Journeys Always Start Somewhere

Posted on September 22, 2019January 4, 2020 by Kristine

Thursday night, I had a couple hours before bedtime when I decided to browse Netflix. It was one of those rare nights when I was in the mood to not just have something on TV, but to actually pay attention to it as well, as opposed to having it be background noise for some other redundant activity like laundry.

That’s when I discovered the film Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things by Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus. I remember coming across this movie on Netflix a while ago and making a mental note of it. I figured well now was as good a time as any to watch it. And plus I had a new diamond painting next to my bedside that I thought would be a good side activity should there be any dull parts.

But the thing is: I didn’t even touch the diamond painting.

Living With Intent: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle

I’ve always been familiar with the term minimalist. I remember learning about the minimalist movement in an art history class in college. I’ve always considered it being the subtraction of things, which has a very negative connotation. However, this documentary helped me see that it’s not just the subtraction of things, but the addition of things that provide value and meaning. And that to me is when it clicked. I mean, what is this life we live if it’s not valuable and meaningful?

Get rid of the excess. Live with purpose. Make every action count. All of these short, pithy sayings that I’ve picked up over the years, my interest in stoicism, my meditation practice, just everything all culminated to a head in this film.

I feel like this is what I’ve been missing. It’s not that I ever needed more money or a bigger house or even some kind of faraway spiritual experience. Everything I could ever need is right here and if anything I have too much stuff and too much stimuli.

What I need to do is start editing my life, removing the unnecessary until only the necessary remains.

“Granular Changes Produce Grandiose Results”

I listened to one of their podcasts on my way to work the next morning and one of them emphasized that same sentiment. “Granular changes produce grandiose results,” he said. I’ve heard this same idea repeated over and over again in other situations, most recently in my therapy sessions with my nutritional psychologist.

So I’m going to start working through their 21-Day Journey to Minimalism. I skimmed through it and I feel like it’s no different from what I’ve already been doing, except this time someone else has pioneered the trail and I’m just there to follow the map.

The next thing: this website. This website has always been a place where I document my phases, but recently it’s become a place of consternation, stalled growth, and dissatisfaction. I’m going to make it a place for me to learn and to foster and document progress. I’ve already spent some time on it this weekend, now I just need to continue that progress.

What’s Next?

As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” I’ll continue to document my journey here using their 21-Day roadmap as a guide. Small changes each day, that’s all I’ll do.

Featured Photo:
Image by KatinkavomWolfenmond from Pixabay

Rattlenake Plant: The Disco Plant of the Plant World

Posted on December 18, 2018December 18, 2018 by Kristine

A couple months ago, my friend and work colleague Rhea gave me this rattlesnake plant for my birthday despite repeated warnings from me that I was a plant killer. And like an unplanned pregnancy, I took on the role reluctantly and kept the darn thing. Also it was a pretty plant and my desk at work was bare, except for a wedding photo and a coffee mug that needed to be cleaned out 3 weeks prior.

This is what Gladys looked like when I first got her. Yeah, I’m calling her Gladys now.

Fast forward to December, Gladys is thriving much to my surprise. A lot of gardening sites state that rattlesnake plants require medium to low light and in fact will actually burn in direct sunlight. This is perfect since I sit about 5 feet away from the nearest window.

However, one thing I noticed about Gladys is that she has some interesting sleep habits. During the day, her leaves just kinda “sleep” and sit normally. But by late in the afternoon, they perk up.

A recent photo of Gladys taken at 9:42 a.m. Clearly she’s asleep. Don’t tell her I snapped a photo of her in her jammies and posted it on the internet.

A photo of Gladys at 5:10 p.m. with her makeup done and her dancing shoes on. Totally different plant, right?

I joke that she’s adopted the sleeping pattern of her owner, as no one is as familiar with daytime napping such as myself.

Read topsinglesite.com/papaya-soap-skin-whitening/

Frozen in Time

Posted on December 12, 2018December 12, 2018 by Kristine

There I was out in my garage with tears streaming down my face, desperately searching. Searching for my sanity first of all, but second of all, searching for 3 small boxes that I was praying to find. Why? Because I’d looked everywhere else that morning and I couldn’t remember for the life of me where I had last seen them.

But there they were, stacked on the floor between some other boxes. And my panic subsided.

6 years ago today, my dad passed away. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long already. Sometimes it feels like it was just a year ago, but when I think about where I was back then in comparison to where I am today, I know that so much time has passed.

I’ve been looking at the same photos of my dad for years now. The same ones I have stored on my phone and uploaded to Facebook. I realized my memories were being reduced to just those few photos. That’s when I remembered I had those boxes of photos. So I went in search of them.

The first spot I checked, my office closet, turned up nothing. That’s where I would’ve thought they’d be since pretty much all my junk is in here. Then I checked the bedroom closet but that’s stuffed to the ceiling with suitcases and bins of accessories I haven’t used in years. I started to worry.

