☕ Before You Read: A Little Time for Yourself

NOTICE THIS: Grade 11 — The Bells and Whistles Years

Are We Getting More but Learning Less?

Estimated reading time: 15–20 minutes

Before you dive into this chapter, grab yourself a coffee, a cup of tea, or whatever makes you comfortable. Find a quiet little spot, put the world on hold for a moment, and give yourself permission to enjoy a story without rushing through it.

This isn't just another blog about growing up. It's a personal journey through money, self-worth, jealousy, education, and those little life lessons we keep hearing but sometimes forget to apply.

Choose a reading pace that works for you:

Your reading styleEstimated time☕ Quick coffee break12–15 minutes💛 Comfortable, relaxed reading15–20 minutes🌿 Slow, thoughtful reading20–25 minutes📝 Reading with personal reflection25–30 minutes

There's no test at the end, no deadline, and certainly no prize for finishing first. We've had enough bells and whistles telling us to hurry up in life.

Sometimes the best investment you can make is simply giving yourself a few uninterrupted minutes to think.

And who knows? Somewhere in my Grade 11 experience, you might recognize a little of your own journey.

**So settle in, enjoy the

 

By QueenB.Divine | Don't Crypto on My Mental Health | Investing in Yourself, Money, and the Lessons Life Keeps Repeating

Notice this. Have you noticed how many bells and whistles we're getting these days? Especially on social media. Every platform, every computerized thing, every shopping mall, every building, every television, everywhere you turn, there's another bell ringing, another whistle blowing, another feature telling you how wonderful life is about to become. And yet, somehow, we're getting less. Isn't that something? They're giving us more stuff we don't necessarily need to make us believe they're doing something for us. More buttons, more notifications, more upgrades, more things to click, more things to buy, and more reasons to believe we're missing something. But are we actually getting anything of value?

And that's how we landed in Grade 11.

Welcome to what I call the Bells and Whistles Years, when I started noticing that life was handing me a whole bunch of stuff that looked important, sounded important, and kept everybody busy, but didn't necessarily teach me what I needed to know. It was one of those early moments when I started questioning what I was being taught, what I was being sold, and what any of it had to do with becoming a functioning human being.

But before we get into that, how are you? I hope you're doing well. I hope you're taking care of yourself, checking in with your thoughts, and paying attention to whatever market you're investing in these days. Maybe it's the stock market, the crypto market, the housing market, or the good old-fashioned market of trying to get your crap together. Maybe you're investing in your health, your relationships, your education, or simply trying to figure out what the hell you're doing with your life. Whatever market you're in, things fluctuate, don't they?

That's one of the reasons I created my self-love channel and started talking about Don't Crypto on My Mental Health. Because here's something I keep coming back to: your love for yourself should never fluctuate with the market. People might lose faith in you. They do. Sometimes people disappear, change their minds, stop supporting you, or decide you're no longer worth their attention. But you should never lose faith in yourself just because somebody else has.

You are the one person who has been there for every single moment of your life. You know things about yourself that nobody else knows. You know when you're pretending, when you're hurting, when you're putting on a brave face, and when you're telling everybody you're fine while your mind is running around like a squirrel that just discovered espresso. And sometimes all it takes is a thought, a word, a change in direction, or one decent conversation with yourself to begin adjusting your course.

Remember what guides you. Pay attention to what sustains you. And if something keeps draining you instead of helping you grow, perhaps it's time to question whether it's the right investment.

Anyways, back to the bells and whistles.

I was sitting there thinking about Grade 11 and wondering what the big lesson was. What did I actually learn? Because I learned a lot of little things. I took French. I took a bit of Spanish. And before anybody starts throwing their dictionaries at me, I'm not saying learning another language isn't worthwhile. Of course it is. Learning languages can open doors, help us understand other cultures, and connect us with people we might never have understood otherwise.

But that's not really what was bothering me.

What bothered me was the feeling that high school was filled with things designed to keep us busy until society was ready to receive us. Here, learn this. Memorize that. Pass this test. Sit over there. Don't ask too many questions. And eventually, congratulations, here's your diploma. Now go figure out how to survive.

What the hell?

I went to Etobicoke School of the Arts and eventually Wexford School of the Arts. I spent a lot of my high school years around creative people, talented people, and people who were trying to figure out who they were. And I loved many parts of that experience. But by Grade 11, I was starting to look around and wonder whether we were learning how to live or simply learning how to fit into a system.

There's a difference.

