The One Where Kailyn Watches Friends

I have never been very good at creating habits.  Good ones or bad ones, it is next to impossible for me to intentionally incorporate anything into my daily or weekly routine.  I really have to work at it.  I suppose that's why blogging has been quite sporadic for me.  

One habit that was easily and quite unintentionally created was my tendency to turn to netflix in times of stress and boredom.  Netflix is my go-to for boredom busters.  One of my favorite things to do is find a TV show and binge-watch the entire thing in quick bursts.  I have been known to finish a 6 season show in about three months, all while keeping up with my studies.  I don't mean to brag, but I find myself quite talented.  

F.R.E.I.N.D.S. is one of those TV shows everyone has seen.  There are quintessential jokes and references that have incorporated themselves into cultural knowledge.  People constantly compare their own lives to their favorite scene or relationships.  I have heard a lot about smelly cat, a turkey dance, Chandler's unknown job, and spudnik, but I honestly have little concept of what all these things actually refer to.  

Yes.  I, Kailyn, have never seen Friends.  

Well, I will admit that I have seen around 10 episodes because my Roomie loves the show and watched episodes on DVD before bed our sophomore year.  But I had to make her explain a lot and the character arcs never quite made sense.  

Now that Netflix has all of friends online, however, and my parents let me watch shows on their account, I have decided to embark on a large endeavor.  To blog my first official viewing of Friends.  To share my discovery of the TV show with the internet.  

Why?  Because I thought it might be fun.  And I know so many of my friends love the show, it is easier to keep them all up to date at once. 

I am going to try and include 2-3 episodes per post, starting with one post a week.  We will see how this goes.  

So without further ado, I present:

Kailyn Watches Friends! (A Semi-Regular Series)

A Selfie a Day...

I'm not one, usually, to follow popular trends.  Most of the time I find out about a fad when it's on it's downswing of popularity and has started to be overused, even in the ironic sense.  The selfie is no exception.  

One of the few selfies I've taken that I genuinely like.
This picture is also from, like, two years ago.
You can see how often I take selfies.  

I never really got into the whole selfie craze.  The thought of taking a picture of myself all the time was weird.  First of all, why did people need to see my face all the time?  I don't want to be that person who clogs their facebook newsfeed or twitter feed or Insta with my face.  

Secondly, I don't really like how I look most of the time.  If I'm honest, I don't think I'm always beautiful.  Oh sure, I have days where I look in the mirror and think DANG THAT GIRL IS ATTRACTIVE! I would totally wife that!  But most of the time?  I don't like myself very much.  

I could pull the "I was bullied" or the "Media inaccurately defines beauty" or the "I didn't have enough support as a child" cards.  (For the record, I have some of the most supportive parents I could ever asked for and friends who constantly tell me I am beautiful, so it most certainly is not the third card).  But I'm not going to.  I really think I just need to learn to love myself, imperfections and all.  Because I think it would be good for me, to love myself the way God loves me.  Ultimately He created me and He loves me the way I am.  

I stumbled upon this video yesterday, and it really got me thinking about how social media affects us.  I thought to myself "Why don't I take selfies?"  And this sort of catches you up to where I am now.  

As I was pondering, I happened to be watching the videos of a family on YouTube that I have been watching for a while, the Shaytards.  They have been vlogging almost every day for about 5 years.  And I realized: what if I made the commitment to take a selfie every day for a year?  No matter how I looked, how I felt, or what I was doing, take a selfie.  

But if I committed to do this, I would have to do so without critiquing myself.  If I committed to it, then I would have to acknowledge something beautiful about myself in every picture.  And maybe, just maybe, I would begin to see the beauty in my physical appearance.  Just because. 

I'm limiting myself to only taking five selfies a day, so that I don't sit there and attempt to take the PERFECT pose to highlight everything I like about myself.  That sort of defeats the purpose.  I want to learn to see the positives of myself, and presenting myself in a weird way, positioning just so in order to hide all my insecurities sort of defeats the purpose.

So here I go.  A selfie a day. Reguardless of how I am feeling, or how I look.  I may take them at the beginning of the day or the end.  I may be cute or bumming it up.  It's about finding myself beautiful every day.  And you can feel free to join me, if you wish.  But you don't have to.  

Well, I still don't want to clog my friend's news feeds (I don't want to be THAT friend, ya know?), I decided that I will post a week's worth of selfies on my blog every Saturday.  Maybe this will FINALLY get me to start posting regularly on this thing.  

I also think I will choose my favorite selfie of the week to upload to the Facebooks/Twitters/Instagrams.  And I will probably edit/filter only the selfie of the week.  So there is that.  Well, let the Selfie games begin!  

A selfie a day keeps the doubter away?  I guess we'll find out!