A Creative’s Struggle

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Sometimes when I make art it occurs to me that I could give myself the label of *artist*. This seems far fetched and silly to me because I’m an amateur that never went to art school, doesn’t do gallery shows, doesn’t make art for other people, and doesn’t pump out piece after piece in rapid succession. I go on little mini-benders and make 4 or five pieces in one month and then I make nothing for four. When I work on a canvas with acrylic paint I almost never come into the project with a pre-chosen idea of what I’m going to be making. I let the colors speak to me and then I squiggle. When I work in the digital medium I use my phone to take a picture of a flower (or use a friend’s picture if they’ve given me permission), make a pencil sketch of the flower in my 4x6 sketchbook, scan it, and put it into Procreate. I haven’t even mastered the comfort of doing my sketch digitally! I make art for myself so it feels a bit like an indulgent, self gratifying act. Doesn’t art have to be made for a great and grand purpose? Don’t I need to capture the hearts and minds of the people with my amazing talent (that’s severely lacking due to nonexistent practice and meager persistence…)?

I’ve been making art of one kind or another since I was very small. Many of us start out that way - drawing with crayons and Crayola markers on sheets of construction paper, drawing our families and our pets and the sun over and over. I found art to be frustrating as a child; I remember sitting in the counselor's office in elementary school, lamenting the fact that I could see the things I wanted to draw in my head but it never came out looking like what I saw. I had a vision of a field of flowers, yellow daffodils if I remember correctly, on rolling hills with a distant blue sky; every time I tried to draw the vision it came out in a child’s hand - crude and blocky. It’s never really gotten less frustrating, only now the frustrating parts are significantly more complex and advanced than when I was six.

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There was a period of my life where I drew constantly. I was obsessed with prismacolors and the incredible blending you could accomplish if you drew just right. I made pencil drawing after pencil drawing, mostly trees and strange disfigured faces. I was at a low point in my life and drawing provided an escape where I didn’t have to think about anything or anyone, I could just lose myself in the rhythmic scratching of the pencil on textured paper. It was an excellent escape that I appreciate to this day; it gave a bad time a little softness where I can look back and see that it wasn’t all bad.

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I both miss and don’t miss that era of productivity. I no longer feel like I have to lose myself in art to escape a life that hurts constantly, however I don’t produce nearly as much art as I used to and that seems like a shame. When I get stuck thinking this way it makes the idea of making art even more difficult. I fall down a rabbit hole of self shaming where I’m down on myself for not being more productive. Who’s to say that to be an artist you have to make 50 pieces of art a month? Who’s to say that someone who spends two hours or less on every piece of work is not a “true” artist?

I’ve been doing the two hours thing since I was a teenager. I took a spin at sketching portraits and for some reason I set two hours as my limit. If I couldn’t capture the essence of a person in two hours or less the project was abandoned. I tried a few times to come back to a piece after I’d used my initial two hours and every single time the second stint produced sub-par art. I’m sure anyone else looking at it would consider it passable but I find that if I walk away from a piece and try to come back at a later time it’s nothing but a miserable failure. Maybe someday in the future that will change but given my age I’m not sure it will.

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I stopped drawing and painting for years. There was a period between the ages of 27 and 34 where I produced absolutely nothing. This was a time of turbulence for me, two divorces, a move across the country, changing living spaces multiple times, job inconsistency…. It’s hard to be motivated to create something when you’re at a basic level, trying to create something of your life. I don’t consider myself any less of an artist for not producing something for years - that wouldn’t be fair to myself. Everyone has ups and downs and we can’t all be at maximum “productivity” all the time, every day, days on end.

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I took up sketching and digital art this time last year because of a YouTube show that I watch called Drawfee. You may be familiar with Drawfee; they’re a very popular and talented group of artists that “take your dumb ideas and make even dumber drawings.” It sounds flippant but I assure you, they are amazing. I hadn’t sketched in probably a decade and because of their goofy and oddly motivating show I decided to try again. I’ve been pleasantly surprised that I haven’t forgotten how to wield a pencil. Digital art was new to me as well and they made it look so easy. Karina is so versatile and can make something cute or horrifying in the blink of an eye. Jacob cracks me up and reminds me that I don’t have to be good at backgrounds to be good at art. Nathan doesn’t realize just how amazing he is at mashing up styles. Julia is inspiring because of her constant drive to challenge herself. Between the four hosts I was so inspired to make my own work and I’m really grateful for what they’ve given me.

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I’ve recently picked up portraits again in the digital medium and I’m definitely a fan. I don’t have a great grasp on how light works against the contours of the human face but I’ve got a love for making people shine in fun ways through art. I’ve done a couple of self portraits, a portrait of Miayah and myself together, an ex, Miayah’s boyfriend, and a coworker. They’ve turned out pretty nicely and I’m happy that I tried again. Before this year I don’t think I had considered doing portraits again so I’m really glad that I gave it another shot. Sometimes art surprises me in little ways like this.

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Art is made for art’s sake. It doesn’t have to be FOR anything. It doesn’t need to be profitable. God forbid it’s something you make for yourself that makes you happy. I am urged on by the American standard of “hustle and make money with your hobbies.” Any value I assign to my art is directly tied to how much money it could bring me and as of yet I’ve made a grand total of $100. This makes me feel like my art has little value and somehow simultaneously I also know this is untrue. I like making art. It makes me happy to see the beauty of it once I’ve completed a piece. I like learning new techniques and skills that I can apply to my art. I like discovering new flowers and colors and methods of making gradients and finding new stylistic choices. I hope that going forward I can continue to be in a secure enough place to continue making beautiful things. It’s satisfying and rewarding in its own way and doesn’t ask too much of me. I’m happy I can share my art with a little corner of the internet and hope that you can find some enjoyment in making your own creative works ❤️

On Grief and Quiet Moments

April is a strange time of the year for me – rather it’s an anniversary of a death that brought my life to a screeching halt, put me in an eating recovery program, and ultimately sent my life in a direction I never anticipated. It’s been years now, and frankly, I am in the best place I’ve ever been. That said, it doesn’t mean that this time year isn’t filled with melancholy for me. I’m more prone to bouts of crying and wanting to hide in my bedroom and simply do nothing. Knowing that this is the case for me during this time of year, I keep a couple things in mind. One, I set some precautions. This means that I sit down with safe people and be realistic about how I may respond to this time of year and ask them to keep an eye on things like how much I’m eating, sleeping, drinking, isolating, etc. They usually have some good suggestions about behavioural benchmarks as well. Second, I have built rituals over the years in order to have a way to directly acknowledge the grief and give it safe space to wash over me. I take the time to honour those rituals. I have found that by allowing those moments to have recognised space I’m not holding the grief in an unhealthy way, and while it’s hard in the moment, there is relief on the other side of that moment. Third, I look for things that can produce quiet remembrance and meaning. This is different from moments of grief. For example, I searched for a garnet eternity band. This doesn’t mean anything to someone who is just looking at my ring, but it is the same colour as the red poppies that are often used as a symbol for World War One veterans. I was in England when I was first starting to pull through my initial grieving process. During the time period we were there, we encountered a lot of memorials full of red poppies, and I have now built an association.

This year, I had an early day when grief hit me hard, and I have leaned into the third thing I do. I reached out and requested a couple of things. The first was a knock out rose bush. This is a significant plant to me because those are the flowers we used at the funeral. The second was flower seeds. A lot of those flower seeds are still in the mail, but that’s okay. I decided that I wanted to put a vertical planter that we could fill with flowers, so we’re currently building that. Flowers create such a wonderful pop of colour, and I wanted to extend that into more parts of the garden with painted markers, so Becky and I sat down with several terracotta planters, lots of river rocks, and our collection of paint. Our pets also joined us, and it was a nice time all around.

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I find the process of painting to be soothing and relaxing. My mind wanders a bit, and it was a beautiful day outside. It was also really nice to get to do something with Becky. We haven’t had a lot of opportunities to really do things together, and we have decided to find more activities we can do together. Painting isn’t something we often do together since she is the one more likely to paint, but this was a great way to spend time this weekend. Becky focused on the terracotta pots that I’m going to stack up once we have all the paint sealed. We’re going to be putting various flowers into these pots, and hopefully we’ll have a tower of flowers in a couple weeks.

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I chose to focus on painting river rocks to put into each of the planters so that one, we can remember what we put where, and two so we have happy pops of colour in the mostly green plants.

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I’m really excited about putting these into the garden. It was really nice outside, and I felt really accomplished by the end. Becky and I got to spend some quality time together. We’re going to have really nice things in our garden. I get to have a tower of flowers that are meaningful for me from a remembrance perspective. I have created the space to go to when I’m feeling melancholy as well.

I think it’s imperative when we have grief that we create the space to simply let it wash over us. By allowing ourselves to experience the grief we give it an outlet so that it doesn’t consume us. I know our culture strives to push away all the “negative” emotions, but I would argue that all emotions are just that - emotions. Our bodies produce a physiological response to emotional stimuli, and we have to acknowledge that. When we don’t we experience physical symptoms. I understand how tempting it is to push away sadness or grief - I did it for so long I couldn’t get myself back on an even keel and ended up in a recovery program. I urge you to create this sort of space. You can see that this wasn’t an evening full of crying and sadness - it was a space that provided peace and sanctuary. It’s a piece of remembering that is now tinged with a happy memory too.

I wish you all the love and peace that comes when we acknowledge our hurts and griefs.

The Love of My Life

This month my dog Cinnamon had spinal surgery.

