Journey to Simple.

I've always thought of myself of being a very simple person. I never really needed to spend money unless its on food or necessities. I don't find myself in dire need of shopping trip when there's a sale going on or whatever people seem to like to do all on the same day at the same time (😁). I don't need to update my home decor every season (or week or month like some unmentioned people). I'm content with what I have and that's how I have always been, its the person I grew up to be. Things are not as important as people. We should all remember that. But the journey to living a simple life is much more than that. I find myself realizing I've missed several steps along the way. That in reality, I am actually drowning in chaos in my surroundings.

I don't need anything trending in make up, but why do I have such a big collection of makeup. Because I haven't let go. The box that my family sent me through the mail with goodies, the goods are used but the box is just sitting there, piling up along with the rest of the boxes. Whenever I do get actual down time when I'm not working I realize how much material things I have accumulated over the years than what I had started with. When my husband and I first moved into our apartment, we started from nothing. We had this plan to be together and that was it. I brought as many of my things that I could from California to Washington, that fit into a rental car, that barely filled a corner space in our place. Fast forward years later and now I'm fighting to get a space for anything.

So more than ever this year, I have been really learning to let go. The Journey to Simple for me, is letting go. I have to let go of the things that gave me temporary joy. What I learned is that, all the years that my husband was active in the military and was away on duty, I began to fill that void with a temporary fix that came in the form of splurging for things that I want but never needed. After reading a bit of the Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I began to realize what is of importance to me now. And slowly but surely I have been cleaning away different sections in our abode.

Now, most people seem to start with clothes as that is what is suggested in her books, but I have found inspiration in starting where I know I don't have most of my attachments which have been (of course) my makeup/beauty collection a.k.a the items that I had splurged on over the years. You would think this would actually be difficult for me seeing as to how much I have added to my collection over the years but its the easiest because like I mentioned, I do not have attachments simply because I no longer wear much makeup.

Over the next couple of posts I hope to add in a bit of before and after maybe to serve as inspiration for those of you on the same journey with me. Thank you for reading this post if you made it this far:)

Until next time!!!

-J

2017 Resolutions.

So I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here but growing up, my family was very typical and standard during the holidays. For Thanksgiving we would all gather and watch the Macy’s Day Parade even though we were not fans, it was “tradition!”. During Christmas it was that exciting time of writing to Santa about all the things we hoped to find under the Christmas tree. On New Years’ Eve we would all be sure to jump at midnight with money in our hands in hopes it would promote good fortune (but thinking back now I’m wondering if this was just a Filipino Tradition). On New Years’ Day it was time to talk about and set our resolutions for the new year. Fast Forward to present day and…I’m pretty sure I might be the only one in my family that still follows these (rather silly) traditions. But for me, setting some goals (okay maybe like 10-15 goals in a detailed list) has somehow always made me feel pretty damn good and motivated. Though the question is… after all these years, have I been able to even complete all of them during the year. The answer is simple: No.

I’ve never been an over achiever and until this day I still seem to try and give myself way more than I can handle. Not quite sure why I do so, but I do. And naturally its taken me years to get to the point that I am at today. My 2017 Resolutions!!! (Lets all clap because this time I think they are quite do-able within the year J). This year I’ve decided to try three main goals. YES, just THREE. Seems easy enough right? I once watched a video about trying to get goals completed and how she (the lady in the video of course) said that she likes to give herself three tasks to complete in day because then she feels its easy to accomplish and by doing so each day you will get a lot done. So I tried it. AND BY GOLLY, it worked for me. SO here I am, looking to complete three main goals this year at which I hope will better myself in the long run. So without further ado, here they go….

MY 2017 NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS/GOALS:
1) Change My Mindset
2) Live Simple
3) Get sh*t done!!! JJJ

Clean.

So here it is, 2:16pm on a Tuesday late afternoon.
I'm sitting here at home on my day off.

And just like every other day off I plan my day accordingly...I make plans and I break the plans. Instead of waking up early and following through with errands...I sleep in and end up waking up naturally. Wishing I woke up at a decent hour in the morning. I do some mundane errands around the apartment, Like washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and clearing the expired foods in the cabinets. Never mind that its the holidays and I really should be on task for any last minute stocking stuffers, gifts, and prepping Christmas cards to be sent out. But the past months has been filled with work. Working a lot and working odds hours that has made the rest of this year exhausting. I never feel rested for a new day and I never feel I've accomplished much because of that exhaustion and not feeling up to doing the things that I want to do.

I haven't been sleeping well at all. I have all these ideas and goals that haven't been put to light, just sitting at the back of my brain, playing over and over in my mind as I try to sleep at night. A few months back I decided to get a journal to document why I can't sleep. And I know for a fact that only I am to blame because I allow myself to give up when I'm too tired or when something feels to complicated. So then projects of mine get started but they are never finished, and so they just sit. Sit for months just like the material things that I have come to accumulate over the years. The things that I have purchased in hopes to make myself happy, only its just temporary. And so they sit. Collecting dust, never seeing the light of day again.

These past months I've been trying to change that. Trying to get back on track. I'm the type of person that has to rely on things to motivate me, whether its watching someone on YouTube clean up their space, or looking at photos on Pinterest to give myself ideas where to start. All the elusiveness probably has you wondering, where the heck am I going with this? I basically felt myself drowning in chaos. Whether its at home, in thoughts, or at work. I've come to find that I'm letting myself get to a point where I don't care. In most cases, that is a wonderful idea. In my case, I've been needing to do major clean up. Because like I've said...I've let things go but I've let things pile. I've let material things clutter up my closet, my workspace, my kitchen....But I'm in the process of getting this clean.

I want to live simple.

The older I get, the more I am realizing there are so many things I don't need, I have never needed, and that I wasted money on buying (especially since I haven't used quite a bit of things). I started reading the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I had heard wonderful things about when I was searching of ways to start cleaning or how to declutter. Though I'm not quite doing it the way the book suggests, I've recently started to clean areas of my life and starting to think in ways that I should have a long time ago.

In conclusion, I wanted to document my journey through the KonMari method of cleaning. So I hope that in my sharing this, it will help you as well if you are trying to declutter your surroundings and Life. And with that being said, my journey will be in full gear for the new year. So I hope for greater opportunities and less clutter.

xo, J.

Fresh.

Today starts a new streak for inspiration and motivation. I have definitely been lacking it a lot in that department lately. But with the help of my sister, Mary Ann. I have acquired a brand new, beautiful tech toy to explore and play with. As it turns out a long while back my laptop basically died. Not completely but with the lack of updates and funds to actually fix it, it was basically as dead as a laptop can get. I couldn't even log in to my profile because it said there was missing files and it couldn't load correctly. 

After just receiving my new laptop yesterday evening, I seriously felt I've been missing out on a lot of opportunities and well, just working technology to begin with. So CHEERS to a brand new leaf. I've just been spending my time getting to know this new beauty and basically personalizing it to fits my needs and to my liking. BOY IS IT EVER SO DISTRACTING. Haha. I've been on a cleaning streak lately and well, after I decided to write this post I sat down and have been playing with the laptop since.

So in conclusion, CHEERS TO A NEW LAPTOP, I feel blessed that my sister willingly decided to help me. And I feel the inspiration to due some well overdue justice by updating a lot of my accounts and finally being able to update my Photography website that had been at a stand still since my old laptop died. I've also got a lot of others things to do but I'll talk about that at another time.

Until next time :)

Yours Truly, Jennifer.