URL Switching Update

URL switching is a lot harder than I remember. Actually, the URL switching itself wasn't too bad, but I've been moving everything to a new email account, so I've had to update all the social media accounts to match. I've also created a new Chrome user to keep all of my accounts separate, so I've been trying to consolidate that with the other things. I got frustrated at the Chrome theme because I wanted the other purple one, but now it's a paid theme, so I considered modifying my old account to use that theme, but that would be too complicated. The one I'm using now is okay, but it's a bit plain. Luckily, I've been super productive all day and I've finished my homework, so I get to focus on this singlemindedly for a while.

After a few hours, I'm done! Here are all the updated social media accounts:

»Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Clary-J-Simmons/383496421812183
[Facebook is being a duck and not letting me make a custom URL until the page gets to 25 likes.]
»Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClaryJSimmons
»Tumblr: http://claryjsimmons.tumblr.com/
»Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/claryjsimmons/
»Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ClaryJSimmons
»Google+: https://plus.google.com/116522039871757821519/
[Google+ is even more of a butt, and has tons of regulations on a custom URL. Will update soon.]
»Bloglovin' Profile: https://www.bloglovin.com/claryjsimmons
»Bloglovin' Page: https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/quintessential-introvert-13501063
»Ello: https://ello.co/claryjsimmons
»Ask.fm: ask.fm/claryjsimmons

I also had to move my TeenVogue and LuckyMag accounts, which are basically community contribution sites. They have the same content as what I post here, but if you're interested:

TeenVogue: http://fashionclick.teenvogue.com/user/claryjsimmons
LuckyMag: http://contributors.luckymag.com/user/claryjsimmons

I also wanted to join another community called HerCampus, but they have a very intense application process, which I do not have all the qualifications for yet, so maybe some other time.

I'll be testing these out over the next couple of days to make sure that they work, and if you happen upon a link that doesn't let me know?

Now, keeping all of these accounts updated is another story, but that's an ongoing process. We'll see. ◊

2015 Focus: Mindful Body Wellness

This year I want to be pretty.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not have body dysmorphic disorder as far as I know of. I'm actually quite happy with who I am at the moment – intellectually, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Of course, some of things are still a little bit shaky, but I'm generally a lot more stable in those aspects than I was, say, a month or half a year ago. But I want to make some changes. Life is always about moving forward and making positive changes. Maybe it is because I'm a little insecure on the inside, but who isn't? And I say, "I want to be pretty," more as a "putting conscientious effort into my appearance" way than a "I'm ugly right now" kind of way. If that makes any sense.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about this, and sure, inner beauty is great and all, but I totally want to be one of those "yoga on the beach at sunset" people. It must be so great to have the time for that, but since I don't have that luxury, I'll start small, maybe just by putting more effort into my my outwards appearance. It's not only about makeup and clothing, but actually treating myself right, physically or health-wise. Sure, body positivity and loving who you are is great, but you're really not loving yourself if you're leaving your body to rot with a crappy lifestyle. That's my own concern about the body positivity movement, that its message can be skewed or misconstrued towards loving yourself as you are no matter what instead of encouraging people to take care of themselves and work towards better health.

This is an idea that has been consistently at the back of my mind for a while, but today, I rediscovered Inthefrow, who basically has my dream life as far as I can tell. She has purple hair, works as a blogger, lives in London, and models on the side. At first I thought, "Wow, she is so lucky that she gets to live off of her looks," but then I read that she has a Ph.D. on her about page, and my life kind of felt like crap again, but it was also strangely motivating. There's nothing that says I can't work towards that lifestyle. Once I have the full freedom and independence to live my life, I'll have so many more options, but there are still plenty of things that I can do now.

For me, that consists of three things: skin care, eating right, and exercise. I'd like to invest in some more beauty products and do reviews on them as I go. Most of these will probably be skin care products, like washes, face masks, and toners etc, as my combination skin annoys me to no end. I thought about doing a "Makeup Monday" type thing, similar to "Food Friday" but I wouldn't be consistent enough for that. Then again I haven't been keeping up with Food Friday either, mostly because the food stuff happens on the weekend, so then I have to wait a week to post about food on Friday, and then I forget.