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I rescued Cinnamon when she was five months old, when she was still losing milk teeth and she was as skinny as a stick. Her ribs stuck out and she was terrified of men and plastic bags and anything that moved too quickly. I was worried that with her fears that she wouldn’t warm up to me but very quickly she was sleeping cuddled up in bed with me and playing her heart out. The magical key was a ridiculous toy. I got her toy after toy, trying to find the one that would win her heart and it turns out she loves any toy that is full of fluff, has a handful of squeakers, and is MASSIVE compared to her tiny body. I got her this blue, super long, dog shaped sort of toy and she dragged it everywhere.

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I couldn’t get her to eat for a while. Every new food came home and was promptly dismissed. She would sniff the new food and walk away, completely uninterested. She got to the point that she’d go days and days without eating and just vomit up bile. I tried wet food and dry food and chicken flavored food and things with grain and things without grain. It turns out she liked salmon. I was so relieved when she finally started eating consistently. She was such a skinny thing, barely 5 pounds when she became mine, and there were far too many ribs visible in her early life.

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When she was 2 one of her back feet swelled up like a balloon. It scared me so badly, more than anything because I couldn’t tell what was wrong. There was no visible cut or obvious injury, but the whole back foot was swollen to at least 3 times it’s normal size. I took her to the vet and they had to do exploratory surgery. It cost me a pretty penny, well over a thousand dollars, and they found nothing inside. We were sent home with a wrapped injury, a cone of shame, and a ton of antibiotics. She ended up having to be on antibiotics for 12 weeks before the injury finally resolved itself. The theory was that she got a splinter in her foot and it became infected. To this day I still don’t know what happened exactly, but I’m glad we got it fixed. I was hoping it was the last time I’d have to subject her to surgery but alas, it was not.

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Cinnamon has stayed with me through two ex-husbands and two different states. She’s traveled cross country with me, lived in eight different houses, and made fast, close friends with at least eight different doggos. She loves hiking in the foothills of Boise, Idaho. She loves sunning herself in any field of grass she can find. We call her a little sun dog; she seems to recharge in the sun. She’ll lay out until she’s sufficiently warmed and once she’s full up she’ll move into the shade or come inside. She’s a burrower - always looking for the closest blanket to hide under. She’s an expert at hiding in a blanket. I cannot even fathom counting how many times I’ve nearly squished her because she was so thoroughly hidden. She’s excellent at playing chase with any dog that will play. All she wants to do with new dog friends is run back and forth, trading off who chases who, until they collapse on the floor with lolling tongues and happy faces.

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Cinnamon has a couple of funny personality traits that I haven’t found in other dogs. She’s a passive resister of anything she doesn’t want to do. If she’s lying in bed, comfortable and warm, and she’s loath to get up, when you try to lift her her whole body will go completely limp and she feels like she weighs at least twice what she normally does. She’s absolutely floppy and quite silly in this position and nothing you do can convince her to move until SHE is ready to do so. She’s also a seam-popper. What is a seam-popper you ask? I’ll tell you: Cinnamon takes any new toy, plays with it for a while, destroys the squeaker, and then will methodically chew on just the seams to rip them out. She takes a single tooth, maneuvers it underneath a single stitch, and pulls them out one by one until the toy has splayed open and she can rip out the stuffing. She doesn’t rip holes in the toys, just the seams. 

On the sixth of March Cinnamon started having trouble walking. It was subtle at first - a little swaying, a reluctance to step on inclines, a rejection of getting on couches unless she was picked up. By the end of that Saturday she was swaying like a drunkard and I was growing quite concerned. Luckily our vet was open on Sunday and we gave them a call and set up an appointment.

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We took her into the vet on Sunday and I requested that they do any tests necessary to assess what was wrong. She’d been to the vet in December when we thought she seemed like she was in some pain and they’d expressed concern about one of the discs in her back. At the time they told us to keep an eye on it and keep her quiet and left it at that. On Sunday they did x-rays of her back to make sure the disc issue hadn’t progressed and they said it looked the same as it did in December and her walking issues appeared to be related to her knees dislocating. They did a test of her neurological responses: they flip one of the back feet over and see how long it takes for her to right it. She responded within the appropriate time so they thought that she was free of neurological issues.  I wasn’t sure about that diagnosis but who am I to question someone who knows much more about canine health than I do?

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We brought her home and tried to keep her resting and quiet. She’s a very active dog so that’s no small feat, but this time felt different. She was reluctant to walk, reluctant to move once settled, and hesitant when trying to take steps as she kept falling over. Monday came and in the morning I took her outside and she could barely stand up. She was flopping and falling and I was becoming increasingly distressed. The knee thing didn’t feel right but I couldn’t be sure. I had Miayah keep an eye on her during the day on Monday and Cinnamon didn’t get out of bed at all for the entire day. I grew more worried.

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Monday night I was lying in bed with Cinnamon and I was getting really anxious. The knee thing didn’t feel right to me. I didn’t have any proof otherwise, right? As I was laying in bed, Cinnamon went to walk down the ramp so she could get a drink of water. She started to walk and then completely collapsed and tumbled down the ramp. I was horrified and started crying because this was clearly more than a knee problem. I put her back in bed and went onto an online message board where you can ask questions of actual veterinarians. The vet I spoke with was slow to respond and I didn’t get a reply until the next morning around 10a: it sounded like she had a burst disc in her back, she was on her way to paralysis, and that her quality of life would be nil if she doesn’t get surgery immediately.

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So that Tuesday I left work, went home and grabbed Cinnamon, and Miayah and I went to the emergency vet where they have a neurologist on site and an MRI machine where they can accurately assess a neurological issue. Their facility was doing curbside service only so we called when we arrived and waited for a vet tech to come get her. We filled out online paperwork and told a vet tech on the phone what her symptoms were. They came and took her into the building and we waited with bated breath for an answer on what was happening. We sat in that parking lot for three hours. They called us, said they did an MRI and that it’s true: one of her discs had burst and she absolutely needed surgery right away, I asked --- “Is she a good candidate?” --- because she’s older. My baby is ten now. Dachshunds can live 15-17 years and that puts her barely past mid-life but that being said, if she isn’t going to recover then what right do I have to put her through a difficult surgery only to be in pain and immobile for the rest of her life? 

Euthanasia is always a tough topic to address. At what point do we say “This is enough pain, let me release you from it.” Who are we to define how much pain is acceptable for a being that cannot speak? I can’t imagine being so selfish that I wouldn’t release someone I love from a life of pain, but a pet can’t tell you what they’re willing to tolerate and when they’re finished. Even if they could speak, who’s to say they would understand the full consequences of the actions we take for them?

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Two different veterinarians reassured me that she was an ideal candidate for the surgery and that they were more than 90% certain that she’d make a full recovery. They said we brought her in quick enough, that she was in good health, and that she wasn’t too heavy to succeed in recovery. They sent over a quote electronically: $4800. Miayah and I looked at each other and briefly talked about the cost. I’d just gotten a little bit of money as a refund from a surgery and I’d received my stimulus check so I could cover some of it, but not all. Despite that, we decided that we were going to make it work. Cinnamon is worth it. She’s a living, breathing being that doesn’t deserve to have her life cut short because I’m shit at money management. I will pay any expense to make sure she’s happy and protected. I signed the quote and put the charge on my emergency credit card. 

Cinnamon stayed at the vet overnight on Tuesday, then mid-day Wednesday she had surgery. The vet called when it was done and told us that it was definitely just one single disc that was causing the issue and that the surgery went flawlessly. She said that Cinnamon was very weak neurologically and that they wanted to keep her for a couple days to observe her.  A few days passed and Friday morning I got the call that I could bring her home. There were strict instructions on how to take her outside, what kind of traction she needed for her little feet, what kind of space to keep her in, etc. They also warned me that she was very weak neurologically and that to get back to a relatively normal place it would take 6-8 weeks.

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Miayah and I went back to the vet and they brought Cinnamon out to us. She was very drugged but it didn’t stop her from being super excited to see us. Cinnamon floppily wiggled in the vet’s arms as she was passed into mine. We drove home, her sitting snuggled in my lap the whole way. When we arrived we set up a little alcove for her - trapped behind a baby gate with a pile of blankets to sleep in since she couldn’t step over the lip of a crate. She was dragging her legs completely. She couldn’t take a single step with her back legs. I sat with her in that alcove for the whole evening, crying the entire time. She didn’t seem phased, just a little confused on why her back end wouldn’t respond right, which ultimately made me a little happy since she didn’t seem to be in pain.

We started a fund raiser for Cinnamon as the bill was definitely a surprise and the outpouring of love and care from our family and friends has been immense. Everyone has expressed sympathy and care for my little one. It’s amazing to see people come together for a creature so innocent and unassuming. I appreciate every single person that has offered support and extend my gratitude eternally.

Every day we get a little better. Miayah and I engage Cinnamon in physical therapy exercises and take her outside carefully in a sling. She gets to take a pain pill and a steroid to make things feel better during her recovery. We ice her back when it feels warm and after she is active. She’s ahead of the curve than many dogs at this point; we took her back to the vet today for her two week checkup and the veterinarian was amazed at how well she’s walking now. They told us that Cinnamon is walking as if eight weeks had passed instead of just two. This is great news and also slightly terrifying news. She’s ready to run but it’s only been two weeks since she’s had major surgery. We have to find ways to keep her quiet so she can continue healing at a good pace and not injure herself again. We’re determined to do everything as right as we can. Recovery isn’t a straight line and it’s not easy but we will take care of her the best way we can possibly muster.

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I love this little monster. She’s the light of my life and I don’t know where I’d be without her. She means the world to me. She’s my best friend and my companion - life long, although it’s her life long and not mine. I hope she knows how much I love her.

