Cindy – November 12th, 2020 Journal Entry #46

Throughout these weeks I have only reduced my time to school work and finishing tasks related to IB. Because of quarantine, I have stayed home and this routine has made my mental health unstable. I constantly find myself frustrated, stressed and overwhelmed so I knew I needed to change the way I was doing things. Today I planted pipianes at home, which helped me relieve stress and focus myself on something else but school for at least 1 hour. This was effective since I had a better attitude and mood throughout the day and classes. I decided to plant something because I see it as a metaphor for my current life situation. Since I am close to graduate high school I want to be taking care of this plant as a reflection of culminating my process of studying high school. The value of this activity is that by seeing them grow and have the responsibility of watering them until they produce a fruit, it will change my perception since I will remind myself that the process of things is always worth it and the most essential part to reach success. This is because I have not been appreciating the process of IB because it has made me tired and be full of stress, yet I want to be grateful for it even if it makes me feel like this… because at the end it will be the part that outstands the most. These new hobby of planting will make me improve my skills of patience and balance, which will help me in the future to manage and deal with situations that require a lot of responsability. Therefore, I will not let stress take over me in the future, instead I will highlight these skills that I am improving in the present. I definitely inspired myself by the creative way I organized a solution to stabilize my mental health once again by doing this hobby as a reflection of my life right now.