With food, I have no authority over my family's shopping habits at the moment, but when I do, I am totally down for the salad and avocado and carrot stick type of food thing (I hesitate to say the word "diet" because that implies a short term phase). No, it's not that I want to torture myself by forcing myself to be vegetarian (trust me, I've tried). It works for some people, but definitely not for me. However, I genuinely enjoy the taste of fresh, healthy food. It makes me feel good on the inside, and I'm always in a better mood after a salad. As for exercise, I don't have the time to do anything extreme. I've even decided to stop swimming for the school as speech and art are taking up more of my day. But I do want to be toned and healthy so I have more energy throughout the day.

Simply put, I want to have more control over my life, so for the time being, I will pursue endeavors that I do have control over, such as my personal health and appearance. I wanna be like Kanye. I'll be the King of me always. Do what I want and have it my way. All day, like Kanye-eah, yeah, yeah.

Or so goes the second song by the Chainsmokers (artists behind the [in]famous #SELFIE). On their Soundcloud, they say that, "This song is about doing you, living life how you want to live it and not giving a f*ck what anyone else thinks," and I think that sounds about right. I want to own my life. Do things my way. I've been terrified by what other people think of me for too long, and I've suffocated in the process. And this time, it won't be a sudden 180˚. It's going to take time. I'm going to take small steps. But I think it's going to be worth it.

So I want to be pretty. Depending on how you interpret that, it could be a good or bad thing. But I'm going to treat myself right, because I have been through a lot of crap, and I need that support from myself. I am allowed to pamper myself, even be a little bit vain, perhaps. I am allowed to love who I am, and I'm allowed to change who I am so I can love myself better. And that's my goal for this year.

(Warning: don't be offput by the SELFIE stuff going on at the beginning. It's a good song. I promise.)  ◊

Marvel's Agent Carter: Live Reactions

An amazing thing happened last week: Diana and Isabelle both started watching Marvel's Agents of Shield! Diana bingedwatched all of it when she was sick, and Isabelle is steadily catching up. You have no idea how exciting this is to me! I love Marvel.

If you haven't watched, you should. MAOS is pure amazingness and a feels rollercoaster that will destroy you and fulfill all your fangirling needs at the same time. You might have a reaction like this.

That's ok. The cure for MAOSitis is to watch everything again, and then to jump headfirst into the Marvel Universe reading everything you can about everything. I'll be honest, some of the things that happen on the show can be quite confusing and not as awesome if you don't understand the references, such as [SPOILER ALERT]  Inhumans and terrigenesis.

It's the Sunday after the James Logan Invite, which I went in expos for. It's a three day weekend, so I get to lounge around for a day before having the day off tomorrow to do homework. To be honest, I wasn't fully prepared for the tournament, as I had just changed the conclusion of my speech and probably could have made a few more posters. I did break to quarterfinals, but the competition was top notch, so I didn't break to semis. Luckily, that means I get to stay in today and watch TV shows. And as you may have noticed from the title of this post, I have decided upon Marvel's Agent Carter.

I've already watched all of MAOS and since it's on hiatus, Agent Carter seemed like the natural choice to go forward with. I've heard generally good reviews about it, and Diana says that Agent Carter is an awesome badass, which I'll take her word for it. I've decided to do a live reaction (to be honest, for god knows why) and I will be typing out my reactions here instead of spamming Diana through iMessage (which I'm sure she will appreciate). Unfortunately, the ABC pause button is broken, so I can't pause and unpause to resume watching. I'll try to update during commercials, or when I simply can not even (you know what that means). Reactions shown after the break for your own protection.

You can watch Marvel's Agents of Carter here.

Clary J. Simmons

Clarisse Jennifer Simmons. AKA Clary J. Simmons.

