Things to Do When You’re Feeling Sad

Hello. As you may know, it is not uncommon for people to suffer from mental health disorders. I, for one, am no stranger to social anxiety and depression. They go hand-in-hand, and to me, it always feels like no one understands the way I feel.

The truth is, plenty of us have our own hardships that we don’t think anyone understands. However, we are not alone in any of our battles, even if it feels like it.

A lot of the time, it’s hard for me to see anything as “fun,” and it’s hard to look forward to things because I feel like I’m not the one in control of myself.

So, for days when I’m not motivated but I’m also not bed-ridden with depression naps, and I just feel kind of “off,” I try to find things that are simple but that also make me feel better, so I wanted to tell you all some of my favorite, uplifting things to do!

1. Painting or Art Work

I don’t consider myself as an amazing artist or anything, but I love to paint and draw and just create things. I find it very relaxing and it also gives me a sense of control over something because a lot of the time, I don’t have that.

I like to paint on denim most of the time. It’s fun to get a denim jacket or a pair of pants and just put whatever you want on them. I can make my own band merch, or TV show references, or just a cool and unique visual.

I usually use acrylic paint because it dries fast, but if you use that instead of fabric paint, be sure to also use fabric-safe Mod Podge and put it over your dry artwork as a seal. That way, you can safely wash your denim in the washer machine.

When I wash things I’ve painted on, I wash them by themselves on low with cold water and I hang dry them! This is the easiest way to keep your DIY as fresh as possible.

2. Making DIY Pins

I also love to make pins. I made some pins for The Aces when I saw them in concert, and they also loved them. These are very easy to do! If you are familiar with shrinky dinks, they’re the same concept.

To do this project, I bought those tin foil food containers at Walmart with the plastic lids. The plastic lids are what I needed because you need #6 plastic for this project to work right.

Then, you take the plastic and draw whatever you want on it (Remember to draw the picture larger because it shrinks down about five times smaller than the original). To do this, I used sharpies, but people have also just used a black sharpie and then used acrylic paint to paint the pins after they’re done.

So then, when the drawing is done, cut around the plastic in the shape you want the pin. After that, set the plastic on a baking sheet on top of parchment paper. Set the oven to 325 degrees. When the oven is ready, bake the plastic for ONE minute. You can watch the pins shrink.

Take the pan out of the oven and press the pin flat with something. I used a mug. Then, after your pins harden, use some super glue and glue the pin onto the shrinky dink. Bada-bing, bada-boom! You have your own pins that are way cheaper than most!

3. Personalizing Playlists

One of my other favorite things to do that distracts me from being sad is cleaning up and enhancing my Spotify. I listen to music almost all day and have tons and tons of songs in my library.

To clean this up, I usually organize songs into playlists based on what I’m listening to constantly at the moment. When my tastes change, I delete the playlist and make new ones!

Spotify is really cool because if you go onto Spotify on your computer, you can edit the playlist cover and put a picture on your playlist! Most of my playlists are categorized by 5SOS memes :-)

Anyway, regardless of what your hobbies are, I hope that my hobbies can help when you’re having a hard time or a bad day!

Thank you for reading! Tips and reads are very much appreciated as I’m a broke college student LOL.