days

Hello everyone and welcome back to Blogmas!

I absolutely adore this theme and it’s one I continue to do every year, even if I’m not feeling very festive. I was first introduced to Blogmas back in 2014 when I found the blogging community on Twitter. I still look back on that memory quite a bit and wish we were all doing the fun chats and checking out everybody’s newest posts without any drama going on behind the scenes.

For those of you who do not know what blogmas is, it’s a concept based around Christmas, you create a series of different posts talking about the festive holiday. Some people will do every day leading up until the 25th, or sometimes they will shrink it down and release 8 or 12 days instead. I’ve always done whatever I could get done and it’s been a hit and miss throughout the years, so that was one of the reasons I decided to only publish for eight days for 2021.

Before I go, one thing I try to do is give people, especially new bloggers a collection of previous blogmas posts, I’ve included what I wrote in 2020. So, I really hope you enjoy what I have in store for you in the next couple of weeks on Got Meghan’s Blog!

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How Do I Read?

This post is all about how I read my books. Last year, I had the chance to work with an awesome company called Tilisma. They create a variety of bookish products. I saw them while watching one of my favorite YouTubers and she showed her viewers these really cool things; it is in the shape of an eye made out of wood with a nice hole carved out in the middle, this is where your thumb (or in my case big toe!) and it is supposed to allow you to hold any type of book and of course make reading easier!

I was given four different products and the nice people of the company, customized every item to my size! The little one is definitely my favorite because it is just perfect for my toes and it has made reading outside or just in the house a whole lot easier for me! Click here if you want to read the whole post on Tilisma. I definitely recommend anyone checking out their stuff on Amazon and/or their Instagram as they share photos of various people using the holders a lot so you could see what you could use for yourself.

Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y!

In this one, I basically talk about the things that make me feel very festive, and I share quite a bit of photos of putting up our family Christmas tree and baking and decorating the sugar cookies. 2020 was the year we could finally do things with Nolan. My mom and I decorated cookies the year before but we all agreed that Nolan was just a little too young to be around that many cookies and frosting–this was a very good call considering how many he did eat last year! I think it was three and a half cookies and I don’t remember how many times he licked icing off his fingers…

The 12 Days of Christmas Book Tag

Here’s the thing, I had a sticky note with array of blogmas topics saved on my laptop, and when I was getting ready to figure out my schedule for this year, I guess I forgot to strike both “Things That Make Me Feel Christmas-y” and this tag. I’m not going to lie; I am pretty proud of myself for looking back just in case or else I would repeat these posts again and I would be really upset with myself.

This post is a survey discussing two loves of mine: books and Christmas. I always enjoy doing these types of posts at the start of blogmas because it is easy, fun and I’m not stressing myself out too much to make it look so perfect. However, now I’m wondering what I will be doing for Friday…

DIY: Christmas Tree Projects

For the longest time, my nana and I would do a bunch of seasonal crafts and despite the fact we loved our pumpkin related projects, the largest job were Christmas things. The final project we did was making everyone their own goody bag full of cookies, lotions, socks, and chocolate bark. And yes, I did a post about it and you can click here to check it out now.

A lot has happened since then, and she lives up north and I am up to no good coming up with ideas to continue the tradition a little, although I wouldn’t say this one wasn’t for family, this was my personal job to see if I could bring back that spark again. I was fairly proud of myself on the work I did on these but now there is only one still on the back wall of the hallway, there is another hanging up in the playroom and Nolan took home the final canvas!

I am doing something similar to what nana and I did with those brown bags, but that’s all I can say about it at the moment. You might see some things on my Facebook and Instagram pages here and there. Once I finish everything, I will have a post up before the 25th.

2020 Christmas Tree

This post is exactly what the title says, it is all about my black Christmas tree for 2020. I’m not entirely sure if I will discuss what I do with my tree this year, but we’ll just have to see what happens later on in the month!

Ultimate Christmas Playlist

As for the final post of the day, you get to know about my favorite Christmas songs. There are a lot of beloved jazz artists like Frank Sinatra, Stan Kenton, Ray Charles, and Michael Bublé, but there is a bunch of different people and songs that inspire that feeling of the holidays as well like, Home Alone soundtrack, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Frozen soundtracks, Lindsey Stirling, and even Celtic Woman.