I started asking questions that still make sense today. Why don't schools spend more time teaching students how to manage money? How to invest responsibly? How to understand debt, credit, interest rates, and the difference between something being expensive and something actually being valuable? Why aren't practical lessons about nutrition, consumer products, relationships, emotional well-being, and taking care of yourself treated as seriously as passing another test?

Now, I understand that mathematics matters. Science matters. History matters. Languages matter. And yes, even algebra has its place. But when you're sitting in a classroom trying to figure out why X equals Y, sometimes you can't help thinking, why the hell isn't somebody teaching me how to pay for X and Y when I get out of here?

I wasn't necessarily against education. I was beginning to question what being educated actually meant.

And perhaps that's still a question worth asking. Are we educating young people to think independently, make decisions, and sustain themselves, or are we sometimes so busy measuring what they can remember that we forget to teach them how to use what they know?

Grade 11 was when I started getting cynical. Oh, yes. I could feel that little cynical creature waking up inside me. You know the one. The one that sits in the back of your mind, folds its arms, looks around, and says, "Well, this is a bunch of crap."

I started thinking, if Grade 11 is like this, what the hell is the rest of life going to be like? Is everything just going to be one long parade of people telling me what matters while I try to figure out whether any of it actually does?

And wouldn't you know it, life was already preparing another lesson for me.

I met a girl at school who was Korean. We started talking, getting to know each other, having conversations like teenagers do. One day, I made an assumption about where she was from China. I don't remember every word of that conversation, but I remember the lesson very clearly. She looked at me and asked, "Girl, how was Africa?"

And I said, "I'm not from Africa."

Then it hit me.

Oh. I see what you did there.

She had turned my own assumption right back around and handed it to me. No fancy presentation. No classroom lecture. No ten-page assignment. Just one question that made me realize I had assumed something about somebody without actually knowing.

And I should have known better.

That's the funny thing about life. Sometimes the lessons we need aren't complicated. They're embarrassingly simple. Ask before you assume. Listen before you decide. Don't put people into little boxes just because your brain thinks it recognizes the packaging.

We stayed friends for a very long time. She was an opera singer, and she was extraordinary. I remember her talent, but I also remember that conversation because it taught me something that has stayed with me.

Being educated doesn't automatically mean you're paying attention.

You can know all kinds of things and still miss what's standing right in front of you. You can think you're open-minded and still make assumptions. You can talk about respecting people and still forget to ask them who they actually are.

And look at us now. We have more ways to communicate than ever before. Phones, social media, messaging apps, video calls, artificial intelligence, and enough digital bells and whistles to wake up the entire neighbourhood. Yet we can still struggle with one of the simplest things: having a real conversation without assuming we already know the other person's story.

Isn't that something?

All that technology, and sometimes the most useful thing you can do is shut up for a minute and ask a question.

But Grade 11 wasn't finished with me.

There was another girl at school who was a wonderful singer. She was getting a lot of local attention, and people were noticing her talent. She also had support, money, and parents behind her who were helping her along. And I'm not going to sit here pretending I was some perfectly enlightened teenager who smiled lovingly at everybody else's success.

Nope.

I was jealous.

There. I said it.

I remember thinking, why is everybody paying attention to her? There are other talented people in this school. What about everybody else? What about me?

You know that feeling, don't you? When somebody else gets the opportunity, the applause, the attention, the promotion, the money, the followers, or the recognition, and you're standing there wondering whether anybody even noticed you showed up.

And suddenly, there's another bell ringing.

Ding, ding, ding. Somebody else got picked.

Now, looking back, I can see something I didn't fully understand at the time. Talent matters, but so do resources, opportunity, timing, connections, and support. Not everybody begins with the same advantages. And sometimes the person getting the attention has worked incredibly hard, while other people who have also worked hard are still waiting to be noticed.

Both things can be true.

But here's the part I had to learn about myself. Somebody else's success wasn't automatically an attack on mine.

Not everything is about us.

Sometimes you don't get picked. Sometimes you don't get plucked out of the crowd and handed the opportunity. Sometimes somebody else wins, and you're left standing there holding your little invisible trophy for trying.

And it stings.

Especially when you've worked hard. Especially when you know you're talented. Especially when you're young and still trying to figure out whether being noticed has anything to do with being worthy.

But being overlooked doesn't mean you're worthless. And somebody else's victory doesn't automatically mean you've failed.

That was one of my earliest lessons in understanding jealousy, competition, and self-worth.

I genuinely wish that singer well. She had talent, she had support, and she was making something happen. My jealousy didn't take anything away from her accomplishments. It only showed me something I needed to work on within myself.

