Discovering My Mission

Originally, I started this blog for selfish reasons, by which I mean the electronic equivalent to an electronic journal. Now that I have started reading for fun again, I have noticed a theme in the content I truly enjoy. They tend to be self-help through someone's personal narrative. A "How To Declutter" book wouldn't be as interesting and meaningful as someone's story in response to utilizing said book to declutter their home and life.

That said, I have not been blogging much lately because I feel rather stuck as of lately. I feel like I need some sort of life change, but I'm not sure what. It would be awesome to learn a real trade or skill and not just soft skills that can apply anywhere. I'm not unhappy working as a cashier at a Chinese restaurant, but this is not a career and after second guessing my calling in Human Resources, it has me feeling lost.

What do I do when I feel lost or unhappy? I like to create.

One of my favorite methods of creation is writing. There is something really freeing about just writing without any idea where you are going. I will often write about the daily stuff (what I'm feeling, ideas I have, wants and desires, conversations I have had recently, and so on). There is a tiny book called The Daily Bones (I believe) that inspired me to do so. I don't journal every day, but I do when I need something back from it.

Today I felt like writing in my other "journal" and as I lay in bed unable to fall back asleep, I thought about what sort of changes I have been wanting. I guess I'm unhappy, but I don't really feel that way. The Universe seems to be telling me it's about time to change something.

One of my first thoughts went back to a conversation I had with a friend from college about what sort of business would I open if money was no object, but if I was to ever open a spa I would be no help for the real work because I don't know how to do hair, skin, nails, eyelash extensions, massage therapy, chiropractic... nothing. I have "soft skills" and could learn how to run the business and take care of my employees, but I would never be able to cover for one of them if they got sick or had an emergency. Opening a business right now would not be a good idea then.

Could I make money off of my blog? Maybe one day, but that's not the point.

Ok, so back to the drawing board AKA a small teal notebook with big white poke-dots and pink binding. Without looking through the previous pages of ideas, I wrote about what I aim to do every day which is essentially to "make today a happy day." I'm borrowing the wording from one of my favorite hoodies that I found at the UNIQLO near my host family's house when I was studying abroad in Japan. It's a pastel yellow with a picture of Mr. Happy surrounded by the words "Today is a Happy Day." Something I have learned is that if it makes me smile, it will often continue to do so long afterwards. Side note, I'm currently wearing it because my house is freezing cold.

Could my happiness journey be my schtick? Why not?

Lauren Singer's Trash Is For Tossers focuses on living a zero waste lifestyle, Simon's and Martina's Eat Your Kimchi (now also Eat Your Sushi) focuses on food and traveling adventures in Korea (and now Japan), Tanja's Rose Shock (AKA @RoseShock) focuses on creative makeup and cosplay, Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus write about intentional living and minimalism at TheMinimalists.com, and and the list goes on. You can literally blog about anything, but it appears that you must have a cohesive theme of focus.

Would anyone even be interested in my ideas about living happier and with intention? There only has to be one person.

Everyone should be living a life in line with their personal values. Lauren is a perfect example of this and she really inspires me to live intentionally. By "living intentionally" I mean that you live a life that aligns with what is important to you. The Minimalists have an awesome podcast on the subject.

I haven't quite figured the wording yet, but I make an effort to live my life is by enjoying the little things, by making today a happy day, by using and doing things that make me smile, by making an effort to appreciate how blessed I am, and by living in a way that aligns with who I am and who I strive to be.

I know that happiness is internal. It does not come from external sources, as awesome as that would be theoretically. It's definitely a challenge sometimes to keep negative external influences from affecting my mood, but there are so many more positive things going on that I feel my quality of life has gotten so much better. Since graduating college, I stopped taking antidepressants, was exercising regularly (I have since fallen off the bandwagon and need to get back on), talked to family and friends regularly, ate healthier, and overall these made me feel better.

Mental health, Happiness, and Intentional Living are so important.

If my story helps even one person, then I have done my job.

(Updated: August 12, 2017)

Five Things I Love About El Paso

Hello!

I have been watching a bunch of Simon and Martina's YouTube videos lately. If you haven't heard of them, they are a Canadian couple who lived in Seoul, Korea for about 8 years and just recently moved to Tokyo, Japan. Simon and Martina are absolutely adorable and do videos focusing mainly on trying new foods and exploring new places.

In a weird way, they reminded me about how much I love to explore and about how I'm living in a city relatively far away from home. I was thinking about the random things that surprised me when I first came here and wanted to share them here on my blog (that I have been sadly neglecting). Without further ado (Side note: I googled how to spell that since I have never actually written that phrase down before), here are five random fabulous things I have discovered in El Paso, Texas.