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Well, that’s it for this post. These are all of the topics I talked about one year ago to hopefully spark the joy of the beautiful season. As I’ve mentioned above, I’ve done this for a pretty long time, so I have a huge selection of Christmas-y posts you can search in the box on the top right corner of the home page.

What is your favorite thing about Christmas?

Life | Mental Heath Update + Things I CAN Control

TW: talks about the dark side of depression and thoughts of suicide!

Hello!

Last year was so crazy that I ended up forgetting writing a two year post depression/mental health update. The only reason why I’m here now is because it’s been on my mind for the last few months. I am a whole month late but I don’t care about that too much, and I didn’t think you would mind either.

A “little” backstory of my struggle with depression.

I’ve had a semi-long history with it, It started in middle school, and just seemed to get worse after I graduated high school. The prospect of going to college and having to deal with different people, surroundings, etc was really exciting at the time, but you have to understand I wasn’t thinking like I had a serve physical disability. I was always in denial because I wanted to be like my friends, go to a regular class, live in a dorm and go to parties, everything that a normal college person does, I wanted it too.

When hell decided to descend into my life, I took it very hard. I was so depressed that I have MONTHS–between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2012–of memories gone! I thought of suicide many times, and just because I have a disability, doesn’t mean I never thought of ways on how it could work in my favor. When you are that low, you are as determined to end your life but thankfully, I never acted on those feelings, but every time I felt like I was heading into that suffocating black hole, I was terrified because I knew what was going to happen once it took hold of me again.

And then at the end of 2017, after my sister got been married and told everybody that they were going to wait five years to start trying to have a baby, they find out they were pregnant. I was already trying to deal with the aftermath of my papaw dying, and that one pretty much threw me over and I went down the biggest hole I’d been in since September 2010. I struggled to be happy for them becoming parents, my parents becoming grandparents and the fact that I was going to be an aunt, but I thoroughly jealous of the fact that my younger sister was going to have a baby.

I’ve always wanted to have a family of my own.

It was the one thing that I wanted to accomplish most of all.

Nothing else I ever did would matter as much as being a mother. I thought my disability would be pushed down like it had while I was growing up because I would be more focused on my child(ren) than my disability. This also shows you how much I despised my own body that would one day carry my own flesh and blood, so seeing my sister absolutely hate everything about being pregnant would make me want to scream after every visit! It angered me so much that this was happening, and then my nephew was born and I was instantly full of both good and bad emotions. I felt really guilty, but yet I was still holding on to that dream and so, it just continued to drag me down

I was supposed to have a doctor’s appointment to discuss taking anti-depressants into the middle of the pregnancy, my poor mom had to be my rock throughout those nine months because I was so sad. I would cry almost every night and finally, a week after Nolan was home, I started on my long journey to heal. In my first year update, I mentioned that I would still have my ups and downs, and that is definitely true all around but I will say, I have kept quite a few affirmations in my mind at all times and in the past year that has really helped me continue to work on myself.

I focus on what I can control, and I let go of what I can’t.

Once I saw this, everything in the last 11 years just washed away. It was infectious to learn this quote because now I don’t feel as many things that would easily, not to mention that would normally, irritate me because I know I am in control (oddly enough!) of my own body and peace of mind. The only thing I still have issues with, is my guilt about my sister being pregnant with my nephew. I still put myself in a guilt trip every once in a while but I am learning to get out of it before the whole thing just takes over, so that’s something to be proud of I think.

I should probably share that if you haven’t learned to control how you react to the different situations, like talking back, judging a book by its cover, learning that no response is still an answer, you probably won’t be able to really let things settle down. You don’t have to right every time. You respect the other person’s words and you go on living yours by your own measure. These are things you CAN control, which brings us to the next phase of this post.

I have a blog friend by the name of Nicky and she recently posted a photo of herself on Instagram last month and explained how life was going for her at the moment. She was feeling really out of it and discussed about dealing with finding control in daily life and she proceeded to create a list of things she could control, and I liked it so much that I decided I wanted to talk about it too, but in “Got Meghan” fashion, I like to chat and ramble on–obviously! I knew doing a simple Top 10 list wasn’t going to cut it, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone basically and this was the ending result I guess.