To be clear, this is a pseudonym – for now. I’ve always wanted to create an alter ego, or at least an online persona, in order to be more comfortable with myself in public and on the internet. This marks the start of a new chapter in my life. Coincidentally, it's also my 100th post on this blog! Names have power. My real name is associated with certain things that unequivocally have contributed to who I am as a person, giving me strength from the lessons that I've learned, but it also comes with a lot of damage. A new name gives me a place in my mind to put that away, while still letting me pick and choose which aspects of myself I still want to keep.

A lot of effort went in to choosing this name. For one, originality was a huge factor. I needed something unique, something that wasn't already taken everywhere on social media. Another factor was how it looked in cursive, because I love cursive writing. Some of my favorite cursive letters are "J," "F," "Y," and "S," so it needed to include all of those letters. But it also needed to be meaningful to me. Here I'll attempt to explain why I choose those three particular names to represent my identity. It's a lot more complicated and took a lot of time, but hopefully these summaries make sense.

Clary is short for Clarisse. I decided on this variant for no particular reason, except that I was originally going to use Clarice, but on the speech and debate judging spreadsheet there was a parent already named "Clarice Simmons" (the worst coincidence) so I didn't want to use it anymore.

Clarisse is French, meaning bright, shining, gentle. I guess it sounds nice, but I don't know if it describes me as a person right now. Hopefully, effervescence is something I can eventually achieve. Clarice has Latin and Greek origins. Apparently it means "famous" which I would not mind.

I also drew a lot of inspiration from literature and media. Clarisse McClellan from Fahrenheit 451, my favorite book, is a dreamer. She's different, in a good way, and is a catalyst in the story. She's very introspective and asks questions and thinks about things in life. She is considered anti-social because she isn't like the rest of the community. Clarisse La Rue from the Percy Jackson series is a fighter. She's incredibly stubborn, a trait which I strongly identify with, and value in a way. Clarissa Fray from the Mortal Instruments series is an artist, with the gift of clarity and intuition. A more obscure reference is Clarice Ferguson, also known as Blink, from the Marvel universe. Her backstory is intensely complicated and tragic, so I won't delve into too much detail, but to me, she represents magic, change, growth, choosing good, and resilience. Also, she has the power to make portals, and she's purple, so what's not to like?

Jennifer is a name adapted from "Guinevere" from Arthurian legend. I've always loved Greek mythology, but Greek names are too complicated, so I settled for Arthurian legend, another set of stories I find interest in. Jennifer is also Celtic for white wave. I wanted something related to water, and I like the Celtic reference, so it fit quite well. I've shortened it to just the "J" because I'm not a huge fan of the way "Jennifer" sounds.

Simmons is in reference to Jemma Simmons from Marvel's Agents of Shield. She is a scientist, specifically a biochemist, and is incredibly intelligent and kind. From her, I take a name that represents the the erudite portion of me. Also, a vague reference from Fahrenheit 451 is Dr. Simmons, of unknown first name, who is a book professor from UCLA. He is among the outcasts that memorizes books to protect him from society. I believe he specializes in a Greek text, portions of Marcus Aurelius, which ties back in to my interest in Greek mythology.

Hopefully that makes some sense. I think my reasoning for the name is through and well thought out, to the point of having too much thought put into it.

I'm still working on setting up all my social media accounts and making everything uniform. I'll also need to create a logo-ish thing, and I had the crazy idea of creating an alter ego for this alter ego. That's going to be interesting. On this blog, from now on, I want to focus more on lifestyle – style, travel, food, music, college life, studying, etc. It's going to be a happy place, a testament to who I want to be, but I'll also keep it real with the actual going on's of life. I'm also planning to start a Youtube channel, coming May 2015, so keep on the lookout for that. I'll probably explain more later, but this post is getting long, so I'm going to end it. ◊

Confidence vs. Arrogance

THIS BLOG WILL BE CHANGING URLs ON JANUARY 15, 2015. THE NEW URL WILL BE claryjsimmons.blogspot.com

Wheeeeeeee!! All I've been doing for the last two hours is blogging. In my pyjamas. In a clean room. On a clean bed. Not worrying about homework. This. Is. The. Life.

