Dear 2017,
I saw you described as a scooter to the ankle and I don’t think I’ve ever agreed with something more. You had your good moments, can’t deny that. I became an adult this year, how did that happen? I have cried more this year than I ever have. I have had a year filled with good and bad, of meetings and partings. I made friends this year I thought would be with me forever, people I thought would have my back, alas I lost them this year too, because they weren’t who I thought they were.
This year I saw people for what they were. 2017, you show me that seven years of friendship, years of me putting others first, of making sure everyone else was okay when I was hurting, boils down to nothing. Not when there are others who can manipulate and twist things. Not when others are louder. Not when your own voice has been reduced to nothing. Maybe I expected to much. Maybe I thought my friends knew me better than they did. Maybe I thought after everything they’d have my back. I wanted my friends to stick up for me and they didn’t. I’ve accepted that.
2017, you pushed me to my limit. You sent me trials that made me question everything I’ve done for the last 5 years. But you showed me that I am stronger than I thought. That I can cope with a lot more than I expected. You taught me that I will be fine. You showed me that even in my lowest moments I can keep going. You reminded me of the importance of family and helped me see who my real friends are.
2017, this year I took a leap and started writing my own novel. The characters that have been a comfort to me for longer than I can remember finally found a home. I found the confidence to start and starting is the hardest part. I doubted myself. I had lost all confidence in my own abilities. But I pushed myself. I started. And not only that but this year I decided what I wanted to do as a career. I was never going to be a doctor or a lawyer or teacher, I think everyone realised that in the end. But although I love acting I realised this year that my heart lies in my writing. When it makes me happy, when it’s all I think about, when all I can do is create stories morning till night I can’t see how I could do anything else. Writing has been the one true thing I have stuck with and it has given my over active imagination a playground.
2017, you were the year that made me realise I put others before myself too often, to a point where I was making myself ill. I will still always be there for the people I care about but now I understand that I need to look after myself too. Life is too short to spend it making myself miserable to make others happy. 2017, you taught me that everything will be okay, to have faith in myself and do what makes me happy. I start 2018 a different person, without the people I thought would never leave. But that’s okay. I don’t mind anymore. I can forgive you all that, 2017, I needed to know.
I start 2018 in a more positive position. I know it’s going to be difficult - that my A Levels are going to be stressful but it doesn’t last forever. ‘This too shall pass’ isn’t that the saying? And the Beth who starts 2019 will thank me for what I do in 2018. Who knows, she may even be proud.
I’m finally learning to take care of myself. 2017, you pushed me to get help for my anxiety, something I always said I didn’t need. I was wrong and you were right. I needed help. I couldn’t go on the way I was. I was in a downward spiral, 2017, and my mental health was worse than it ever had been. I thought I was going mad. I’ve got help though and people are aware now of how much I was suffering and how much I still suffer.
I am done changing myself to fit other people’s preferred view of me. I’ve only got one life and I am determined to live it as myself. Not someone else. I wrote once that ‘we all become stories’ and that we should ‘embrace the uniqueness of our own’ because ‘no one will ever have the same story as you’. Typical writer, I suppose. But whatever my story is, it will not be dictated by others. Thank you, 2017, for helping me see how much needed to change.
Goodbye, 2017, you’ve taught me a lot but I cannot say I am sad to see you go. Here’s to better days.
Beth
31/12/17
things i say that confuse and worry my coworkers:
“happy birthday” every time i hand them something
“well, that’s not ideal” whenever something is going wrong
“we are in the timeline that god abandoned” whenever i’m mildly inconvenienced
“can’t you see that your fighting is tearing this family apart?” whenever two or more coworkers are arguing
referring to taking medication as “eating medicine”
“time to go back to prison!” when putting animals back in their cages
referring to inanimate objects as (s)he, particularly when i break something and say “oh no, he’s dead.” this concerns them especially when i follow it up with “that’s not ideal”
“what are they gonna do, fire me?”
2018-01-01
Starting off the year with an iced latte and some essay-writing ft. @emmastudies ’s new desktop calendar 💫
Happy new year everyone!
Hello! I've been wanting more experience in reading tarot and runes so I decided to open up tarot readings for free! Please message me if you're interested and I'll get back to you asap
I have 2 decks
Throth tarot deck and wild and unknown tarot deck
I only have 1 set of runes
Please let me know if you're interested! Love and light
Glad to see some boy positivity in the studyblr community!
i see a lot of posts on here supporting girls, which is amazing!! but!! i wanna take a second and recognize all the boys that run studyblrs too! they’re all so amazing, and just because it isnt “stereotypical” (gender roles are gross) for guys to have a blog like that, it doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. i’m a boy and i wanna see more love for boys around here!!
today was a stressful day… lesson learned: don’t cram all piano theory homework until 1 AM. also please ignore the “leggiero” i totally screwed up on that
the time you take being jealous of other people’s success is the time you could be using to build your own
you’re never going to “feel like it”
doing and practicing now is better than waiting for the perfect moment
eliminate people with toxic habits from your life
you are in control. Everything you’ve done up to this moment led you here. Therefore, your future is determined by what you do now.
everything is as it should be and only later in life you can connect the dots.
self discipline will give you freedom. consistency will give you results
everything is temporary. You should find freedom in this concept
the rich stay rich acting poor and the poor stay poor acting rich
being healthy means finding a balance between the good and the bad
the people that outranked you have outworked you.
you can’t be grateful and negative at the same time.
