favorite time of year

I am declaring this my favorite time of year.

It’s the gooch of time between reflecting on everything that you didn’t do and setting your intentions for the new, shiny year ahead. 

To make this official, I am posting what I will “finally” start/finish for the year of 2022:

  • Taking vitamin d daily

  • Grow broccoli sprouts

  • Cardio everyday

  • Walk with Dad at least once a week

  • Be more involved with family

  • No (realistically: less) drinking during the week

  • My job is all about decisions. I need to trust what I know and just pull the trigger quicker, both professionally and personally

  • Limit buying knickknacks

  • Clean something each day

  • Respond to every text and email before the end of the day (HA! But I am hopeful)

  • Find a creative outlet

  • Read, read, read- fiction or non-fiction

  • Cook one badass meal at least once a week

  • Buy sustainable products when it makes sense

  • Start my business already!!!

  • Be early- with projects and for events

The theme for this year is CONSISTENCY.

the pendulum has swung too far

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

wabi-sabi

When we go through a life changing event, we may find the need to control every part of our lives. We become stressed because we want to know what's going to happen next and we want all the answers.

For me, instead of letting nature take its course, I want to make sure things go the way that I envision them. I'm not patient. Choices stem from instant gratification; even if it's at the expense of my long term happiness. If I don't see results here and now, then I quickly scrap the plan and plot another.

I recently finished the book, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers by Leonard Koren. Wabi-sabi is the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. "It is a beauty of things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional." An object that exemplifies wabi-sabi shows the wear and tear of time and can appear misshaped and irregular.

For someone who constantly wages an internal battle with not having everything figured out, the concept of wabi-sabi has, and continues, to bring a sense of peace and calmness.

A beauty of things imperfect?

I think that this is a difficult concept to grasp, especially here in Southern California. To most, perfection is when we have a plan laid out or when things are symmetric and neatly in order.

Keeping up with the fast pace environment most of us are use to, we over look the subtle beauty of things. "Wabi-sabi is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent they are invisible to vulgar eyes."

A beauty of things impermanent?

There is a season for everything. We may try to preserve and create structures that are everlasting but with time things mature into its next stage. "In metaphysical terms, wabi-sabi suggests that the universe is in constant motion toward or away from potential"

A beauty of things incomplete?

Sometimes when we get stressed, we try to find a quick fix to get us through. We feel that there has to be a definite start and end to our doings. "Consequently to experience wabi-sabi means you have to slow way down, be patient, and look very closely."

Even though wabi-sabi applies to the aesthetic beauty of objects and spaces, its lessons can make us think about how we view our own situation.

"Wabi-sabi images force us to contemplate our own mortality, and they evoke an existential loneliness and tender sadness. They also stir a mingled bittersweet comfort, since we know all existence shares the same fate."