1. How to breathe, because not many people have the luxury to do so
2. Everything is by choice in life and dreamland
3. Reaction to both positive and negative situations
4. The book(s) I want to read next – for the most part!
5. I can help people understand more about me, the ending result will not always be in my favor, but that’s the price to pay.
6. If things don’t come to me at the right moment or fit into my monthly blogging schedule, I can always save it for a later date.
7. Accepting myself, ALL of my self and being in the moment
8. One-on-one time with the cats – even if they don’t like to share!
9. What songs to include in my Spotify playlists
10. Creativity to the arts, especially starting new medias and projects

Before I go, I would like to say that if you can, find someone to talk about your depression, whether it’s through a therapist, family member, best friend, co-worker, basically anyone you feel the most comfort and trust with your feelings but if you are unable to, I highly suggest writing about it. You could create a blog like I did, although deep in my haze I wasn’t in the mood to blog about anything, so maybe find a journal or if you are worried about someone seeing a diary or journal, keep a regular notebook like you would keep for school assignments, and write in there secretly. Of course, the best advice I can give you is the National Hopeline Network is completely free and the number is 1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433). There is another one I am giving you and that is, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and their number is, 1-800-273-TALK (8255). I hope if you are struggling with life, whether you have a disability or not, I want to say, you’re not alone at all. There are ways you can thrive with life again.

My only question is, can you list out 10 things you CAN control like I did above?

The Goodreads Challenge |Top 20 Books For 2020!

Howdy!

If you are a lover of Goodreads, you probably vote for your favorites of the year in December and when January comes along you make up an estimate of how many books you would like to read that year. I don’t participate in the yearly votes but I do try to create the reading challenge at the beginning of the year; now I usually pick a very low number because I have never had a large selection of books that I actually wanted to read during the course of the year. This year, I feel a change taking place within me. I want to read more, I really do. So, that’s why I am taking the plunge and updating my original goal of 5 books to 20!

I have to say before we continue on with this post, I was inspired to write this after spending a couple of days on Twitter checking out other blogs. Anna from The Bursting Bookshelf does the weekly Top Ten Tuesday challenge and she shared the newest prompt of the week which was “Top Ten Books Added To Your Bookshelf” or something like that. I thought this could be an awesome way to share the rest of the books I bought with that Amazon card in December. So, after reading this post, please go take a look at her blog too!

So, as of right now I have only completed one book and I think this looks promising! I haven’t figured out all of the books I’ll be reading this year, but I can give you the top 15 books for now and maybe I will update you later! I tend to check out the free books a lot during the week so it could grow into a bigger list in the next couple of months, but we’ll see what happens!

1.  After You by JoJo Moyes | click here to read my review now!
2.  Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott* | the book review will be up on Friday!
3.  Ride Me Dirty by Vanessa Vale
4. P.S. I Still Love You by Jenny Han* | I am back on the Lara Jean/Peter love train!
5.  Wicked Beat by Olivia Cunning
6. Wonder by R.J. Palacio*
7. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
8. Throne Of Glass by Sarah J. Maas
9. The Husband Hunters by Anne de Courcy
10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
11. Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen*
12. Head Over High Heels by Lila Monroe
13. Down The Rabbit Hole by Holly Madison
14. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn*
15. A Court Of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

As you can see, I have a lot of books that I can read in 2020 already! The books with the [*] at the end mean I want to watch the film after finishing it.

I have already completed After You, the second in the Me Before You series. The next five books listed are almost finished, everybody is over 50% of the way done so I’m hoping to get through before I get to Wonder. I would also like to mention that all but one is on my Kindle. I have the physical copy of the second book in the Jenny Han series stuffed into my bookshelf for when I am ready for it!

I don’t know what made me purchase Jane Eyre, Pride & Prejudice and Little Woman. I feel like it was a mixture of curiosity and wanting to explore the classics a little bit too. There are a couple of other books on this list that were bought by my mom a few years ago, and I’m glad I can read them now! She read both Down The Rabbit Hole and Gone Girl. They were the only ones that I felt were interesting to me! I’m trying to convince her to get Sally Fields memoir so we can buddy read, but so far no good!

If you want to check out on my progress throughout the year or want to see the other books I’ve read in the past, you can add me as a friend on Goodreads! Click the “G” symbol on the sidebar on the right with the rest of my links.

What are you currently reading now? Are you taking part in the Goodreads 2020 challenge? If you are, how many books do you want to read this year?

Blogmas | The Christmas Day Tag!

Howdy!

