Hi everyone,

As most of you know, I am currently a final year student completing my thesis. This takes up most of my time and will do in the coming weeks until its submission in May. I don’t have time to even part take in any hobbies at this point, it’s just working and sleeping. You probably have also noticed my posts here and on my Instagram have been irregular, this is also due to the same reason outlined. In April, I will also be beginning my application process for some full-time jobs in my chosen field, which I need to prepare for and this will consist of interviews and a lot of prep, also time-consuming on top of the thesis. Due to the pandemic also, I have lost the drive. I do not feel a want to write, or create art or write stories, it is starting to feel like a chore more than a love.

Due to all this, I will be taking a coffee break from So Effortless, not sure for how long, but not forever. Probably a month or so. I will see how I am doing personally and with my thesis and let you know around that time. I need to focus on this very important time in my life right now, alongside not having a drive to create and not wanting to give crappy content, it’s just not who I am.

I hope you all understand and will still be here waiting for me when I get back! Activity on my Instagram blog account will also stop from today for the same amount of time, I will be checking in for any messages and so on.

Love and missing you already, Kasia x

Hi everyone,

During such a difficult time, it’s hard to concentrate on the things we have to get done. As a student, I can relate to a workload that does not stop, even for a pandemic, and things just need to be done by a set time. But we are faced with many distractions now with so much time “off”, such as Netflix and online browsing (in normal time for me as well). I thought it would be a good idea to discuss some distractions I am faced with during this time, so some of you can maybe relate, and how I overcome them and get all the workload finished. Distractions are a normal thing we are all faced with, I’ll take a distraction of Youtube over finishing my essay any day, but it has to be overcome and finished at some point. We just have to make sure to realise when we are being distracted and know when the cut off point is to restart.

One of my main distractions during trying to get anything done is my phone. The amount of times I always get on my phone when I am supposed to be cleaning or doing my assignments is unaccounted for. It’s like a cycle of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter non stop until I see that I have been online for about an hour and I get a shock and put my phone down, to then again pick it up and do the cycle again in 15 minutes. Honestly, I wish I had someone with me watching me every time I have to get something done to stop me from picking up my phone all the time. But one way I have found to get around this is just in your phone’s settings (if you have an iPhone!) If you go into your settings and choose “screen time” there are so many settings in there you can adjust to improve your time away from your phone. You can simply choose downtime, which locks your phone completely at different times of your choice, obviously, you are able to unlock it for an emergency. You can also choose “App limits” which sets a time limit on specific apps. There are loads more settings to play with there but these are the 2 I find most useful. It stops me from going on my social media accounts, of course, I can just unlock it with my password if I want to but it’s the concept that counts for me. When I pick up my phone and I am met with a message “this app is locked until 18.00” for example, then I know to put it down and get on with whatever I am supposed to be doing.

Another distraction I am met with often is doing absolutely anything else than what I am supposed to. For example, if I am supposed to be doing work for university, I will clean my room instead, because I will use the poor excuse reasoning of “It has to be done anyway, so I’ll do it now and do the work later” NO! do it now! I always do this and put my work off and off and off until I end up doing it last minute. Yet, a way I have found around this is to schedule when and what will be done. For example, I will plan to do my essay from 10am-1pm and then clean my room from 2-3pm. I know this sounds over the top and a bit “businessy” but it really helps, it allows you to not think of all other things you could be doing to get out of your work and lets you get on with the task its self. Everything is planned and there is no excuse to get out of what you are supposed to be doing!

Also, distractions mostly occur in my life when I try to do too many things at once. I’ll try and do some coursework but at the same time read emails and talk with my mom, it’s too much going on and neither of the things I am doing gets done properly, my mom gets annoyed I am not paying attention to her, I delete an email I might need and my coursework will become filled with gibberish. Try and focus on one task at a time, I know it may be easing to know you can finish doing many things at once but doing things half bothered is not the best, when you can make time to do things properly it makes things more fulfilled and well-done. Try and space things out more, as suggested in the paragraph above, it always works for me when you have more time to put more care into your tasks instead of getting distracted with doing too many of them at once.

A very basic thing we can also get distracted with, without even knowing is our own thoughts. If your mind is not with you on the task you are doing then whatever you are thinking about becomes a distraction. Sometimes we need to push certain thoughts and ideas aside in order to concentrate on one thing. Of course, don’t suppress thoughts as most times this leads to enlarging problems or even forgetfulness, just kind of put them aside to deal with them later so you can complete the one task needed to be done. Thinking of too many things at once can also become tiering which is also distracting and can make the task you are doing even more difficult to complete.

I hope you have enjoyed reading some of the advice I have on how to overcome distractions, this is part of everyday life and sometimes are difficult to overcome and get things done which is understandable. Do not rush, with most things you have plenty of time to finish them if spaced out in time correctly. Make sure to not stress too much over distractions, just acknowledge them, get rid of them and get on with whatever you are set to do.