If you want to contribute to Cinnamon’s surgery please donate here:

https://www.facebook.com/donate/189325172615325/?fundraiser_source=external_url

Finding Small Joys and Backyard Things

It’s the end of March! This year has already been super full mentally and emotionally. When the end of the month rolls around, I take the time to look back and see what worked, what didn’t work, and take a quick check on how I’m feeling. It’s also the time I start building my intentions and goals for the next month. Let me tell you - March was a doozy for me. 2021 has not been a great year, and everytime it feels like I’ve finally got a handle on things something else rolls along to punch me in the gut. That has basically kept me in a high stress situation that has been slowly eating into my mental health situation. It was affecting my mood, my food, and my willingness to engage with anything. I basically wanted to curl up and hide in my bed constantly. Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m constantly looking for experiences - I’m rarely idle in any capacity. That level of engagement is what brings joy and satisfaction into my life. Something needed to shift.

Anyone who has struggled with depression knows that it isn’t simply a matter of “getting through it” or just to “do something” about it. I’m glad that I have people around me who support me and who I feel vulnerable enough to lean on. Yesterday, Becky and I sat down together to really look at how we were feeling and talk about what was happening in our brains. It turns out, we’re pretty much on the same page. We’re both feeling overwhelmed, a bit lonely, and worried about how things are happening in our lives. So we decided to make some shifts. I am loathe to say changes, because at one point, these things were part of regular routines. 2020 felt like a lost year, and I’m sure many people out there share that sentiment. We are both incredibly passionate about experience, and being in lockdown has made engaging in experiences really difficult. The erosion happened slowly, so we didn’t notice it really. We decided that we would find ways to do things that helped us feel like we were having experiences that fuel us. I’m also feeling like we’re a bit late to this party, but hey, at least we got here.

When I talk about experiences, I’m not talking major life changing things. I’m talking about the small things - going out to dinner, checking out a bar we really like, window shopping in outdoor shopping centers, checking out local craft shops for inspiration. It was always something small, but things that got us up and moving around, even if it was just walking. There’s something really different about going into a local shop instead of looking for things online. I’d been to one of the local home improvement stores recently, and saw a bunch of new plants that I thought Becky would love, so we decided to get in the car to go check it out. We weren’t really planning on getting anything, but if we ended up with a flower plant, all the better. It’s something so small, but it really helped us refocus on the little things that gave us a lot of joy. That small window shopping excursion turned into something that helped fuel us, and that’s the coolest thing!

When we got home, we were feeling a lot better and decided to tackle things in our backyard that we have been putting off for ages. We have always wanted some sort of outdoor space, and we have a pretty nice backyard. We had already worked on our container garden, and really enjoyed the time spent together doing something that we both enjoy. While the garden looks great, we had not done anything with the rest of the yard. It really needed some help.

You can see how over the years things have just sort of gone by the wayside in the backyard. We had trash that had accumulated from various activities, most recently adding to our garden. We had laid out the umbrellas when it was too windy, and things around the yard were just disorganised. So we pulled our rubbish bin into the backyard and just started picking things up. Frankly, if that was as far as we had gotten, I would have been really pleased! Really, it’s a lot like my “I can do 15 minutes of anything” stance. We got started, and things just kept snowballing.

We were gifted the astroturf a while ago when we were thinking about putting in a deck. We had used it to smother the underlying grass to make it easier to level the yard. We’re not up to building a deck right now, so that’s not a thing, but we kind of like it, and our dogs love it, so we left it in place. We did take the time to smooth it out and clear away the leaves that were all over it. It’s surprisingly nice to walk on. We also rearranged the lawn furniture we have strewn about the yard and picked up any remaining trash. We had several large spools in our garage that we were gifted ages ago and it turns out the centre hole is just the right size for the umbrella stands and umbrellas we had! So far so good, the wind hasn’t knocked the umbrellas over, which has been a HUGE problem for us in the past. We did have to test them to see if they would still open and ultimately, they did! We did have to spray them down though, and they’re a bit stained. I’m sure at some point I’ll figure out how to clean them a bit better, but for now, they work.

All in all, we spent just about an hour working outside. It started out as a small project that we both figured we would devote a couple minutes to, and it snowballed into something much better. We had only intended to go look at the new flower plants, but the small piece of feeling more normal really helped us feel more like ourselves. Now we have a backyard space we can use, and we’re going to enjoy it. I hope that you are able to find the small things that help you feel normal.

Seasonal Salad with Carrot and Lemon Dressing

March is always a weird time of year for me. I know it’s still pretty cool in other parts of the world, but it’s already starting to get warm in Texas. March is kind of like our hint of spring before we fall into the summer temperatures we experience nine months out of the year. I end up craving salads and lemonade well before it’s in season. Luckily for me, there is always some kind of green in season, so I thought it would be nice to have something light and crunchy. Years ago I went to a local restaurant that had a salade nicoise on the menu. While it wasn’t a traditional salade nicoise, the restaurant used local produce and the presentation was lovely. It was presented in beautifully bright strips of produce and protein on a long white plate. I thought it would be nice to set up something similar after months of drab colours outside.

We made a list of the in season produce for our area and went to the store to see what was available. We were aiming for 6-8 components, and simply used what we found. Feel free to substitute other ingredients that are available to you. The goal is to create a pretty well balanced meal in a single salad. We like to have one or two starchy vegetables such as beets, sweet potato, carrots, potato, or corn to give the salad some good carbs. The other vegetables help bulk out the salad and provide additional nutrients, but you aren’t limited to the choices we made. Use whatever you like! We used what we could find in season at our local grocer. While we chose to use quail eggs for our protein, this is really up to you. This salad is super flexible and any sort of protein would work well. The dressing is super citrusy, so keep that in mind when choosing a protein. The dressing also has some really great fats, but you could also add olives or avocado or cheese if you felt so inclined. The idea is just to get something crisp and colourful, so let out your creativity. See what we did below!

Seasonal Salad with Carrot and Lemon Dressing (Serves 4)

Dressing:

  • 100 grams carrot, peeled and roughly chopped

  • 25 grams shallot, roughly chopped

  • 5 grams fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

  • 2 Meyer lemons, juiced plus the zest

  • 3 tablespoons olive oil

  • sugar, to taste

  • salt, to taste

Combine carrot, shallot, ginger, lemon juice and zest in a blender and blend until smooth. Add sugar and salt to taste.

Salad:

  • Beets

  • Sweet Potato

  • Brussel Sprouts

  • Quail Eggs

  • Spinach

  • Celery

  • Broccoli

  • Radish

  • Carrot and Lemon Dressing

  • Parsley, for garnish

Peel and slice the beets and sweet potato. Trim the brussel sprouts and cut in half. Pre-heat your grill pan over medium heat for a couple minutes and brush with oil. Lay the vegetables out in a single layer and leave for about 5 minutes before turning. Leave for an additional five minutes, or until cooked through. Remove from heat.

Hard boil the quail eggs. If the eggs are cold, place in cold water and bring to a boil. If the eggs are room temperature, boil the water before placing eggs. Boil for three minutes, turn off the heat, and let eggs sit in the hot water for three minutes. Plunge eggs into an ice bath and leave for two to three minutes. Peel eggs. Slice in half and set aside.

Chop spinach, celery, broccoli, and radish into bite size pieces and arrange each vegetable in long rows on the serving tray. Add the beets, sweet potato, and brussel sprouts in rows as well. Place quail egg halves on top.

Spoon carrot and lemon dressing across the top of the salad. Sprinkle parsley on top of the dressing and serve.

Blood Orange Vodka Spritzer

Blood Orange Vodka Spritzer (Inspired by the Moscow Mule)

I was thinking about the Moscow Mule the other day. It’s a simple cocktail - vodka, ginger beer, lime juice, and simple syrup to taste, over ice. It’s a delicious and refreshing cocktail with just a little bit of bite. I’m a fan, and yet I wanted to make something a little more challenging to the palate and a little more fun. We’re in late winter and that brings a smattering of citrus fruits into season: sumo oranges, tangerines, meyer lemons, grapefruit, blood oranges, and more. I decided that I’d bring in some of these tasty, in season fruits to the forefront of a cocktail inspired by the Moscow Mule. Be aware: you’ll have to think ahead to make this cocktail as the simple syrup is homemade and needs to cool before you can use it!

Blood Orange Vodka Spritzer

Ingredients for Cocktail:

  • 2oz blood orange simple syrup 

  • 2oz vodka

  • 1/2 oz lemon juice (for cocktail)

  • 4oz ginger beer 

  • Salt & Lemon juice (to rim the glass)

Ingredients for Simple Syrup:

  • 4 blood oranges

  • 2 meyer lemons

  • 2 cups sugar

  • 1 1/2 cups water


Instructions for Simple Syrup:

  1. Juice 4 blood oranges into a medium sized sauce pot

    1. This simple syrup recipe will make about 20oz of finished product, so feel free to scale down as needed. We have flip top bottles that we use to store the extra syrup that wasn’t used immediately. If you have extra - refrigerate!

  2. Juice 2 meyer lemons into the same sauce pot

    1. Meyer lemons are sweeter than regular lemons but don’t worry if you can’t find the meyers! Regular lemons will work; your cocktail will just end up a little more tart and a little more bitter.

  3. Add 2 cups of white granulated sugar to the sauce pot

  4. Add 1 and 1/2 cups of water to the sauce pot

    1. Normally simple syrup calls for equal parts sugar and water, however the juice of the citrus fruits throws off this balance. It’s best to reduce the amount of water for this, as well as to strengthen the taste of the fruit in the finished product.

  5. Stir the ingredients together and then heat on medium until boiling

  6. Boil for 3-4 minutes to thicken the syrup and then set aside to cool completely


Instructions for Cocktail:

  1. Take a tumbler and rim the edge with salt

    • If you’ve never rimmed a glass it’s not too hard - dip the top of the glass in lemon juice or water (we chose lemon juice!) and then roll it in a bit of salt. In our house we use pink sea salt as it’s slightly less bitter that iodized salt, but as we’ve said before - substitute as you see fit.