And isn't that what jealousy sometimes does? It points toward something we want, something we fear losing, or something we believe we haven't received enough of.

The question is what we do with it.

Do we sit around resenting somebody else because they got an opportunity? Do we spend our time criticizing their success, picking apart their appearance, questioning their talent, or convincing ourselves they didn't deserve it?

Or do we ask ourselves what we can learn, what we can improve, and whether we're willing to keep going even when nobody is clapping?

You don't have to pretend disappointment doesn't hurt. It does. You can be frustrated. You can feel overlooked. You can even have a little private pity party. Hell, bring snacks.

But eventually, you've got to decide whether you're going to spend your energy watching somebody else's life or investing in your own.

And that's where Grade 11 started connecting with money for me.

Because money and self-worth can get tangled together in some very strange ways. We work for money. We trade our time, energy, knowledge, and effort for it. We use it to support ourselves, buy what we need, and hopefully create a little security. In that sense, money can represent something we've invested of ourselves.

But money isn't the whole of who we are.

And neither is recognition.

You can have money and still feel empty. You can have talent and still feel invisible. You can have thousands of followers and still wonder whether anybody actually cares about what you're saying.

Look at social media today. People are constantly comparing views, likes, subscribers, lifestyles, homes, vacations, bodies, businesses, and bank accounts. Somebody posts a beautiful picture, somebody else announces another achievement, and suddenly you're questioning your entire existence because you haven't accomplished enough before breakfast.

Meanwhile, the platform keeps ringing its little bells.

Congratulations! You got a notification.

Congratulations! Somebody viewed your profile.

Congratulations! Here's a new feature you didn't ask for.

And somewhere in all that noise, you might start confusing attention with value.

I think about that a lot, especially as a creator. Because it's easy to start believing the numbers are telling you how much your work matters. One video gets attention, another doesn't. One person gets promoted, another gets ignored. And before you know it, you're back in Grade 11, standing in the hallway wondering why somebody else got picked.

Same lesson. Different bells.

That's why I keep coming back to investing in yourself. Not because I think self-love magically pays the bills. Wouldn't that be lovely? Just stand in front of the mirror, tell yourself you're fabulous, and watch the mortgage disappear.

Yeah, right.

But investing in yourself can change how you make decisions. It can help you recognize when you're chasing something because it matters to you and when you're chasing it because somebody else has it. It can help you understand the difference between an opportunity and a distraction.

And that distinction matters when we're talking about money.

Because there are bells and whistles in investing too. Fancy apps, flashing prices, exciting promises, new technologies, impressive presentations, and people telling you that if you don't get involved right now, you're going to miss the opportunity of a lifetime.

Maybe you will miss something.

But maybe the smartest thing you can do is ask a few more questions before handing over your hard-earned money.

What am I actually buying? What are the risks? What does this cost? Do I understand how it works? Am I investing because I've done my homework, or because everybody else seems excited?

The same questions apply to your personal life.

What am I giving my time to? Who am I listening to? Am I learning something useful? Is this helping me grow? Or am I just collecting another bell and whistle because it makes me feel like I'm doing something?

That's the thing about bells and whistles. Sometimes they're genuinely useful. Sometimes they make life easier, more interesting, and more enjoyable. But sometimes they're just noise dressed up as progress.

And we have to learn the difference.

Now, I don't want you thinking Grade 11 was one long miserable episode of me questioning society and silently judging everybody in the hallway. It wasn't. I had a lot of fun.

I majored in musical theatre, and I loved it.

I remember doing Hello, Dolly! Oh, I loved that musical. There was something wonderful about being surrounded by music, performance, creativity, and people who were willing to get up on a stage and express themselves.

Those experiences mattered to me. They gave me something that went beyond memorizing information. They gave me opportunities to participate, perform, observe, and learn about myself through other people.

And maybe that's part of the contradiction of Grade 11.

I was questioning the system while enjoying some of the things it gave me.

Life's funny that way, isn't it?

You can appreciate an experience and still question whether it could have been better. You can love learning and still wonder why certain things aren't being taught. You can admire somebody else's talent and still feel a little jealous. You can believe in yourself and still have days when you question your worth.

We're human.

We're not always consistent, and we're certainly not always as wise as we think we are.

But the biggest lesson I carried out of Grade 11 wasn't about French, Spanish, algebra, musical theatre, or who got the most applause.

It was about paying attention.

Because I started realizing that life keeps teaching us certain things over and over again, and sometimes we keep ignoring them.

We know we shouldn't assume things about people, but we do.

We know comparing ourselves to others can make us miserable, but we keep scrolling.