Love, Kasia x

Hi everyone,

I thought it would be a good idea to lay out some ways I keep organised during my university semester and also just in general, I think during this crazy time it’s a good way to show people how to stay on track and not worry about being forgetful. I am always overly organised, as my friends and family say, but that’s because without this I would forget to do basic things such as finishing up bits of my assignments or replying to emails, I don’t know why but that’s just the way my brain functions. Also, I see organisation to allow me to breath more and let me concentrate on relaxing instead of always thinking about what I have to do, responsibility wise. I always feel confident in the fact that I will always get everything done because of my organisation so again, it keeps me calmer and allows me to enjoy more free time instead of worrying about a million things I might have to do daily.

Here are the 4 main ways I keep organised and how it helps me be more “on time” and not forgetful!

• Keep notes everywhere: I either keep notes on anything I have to do using the sticky notes app on my windows pc or on a pinboard above my desk. It just lets me keep all my important and short term “to-dos” in one place and I don’t have the think about them all the time as they appear on my screen as soon as I turn on my pc. For example, on my pc sticky notes right now I have a note that breaks down my assignment due in July, how many hours I have left to take off work and my blog ideas. It is just simple things that I would not usually remember but are stored on my pc and always there when I do any personal admin or university work.

• Put small notes on your desktop calendar: in addition to using sticky notes, if I have a simple yet small one-time thing to do, I add it to my calendar on my pc. If I use sticky notes, its usually for a “to do” that’s really long, like I mentioned my assignment break down, whereas on the calendar its simple things. This is also synced with my iPhone so I can add or delete these small to-dos from either pc or phone. For example, I have a small reminder that this post is going up on the 26^th as I am writing it on the 24^th, just to make sure I don’t forget the things I need to do for its release. I have my calendar open on startup when I open my pc so as soon as I need to do something, the calendar pops up and I know exactly the small things I have to do for the day, the sticky notes pop up on startup too. Additionally, using the calendar lets me plan my short term to-dos more into the future, for example, I need to call my bills company on 2 weeks for something, I can put that 2 weeks ahead and have it pop up as a reminder closer to the date, and again I will always have it on startup as the calendar opens! If you want to know how to sync your Outlook calendar to your iPhone or how to get your calendar to open on startup on pc then I have these links here and here, this is what I used to do this.

• Layouts: as mentioned before for my assignments and other long notes, I do layouts to make things simpler for myself to understand. It also makes things easier to write and do as if you do something in smaller parts it’s always easier, make things more basic for yourself, why struggle!

• Keep a diary: I keep a small note pad with some long term to-dos, also as a back up to my sticky notes just in case I lose them. It includes things like what I need to pack for holiday or wish lists, people’s birthdays and stuff like that. I know you can use the calendar for this too but sometimes I do find it helpful to have some personal stuff like the mentioned above in a secure paper format as it’s not something I really need to have on-screen or on my calendar when I am in a lesson or at work.

I hope you have enjoyed reading through some of the things I do to keep organised, and I hope they help you too, let me know if they have or which ones you used. Keep safe and see you in the next post!

Love, Kasia x

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to write about something that has been on my mind for a while and I feel the need to share. Acceptance is such a common issue among people my age and its mostly not dealt with, pushed to the back of our minds, and never looked at again fully. I want to touch on the main issues with acceptance that I see online and my own experience of acceptance in particular that has been on my mind.

When you think of acceptance, the first thing you probably think of is issues to do with body image and “If I don’t get enough likes on this selfie I’m going to take it down” kind of thing. And that’s right, that’s what I want to talk about first as it is so common even I catch my self doing it, not the selfie thing of course.

But yes social media acceptance is a big issue that needs some light shed on it, as I consider it to be absolutely stupid but a common habit in the 21st century. Why do we need some sort of stamp of approval from a bunch of people we barley know or used to go to school with? We post something mostly now to seek acceptance from friends, family, co-workers, even the random people who view your profile, and barley post to fulfil our selves and the sort of image we want to see of ourselves on the web. We think of others opinions first even before we post. I catch myself posting too many pictures of my dogs? better delete those before someone that I used to go to high school with thinks I don’t have a life and I’ve become a dog lady. You want to post a nice picture of yourself before a night out? be careful! think! others might say your outfit is too revealing, or too prude or anything else they can think of to lower your acceptance of the person you show them online.

Online opinions of others that you barley see, most of them anyway, knock your acceptance of yourself and what you give out to the media when in reality all these things should not matter. If you enjoy posting about your life or the events you attend or choice you make then accept that and love doing it, don’t be ashamed to do it because others are not that “in to it”.

Another form of acceptance I wanted to talk about is a little more offline and more to do with the choices you make continually, every day in life. It being education, work or household related, you should love how you live your life and take small consideration of others opinions, unless they are there to help you and not put you down. By this I don’t mean if your failing high school or something like that, don’t accept that because that’s not what I intend for this post to mean, I want you to see that this is an issue, accept it as a problem and then start doing something about it. So, then you can later be happy and content with yourself that you acknowledged the problem and made it work, to now being able to accept your current life situation.