Ok fine, this is procrastinating. But I've been telling myself that I deserve/need it because my sleep schedule has been so messed up because of speech and debate. It's a slow and steady recovery, and at least blogging is somewhat productive.

Sunday was League II speech. I was entered in expos. I had just finished the final draft of my speech on the Wednesday before (Jan. 7) and had worked on the posters and memorization Thursday through Saturday. Essentially, I finished the whole thing in four days, which is absolutely ridiculous. On Saturday I had a coaching with Sandra*. It was a trainwreck, but that was expected. My first expos coachings had always been with her, and they had all been trainwrecks. But she wasn't in a good mood and went to talk to Mrs. Dasher* and I thought, "Oh god, I am fosho going to be dropped." Luckily, I wasn't, but I had some serious work to do. I went home, plunked down, and worked like a madwoman (I essentially am on on the daily, but even more so when I'm focused).

On Sunday, I woke up at five. I was aching all over from being hunched over on the ground working on posters, and I was terrified of messing up at the tournament. But all of a sudden, something changed. I stared at the ceiling and said to myself, "You worked hard for this. You wrote the speech. You memorized it. You made the posters. You did this all in four days. That is incredible. You can do this," and more, essentially giving myself a fifteen minute pep talk. I also listened to Britney Spear's "Work Bitch" which was strangely motivating. You want a hot body? You want a Bugatti? You want a Maserati? You better work bitch!

In extemp, it is necessary to be arrogant. Arrogance is thinking that you are better than everyone else.
You do have to believe that you are better than everyone else, because it's a solitary event, so doing so helps keep your morale up and confidence high. But arrogance is nothing without a strong foundation of confidence. Neither is necessarily a bad thing, but different situations require different outlooks.

The rest of the morning was a blur as I got ready and carpooled to the tournament. I tried going over my speech in the car and at the tournament, but I felt at ease. Confidence is a state of being in which you know you can do it. You worked for it. You put in the effort. Why wouldn't you be prepared? You are sure in your own abilities. That is confidence.

I started out shaky. A poster was out of order, so in my first round, I skipped an entire paragraph. No worries, change it around and do better next round. Next round however, the prop attached to the previous poster was gone, so I didn't use it. No worries, fix it. The third round, everything went well.

I actually didn't find out myself that I had broken. Another freshman told me. It felt like a dream. After all, even though I'm a senior, that was only my second time breaking at a League tournament.

I went 4-1-2-446, and I couldn't be happier. Though I didn't get a wildcard, I did place a respectable tenth place, and didn't rank dead last in my final round. I know I spoke the best that I could, and there wasn't anything else at the time that I could have done better. I was up against some of the very best, people who had been preparing for months. I did just as well, if not better, than half the people in that round, with four days of intense work. If that's possible, anything else is too.

The wildcards were also based on which round one ended up in for double-finals. The seventh place card (from Leland) had the same prelims ranks as me, but since she was in the (unanimously declared) easier round, she had higher rankings compared to everyone else in her round. That could have been me, but that wasn't, and I'm not mad about it. I just have to work harder so I am number one no matter what. And I know what to do. ◊

*name changed

Alternative Sleep Schedule Experiment

THIS BLOG WILL BE CHANGING URLs ON JANUARY 15, 2015. THE NEW URL WILL BE claryjsimmons.blogspot.com

It's second semester senior year, and contrary to the heavy case of senioritis I had expected, I'm finding that I'm even more focused and meticulous than ever. I think managing to achieve straight A's first semester was a huge part of it (even though it only raised my GPA a measly 0.02 points). I don't know why, but I'm taking seven classes as a senior, including AP Biology and Journalism. Speech and debate is also picking up again, and there is so much end of the year senior miscellaneous crap to deal with.