    • Fill the tumbler with ice to the very top

  2. Toss in 2oz of vodka

    • We prefer New Amsterdam 80 proof vodka as it’s very affordable and at the same time very drinkable. New Amsterdam has a couple choices: 80 proof, 100 proof, and gluten free - any will work, but be warned that the 100 proof may throw off your flavors and overpower the blood orange.

  3. Pour in 2oz of blood orange simple syrup

    • Be warned: this is a VERY sweet syrup.

  4. Throw in 1/2oz of lemon juice

    • We chose to go the easy way and used bottled lemon juice. You can absolutely juice another meyer lemon if you’re feeling up to it and don’t mind getting a little sticky again. Expect a significantly sweeter cocktail if you do go with the meyer.

  5. Add 4oz of ginger beer

    • This is ginger BEER, not ginger ALE. There is a significant taste difference between the two and you will absolutely be disappointed with this drink if you chose ginger ale. We like to use Reed’s All Natural Ginger Beer in the Strongest variation or Maine Root’s Spicy Ginger Brew. Both are delicious choices: the Maine Root is a little more earthy and feels unfiltered whereas the Reed’s is sweeter and a little thinner. Use your favorite ginger beer!

  6. Stir together and enjoy!

    • Garnish with a meyer lemon wedge if you’re feeling fancy ;)

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15 Minutes

Real Moment: I am very unmotivated right now. I was unmotivated yesterday, and I’ll probably be unmotivated tomorrow.

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The world has felt like total chaos for the last year, and frankly, 2021 hasn’t felt any better. The pandemic has hit the world harder than anticipated and lasted longer than any of us hoped. Since I had already been working from home, I was thankful to still be employed and figured the only changes I would really have to deal with would be changes to my social life. I counted myself lucky to be living with someone I adore, and we would support local restaurants by ordering in as opposed visiting them personally. Social distance was a pretty easy thing for me to deal with as well since I’d been used to being at home and not having to interact with many people. I already shopped during non-peak hours, and if I wasn’t comfortable going to a store I could probably live without it - anything super necessary could be ordered online or grabbed at curbside. What I wasn’t prepared for was how long this would continue. The longer I spent in isolation, no matter how many creature comforts, was starting to drag on, and the worldwide changes began taking a toll financially. Couple financial difficulties with the prolonged inability to feed my extroverted nature effectively, and I was in a deep slump which resulted in zero motivation.

Now I’m in 2021, and this is the busiest time of the year for me at work. I feel like I have motivation one day and can’t get out of bed the next. It’s really screwing with my brain. Last month, I laid out some goals, and I feel like I made some great progress. That said, that progress was gained in small steps on days where I didn’t feel motivated at all. This isn’t about just “powering through” a slump. That isn’t in line with my intentions for this year. Instead, I decided to figure out how best to utilise the small amounts of motivation I could muster. Here’s how I did it.

When I did feel a sense of motivation, especially early on, I took the time to “dream big.” I wrote down the things I wanted to do if I had all the time and energy in the world. What I found was that a lot of things fell into only two or three pretty broad categories. Then I looked at my lists and my environment and asked myself, “What will make doing anything (no matter how small) on this list manageable?” The answer to that question was what I would choose to do.

For example, I wanted to close out the books for work. It’s a large task that was making me feel overwhelmed by the amount of work that needed to be done, and I couldn’t make myself sit down and do it. So I looked at my office and realised that my office was messy and felt disorganised which did not help my ability to get things done. Even if I couldn’t tackle the paperwork right that second, I COULD tackle the mess of papers, supplies, mail, etc that had piled up in my office. I can do 15 minutes of anything, so I set a timer and started. When the timer went off, the task wasn’t done, but I still felt like I could keep going, so I set the timer again. After an hour, my office as well as the space connected to it was tidy and organised. If I had allotted an hour at the beginning, I wouldn’t have started. That felt too big. By giving myself a time frame I could mentally handle, I was able to feel small victories and actually complete the task while I still had motivation to do so. What I found at the end was that having a tidy office and connecting space (my office connects to our library) made me feel less overwhelmed about the work I needed to get done. I could then sit down and actually tackle some of the things on my to do list. Success!!

I acknowledge that I work best when my environment is tidy. After that particular exercise, I made it a point to actually take the time at the end of the day to tidy my workspace. It’s two-fold: I get to create an end of the day ritual where I close the door on my day job and I delineated a space where work occurs. I can’t see past the library doorway and see anything else that needs to be done around the house. Is the kitchen a mess? Absolutely. Is laundry piled up in my bathroom? Yes. I can’t see it though. I had already made a list of things that need to be done, and even though I didn’t have enough spoons to do it right then, at least it was out of my head.

Timers have literally made my progress happen this year. I’ve been doing the same thing whenever I feel overwhelmed. When I walk into a space that makes me feel overwhelmed the first thing I ask myself is “What can I do right now that will make me feel less overwhelmed?” Sometimes the answer is “Walk out of the room,” and that’s okay. I’ll go check on the plants, or play with the puppies, or lay down. I set a timer and figure out if I can get something done on my to-do list. A lot of what runs through my head these days is “I can do 15 minutes of anything.” I’m okay with that. Fifteen minutes isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but lots of 15-minute intervals can make a lot of things happen. You’d be surprised by how much happens in 15 minutes. It’s a victory and an accomplishment. All those little moments add up.

I still have days where I can’t make myself do much of anything. That’s okay. I give myself grace to be messy and know that there is still tomorrow. So really, I’m unmotivated today. I was unmotivated yesterday, and I’ll probably be unmotivated tomorrow. But I have fifteen minutes and a timer.

What are the things that help you get through your day? How do you handle your moments of motivation?

Garden Time!

We really love vegetables in our house. As nice as it is to walk into a store and see bins of fresh produce, nothing beats vegetables fresh from the garden. We aren’t lucky enough to live in a place where we can plant a garden directly into the ground. After some deliberation, we decided that container gardening is the way we want to go. It gives us some pretty solid flexibility, and you’d be surprised by how large a harvest you can get from container gardening. The other nice part about container gardening is that we have the ability to move the containers when the weather gets unpredictable (Texas weather anyone?).

March is one of my favourite months because we start the garden. We both love English peas, but the season for them in Texas is really short. We usually plant these in late February and then plant anything else we’re interested in later in the season. The icy weather this year changed our plans a bit, and instead of just planting the peas, we decided to plan and plant everything in one go.

We are lucky enough to live in an area that has a lot of resources available on plants that do well in our area as well as in containers, so that took out a lot of the guesswork and helped us get a handle on how to prioritise things. Many years ago I was able to get a vertical garden in an end of season sale, and this is the first year we’re going to be using it. We’ve also been blessed with various containers over the years, and this year we finally rounded out our collection with a series of lightweight plastic planters. As nice as the heavier duty terracotta planters are, we decided that those were prohibitively heavy once full, so compromising on material became important.

This year we have decided to have more plants than usual. We sat down and really took a look at how we eat, what we eat, and what we want to eat in order to decide how to prioritise what we wanted to plant. As nice as it is to dream about a huge garden so full of produce that we wouldn’t have to purchase anymore produce in a grocer, it’s simply not practical given our lifestyle and living space. We have tried to capture this feeling with the vertical garden. It has four herbs we use regularly as well as a series of greens and other small vegetables we like to use in salads. We hope that we will have a mini-wall of ready made salad stuff to use through the spring and summer seasons. Ultimately, it’s an experiment because of how the vertical garden holds moisture.

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This is where we planted the peas - the plant we’re most excited for right now. We have had good luck with seeds we can get in our local shops, and while the idea of a trellis is lovely, we like using tomato cages to support the vines. It gives a lot of space for the peas to climb, and since our planter is round we can get more plants around the cage itself. We will get to use them for actual tomato plants later. The big cages are really sturdy too, so we’re hoping to use them for more than just the peas this year.

Since these are the largest planters we own, it makes sense to talk about how we choose the soil we use in our containers since there are so many options out there. We use pre-mixed soil bags for the smaller planters inside our house or for succulents. For the container garden, we choose to make our own soil mixture. We use a combination of garden soil, peat moss, and manure for our baseline. We have a compost pile, and hope to use that next year in lieu of commercial fertilizers. We used about 50% peat moss, 35% garden soil, and 15% manure. As long as we mix it well, we’ve had really good luck with our plants. We’ve never had to completely refill the large planters either. This year, we knew we were adding at least six more medium sized planters, so we bought more soil. I took some of the newer mix and mixed it in with what we already had and it should be just fine.

We have four square planters as well as two larger terracotta planters this year, though they are a bit more experimental for us. We have never grown any type of pepper, and we wanted to try that this year. We have planted a cayenne plant and a serrano chili plant in each of the planters. We’re hoping that by giving each one their own container that they will get fairly large and we will have plenty of peppers. The other container houses the onion we transplanted from a smaller container. It’s an onion that sprouted, and we put it in a pot. It gives the BEST shoots, and we use it in place of green onions often. We also found cowpea seeds for the first time in our local shop. We are particularly excited about this because we really enjoy them even though we don’t often purchase them from the grocer. Cowpeas are a type of very long bean with a more robust flavour than typical green beans most people are familiar with. They vine in a similar fashion to other beans, so we’re using the same tomato cage system we use with the other peas. Wish us luck!

That’s basically it! The vertical garden and square planters have a long season where we live, so we’re hoping to have vegetables from both until fall. The season for the peas and cowpeas is really short and ends just as the heat really starts to set in here. Once their season ends we’ll add several tomato plants and some sweet pepper plants as well as experiment with some tiny watermelons. The plants bring us a lot of joy and contentment. The process of getting everything into the planters is a lot of work, but honestly made a really horrid week a lot easier to cope with. There isn’t a lot to do right now but wait for things to sprout, and that’s really nice. I know that when my day is hard taking time to check on the plants gives me a nice bit of reprieve, and hopefully we’ll get a decent crop of edible things. Even if we don’t though, having somewhere to go and decompress is so valuable. Besides, having the tiny creatures around to check out the plants and our work makes things better too.