I want you all to be more open to the situation life throws at you, they might be terrible right now and you may be very confused as to what to do, but the more you dewell on rejecting this situation and thinking of its cons it will get worse, try accept it and work with it, let it bring some sort of light in to your life no matter how hard it can be. All things happen for a reason and sometimes acceptance is all you can do as running from certain things can only make them worse.

I will give you a current situation I am in now and have been for the past year to give you some perspective on what I mean. My school teachers, and I mean all but two of them, did not support my course choice for university. They did not encourage me as much as they did to the other students who chose to do media. All they said to me was that I am moving to far away, it will cause problems, it’s not a popular course, etc. But I took the people that were on my side and communicated with them, I expressed my happiness to them and accepted the idea that not everyone will like what I do and THAT IS FINE. Later down the line my parents were also added to this list of people who are not really fond of my course and they also expressed to me why they don’t like it, and that’s okay that’s their opinion, they still don’t consider my course to be “credible” at university, whatever they think that means.

But a year and a half later I am still here, dealing with this situation but learning to accept it as I can’t change someone’s opinion, I can’t make them like or be interested in what I do. They have their opinions and I have mine, I am happy with what I do and what I create and put out in to the world. By the way, this in no means is a way to call out my teachers or people being unsupportive, I am just giving out my experiences and how I feel, to be able to put this idea of acceptance in to your mind. They chose not to be a part of my life in a way of accepting what I do and that’s on them. YOU DO YOU!

I just wanted to put this out there, for anyone in a similar situation to mine, or anyone else struggling with online or offline acceptance as I have described here. I think if you just took a step back and considered what you do and decided if it actually is for you and if you love where your life is right now, this idea of acceptance will be much easier to adapt into your lifestyle. Accepting, fixing and moving on is a part of our life and it should be more commonly discussed and applied to become our better selves.

Love, Kasia x

Hi everyone,

This issue has been going on in my life for the last year, year and a half I would say. And it has been awful. The fear, crying and panic I feel when even boarding a plane is unreal and it’s something I have noticed I am not the only one dealing with so I thought I would open up my own experiences about this issue and what I am doing to help my self, and maybe it will help someone else too.

When I was a child I used to fly a lot, around three holidays a year. It was all fun and games because I didn’t really understand the concept of a flying piece of metal in the sky, so I wasn’t concerned about it’s risks. I enjoyed flying and always had the window seat, enjoyed take off, landing, everything. My mom was a bit of a nervous flyer so me and my dad would even laugh at her sometimes, I could comfortably walk around the plane, eat, drink, play games on my iPad etc. It was all easy until all this flying stopped. My parents started to have financial issues and other problems also came up so I stopped flying from the age of 15 to 18. Three years without flying.

During this time I also developed serious anxiety due to on going family and personal issues but it never occurred to me it would mostly effect me during flying as I did not fly during that time. But then after three long years I decided it was time to go see some family in Poland, I saved some money for a ticket and booked the flight with no problem, no worries on my mind. I got to the airport and started to feel dizzy and sick as I started to hear the anxious voice in my head. I tried to push these out of mind and boarded the plane. As I sat down I felt worse and worse. The plane started to take off and I clenched my seat and fear and didnt understand why I was feeling like this. For the rest of the flight I sat curled up in my seat with my earphones in watching something on Netflix I downloaded, trying to block out the noise of the plane and pretend I wasn’t even on it. Once I landed I felt 100x better but still quite confused as to why I felt this was all of a sudden.

The way back was the same. Same sick feeling in my stomach clenching of the plane seats.I still don’t know to this day why I feel this way and what might have caused it. I flew again a few months later with my boyfriends family (photo below) but this time it was worse. I couldn’t breath, I was crying, refusing to unbuckle my seat belt or even get up from my seat to go to the toilet while the plane was in the air. I was having panic attacks every time the plane even moved slightly while in the air, over the period of a two hours flight.

Sitting here, writing this post, thinking about flying is making me physically sick to the bottom of my stomach. I hate it so much that if I didn’t love to see new places and learn new things, I would never fly again. My boyfriend talks about going to New York constantly, I’m going with him to Italy next year and at the end of August I will be flying back from Poland as tomorrow I am leaving to go there but by car, thank god! I would take a 26 car journey over a 2 hour flight, I’m not even as excited as I should be about a holiday with the one I love the most either, that’s how difficult it has gotten.

I have tried some natural remedies such as Valerian and some other stress relief medicines, it worked for a short period but not well enough. I have been using this and pushing this to the back of my mind for the last year but now it’s too much. I have decided to start some behavioural therapyand see how that works out, I will give an update later on.

I honestly recommend doing this. Don’t suffer. Some may think it’s stupid but if you suffer from flight anxiety as much as I do, you know it’s not lightly taken or in any way an over exaggeration. Speak out and get help, we all deserve to explore the world and see new things but for some of us, it’s just a tad harder.

Love, Kasia x