I think every Blogmas I’ve done, I always have some kind of Christmas tag in the lineup. I’ve never planned on any of them, by the time the season rolls around, they just appear at the right time, so I just end up doing them anyways!

I found this one while on Twitter. A fellow blogger Nina posted her link through the many retweet accounts and it came up on my newsfeed. When I first read it, I quickly realized that I hadn’t done it before and that it was all about what goes on Christmas day. I thought it would be fun to kind of guess what’ll happen that day a few weeks in advance, and maybe I’ll find out everything I said in my answers was right. Sometimes I like placing bets on myself, keeps things entertaining on those boring gloomy days!

It is a tag, but I am opening it up to anyone who wants to do it. If you end up answering the questions below, I would like to read your posts! So, please link it back to me at the end, okay? Have fun!

What time do you wake up?

It varies with every year honestly, but it is always very early! I’m not saying we get up at like three or four in the morning–when I was little, my sister and I tried to make this happen on more than one occasion; it actually happened once, we were proud of ourselves!–but we tend to get up around sevenish. When my grandparents lived in town, this was our usual schedule: wake up at 7am, play for 10 minutes and then rush to get ready to go to nana and papaw’s by 8am. This might be the way, Blondie and Brandon do it this year, but I could be wrong.

Where will you be spending the day?

So, since we no longer go to my grandparent’s house, it’ll just be my immediate family gathering at our new house! I am actually really excited to celebrate it here, we were jipped last year but we want to make up for it.

What will you be wearing?

I have a really cute pajama set, they are white with little Cardinals sitting on tiny branches and red leaves. It is made of velvet, so they are comfy and warm – perfect for Christmas I think!

What games will you be playing?

We don’t really play any games, at least not with my parents. Nolan will probably play with his cars for the “short” time before we unwrap presents. I don’t think my parents, mainly my dad, to have my little nephew wait even five minutes to dig into the gifts under the tree! He’s always been awful about that, but he has turned into a big softie when it comes to him.

What will you be eating and drinking?

So, during Thanksgiving, my mom is the one that tends to do the bulk of the cooking but dad is in charge of the turkey and gravy. However, when it comes to Christmas, this is where he tends to shine the most. He loves making big Christmas breakfasts.

We usually have any way you take your eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, sausage and cinnamon rolls. Sometimes he makes me breakfast burritos or quesadilla, but if he doesn’t, my go-to is the potatoes with ketchup, plus two or three cinnamon rolls for good measure!

As far as beverages go, we never have anything fancy. Nolan will probably drink apple juice and the rest of us will have milk, which seems like the perfect breakfast to me.

What will you be watching?

Okay, since dad gets up pretty early to cook everything, he usually takes over the remote and turns it to TBS for the 24 hour broadcast of “A Christmas Story”. Here’s the funny thing about that, I haven’t watched it all the way through since I was in middle school!

Now, after all of the festivities die down a bit, I have a full afternoon of NBA basketball games. I like to think it’s a Christmas gift to myself because it’s usually all of the teams I normally watch during the season playing on that day. Last year, I only missed one game, because I was so exhausted and because the Lakers were having an awful bout of games, I figured I wasn’t going to miss much and I think I was right too. I might end up recording them all and watch at my own time, but who knows!

What do you hope to find under the tree on Christmas Day?

You’re allowed to laugh at this answer, but I haven’t really asked for much this year. My mom said she has gotten me something that will be signed “From Santa Claus” on Christmas day, but the only thing I really hope to see is a giant pillow.

I sleep with three pillows at the moment! I have my childhood pillow down at the bottom because I can’t get rid of it for the life of me, plus two extra ones I’ve had to include because of my neck. So, I am hoping for one, hard, giant pillow to solve all of my problems.

Who will you be spending day with?

I am spending the day with my parents, Blondie, Brandon, Nolan and our dog ChiChi (and yes, she has a stocking and is getting her own gifts!). I feel like it could be chaotic because of the excitement in general, but since Nolan is walking now, we can’t just place him in his high chair and have him unwrap his presents there. I have a feeling, he’ll be attempting to help everyone with their gifts!

When will you be opening your presents?

It’ll depend on whether or not we eat breakfast first, but like I said, I don’t think it’ll take my nephew long to convince papaw that we need to do this first, but you never know – although when it comes to these two, I’m hardly ever wrong!