I encourage you to find the small things that help you breathe this week.

The Importance of Recognizing One’s Love Language in Regard to Resolving Conflict

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So I’m struggling with self confidence right now because I work with a woman who makes me feel like I did when I was abused. She’s nice and funny sometimes but most of the time she makes me feel small and stupid. I was giving her the benefit of the doubt for a long while because maybe she was just having a bad time. Maybe she was just a mean person who didn’t understand how her demeanor affected people. Maybe she genuinely meant well but has no awareness of her tone and speech. Yesterday she actively gaslit me and that’s it. I can’t ignore the fact that she’s making me feel small and stupid, and that the behavior I’m starting to exhibit is what happened when I was with two of my exes, where I felt like nothing was good enough and I was dumb and incapable of doing the right thing and that I had to constantly defer to my abuser for any sort of affirmation or confirmation that I’m good enough.

I will not rely on her “approval” to make my days good. I am good, I am strong, I am intelligent, and I’m capable of learning how to do all the varied tasks that I’m expected to do here at this company. 

I miss having people reaffirm that I’m good enough. I’m realizing that words of affirmation may be my strongest love language. I gain a lot of warm comfort from people telling me that I’m doing a good job, that I’m a good person, that I’m kind and thoughtful, that I’m capable and competent. I enjoy being told how attractive I am, both physically and mentally. I like having my hard work acknowledged and being recognized for my efforts. 

I shouldn’t be afraid to ask for words of affirmation. I know that it’s not the strongest love language that the people around me demonstrate but there’s nothing wrong with asking for help, and that’s what I need right now. I’ve noticed that recently I’ve been saying things about myself that aren’t true, like my opinions are dumb and invalidating activities that I enjoy. That’s not fair to myself. I’m worried that the experiences I’m having at my place of employment are undermining all the hard work I’ve done over the years to feel confident in myself and my abilities. I’m worried that the experiences I’m having are undermining the difficult work I’ve done to love the physical vessel that my soul resides in. This summer I could look at my naked body and my naked face and feel attractive and feel love toward myself and I’ve shrunk away from that this last month. That’s not what I want. 

This is definitely not what I anticipated coming into this employment position. I knew that learning new things and starting a new job would be difficult as I have perfectionist tendencies, but this is a whole new level of frustration. I am learning how to do marketing. I am learning how to do social media for a small business. I am learning how to deal with online security and teaching others how to do so as well while I learn. I am expected to coach the sales team on how to use social media effectively for B2B sales. Who am I to be able to teach anyone how to use social media effectively? Like… I get it. I’m a millennial which makes me a tech native. I’m relatively comfortable with social media, and I’m working on this blog with Miayah so I have a baseline understanding of how to use social media but this is most certainly not what I have studied in the past. That being said, I’m not getting any encouragement at work. No one has recognized how difficult this has been to make happen from the ground up. I’ve done project management before but this is a whole new level of frustration because no one talks to anyone around here but honestly I don’t blame them. Every time you try to talk to my difficult coworker, and she’s the one everyone has to talk to, it’s a super unpleasant experience. Of course no one wants to communicate. Who wants to feel small and stupid?

I am angry and frustrated and these are valid emotions, however I need to make sure that I’m not turning them against myself. It’s easy to turn them against myself because of old habits established during times I was abused, a time when I always asked “what did I do wrong here, what can I do better?” when in fact it was my abuser that gaslit me into thinking that I was the one who’d caused issues. 

I am still new here. These are my first projects and the first time I’ve interacted with these guidelines on how to enter things into an accounting system that I’m absolutely not familiar with. Any reasonable person would be patient and kind while giving guidance on how to navigate these unfamiliar waters but instead I’m getting condescension and annoyance.

So what’s the answer? What to do in this situation?

  • First: Accept that my coworker is not going to change. This eliminates the desire to have an all out verbal brawl with her. Being vulnerable with her is a ticket to being ground down further. Attempting to appeal to her humanity is a waste of breath. Accept that no matter how well or poorly I’m doing I’ll be subjected to the same sort of abuse and belittling; this will permit me to let go of finding an action plan that involves attempting to change another person. As a woman it’s easy to fall into the trap of wanting to be the fixer, the mediator, the one that has to change to make things go smoothly and wasting my energy to do that is futile.

  • Second: Affirm with myself that I’m good, I’m smart, I’m attractive, I’m compelling, and I matter. Remind myself that I don’t need external validation to exist as a whole and strong human being. Write down affirmations that reinforce these facts and say them daily. 

  • Third: Reach out to friends and family for help and encouragement. I’ve recognized that I need words of affirmation much more frequently than I’m currently receiving them, and telling the people that love you what you need is 100% acceptable. People that care for you want to make you feel good. People that are in your inner circle will do whatever they can to lift you up and empower you. Asking for help is not a detriment to my life, it is in fact a way to bolster my existence. 

  • Fourth: Find an appropriate place to vent as I recognize my anger. It’s not helpful to hold onto the fury that I feel or try to squish it down so I don’t feel it. I must sit with my emotions and feel the anger completely. Where is it in my body? Are my shoulders tense? Is my back hunched? Are my fists clenched? What can I relax as I recognize the tension? Is the anger helping me accomplish anything? Talk this out with a therapist, a close friend, or a trusted family member. Don’t burden myself with holding onto the anger and stewing. Be aware that if I am venting to a family member or friend I should ask first if they have the capacity to speak about an emotionally charged situation and if they do, clarify whether I want advice or for them just to listen. This will help clear up any misunderstandings I could potentially have during the conversation with my loved one. 

  • Fifth: Engage in an activity outside of work that permits me to completely forget about the daily conflicts. Tap into a hobby, like drawing, that makes me feel powerful and good. Watch the stars and reconnect with nature. Have a cup of tea and think about what puppies would look like if they had rainbow tails. My work isn’t my identity or life. I work to live, not live to work. This coworker has nothing to do with the fulfillment and enjoyment I get from the rest of my life outside of the 40 hours sitting at a desk. 

With the five steps I’ve laid out here I feel confident that I’ll be able to implement my own advice this month and come out on the other side happier and more fulfilled. 

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When you feel overwhelmed, what love language do you tap into to recover? Do any of these steps resonate with you?

On Needs

Knowing What You Want

“When our thoughts are unsettled and our inner world is in a muddle, we may sharpen our wits and try to recognize the invisible edges of our fractured stance. If we seek to figure out what our life story is all about, we may be able to put the missing pieces in place and identify what is driving us, what we are actually up to and why we are running like mad dogs, sometimes. (“On a doggy day”)”
— Erik Pevernagie

In this day and age many of us are feeling unsettled, myself included. There’s a lot going on in the world that we have little to no control over: from military strikes, to the ever ongoing pandemic, to disruption of our relationships caused by distinct differences in values and beliefs. It’s easy to get caught up in the distress of it all and forget that this kind of low lying background static can affect our ability to live a purposeful life - one where we make a conscious effort to take care of ourselves. In light of how my intention this year is to work on taking better care of myself, I am choosing to take the time to breathe and ask myself: what do I need at this moment? 

“He isn’t a codebase; he is a human being, and bugs are harder to spot and fix in humans. You can’t just deploy a fix immediately. It takes time to identify the problem and foster and grow a change.”
— Jono Bacon

How does one recognize what is needed mentally and emotionally? It seems like a simple question but it’s deceptively difficult. Our needs are complex and seemingly never ending day-to-day: how do we feed ourselves? How do we pay our bills and maintain financial security? How do we love others and find love for the self? How do we achieve the goals we set out for ourselves? A grounding place to start is to define the types of needs that exist across the spectrum of humankind.

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Have you heard of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? If you’re not familiar it’s a theory in psychology, put forward by Abraham Maslow, that proposes that all human motivations can be ranked in terms of a person’s needs that lead to growth. The base of the pyramid is “physiological needs”: shelter, food, water, rest, health, and other things the physical container our souls inhabit need to survive. The next layer of the pyramid, which is pursued once the base needs are met at least partially, is “safety.” This includes things like emotional security, personal security, and financial security. Once these are met, the next layer is composed of “love needs.” This can look like family, friendship, and intimacy needs. Don’t be misled - intimacy doesn’t have to be physical. This could also be the ability to be vulnerable with others. “Esteem needs” is the next tier up: this can be both having the respect of others as well as respect for yourself. At the top of the pyramid is “self-actualization.”  This can look like utilizing and developing talents and abilities as well as pursuing goals. 

Examining each of these layers in turn gives us a good jumping off point in which we can categorize our own desires using this organizational system. Take a moment and think to yourself: what are my physiological needs today? Am I hungry? Do I need water? What are my love needs today? Do I need a hug? Do I need to have a conversation and be vulnerable with someone that I care about? Visiting these questions on a regular basis can help you prioritize your self care and create a game plan with which you can address immediate issues in your life. 

Something I practice, when I identify which layer needs attention, is making a list of actionable steps on how to address this particular need. I make these steps as specific and small as possible. It’s no good to say “I’m going to make dinner at home every night,”  both a physiological and safety need, as a single step. Instead, write out each little piece - “Make a meal plan.” “Make a comprehensive grocery list.” “Go to this particular grocery store on this date.” “Have dinner with my loved one so I’m encouraged to actually make food.” These are actionable steps to address at the base a physiological need.  It’s also very satisfying to cross off each little step (mentally or written out physically). It gives a great sense of accomplishment and, as evidenced by the ideas I listed above, can lead to more than just one need being met. This list making has saved me from a significant amount of strife countless times.