1) Hot Cheetos & Queso (and Mexican Food in general, YUMM)

2) Wide Right Lanes (instead of a third lane)

3) Club Music on the Radio at Noon and 5PM (great for trapped in traffic jam sessions)

4) Extra Front and Back Doors on Houses (which makes me feel safer and I can air out the house)

5) Rock Fencing (which just looks cool)

There have not been a whole lot of things that I particularly dislike about El Paso other than the amount of straight sunlight (it's a sunburn waiting to happen) and the spiky sticker plants (which are the equivalent of stepping on spiky legos). Overall, every place in existence has interesting things that are new and different. In my opinion, you don't have to travel internationally to find a bit of culture shock.

I hope y'all have an amazing day!

Small Life Update

Hello everyone,

This week I have noticed how much of my time seems to be slipping away from me as of late. My ability to reference how much time has passed, how long ago I did something, and what all I did (say yesterday, for example) is not the greatest, so I may not be as accurate as I would like to be.

Last weekend, I drove across Texas to my hometown of Houston, which was a rather long and boring drive. My husband was supposed to go with me since he had a long weekend, but they decided to put him on call so he couldn't leave the area. The drive would have gone way faster had he been able to go, but that's always the case with road trips. Thankfully, I was able to see not only my family, but his family (even if only for a little bit). I'm so grateful to have a good relationship with my in-laws since apparently that's one of the top issues that arises within marriages. Maybe that's a good blog post topic for another day.

Back to the story: My main reason for visiting my in-laws was to pick up the newest member of our family, Kruella, which I decided to shorten to Ella for obvious reasons.

Now that I have had her for a week now (Mike has been out in the field doing army stuff), I have a better feel for her than I did at my in-laws house. She also did really well on the drive and spent most of the time staring out of the window. The getting out of the car for gas and bathroom breaks was a completely different story.

We will definitely have to work on her barking at new people, other dogs, walking on a leash without pulling the whole time, and listening (this she has gotten a whole lot better at thankfully). Overall I'm glad to have her, even if she can't bear to be apart from anyone for very long.

The Love of My Life

While I have not been taking photos for the 2017 Tiny Moments February challenge, I do try to take photos of moments like these that make me smile or laugh. I love running across old photos and remembering the moment. I did say I wouldn't post this photo on Facebook, I never said I wouldn't write a mushy blog post about him on my blog that no one reads :) Look at how cute they are all snuggled up and fast asleep. 

Today is Valentines Day and even though it's a made up holiday to get lovers to appreciate each other and unnecessarily spend money on flowers and chocolate, it's nice to have an excuse to celebrate. He's not really one to buy me flowers, but that makes it more meaningful to me when he does. Its rather funny that I caught wind of the surprise flower delivery via an email from UPS though. I never thought I was a big flower person, but in reality I love getting a bouquet of flowers, especially stargazer lilies, sunflowers, and roses. 

Neither Mike nor I are perfect, but I'm glad we have made our relationship work. It definitely helps that we have similar values, have overlapping senses of humor, can compromise, and both make a consistent effort to tell and show the other person that they are loved and appreciated. We fight just like everyone else, but we learn about each other from them. Mike has added so much to my life and I'm so grateful that I can be myself around him. There are moments where we will leave from being around other couples who do things differently, our eyes will meet, and we will sigh or crack up. Never forget to tell your loved ones how much they mean to you, show them that you appreciate them, and do stuff together. Meaningful relationships, romantic or not, are so important. 

Enjoying Your Morning Coffee

When I was in high school and college, I envied my mom for having the time to sit and enjoy her morning coffee. She would set up the coffee pot the night before so that all she would have to do is push the one and only on-button the following morning. Once I had convinced her that cats are a necessary part of life, she added feeding them some canned food to this morning routine. Mom would then take her mug to the couch where she would turn on Good Morning America to see what is going on in the world. As someone who could never get myself up early enough to do anything but the basics, I could not comprehend how she managed to get up around 6AM every single day. In middle school and high school, when I was a bit self-conscious about my wavy hair because silky, straight flat ironed hair was the trend, I would force myself to get up super early (AKA 6:00AM) and straighten my hair. Once I was in high school, that concern eventually fell away. There wasn’t a good enough reason to waste my precious sleeping time to have straight hair like every one else. I actually got compliments on my natural hair and found out that a beautiful, curly-haired college friend of mine had a very similar experience. As I matured and got older, I still could not find the time to actually use a coffee mug for its intended purpose unless I made hot tea. In case you are gripping your seats in curiosity, it was usually chai tea. Maybe it’s because one of my majors was East Asian Studies, but I started drinking a whole heck of a lot of tea on a daily basis. I actually figured out that people started associating my huge Tervis cup with sunflowers on it with me when someone would call and ask if they had found my cup after I had left it somewhere on campus.

