First things first, Welcome!
Improvementals is dedicated to personal improvement and the development of human potential!
Too often we have fallen into a rut of misery in our personal and professional lives! If left unchecked, this “misery rut” becomes a “misery canyon!”
Recently I realized I’d allowed my life circumstances to erode to “misery-canyon-status,” and my mental state had dissolved into constant stress & overwhelm!
I resolved right then and there, with total determination, to change my life into the life I want to live! The idea for Improvementals started as part of my personal improvement plan.
Why a Personal Improvement Blog?
Improvementals boils down to an inborn need for personal improvement. I feel like most of my life, I have just not had much of a voice.
People have often overlooked my potential, and they have done so for so long, that I had started doing the same to myself!
But you know what? I have a wealth of creativity and innovation to offer the world! I want my existence to benefit myself and others, and I have wanted this for a long time now!
But I have been “held down” (knocked off course) by many of the people whom I looked to for support, and I am only now realizing my own value!
It is true that I have seen opposition in some of the most unexpected places. But on the flip side, I have received help and support in some quite unexpected places too!
My life has been a roller-coaster-like series of highs & lows, happiness, sadness, despair, perseverance, and growth. At times, I have been accused of being “too emotional.”
Well, rather than allowing the opinions or indifference of others to define me for any longer, I have set a new goal for myself!
My personal improvement plan is to develop my unique characteristics and use my vast potential, to achieve the life of my dreams!
Background & Education
I need you to understand that my unique characteristics and vast potential have traditionally been a source of great suffering for me.
This is because, no matter how I tried, I simply never quite “fit in” with the people who were in my life by default. (“Default” meaning, family- and community-members. For simplicity, I’ll call those people my “roots.”)
While personal improvement has always been important to me, I only recently developed a personal improvement plan for myself.
My personal improvement plan includes healthy stress management, proper nutrition, vacations, and operating the Improvementals blog site.
Attending College Was Taboo
Going to college never even dawned on me after graduating high school in 2004! That’s an example of the effects of a fully immersive, semi-rural Kentucky upbringing; to which my experience at that time, was limited.
My daily life was a series of short-term goals and decisions. I had very minimal life-planning & virtually no direction. Reflecting upon things now, I tend to think most of the time, I was going through life, without really noticing I was living it! I was just living day-to-day.
Within one year of graduating high school, I was married and had borne my beautiful son, Wildon (pronounced Wild un).
Associate Degrees
Eventually (around the time Wildon started Kindergarten) I started missing school myself! So, I developed a personal improvement plan.
And after great determination and ample hard work, on May 13, 2013, I graduated with my first college degree!
This Associate of Science from Elizabethtown Community and Technical College (ECTC), was only the second college degree in my entire family! (Second only to my sister who, might I add, is 5 years older than me.)
You see, when my parents were teenagers, finishing high school was quite uncommon within their respective families. (Teenagers were expected to contribute to their household by working; and school just didn’t pay.)
During my teenage years, a high school diploma was expected, but college was still pretty taboo.
I Continued to Pursue My Education:
My second college degree is actually pretty cool in my opinion! That’s because, the only pursuit of this Associate of Arts degree was a paper application! No joke!
When I enrolled at the University of Louisville to work toward my Bachelor of Arts—yes “Arts”—in Biology; I heard about a free program for new students.
In this program, course-advisors reviewed incoming students’ transcripts, to determine each student’s eligibility for an associate degree.
The Associate of Arts was awarded to me in December 2013. The reverse degree transfer initiative audit (which took all semester to complete) demonstrated that, while earning the Associate of Science, I had fulfilled all the requirements necessary to also earn an Associate of Arts!
Not only that, but I was the first-ever student to use this program through the University of Louisville! Pretty cool! Right? (Well, I still think so).
Bachelor’s Degree
As I mentioned, my third college degree is the hard-won Bachelor of Arts in Biology, which I momentously achieved in May 2017.
What was so momentous about this degree? The uphill battle in getting to the finish line! Not least of which: 30,000 (thirty thousand) miles of commute during my 3.5-year U of L attendance!
Some weeks I was driving over 800 miles, attending classes full-time, and being a caregiver at home!
I am proud to say I graduated with a 3.2 grade point average (GPA). (About a “B” average).
Master’s Degree
Finally, my fourth college degree! Graduating with a 3.9 GPA, I earned my Master of Art in Social Responsibility and Sustainable Communities (SRSC) exclusively online.
This was due, in part to Coronavirus closures, which also left the Western Kentucky University graduating class of Spring 2020, unable to traditionally celebrate our achievements.
There were none of the usual graduation activities, nor a graduation ceremony at all! Admittedly, I feel like we (and all subsequent graduating classes who had to forego graduation activities due to COVID-19 closures) missed an important rite-of-passage.
My Problem
Traditionally, it seemed, “to be my luck” to narrowly miss out on something really cool! For instance, the awesome outdoor playground that my elementary school built for students, they built the year following my last year there!
And the SRSC students have taken a week-long educational field trip into the Appalachians every year, until what would have been my class’s turn to go, and the trip was cancelled, last-minute due to COVID!
My life has been chock-full of these “day-late, dollar-short” type life-experiences but, they have helped to shape me, and grow me into the headstrong, savvy woman I am today! And today, I am ready to improve my life!
We all need freedom to exist how, when, and where we want to! And I desire, travel, my own schedule, financial security, a creative outlet, an unhindered voice, and to live my life as my own life!
My Solution: Personal Improvement
With Improvementals, I have my “voice,” and I hope to help you find yours too! Now, it was only recently that I realized people can actually earn a living by blogging!
This is possible through affiliate partnerships and a multitude of other routes, some of which I discuss as part of the Improvementals blog!
I hope to “share the wealth” of my knowledge with you! Put plain and simple, this whole blogging adventure sprouted from necessity!
I needed to change my personal status quo, and Improvementals is my way of achieving monumental personal improvement!
Please join me on the Improvementals journey, so you may achieve your personal improvement too!
Want to know more about me? Check out the Improvementals About Page.
Sincerely,
The Improvementalist,
Chrystal T. Nelson, M.A.
[…] perhaps about Improvementals, please visit the Improvementals About Page, and then maybe check out, An Inborn Need for Personal Improvement (1st Blog Post). And, for even more wellness-boosting, please check out my recent post, How Healthy Food Affects […]