“Acting on our interests refines our understanding of what we are good at and what we value. The experiences we have along the way sometimes introduce us to new values that enhance and enlarge our vision. The lessons we learn through habits of action test our understanding and teach us to identify what matters in our life.”
— Marian Deegan, Relevance: Matter More

What are you missing in your life today? Don’t worry if the answer doesn’t come to you easily or quickly. The ability to engage in self reflection is a learned skill that takes time, effort, and patience to cultivate. Using the hierarchy of needs as a base let your inner voice guide you through the troubles you’re currently experiencing. Gently identify which layers need attention and set a plan for yourself that will get you to a place of satisfaction. It doesn’t have to be perfect or permanent, just enough to make your life a little less tumultuous today. Find a solution for yourself that will permit you to grow, even if it’s baby steps and tiny sprouts.

What do you need at this moment? Leave a comment below and let us know what need is on your mind today. How will you address this need step by step?

February Wrap Up

Take a breath. Find a moment of quiet. Revel in your imperfections.

Take a breath. Find a moment of quiet. Revel in your imperfections.

We’re at the end of February, and I’m looking back on my month in light of my intent to feel accomplished. I really like checking on myself monthly to gauge what I’m feeling, what worked, and what didn’t. There are lots of tools out there to help you track stuff like this. Anyone that knows me knows that I am forever going in about 12 directions, and I have found the best way for me to keep my life on track is a paper planner. I have a spread for the month where I have a calendar and my intentions/goals for the month as well as a habit tracker and a monthly wrap up. Today I’m taking peek at my February spread to see how I felt during February.

The first area I wanted to work on was building a morning routine. I gave myself a benchmark of getting dressed, taking my vitamins, and performing general morning ablutions. I did really well on the morning routine bit! Almost every day I got up, got dressed, and performed general morning stuff. This is a HUGE win for me because it really helps me get motivated for the day. The vitamins were really about a 50% rate of success. I hate taking them. I know I need to choose to take them. (Side note: Yes, I am aware that there are a LOT of opinions on taking vitamins. I made this choice in conjunction with my dietician in order to support my own personal recovery process.) The biggest hurdle for me is getting them sorted out so that I have easy access. I’ll keep working on it and hopefully next month is better.

The second area I wanted to deal with was my own workflow. For those of you who don’t know, I work more than one job, and that can feel overwhelming. I love what I do, so this isn’t about being unhappy. It’s a lot to manage, so I struggle with feeling overwhelmed. I feel like I really was able to get a good idea of how my month should flow. I think I have a reasonable spread in my planner to best outline my week. I really feel like this is the area that got the least amount of work. A lot of what I did was to get a lot of the files and documentation I am responsible for organised for the next quarter. I absolutely feel like I’m struggling with motivation, and we’re making some changes in our personal lives that will change how my day flows. In March, I’m hoping to get some really solid time blocks where I designate when I’m going to focus on each job. I’m still figuring out how I want to track that in my planner, but hopefully this will help create a better balance in my day.

The last area I wanted to focus on was building a financial plan. I’m really pleased with my progress in this area! I have a built a better tracking system for regular bills and we have discussed how we want to use the money we have. Things are far from perfect, but I spent a lot of last year kind of coasting along. Having a plan has done wonders for my stress levels and I feel like I have the ability to focus my attention on things that matter to me more. Money is something we need to function in our society, and it’s often a source of stress and contention. By really outlining all the things I was holding in my brain space, I was able to release a lot of the tension. It’s no longer something that I have to constantly think about and that makes my days better.

I really love this way of working with my annual intentions. Last year was rough, and I had a lot to grapple with in January. I am far from feeling totally accomplished in my life, but what matters most to me is that I am taking steps. When you take enough steps, you eventually get to where you want to be. I don’t believe that this intention is something that I will be “done” with at the end of 2021. I think it’s something that I am going to be focusing on for a long time. In years prior I have focused primarily on contentment because I was not content. I really enjoyed sitting with my own contentment in 2020 because it made the feelings of the world burning substantially easier to deal with. I WANT to feel accomplished because it adds to my overall life satisfaction.

It’s important to acknowledge that this is process. I didn’t get anywhere near “completing” the things that I decided to focus on. That’s okay! This intention is something that’s pretty abstract. It’s fluid and changing, and life is still happening. I’m looking for the small wins today. Feeling accomplished is something that is still wrapped up in a lot baggage for me. It brings up old materials with a new face, and I have to figure out how to assimilate all these pieces. I don’t believe that change is something that just happens one day. I believe that it is something that builds slowly over time until you look around and notice that you’re in a different place than you were before. These small accomplishments have given me moments to celebrate. I get to revel in the imperfections. So now, take a breath. Take a moment of quiet. Find the thing you can celebrate. Let’s move forward together.

The Importance of Slowing Down

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Is it possible to fail at an intention? I’m going to say no. Admittedly this month has been a difficult one. I have not treated myself with as much care as I deserve. I have had too much alcohol, too many foods I’m allergic to, stressed too much about work and obligations, subjected myself to an elective surgery, and have tormented myself trying to pick apart a relatively new relationship. I have exhausted myself in a very short amount of time. That being said, this is not like your average, run of the mill new years resolution. This isn’t a “huh, I messed up on this, let’s abandon it and try again next year” sort of thing. An intention is gentle and doesn’t demand perfection, and damn do I need gentle right now. I’m writing this as I’m in a less-than-good mood. I can’t pinpoint exactly what has put me in such a questionable mental space, but it’s a firm reminder that not every day is going to be as expected, as much as I might try. 

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As I sit here eating ginger-heavy congee, drinking rum and coke, and writing this piece, I’m forced to slow down a little to reflect on what got me here. My mind is resisting this reflection and I (childishly) want to stew in my grumpiness but that’s not quite right. I’ve worked hard to become someone in touch with their feelings, who’s aware of what others need, who is willing to sit quietly and listen to the rain as it falls. It is in fact raining at this moment. Why do I resist listening?  

Self reflection is a challenging thing to undertake. By definition self reflection is a form of personal analysis that allows you to bring your life into alignment with what you wish it to be. Like chiropractic care, it takes some unpleasant adjustment to get things back in alignment. Looking back on this month there are a few things that I immediately notice as being out of alignment with what I wish life to be:

  1. When I am confronted with a lot of strife I retreat into my coping mechanisms, both healthy and maladaptive. I lean on friends and enjoy a few too many cocktails. I pour my feelings into a journal, go to therapy, and eat foods that don’t quite agree with my system. The maladaptive coping mechanisms do not align with my idea of caring for myself.

  2. I have resisted laying quietly and healing from my surgery over the last few weeks. I am one that wants to jump into things immediately and push myself to accomplish as much as I can while ignoring the warnings my physical body is communicating to me. 

  3. Relationships, both personal and work-related, are fragile and need to be treated with care. I’ve let my work relationships take over more of my mind and my worries than what is warranted. There’s only so much you can do to be appreciated in the workplace; at some point it’s up to the other person to decide how they’re going to treat you. You can’t fix every interaction or please everyone, despite your best efforts.

It’s a work in progress and as we say around here, we’re trying to find contentment by sacrificing perfection. I’m definitely not perfect and that’s ok. No one is perfect and expecting perfection in one’s self is harmful at best. As I stated in my first post this month: “I hope that you can look inside yourself, find out what your spirit needs right now, and then find the strength to ask for it. Remember to be gentle with yourself.”  Now is the time to ask for what my spirit needs and for me, it’s currently patience and physical healing. I’ve been known to push too hard after an ailment (as evidenced by the fatigue I feel after my surgery) and I am the best person to give my spirit what it needs: rest. Patience and physical healing come together in rest.

““Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.””
— John Lubbock, The Use Of Life
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It’s ok to rest. Something we’re constantly pushed into by modern society is the idea that rest is wasteful and that we must be continuously striving to achieve something that will garner profit. Rest is NOT wasteful. Rest is not a luxury or an indulgence, it’s essential to our existence. Rest can look like different things to each of us; rest for you could be an audiobook romance under the stars, maybe it’s binge watching a new kdrama, maybe it’s skateboarding in a local park, it could even be laying in bed wrapped up like a cocoon watching TikToks. Right now my rest looks like situating my body in a way that doesn’t agitate my surgery site, turning on a fluffy feel good show, and drinking warm tea. Whatever form your rest takes, relax into it. You and I deserve that much needed rest despite the constant droning of society’s push to produce. You are not your labor. 

In closing, I know that many of us were hoping that 2021 would be a complete departure from the unsteadiness of 2020 and what we failed to consider is that just because the first two months of the year have come and gone doesn’t mean all the strife from the year before has magically ended. The new year is a chance for reflection and self change and knowing that we can only control so much. Hopefully you’ve had some time this month to reflect on what you want 2021 to look like for yourself and have been as gentle to yourself as possible. We’re in a marathon right now, the idea of a sprint has come and long gone, and we’re (hopefully) in the last stretch. Pacing yourself is much more important than speed. Rest when needed. 

What does your rest look like today?

The Biayah Hot Toddy

The hot toddy is one of my favorite drinks for the winter season. I know February is still a chilly month for a lot of the country which makes this drink a wonderful choice, even if it isn’t quite so cold here in Texas. It’ll warm up your hands as you hold the mug and warm up your insides with a generous amount of alcohol. We’ve put our own twist on this classic drink, incorporating ginger tea and cognac in place of water and whiskey. I highly recommend making a full pot of tea and drinking these cocktails with your chosen family and friends.