I went out into the garage and turned on the light. They had to be out here somewhere, I thought, this is the only other place they’d be. As I shifted boxes around, I felt the tears welling in my eyes and sobs escaping my throat. I need to find them, I thought. I need to find him.

When we lose someone before we’re ready, our brains freeze that person in our memories. They neither grow older, nor change. No new memories are created, and only old ones remain. This morning, I found myself reliving the same 6 or 7 snapshots over and over again. But I desperately needed different ones. I don’t know why, maybe I just wanted to feel like seeing photos of him that I haven’t looked at in a long time would awaken feelings of newness.

And there, in the shadow of a stack of plastic storage boxes, I could see the silhouettes of three small photo boxes, one was a glossy white and two were a flat maroon color. There they were. I lifted them out of the shadows and carefully carried them into the house, wiping the tears from my cheeks. I set them down on my kitchen table and started going through them. I remember I had started organizing them with index cards based on general topics, but half of them were still left unorganized, a project long since forgotten. It did not take long to find what I was looking for.

I thought I would feel better. But as I stared at these old pictures of him, I realized that’s all they were: old pictures. And they would always be that way, no matter how long I put them out of sight. They would not fill the hole left by him when he passed away. I felt disheartened mostly because I wonder if anything ever will.

Consume Your Craft

Posted on October 13, 2018 by Kristine

*Wave* Hi, there. It’s me. So after 8 long months of radio silence, where do I even begin?

Honestly I’ve been wrestling with a significant case of burnout, which is really very common in my industry. However mine also happened to be fueled by this months-long website migration project I’ve been on at work at least since April. We had to move around 1,800 websites from one system to another. It sounds easy, but it’s not really pick up said assets from point A and move to point B. No, no. It was more pick up from point A, then completely rebuild it on point B. Oh and it can’t look exactly the same as it did when it was at point A.

A project like this normally would’ve taken a couple years, but in our world? 8 months. There were some clients who did not like this one bit and never failed to let us know, whether it be by writing us the most hateful, deriding emails or calling us names over the phone. There were some days where all I could do was cry instead of make dinner.

I’ve always prided myself in having thick skin. Years of art classes, journalism classes, advertising classes, and just generally living and breathing agency life for 15 years has given me the ability to develop it. But this time it was really put to the test.

I began to have a mid-life crisis about my career choice. Is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? Is this where I want to be? Do I really want to be hated and bullied and degraded for the rest of my career. Maybe I need something more creative, more enjoyable rather than something that dragged me through the mud every goddamn day.

I believe I have an entrepreneurial spirit. Somewhere deep inside me there’s someone that wants to go out and do her own thing, to be independent and try and succeed on her own. But doing what? I don’t know yet. And “yet” is the operative word.

But right now, my craft is web development, specifically in WordPress. I’ve had a long history with it. I know it well enough to build websites on it, break websites on it, fix websites on it, and make websites on it better. I really need to focus on that.

Rose Mosaic Virus: How Bad Is It?

Posted on May 16, 2018May 17, 2018 by Kristine

Last year I noticed something really strange about my adopted rose bush, the Peace rose. It had produced a few mottled leaves here and there. I discovered this in the earlier part of the growing season.

As the months wore on, the mottling gradually disappeared. I thought nothing of it after that.

Rose Mosaic Virus — One of the leaves showing the strongest webbing of discoloration.

Today I was watering the flowers because temperatures began rising into the upper 80s and lower 90s these last few days. Afterward, I examined the Peace rose and once again noticed a couple leaves–not as many as last year–had some significant mottling. I Googled this information. Apparently rose bushes have their own version of WebMD on the internet. And as soon as I managed to identify and match what I was seeing to what I found on the internet I discovered my rose unfortunately suffers from Rose Mosaic Virus.

Opinions vary from extreme (“We don’t know anything about Rose Mosaic so you should destroy the bush and destroy the soil it lived in. LET IT BURN!) to, well, not so extreme (“The virus doesn’t do much to the bush other than make early leaves look weird. It may stunt the growth of branches, but most bushes go on to produce beautiful flowers anyway.”) They’re even conflicting. Some say it spreads through the pollen, others say it’s spread through propagation, which is especially why it’s most common in grafted roses. And I suppose it makes sense why this rose has always been such a small dwarf despite it being a hybrid tea.

Either way, I’m torn. I don’t want to put my other roses in danger. But then again, are they really in danger if the virus isn’t fatal? Maybe it’s just like a limp or a genetic defect. Does it warrant destroying a perfectly good rose bush that seems to have lived with this virus many years? Please keep in mind that this year, this rose bush has produced the biggest, healthiest most beautiful blooms that I’ve seen since I’ve lived here. Below are some pictures from April.

Kristine Macabare

A Wordpress Developer and Her Obsessions

Author: Kristine