Meditate on these statements. They are so very powerful! Xxx
january 08, 2018 - 4/100 days of productivity: back to school!
Some digital notes I’ve been eager to upload but never really got myself into doing so. Now I’m focusing on making the notes as illustrated as possible and on the same day as the lecture! definitely a new challenge.
currently listening to: “fire and fury (audiobook)” -michael wolff
FAMOUS AUTHORS
Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.
TEXTBOOKS
Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.
Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.
KnowThis Free Online Textbooks: Get directed to stats textbooks and more.
Online Medical Textbooks: Find books about plastic surgery, anatomy and more here.
Online Science and Math Textbooks: Access biochemistry, chemistry, aeronautics, medical manuals and other textbooks here.
MIT Open Courseware Supplemental Resources: Find free videos, textbooks and more on the subjects of mechanical engineering, mathematics, chemistry and more.
Flat World Knowledge: This innovative site has created an open college textbooks platform that will launch in January 2009.
Free Business Textbooks: Find free books to go along with accounting, economics and other business classes.
Light and Matter: Here you can access open source physics textbooks.
eMedicine: This project from WebMD is continuously updated and has articles and references on surgery, pediatrics and more.
MATH AND SCIENCE
FullBooks.com: This site has “thousands of full-text free books,” including a large amount of scientific essays and books.
Free online textbooks, lecture notes, tutorials and videos on mathematics: NYU links to several free resources for math students.
Online Mathematics Texts: Here you can find online textbooks likeElementary Linear Algebra and Complex Variables.
Science and Engineering Books for free download: These books range in topics from nanotechnology to compressible flow.
FreeScience.info: Find over 1800 math, engineering and science books here.
Free Tech Books: Computer programmers and computer science enthusiasts can find helpful books here.
CHILDREN’S BOOKS
byGosh: Find free illustrated children’s books and stories here.
Munseys: Munseys has nearly 2,000 children’s titles, plus books about religion, biographies and more.
International Children’s Digital Library: Find award-winning books and search by categories like age group, make believe books, true books or picture books.
Lookybook: Access children’s picture books here.
PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
Bored.com: Bored.com has music ebooks, cooking ebooks, and over 150 philosophy titles and over 1,000 religion titles.
Ideology.us: Here you’ll find works by Rene Descartes, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, David Hume and others.
Free Books on Yoga, Religion and Philosophy: Recent uploads to this site include Practical Lessons in Yoga and Philosophy of Dreams.
The Sociology of Religion: Read this book by Max Weber, here.
Religion eBooks: Read books about the Bible, Christian books, and more.
PLAYS
ReadBookOnline.net: Here you can read plays by Chekhov, Thomas Hardy, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and others.
Plays: Read Pygmalion, Uncle Vanya or The Playboy of the Western World here.
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare: MIT has made available all of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories.
Plays Online: This site catalogs “all the plays [they] know about that are available in full text versions online for free.”
ProPlay: This site has children’s plays, comedies, dramas and musicals.
MODERN FICTION, FANTASY AND ROMANCE
Public Bookshelf: Find romance novels, mysteries and more.
The Internet Book Database of Fiction: This forum features fantasy and graphic novels, anime, J.K. Rowling and more.
Free Online Novels: Here you can find Christian novels, fantasy and graphic novels, adventure books, horror books and more.
Foxglove: This British site has free novels, satire and short stories.
Baen Free Library: Find books by Scott Gier, Keith Laumer and others.
The Road to Romance: This website has books by Patricia Cornwell and other romance novelists.
Get Free Ebooks: This site’s largest collection includes fiction books.
John T. Cullen: Read short stories from John T. Cullen here.
SF and Fantasy Books Online: Books here include Arabian Nights,Aesop’s Fables and more.
Free Novels Online and Free Online Cyber-Books: This list contains mostly fantasy books.
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
Project Laurens Jz Coster: Find Dutch literature here.
ATHENA Textes Francais: Search by author’s name, French books, or books written by other authors but translated into French.
Liber Liber: Download Italian books here. Browse by author, title, or subject.
Biblioteca romaneasca: Find Romanian books on this site.
Bibliolteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes: Look up authors to find a catalog of their available works on this Spanish site.
KEIMENA: This page is entirely in Greek, but if you’re looking for modern Greek literature, this is the place to access books online.
Proyecto Cervantes: Texas A&M’s Proyecto Cervantes has cataloged Cervantes’ work online.
Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum: Access many Latin texts here.
Project Runeberg: Find Scandinavian literature online here.
Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.
Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.
Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.
Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.
CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.
HISTORY AND CULTURE
LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.
RARE BOOKS
Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.
MYSTERY
MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.
POETRY
The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.
MISC
Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
A Celebration of Women Writers: The University of Pennsylvania’s page for women writers includes Newbery winners.
Free Online Novels: These novels are fully online and range from romance to religious fiction to historical fiction.
ManyBooks.net: Download mysteries and other books for your iPhone or eBook reader here.
Authorama: Books here are pulled from Google Books and more. You’ll find history books, novels and more.
Prize-winning books online: Use this directory to connect to full-text copies of Newbery winners, Nobel Prize winners and Pulitzer winners.