I've decided not to do swimming this year because with seven classes and other extracurriculars it's just all too much. I need to focus on my health again, especially sleep. I've only ever pulled one all-nighter, and I'd like to never have to do that again. However, some nights I'd only get about three hours of sleep (rarely, but it happens). As I thought about it, a lot of time was wasted on nothingness.

Homework should only take about three hours per night, at a conservative estimate. With speech and journalism, it's more like five hours a night, but I try to do as much work as possible at school too. For the sake of simplicity, I decided to base my planning on three hours of homework per night and 7.5 hours of sleep (5 sleep cycles). My counselor recommended getting nine hours, but I don't think that will be really necessary. I'm pretty much done growing.

The point is, I've been trying to rearrange my sleep schedule so I am more alert and well-rested when it matters (at school and doing homework) and spending time on productive resting (naps) instead of procrastination. I came up with this plan:

I was originally going to try it out for a week, but from the beginning, it didn't work too well. I couldn't nap for two sleep cycles and woke up automatically after one. Showering and dinner took time in homework (ideally I'd eat dinner at 6pm and shower in the morning, but with the other people in the family, that's not possible). I ended up working until 1:30am and was not able to wake up at 4:30 in the morning. Also, there is the issue of special events and sometimes having a social life. This schedule is too rigid and demands perfect adherence or else it doesn't work.

I then modified it slightly to only have one sleep cycle nap in the afternoons, but I didn't like the imbalance of the sleep cycles with 4:1. Logically, this one probably works best, so I might try it in the future, but I don't think I'd be able to keep up with it now.

At the same time, I'm determined not to go back to the first sleep schedule, so it looks like a more structured version of it is going to come into play. There will be a twenty minute nap right after I get home from school, which hopefully will give me the rest I need to stay focused on homework later so I can have go to bed and wake up earlier and be fully awake when I go to school.

Hopefully this one will work out, and sometime in the future I'll do an update on results. ◊

#obsessed: Orinoco Flow – Celtic Woman

THIS BLOG WILL BE CHANGING URLs ON JANUARY 15, 2015. THE NEW URL WILL BE claryjsimmons.blogspot.com

I haven't posted in a bit because I have been insanely busy with everything. I'm still busy with a whole bunch of miscellaneous items, so I'll go in depth in another post soon, but for now, I just wanted to share this song/video. Now you may be thinking, "Carol, since when were you into Irish vocal ensembles?" and to be honest, I don't know. For some reason, random Irish songs have just mesmerized me through the years, and there are still a few that I've heard and have not yet figured out what they are yet.

The thing is, I had heard this song way back when I was a little kid, and I don't even remember how long ago. I just have a vague memory of looking at the TV and seeing a whole sea of people, and something along the lines of "from Celi to Bali" and "sail away, sail away, sail away." I knew it had something to do with "Celtic Woman," and for years, I believed that to be the song name, or the name of a show or musical, with this song as one of its features. Just recently, when I looked up an approximation of the lyrics and "Celtic Woman" did I find out that it's this song, and this particular performance is probably the one I had seen on TV. So I went and looked it up on Spotify and it's been on loop for days. Enjoy! ◊


UPDATE: The other Irish song I had heard was Bill Whelan's "Reel Around the Sun" from Riverdance, a song that Jason Brown skated to in the 2014 Figure Skating Championships. He won a spot on the US Olympic Team with this routine. Here's the video.

Camera Unboxing and Review: Canon ELPH-350

THIS BLOG WILL BE CHANGING URLs ON JANUARY 15, 2015. THE NEW URL WILL BE claryjsimmons.blogspot.com

I don't think anyone will see this, because it's been retropublished by scheduling, which basically means I published it in the past (so it's actually Jan. 14 today, but I'm putting it under Jan. 7 on the blog roll).