The Biayah Hot Toddy

Ingredients:

  • ¾ Cup of Hot Ginger Tea

  • 2 oz Cognac

  • 3 tsp Raw Honey

  • 2 tsp Lemon Juice

  • Dash of Cinnamon

  • Dash of Nutmeg

Instructions:

  1. Brew ginger tea and separate ~¾ cup into a teacup. 

    1. We use Rishi loose leaf ginger turmeric tea and generally brew a full pot at a time. I highly recommend steeping for a little longer than the instructions say and use about half the amount of tea as instructed by Rishi which will result in a full bodied tea that has a real texture and can stand up to the lemon juice and honey. If using a tea that’s not Rishi brew as you see fit. We choose to use approximately half of the recommended tea because the leaves expand like crazy!

  2. Add 3 tsp of raw honey. 

    1. I recommend adding the honey before adding the cognac or lemon juice so it can melt all the way into your tea. Organic raw honey gives the drink a little bit of toothsome goodness and can stand up to the cognac very well, however regular honey will do if you don’t have raw. Take liberty to adjust the honey amount once everything is mixed. You’ll ultimately be achieving a honeyed ginger tart flavor; don’t let the honey disappear. 

  3. Add 2 tsp of lemon juice.

    1. Your choice of lemon juice is quite open. I’m a fan of the fancy organic stuff, but don’t let that stop you from indulging if all you have is the squeezy lemon juice from the produce section of the grocery store. This, like the honey, is customizable based on your taste. If you want more tart than sweet, this is your man. Make sure you’ve mixed everything together first before you decide to add any extra.

  4. Add 2 oz of cognac. 

    1. Again, your choice of cognac here is fairly open. I don’t recommend bottom shelf liquor as the taste will overwhelm the delicate flavor of the ginger tea. We typically use Frapin Cognac Grande Champagne V.S.O.P. which is a good mid-range cognac that won’t break the bank, but is smooth enough to blend nicely into the drink.

  5. Add a dash of cinnamon and a dash of nutmeg.

    1. The key here is “less is more.” You don’t want to be drinking a gritty cocktail so don’t go crazy here. Just a smidge of cinnamon and a smidge of nutmeg, then stir well.

  6. Taste and adjust as needed with extra lemon or honey, then enjoy while cozied up in a blanket!

Beef and Kabocha Curry

Food is everywhere we look. A lot of times I feel overwhelmed by choices. I mean, it’s so easy to just open an app and order whatever type of food you want. It arrives with little to no fan fare. I don’t have to plan or think about what we may or may not have available to cook at home. That said, eating at home is a way to honour both of our intentions for the year.

I really like eating seasonally. It’s often not something people think about since modern day grocers provide access to berries in winter and apples at the height of summer. Even though they’re always available, in season produce is cheaper than out of season produce. That makes me happy.

If you know me, you know that I don’t really enjoy cooking, and I can’t be bothered to follow a recipe closely. I tend to call myself a “method” person rather than a recipe person. What that ultimately means is that I tend to decide that I want some sort of food or want to use some specific ingredient and then I skim recipes to get an idea of what I can make. I do a lot by feel and have difficulty giving recipes.

When we were planning out this recipe, we decided we wanted to focus on a seasonal item. We both adore leeks, and they’re in season. Double win! It’s still technically winter where we are, and even if it’s not terribly cold a curry seemed like a nice idea. Armed with the idea of a curry, we headed to a local grocer to see what other lovely things we could find.

We found some lovely leeks and we found some small kabochas! If you’ve never had kabocha, it’s a type of winter squash that tastes a lot like a sugaring pumpkin. It’s firm, and holds up well to longer cooking times, so it was perfect to add in this curry. One of our favourite cookbooks is called Curry Bible by Jacki Passmore. We adapted one of the recipes found there to make this. You can check out the gallery below if you want to see our step by step process.

Beef and Kabocha Curry: Serves 4-6

  • 2 leeks

  • 3 tablespoons ghee, oil, or butter

  • 3 cloves garlic, crushed

  • 2 teaspoons ground ginger

  • 500-700g beef

  • 1 teaspoon ground turmeric

  • 2 teaspoons garam masala

  • 1/2 teaspoon crushed fennel seeds

  • 700ml chicken stock

  • 450g kabocha, peeled and cubed

  • 3 Serrano chilies, sliced

  • 1 bay leaf

  • salt and black pepper

  • Chopped fresh cilantro or mint leaves

Finely slice one leek, and chop the remainder very finely. Fry the sliced leek in the ghee, oil, or butter over medium heat, until very well coloured, stirring frequently. Lift out and set aside.

Add the chopped leek and garlic to the pan and fry until lightly browned. Add the beef, ginger, turmeric, garam masala, fennel seeds, and bay leaf with enough chicken stock to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for about 30 minutes, until the beef is almost tender.

Add the pumpkin, 2 of the chilies, bay leaf, and salt and pepper to taste, and simmer until beef reached desired tenderness. Drop in the remainder of the chilies, fried leek slices, and garnish of choice, then stir through. Check and adjust seasonings, and stir in cilantro or mint before serving.

Adapted from: Curry Bible, by Jacki Passmore

What does it mean to treat yourself well?

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Once tragedy hits I find myself anticipating the next incident before it happens, even before there’s a hint of trouble. My anxiety spikes and every small pain is suddenly a potential thunderstorm waiting in the wings. One of my best friends died recently and it hurt more than I could have imagined. My mother has been in the hospital four times in the last six months. My sister was in a bad car accident where her car was totaled. In the midst of a global pandemic, civil unrest running rampant, a harrowing presidential transition of power…. The personal concerns become nearly unbearable. It’s times like these that make me wish for a sliver of peace and the ability to forget about all responsibilities and relationships - possibly by abandoning my life and living in a cave - a counter-intuitive reaction when really I should lean on my support network. I have an excellent support network, composed of friends, family, and chosen family, that is available to me at any and all times. I am well loved by many and yet I am reluctant to lean on anyone in times of crisis. This has led me to ask myself - am I treating myself well in exercising this behavior? Do I value myself less than others? Do my needs mean less?

I’ve done deeply personal work these last few years - developing my sense of self worth. For many years I sincerely regarded myself as a flaming garbage heap of a person, useless to anyone and everyone. To be honest, this work toward self actualization is exhausting and intense however it’s proved to be 100% worth it. Through therapy, multiple therapists, and extensive introspection I have found that I have inherent worth as an independent being and that worth is not tied to what I can do for other people. An easy way to test this in yourself is to ask yourself what your best traits are; if you list things that are acts of service it’s time to step back and think about what you are rather than what you can do for others. My feelings about myself: I’m funny, I’m creative, I’m a great dog mom, I’m passionate about social justice, and I have a biting, acerbic wit when my guard is down. Hell, I’m a sexy bitch that commands respect and admiration. These feelings about myself are hard won through years of targeted work and therapy. When faced with the above questions: “Do I value myself less than others? Do my needs mean less?”  the answer is clearly an emphatic NO. 

The paramount question - “am I treating myself well?” - is what I really want to focus on at this moment in time. I have established that I have worth, but what does that really mean in terms of how my day to day life functions?  How do I honor myself? How do I show my inner spirit that I value my existence? An excellent opportunity to dive into this presented itself in early January, brought to light by Miayah and a car ride discussion regarding New Years resolutions. In recent years I’ve found resolutions set on January 1st to end up being nothing but disappointments - things that I badger myself about and will ultimately fail at accomplishing because the goals are either too big (with no smaller steps on how to get there) or don’t align with the direction life takes me - hence I have stopped setting them. It turns out that Miayah also doesn’t set resolutions - she sets intentions. This sounded very curious to me; what did she mean by “intentions?” What does an intention look like?  We talked for a while and I came to understand that an intention is a positive and loose guideline to live by for whatever time you set. This can be something like “I’ll work to be a more functional adult-person” or “I’ll become someone with more of a green thumb” or “I will be more disciplined with my finances.” 

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After giving the concept of intentions some thought I came up with this: I will set my intention for 2021 as “I will treat myself with more care.” It’s loose, it’s gentle, it’s full of love for myself. It can mean so many different things: eating better, adhering to an improved sleep schedule, spending more time doing things I love that enrich my life, making art at my own pace, finding time to build new relationships, taking personal time when I need it, and even leaning on my support network instead of roughing it by myself. I am giving myself permission to be kind and soft with my spirit and body, despite the world presenting challenges over and over during this volatile period. Looking at the experiences this last year has brought - death, hospitalizations, accidents, the pandemic, dire and expensive insurance problems (a distinctly american issue), mounting debt, and a rising sense of fear in the nation - giving myself permission to be soft is a great and valuable gift. I am worth treating with care and compassion and the best person to give me that care is myself. No one else can be responsible for my happiness and well being. I do not have a life coach or a personal trainer or someone that I can shift responsibility onto, and even if those things were available to me, the only person who truly knows what care looks like to me is myself. I am responsible for my own care and part of that care is leaning on others to support me in my struggles and successes. Let others celebrate the wins with you! Let others be a shoulder to cry on! Don’t force yourself to be alone and miserable when caring for yourself is available in the form of a chosen family. 

I’m looking forward to what this year will bring. I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to say that when I started writing this entry. The mercurial temperament of 2020 has affected us all in different and profound ways, and has made finding bits of hope difficult at best. I strongly feel that bringing one’s focus back to one’s self is healing and necessary today. I’m grateful that I have the opportunity to care for myself in this way, and that I have others in my life that can bolster my spirit and determination. I hope that you can look inside yourself, find out what your spirit needs right now, and then find the strength to ask for it. Remember to be gentle with yourself. I’m going to treat myself with more care and compassion.

What do you want for yourself this year?

XOXO, Becky <3

My Annual Intention

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During January, I set my intentions for the year. For years, my intention has been “To Be Content.” I feel like I have reached a place where that is no longer something I have to strive for. At the risk of sounding just like everyone else, 2020 was a strange year. I found that even though I was largely content, I didn’t really feel like a “real adult.” Yeah. I really, really had to sit with that. There was journaling. A LOT of journaling.

