#OneBraveNight 2018 | Thank you!

Last month, I decided to participate in my second One Brave Night for Mental Health fundraiser. In my previous blog post, I pledged to raise $500 for the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health Foundation, and thanks to all of you, we were once again able to surpass my fundraising goal.

#OneBraveNight for Mental Health 2018

Last year, I participated in the CAMH One Brave Night for Mental Health™ challenge. I set a goal to raise $300 for the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health Foundation, and you all helped me not only achieve that goal, but go above and beyond my expectations. Since last year’s campaign was so successful, I’ve decided to take the challenge once again.

Feeling the Fear

Hi, everyone! Raise your hand if you thought that 2017 was a terrible year! Not just me, right?

So, now that we are nearing the end of the first quarter of 2018, and the mess that was 2017 is long gone, I hope that the new year has been treating you all well so far. Personally, 2018 and I started off on the wrong foot, but after several weeks with a few ups and a lot of downs, I feel like the rest of 2018 has the potential to end up being a decent year.

The Results of #OneBraveNight 2017

Three weeks ago, I made a blog post explaining how I wanted to participate in the CAMH #OneBraveNight for Mental Health challenge. I said that I wanted to help out other people across Canada who are also suffering from mental illness. In that post, I pledged to raise $300 for the campaign, and I asked all of you reading my blog to help me out by sharing my post or making a donation. I fully expected it to take the entire three weeks for us to reach $300. Instead, you all went above and beyond.

The Problem with “Light it Up Blue”

Before we get to this week’s blog post, I’d like to talk about my previous post, in which I said I wanted to help raise money for CAMH’s One Brave Night for Mental Health challenge. In that blog post, I pledged to raise $300 by April 7, 2017, and I asked all of you reading my blog to help me out by sharing my post and making a donation if you were able to contribute. However, instead of taking three weeks to campaign and spread news about the challenge and slowly raise the money during that time, it only took about five hours before we’d raised $300 for mental health.

Thank you. Thanks to everyone who shared my blog post with others on social media and donated to my campaign. I couldn’t be more grateful to all of you.

Raising Money for Mental Health #OneBraveNight

Many people who know me are aware that raising awareness about mental health issues is incredibly important to me. As a society, we are slowly becoming more aware of mental illness and its effects on people, but I feel like we are not yet at the point of complete understanding and acceptance, at least not to the same extent as we are with physical or visible illnesses. It’s saddening, because our mental health is just as important as our physical health, if not more so.

Embarrassing Childhood Writings

When I was seven-years-old, I wrote my first story. It was a picture book, and I’d written and illustrated it on large pieces of lined paper which were meant for me to use for practicing my printing. It was about two siblings, Valentina and Valentino, who wanted to meet Santa Claus. I believe I titled it “A Beanie Baby Christmas”.

(So, yes, my first ever story was essentially Beanie Babies fanfic. Hey, I was a 90s kid, and those stuffed animals were adorable.)

Since then, I’ve written a number of stories, many of which were left unfinished due to lack of motivation and/or inspiration, and if I’m being honest with myself, most of these stories were pretty terrible. I don’t often look back at my previous writings, but last month, one of the #Wordbound prompts caught my attention.

The Cursed Dress

There is a dress that has been hanging at the back of my closet for the past nine years, and only occasionally does it come out of hiding. This dress is cute and black and sparkly and is actually one of my personal favourite dresses that I own, but I also lovingly refer to it in my head as The Cursed Dress.

Travelling and Anxiety

Okay, it’s been about a month since I’ve written anything on this blog, so I thought I’d provide a bit of an explanation.

At the beginning of February, I had the opportunity to travel to Toronto for a week. Last month, my favourite band, AFI, started on the first leg of their tour to promote their new album, AFI (The Blood Album). (Also, hey, I wrote a track by track review of that album, which you can find here.) I’d seen them in concert once before, when they opened for Thirty Seconds to Mars and Linkin Park on the Carnivores tour. Even though they only played a half hour set, it had been the best day of my life at the time, and I swore to myself that the next time they went on tour, I would be there in the front row, singing along to every single song. But since the last time AFI played a headlining show in my hometown was over thirteen years ago, I figured I’d stop waiting around for them to come back to my city, and I decided that instead, I would go to them myself. So, I dipped into my savings account, took a week off work, and hopped on a plane to Toronto.

Album Review: AFI – AFI (The Blood Album)

Last week, the band AFI released their tenth album, and since I’ve been listening to it on repeat practically non-stop since then, I thought I’d write a review about it.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with AFI, here’s a quick overview of their history. AFI formed in 1991 as a hardcore band, but over time, their sound has evolved to incorporate elements from various other types of rock music, including post-punk, post-hardcore, emo, new wave, pop punk, and alternative, among others. Their newest record, which is technically self-titled but often referred to as The Blood Album, continues to pull from and experiment with different genres, while still retaining their unique sound.

So, without further ado, let’s get more in-depth about The Blood Album! I’m going to start with my thoughts on each song, and then go into my thoughts on the album overall.