We know we should take care of our health, but we put ourselves last.

We know we should understand where our money is going, but sometimes we avoid looking.

We know we should set boundaries, but we keep allowing people to walk right through them.

We know we need to listen to ourselves, but somehow everybody else's opinion keeps getting louder.

And there go those bells again.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

How many times does life have to ring the same damn bell before we finally answer it?

That's what I mean when I talk about the bells and whistles of life. I'm not just talking about the flashy things people sell us. I'm talking about those little lessons that keep showing up, those things we hear but don't actually pay attention to, and those details we dismiss because we think we already know better.

Sometimes the problem isn't that we haven't learned the lesson.

It's that we haven't applied it.

And I include myself in that.

Because I can sit here and tell you all kinds of things about self-love, personal growth, money, jealousy, and learning from your mistakes. But if I'm not putting those lessons into practice, then what am I really doing?

Making noise.

Just another bell ringing and another whistle blowing.

That's why I think self-care needs to be more than a nice quote, a pretty picture, or somebody sitting peacefully with a cup of tea while the sun rises behind them. Those things can be lovely. But sometimes self-care is asking yourself an uncomfortable question. Sometimes it's admitting you're jealous. Sometimes it's acknowledging that you made an assumption about somebody. Sometimes it's looking at your finances and realizing you need to make a change.

Sometimes it's recognizing that you've spent years listening to the same advice without doing a damn thing about it.

And that's okay to admit.

But once you recognize it, what are you going to do?

Because life isn't going to stop presenting us with lessons just because we're tired of learning. There will always be another market, another opportunity, another disappointment, another person getting ahead, another new technology, and another shiny thing promising to make everything better.

The question is whether we're going to keep reacting to the noise or start paying attention to what actually matters.

Grade 11 taught me that I wasn't simply being educated to live in the world. I felt like I was being educated to function in society. And as I got older, I realized I would have to take responsibility for learning many of the practical things I believed were missing.

I would have to learn how to sustain myself. How to understand money. How to recognize my own value. How to handle disappointment. How to celebrate somebody else's success without making it a judgment on my own life.

And perhaps most importantly, how to keep investing in myself even when the returns weren't immediately visible.

Because personal growth doesn't always come with applause.

Sometimes nobody notices that you've become more patient. Nobody hands you a trophy because you stopped comparing yourself to somebody else. Nobody sends you a notification because you finally learned how to say no.

There's no little digital bell that rings when you choose peace over drama.

But those changes matter.

They might matter more than some of the things we've spent our lives chasing.

So, here's something I'd like you to think about. What are the bells and whistles in your life? What are those lessons you've heard a hundred times but still haven't applied? What are you paying attention to that isn't actually giving you anything back?

Maybe it's a relationship. Maybe it's money. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's the constant need to prove yourself. Maybe it's the belief that somebody else's success means you're falling behind.

Or maybe it's something much simpler.

Maybe you already know what you need to do, but you've been too busy listening to the noise to actually do it.

And there's your investment lesson.

Knowing something has value. Applying what you know is where that value can begin to grow.

I don't think we ever stop learning. I certainly haven't. And if you've been following this journey from Grade 1 through Grade 11, you've probably noticed that I keep coming back to the same connection between growing up, money, and understanding our worth.

Because that's what this journey has been about for me. Looking back at the experiences that shaped how I saw myself, how I valued my efforts, how I understood success, and how I eventually began connecting all those things to investing.

Not just investing in money.

Investing in me.

And perhaps you'll recognize a little of yourself somewhere along the way.

So listen carefully out there. Listen well. Invest well. Don't just jump into something because everybody else is doing it or because somebody has dressed it up with a bunch of fancy bells and whistles.

Ask questions. Pay attention. Take care of yourself.

And remember, the world is a wonderful place. Society? Well, that's where you've got to learn to pick and choose.

The bells and whistles are often the lessons we hear but don't actually listen to. And sometimes they keep getting louder until we finally pay attention.

Take care out there. Take care.

Now, before you go, tell me something. What's one lesson life keeps ringing in your ears that you know you need to start applying? Leave your thoughts in the comments, share this with somebody who's tired of all the noise, and follow my NOTICE THIS journey as we move toward Grade 12.

And don't forget to subscribe to QueenB.Divine and Canada's Selflove Daily Channel for more real conversations about self-care, self-worth, growing up, money, and learning to invest in the one person you should never give up on.

You.

By QueenB.Divine — Don't Crypto on My Mental Health.​

Ps I could really use the follow on Youtube the bells and whistle are ridiculous there.