​I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. 

​I thought I did. I mean, up until a few months ago I would have said with absolute certainty that I did. I had things together. Went to college, got a job, went to grad school, kept teaching and doing good things with that, worked on my writing, published more books… everything I anticipated when I said from the age of like 5 that I was going to be a teacher and an author. I thought I had it all figured out. I think I was wrong.

As I've been reflecting now that Cursed has been out for a few days, I've come to the conclusion that this book is a gift. Not in the very pretentious way of "this book is so fantastic that it is obviously a gift to all of you." (Although I do really love it and think you should read it) But in a very deeply personal way of this book being a gift to me when I needed this particular story and these special characters. 

If you happen to follow along with my writing at all, you may know that my writing process can be, let's say... unpredictable at times. Most times. While part of the reason for that is because I can never seem to write characters who behave according to my outline (yes Mom, I know that makes me sound crazy), part of it is also because whatever is on my heart and mind inevitably seeps into my stories. Every book I've ever written has been a reflection of my life during the time period in which I wrote it. And as I have entered into the Beyond Beauty time period, I have reached a point in my life where the idea of rebelling against beauty standards and obsession is in the forefront of my mind.

Here's the thing: this particular wording feels a bit weird for me to use. I'm not typically a very loud person (in fact, as introverted as I am, I'm far more likely to hear comments about how I should speak up and make myself heard... which is a whole separate thing that we won't be getting into in this particular post). All through high school, I barely spoke at all. And even now, I tend to find myself thinking about if it's really necessary to talk in a lot of conversations. I don't prefer to be the "loud" one. But it seems like there is an unfortunate lack of people getting "loud" about moving beyond beauty, so now you have to hear about it from me. Aren't you lucky?

Welcome to the "Why Beyond Beauty?" blog series, where I explain further my need to write an entire series largely dedicated to taking the focus off of the value of external beauty. I know this is kind of a strong start, but, interestingly enough, anger is very much a driving force behind this thought process. It's kind of new territory for me, since I'm not someone who gets angry very easily. But, I can tell you with certainty that the fixation on outward appearance definitely does it.

I'm gonna just go ahead and say that I've made a scientific breakthrough. Do I have the qualifications to make that announcement? Sure. According to me, I have every bit of authority necessary to give my own personal discovery the title of "scientific breakthrough."

This is not the usual post for our Joy Experiment, so I'll keep it pretty brief. For the month of March, I have created a calendar with 31 days of small, quick activities that will hopefully bring joy to your life. I encourage you to join in and do as many of these as you like/are able to do! Most of my activity for this challenge will be on Instagram, so if you'd like to share what you are doing for the challenge, just tag me there (@sgbaconwriter). I hope you will use this calendar and challenge as an opportunity to incorporate more things that bring you joy!

So... things haven't exactly gone according to plan. You may have picked up on that, given the fact that we skipped a week in these posts. I had planned on posting for week two, even had my whole discussion on how that week had put this whole theory to the test planned... but then week two went straight into week three, which turned out to also be a challenge. So here we are. End of week three, heading into week four. Things are a little different than anticipated, but honestly, are you surprised? I'm not.

I'm not going to lie to you here and tell you that after just seven days of these new habits, my life is changed, I'm 100 times happier, and everything is perfect. That's just not how these kind of things work. And besides, I'm not trying to sell you on doing things exactly like me. That's not the point of this. The point of this "experiment" is to see what happens (and according the the research study I'm in the middle of conducting for grad school, it's best to remain as objective as possible). That being said, there are a couple of key pieces I have noticed so far.

I always like to start things on the first of the month, so I've waited not-so-patiently to dive into this new project for a few days now. This past weekend, I was able to attend an amazing conference all about establishing healthy rhythms of rest and work, how to engage in Christian meditation, and ways to truly keep the Sabbath holy. I was honestly pumped for this conference because I have gotten to the point of being so tired of living my life just waiting for my next break. I knew that I needed to learn to romanticize and find joy in every day. So here we are.