Category: Mental Health

How to escape the stress of adulthood by building a blanket fort

Everyone feels stressed out sometimes. It might be because you’re getting nowhere with your Christmas preparations, exams are coming up way too fast or adulthood in general is just too much to handle right now. That’s why I decided to relax by trying something I never did while growing up: build a blanket fort. Here’s how it worked out …

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Step 1. Get a blanket fort buddy

A project like this is just plain depressing on your own, so get someone you would enjoy hanging out with for an afternoon. Someone who doesn’t annoy you endlessly while you’re building the fort. It might actually test your relationship if you’re not good at team work. I chose my brother because he is just childish enough to enjoy the project with me.

Step 2. Find a place to build the fort and make room

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I guess most of you live in a tiny flat or student hostel like me. So building it there wasn’t a real option because my roommate and I own a grand total of three blankets. That’s why I waited for a weekend at my parents’ house. Their couch area is perfect for a blanket fort because we could build around the actual couch as well as use a couple of hooks and beams that provided stability for our fort. We also had to wait for our parents to be gone for most of the day because seeing their couch like that might have irritated them just a little. Also the thought of their two grown children building a blanket fort seemed to bewilder them, for some reason.

Step 3. Get everything you might need and build away

We collected the pillows and blankets from the entire house, using the lightest ones for a kind of dome roof and the heaviest winter ones as fluffy padding at the bottom. But we still had to stop after constructing half the fort and ask our granny for more blankets. So we had about ten to fifteen blankets of different weights and varying degrees of fluffiness. To attach the blankets to each other, pegs and safety pins proved most effective. It was also important to strengthen some parts with lots of pins and the biggest clothes pegs because they carried more weight. Just get used to the idea that your fort is going to collapse at least once, it’s a process that requires trial and error. Also don’t try to improve something until you’re entirely sure what it’s attached to. You can imagine why.

Step 4. Make yourself comfortable

Put all the heaviest, fluffiest pillows and blankets in your blanket fort and add some fairy lights for atmosphere. Maybe bring a laptop and watch a movie, snuggled into all the fluffiness of your fort. Enjoy the company of your blanket fort buddy and admire your work for a bit. My brother and I spent the afternoon watching Adventure Time on my laptop, napping and jamming on his guitar … it was magical.

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Step 5. Finally take your blanket fort down

Life eventually has to continue. So after a while we had to take our fort down because our parents returned home and wanted to use the couch. My brother decided to throw himself into the fort to accelerate the demolition process (maybe only do that if you haven’t used safety pins).

Anyway, it was fantastic to be able to return to our childhoods for a few hours. Afterwards, we felt more able to face the world as adults, but most importantly – we had some fun.

Author & Pictures: Lisa Bittner

Why I’m giving up negativity during Lent

lent 1Ash Wednesday is today and that marks the beginning of Lent. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this religious holiday, Lent is a Christian holiday that lasts 40 days beginning with Ash Wednesday and ends on Easter Sunday. During this time, people tend to fast or give something up, as for a lot of Christians it is a way of remembering when Jesus fasted in the desert and also a way of testing self-discipline.

I grew up in a very religious and conservative country, where people consider Lent as sacred time and even though I never really gave anything up or fasted during these 40 days while growing up I do know a lot of people who did. Personally, I never felt the need to make a sacrifice, probably because at a young age I really didn’t know what it was all about but I do remember seeing a lot of my classmates on Ash Wednesday with the cross on their foreheads really early in the morning or not eating red meat on Fridays during Lent.

I think it’s important to mention that my family was not as conservative as the rest of the families in my country and also while growing up I never really went to Church on Sundays; it was really rare if I did, not because I didn’t believe in God, but because I didn’t think it was important to leave your home when you could talk to God on your own through a prayer, which is what I usually did. All of this might sound really religious and I know it is a controversial topic, but for once I felt that the time was right for me to come clean with my story. I know that people come from different backgrounds and we have different beliefs but since I live in Bavaria now and it is considered the most conservative state in Germany I thought why not address this topic?

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Since the year started I decided I wanted to make a huge change in my life, even though I’m a happy person most of the times I do have my low points and most of them have to do with negative comments from people or rejection, which is why for this holy time I decided that instead of fasting I’m going to be giving up negativity. I think that giving this up is a bigger effort than giving up some sort of food or habit that I have and it will take me through an emotional journey of self- discovery and hopefully it will make me a better person.

The reason I chose to give up negativity is because in this day and age it is so hard to not make any negative comments about things or even be negative towards ourselves. Also because I’m a firm believer that when you have negative thoughts or are negative towards life in general, you’re only attracting more negativity and bad things to yourself that you definitely don’t need and I want to change this. I want to be a positive person and attract only positive things, and who knows, probably even inspire someone to change their mindset as well.

Have you ever had those moments where you think “I’m so dumb why did I have to do that?” or you found yourself criticizing someone by the way they look without even noticing? These are the type of things I want to battle against these next 40 days and beyond if possible.

I’m a very critical person when it comes to me, I try to do everything as perfect as I can while still having negative thoughts towards my work: what if I fail? What if my professor doesn’t like my writing? What if I never make my parents proud? This constant negativity is around every single thing of our lives and we’re bringing ourselves down without even thinking about it. Like I said before, I want to try and be a better person and make a change for me, try to finally start putting into work everything I believe in but still my doubts and negative thoughts haven’t allowed me to do yet. I want to stop gossiping about people for once or criticizing them just because I don’t like the way they look or what they’re wearing, I’m nobody to judge and people shouldn’t judge me either on any decision I make.

During the next 40 days by giving up negativity I will obviously gain something in return: I will practice patience, humility, self-discipline, things that are so common yet not everyone has the chance to put to practice. I am expecting to become a happier person, more open to the endless possibilities and overall to stop the constant nagging, complaining and whining about everything that goes wrong and finally look at it from a different perspective and grow from the experience.

I am really looking forward to the next 40 days of positivity and happiness. What are you giving up during Lent?

Author & Pictures: Roma Rodriguez