            It was not until I started writing and blogging for the fun of it that I ever got up early. It definitely helped that my husband needed a ride to work at 5:30AM since our roommate totaled his car, that we eventually adopted a dog who needs to pee at 8:00AM sharp, and that I had fallen off the morning yoga in my bedroom bandwagon and taken to watching TED Talks to start the day instead. After taking Mike, my husband, to work that morning I would come home and sit down at our off kilter, round kitchen table and open up my laptop. At first when this habit continued into the weekend, I lied to Mike about what I was doing and said I was doing the online class I’m definitely still supposed to be working on. As I write the first draft of this section, I still have yet to tell him that I started a blog. The secrecy seems to make it kind of fun for the time being. Creative writing was never something that I had much of an opportunity in school to cultivate since I avoided English classes if I could, but I also felt like I had nothing to really contribute to the written world and so I avoided it into college as well. The funny thing is that as I read more blogs and listened to TED Talks and YouTubers, that self-doubt was essentially erased. If they could do it, then I could too. One quote that resonated with me was to “write what you want to read.” If I re-find this quote, I will make note of it and give credit where credit is due. I really would like to thank this person for inspiring me. This quote was so simple that it hit me like a ton of bricks. It really made me sit and think about whether or not I could actually be a writer like some of the TED Talk presenters that I had really enjoyed, like Elizabeth Gilbert, who is most famous for writing Eat, Pray, Love, Committed, and Big Magic. Both of these books are currently on my To Read List, but hearing her TED Talk made me want to read her work more so than I had before when I did not have a face and voice to put with the name.

            Whether or not I’m qualified as a life coach or some guru, I want to keep writing about my life, the things I have learned, even the smallest experiences that made a difference to me, and my thoughts on something. I don’t care if only my parents read this. At this moment in my life, I want to write for me and for the sake of writing. I have always loved the process of creation and that is why I identify as an artist. I’m an artist with no true medium. In my opinion, half of the fun is trying a medium that is new to me to see what I can create. Developing that process further is another awesome step on that creative journey. I have to say that the time I spend in front of my laptop at my kitchen table with a hot mug of coffee is precious to me. I wish I would have found the value in it earlier in my life, but maybe if I had then I would not appreciate it as much as I do in the present. Enjoying my morning coffee is akin to taking the time to do my skin care routine and enjoying a relaxing face mask for a whole uninterrupted fifteen minutes. We should all be doing the little things that makes us smile, makes us feel relaxed, and makes us feel inspired.

Every day is a fresh start and a great day to have a great day.

If You Could Open Any Business, What Would It Be?

Good morning,

A friend asked me this very question the other day and it made me think. First, what sparked this question in the first place. Second, my knee-jerk thought was maybe a spa with a salon inside. Third, is my idea worth while? My thoughts raced around my head, but knowing my friend I know he was just asking out of curiosity and would explain his idea once I came up with my own. Going into real estate would be cool too though.

I Wish Someone Would Make This

Good morning!

While scrolling through Facebook, I came across a short clip of someone filming the view off the side of their boat while sailing through the neon blue waters of Greece. My knee-jerk reaction was to smile and my eyes watered with u she'd happy tears. To me, Greece is the land of my ancestors and a happy memory of going on a cruise with my grandma and aunt's family. Here's a photo I took off the boat from our trip in 2013.

Grandma's grandfather, who we refer to as Papu, is the closest known relative to have made the journey across the Atlantic to make a better life for himself. Papu's story is our emigration story. Grandma is the most Greek looking of all of us, mainly since her children inherited her previous husband's fair skin which we attribute to his Scottish ancestry. She has the most beautiful olive skin tone and I used to envy her as a kid before I embraced my own fair skin.

My emotional reaction to a simple video sparked a happy memory of traveling to the land of our family with one of the he only family members to have real memories of Papu. She used to go visit her grandparents who lived across the street to play checkers with Papu. Going on this trip with my grandma was such a life changing blessing and I feel as though we grew closer because of our adventures together.

I had an idea. What if there was a book, movie, or documentary where they took Americans from the United States, let's call them "Usians" as in "you-zee-ans" as in what one of my favorite professors would call Americans, and let's take them on a fantastic trip to the country that their family left behind. I may justill put this concept in my book idea that I've been churning on for the last couple weeks. I would not be unhappy if this became a documentary though.

Have am awesome day!