I finally got a proper camera! I got this as a Christmas present under the current situation (I don't know how else to describe it without being explicit, and it's not something I think I want to remember, but whatever), had to charge the battery for the camera to work, so this is more like a really quick re-unboxing just to show what's in the box and the specs and stuff. All pictures unless otherwise noted are taken by the Samsung Galaxy 1 camera phone that I have been using for all of my pictures so far (notice how it doesn't have the best focusing, especially on text).

Click on pictures to enlarge view.

»Inside the box: camera (it's purple!), battery, charger, wrist cord, forms

»Items with front and back views edited together

»The box does not come with an SD card, so you will need to buy your own.

»With the wrist cord attached:

»Side by side comparison of a photo taken by Samsung Galaxy 1 on left vs the ELPH-350 on right.

Overall, it seems to be a solid camera that can record video. The digital display on the back is quite lackluster and pixelly, but the pictures still turn out pretty well. A quick flip through the menu shows that it is very customizable, with different modes and fine adjustment of settings. I plan on using it to take more pictures for the blog, as it's much easier to directly use the SD card by plugging it into my computer than to extract pictures from my phone by downloading it from Dropbox. Pictures also take up a lot of space, so I can clear out some room on my phone now too. ◊

Happy Birthday Sonia!

Soniaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!

Happy Birthday Friend!

I don't know if/when you'll see this but since I'm off Facebook, I still wanted to say "Hi" personally.

Wow, I don't even know where to begin. You are simply an incredible person, as an artist, student, flautist, tall person, baker, cat lover, journo editor, make-up and hair stylist, ex-swimmer, and friend. You have an unforgettable sense of humor (the bathroom) and impeccable taste in food (slutty brownies all the way). You've been a constant personal support, a rock in my life, this last year amidst all the crap and terrifying breakdowns. Thank you so much. You rock. You are so so amazing, and I feel so fortunate to know you.

We don't have any pictures together ( D: we'll have to fix that!) but here's a picture of Larry for you :)

Hope you're having a wonderful break and will have a wonderful rest of the year! Here's to many more a bake-fest in the future! I hope all your wishes come true <3

Much love,
Carol ◊

Yet Another Blog Redesign

I'M FINALLY DONE WITH COLLEGE APPS!

I was so very terrified going into the last one (Stanford) but I managed to do it. I was shaking and on the verge of tears afterwards, but that's ok, it was over by then. It's out of my hands now, and all I can do is hope that the last four years of my life will be deemed worthy enough to garner acceptance into a school, any school. I've convinced myself that even if I only get into a safety UC, I'll be ok. Less stress is more time for hobbies (aka blogging) so I'm going to be happy wherever I end up.

Speaking of hobbies, you may or may not have noticed that the design of this blog is completely different (though I don't know how you could have possibly missed it)! Yup, instead of going to sleep like a normal, sane person, I decided to reward myself for finishing college apps with a free for all blog redesign. I had only intended to change the fonts, but got distracted and changed the theme (hence the cute little ribbon for the tabs), which forced me to redo all of my previous customizations as well, but now it's even better than before! I was able to explore more and add a few new customizations as well. I honestly love working with CSS, because I somehow understand it intuitively, so it's both a challenge and a learning experience to navigate myself. The blog is definitely way more girly than it was before, and I'm still not sure if I like it yet, especially the color scheme. I know for sure that I love that shade of purple, but I don't know if it's a good idea for a blog. We'll see.

As it is almost 3:00AM now, I did not get to do all of the customizations I wanted to. I need to upload a new sidebar picture so it's the proper size, and I'm considering creating a headbar picture to use instead of regular words (because they're glitchy when they load).

AND REMINDER: THIS BLOG WILL BE CHANGING URLs ON JANUARY 15, 2015. THE NEW URL WILL BE claryjsimmons.blogspot.com. I'll keep posting this reminder at the top of all my new blog posts from now until then.

Let me know in the comments what you think! If you have any questions about fonts or CSS or anything else on his blog, I will be glad to answer them :) Hope you've all been having a wonderful 2015 so far! ◊