What it ultimately boiled down to was this: while I feel very content with who I am, 2020 left me feeling less capable. Let me explain.

In late 2015, I entered an eating recovery program. All the issues that I had spent years keeping under wraps reared their ugly heads when I was most vulnerable after a year of massive loss and change, and I imploded spectacularly. The story is long and messy, but the salient points are this:

  • For the first time in my life I was forced to really look at the material I carried. I could no longer turn a blind eye to the things I felt.

  • My way wasn’t working. Setting aside my feelings put me in a place where I was not functioning at all.

  • I learned a lot of about feelings – how they feel in the body and how they affect what I can and can’t do. Feelings, even when ignored, do not simply go away. They sit in the body and can fester when not addressed. I had years of repressed feelings that needed to be acknowledged, prioritized, and addressed.

My choice to ignore everything resulted in engaging behaviours designed to mask the responses to those feelings. I needed to take steps to recover from the unhealthy behaviours. I do mean this in the most literal sense. The first priority was to re-learn how to eat food in a healthy way. Since my most prominent nemesis was food, I had to accept that it would also evoke feelings. I was left feeling like a completely incompetent human. My brain kept repeating, “You’re a grown woman, and yet you are so incompetent that you can’t even feed yourself well enough to stay alive.” The reality was that I was competent. I still had a job. I still had relationships. I was still doing life things. It didn’t change that I had a lot of grief and pain that I had chosen to ignore, and in order to stop feeling those emotions; I used my relationship with food to numb the feels. I decided that slogging through all the bits and pieces was the only way to keep moving forward.

I worked through the most pressing problem (food) in a very supported environment, and I was released fully to outpatient in 2016. I left with more skills than I started with, and continued to work on things. At this point, everything centered on getting myself to a place where food felt neutral and I could address feels as they came. I stayed in that place for years. What it meant to the mantra in my head was that I was working to re-learn what it meant to be in a place I deemed “okay.” Yes, I know that sounds like a “barely acceptable” place, but really, it meant that I had faced my nemesis head on, and now it wasn’t some awful monster anymore. It meant that feelings were no longer this terrifying nebulous blob of pain and suffering. That was meaningful, and still something I was never sure I would achieve.

Fast forward to 2020. I was starting to feel really stable and more like myself. The pandemic rolled around, and still, I was feeling “okay” and “content.” Sure, things were different, and that was okay. It dawned on me that I was in the place where things could come and I could roll with it. It was the place that I NEVER thought I’d get to.  It was an incredibly liberating feeling. All my annual intentions in years prior had been focused on getting to place where I felt okay and content. I wanted to look at something else in 2021.

It would appear, based on what I just said, that 2020 was a beautiful walk in the park that was all lovely romantic pictures and vintage roses. The reality was that it wasn’t. I struggled with motivation, even though I didn’t think I should have. I struggled with finances. 2020 was messy and really awful, but even with all of that I still felt content with who I am. That was the important piece for me in 2020. Even though I felt content, I also found myself revisiting the feeling of not being a capable adult. Yes, there was a lot of data that indicated that I was a fully capable adult, but again, that doesn’t change the feeling. Yay! Time to grapple with the feelings!

I wrote in my journal a LOT (I feel like this is my theme for this year, oh goodness.), and I focused on how I wanted to approach the idea that I didn’t feel like a capable adult. If I wasn’t feeling like a capable adult, what did I want to feel instead? I started by listing out what things made me feel like I wasn’t capable. Here’s where I landed:

  • 2020 was difficult financially, and I felt like I wasn’t able to stay on top of all my bills.

  • I struggled with staying motivated, and I felt like I was always behind with work.

  • Since I was struggling with motivation, I felt like I wasn’t able to keep the house clean and organized to a “reasonable” level.

As I continued to sit with these ideas, I kept running into my own personal dysons. There are a lot of things that society tells us we “should” be doing, and I was really falling victim to that sort of cultural story. It was apparent that while I proved to be capable, what I was missing was that feeling of accomplishment. That felt like a real light bulb moment! My intention for 2020 is to feel accomplished!

I like to check in with my intentions monthly, so I started writing down all the things that would help me feel like I was accomplished and chose 2-3 for each of the areas I was feeling less than capable about. So here’s what I’m working on this month:

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  • Build a morning routine that includes: getting dressed, taking vitamins, and general morning ablutions

    • This is to help me get motivated for the day so that I can accomplish the things on my to-do list.

  • Build a better workflow to help alleviate the feeling of being overworked and overwhelmed.

    • This is to give me a birds eye view of what I need to do each month so that I can maintain the feeling of accomplishment throughout the month.

  • Build a financial plan with due dates and regular amounts due.

    • This is to allow me check things off so that I don’t feel like I’m scrambling each paycheck.

At the end of the month, I’ll check in and see what worked and what didn’t. What are you working on this month?

XOXO,

Miayah

On Resolutions and Intentions

January seems to be the time for resolutions. I’ve never been fond of resolutions of any kind because I often feel that people don’t really have a good sense of who they are when they set them. I’ve set all sorts of unrealistic resolutions – you know the ones:

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  • I’m going to get in shape.

  • I’m going to go to the gym every day.

  • I’m only going to eat “good” foods.

  • I’m going to have a really clean house all the time.

  • I’m going to write a book.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those resolutions, and they’re all great things. Why is it that we often start with the best intentions, and then suddenly burn out when March rolls around? I think the answer is two-fold. We choose resolutions that society tells us are important, and we ignore the reasons why we have not met those societal expectations previously.

Personally, setting resolutions has never been a good fit for me, and I’ve always ended up feeling like a failure as soon as burn out begins. Over the years, my greatest successes with life changes began when I decided that I wanted to feel differently than I did at that moment in time. When I focused on how I wanted to feel rather than what I was “supposed” to be doing, I was able to align my actions with my feelings and make long-lasting adjustments that stop the feelings of failure and promote feelings of success. That feeling became my intent, and hey, January seems to be a time for setting those things.

I’m not going to lie, setting an intention for the year is one of the hardest things I do in my personal journey, but it’s also one of the best, most rewarding things I do too. It’s a process, but then again, isn’t everything?

I usually begin thinking about my year in the beginning of December, and not just about the things I’ve done. I take the time to really focus on how I felt that year. There’s a lot of journaling, otherwise, I can’t remember a thing I think of. I go back through my bullet journal and look at all my habit trackers and journal entries and lists I’ve made about my life. I ask myself some version or combination of the following:

  • What feeling (or feelings) pervaded that year?

  • Are there any feelings that I want to build or maintain?

  • When did I feel the most content? Happy? Sad? Angry? Anxious?

  • Are there any themes to the feelings I’ve had this year?

  • Is there anything that consistently causes me worry, pain, or sadness?

Once I have some answers, I start thinking about how I want to feel in the coming year. The thing that usually tops my list is that I want to feel content. Voila. This is my intention!

Side note: Personally, I’m not interested in feeling happy all the time. When I focus on feeling happy all the time, I end up feeling like I’m failing whenever I experience anything other than happiness.

Now that I have an intention, I start listing out what that means. I don’t try to write out complete sentences. I don’t try to make it all make sense. I just start listing what that looks like to me. Sometimes it’s messy. Other times it’s neat and orderly. Sometimes it’s full of stories that aren’t mine. The point is just to get it all out so I have an idea of what that feeling means to me. Usually, the things I write follow a theme that I can use to help guide me in the next year. By this point, I’m usually wrung out and convinced that setting an intention is the worst thing I could possibly be doing, but hey, I’m this deep in, and I may as well press on.

So now I have this wild list of things that define the feeling(s) I want for the year. I go back and re-read the things I’ve written out and search for the things that jump out to me. Usually, I aim for three things. Three has always been a solid number for me, but not a hard and fast rule. By this point in my process, I’m usually at a point where I have listed real, concrete things I can do to promote the specific feeling I want to evoke, but they’re still really big things. Now, I’ve got the feeling I want, the things that help me feel that way, and narrowed it down to a manageable amount. I’m pretty overwhelmed and need to step away for a while. I like to let all that sit for a while – sometimes a day or two, other times a week or two. The brain will continue to roll over the feeling for a while, and a lot of times, I find that I have deeper insights or complete changes. I give myself a lot of time to feel comfortable with my intent because I like to have my intention be my intention for the entire year.

Once I’m comfortable, I take the time to list out small steps that I can take in a month that help achieve my intention. Sometimes it’s something really small like giving myself permission to indulge in a really nice cup of tea when I’m feeling stressed out at work. Other times it’s something larger like committing to a weekly dinner with a friend. Sometimes, I’m not sure what I will actually be able to do immediately to start promoting my intention, so I jot down ideas that could be workable. I check back on myself at the end of the month to see what promoted that intention and what didn’t. Then I can set other steps in the next month.

The beauty of having a year long intention broken into small monthly bits means that one, the intention is always set in the forefront of my mind, and two, there are a lot of opportunities for success. I know that unless I feel like I’m being successful, I will not have the motivation to continue. I also find that setting an intention in the manner I do lends itself to doing things I can realistically accomplish. This takes the “Miayah Factor,” and places it front and center rather than taking a societal expectation and placing it front and center. There are reasons why I have never had success following through on those resolutions I listed at the beginning. A lot of those reasons have to do with me saying that what I present to society has to look like the glossy magazine covers, and nothing about who I am at my core. I think the key to setting a successful intention lies in knowing who I am and what I want to feel. Once I start doing things that align those two things, I feel complete and whole. That makes me a better friend’ a better partner; a better human. It helps me have enough spoons to do what I want and to be able to be there for others when they have a need. It fills my emotional bank.

What do you want to feel this year?