It’s a Sign…

I need to preface this post with a bit of background. Everything below the photo was written on March 12, 2020. The next day our world went into lockdown-self-preservation-fleeing from a pandemic-hyper vigilant-sterilizing everything- full on terror mode. The irony that I posted a stock photo of a sign that read “Come In We’re Open and Awesome” is absolutely not lost on me.

Something that I am constantly doing and have been for most of my adult life is reading blogs and finding solace in all of the universal experiences and feelings. This year has kept us farther apart and more separate than ever and yet, in some strange way, I feel more united. I feel that we have endured this year together. We have been resilient together. We have found silver linings and ways to amuse ourselves. We have shared meme’s and stories. We have found our commonality and our core beliefs. We have seen ourselves reflected in other peoples faces and words. We have become aware of the insignificance of things we held on pedestals and the massive importance of tiny moments. I discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, that writing is my own version of therapy. It’s how I understand what is going on in my mind and in my life and where those threads intersect. So this website is coming back to life…again! Just like all of us are suddenly feeling a tiny glimmer of light at the end of this treacherously long and dark tunnel, so too will my teeny tiny corner of the internet be coming back to life.

I will leave you with my never-before-published because a pandemic hit the next day post from last year. I will also leave you with my word that I will bring this site back to life. I will bring my thoughts to the forefront. I will use this platform to stretch my creative writing/journalism/idea sharing/product suggesting/question asking muscle on a public level. There is a certain level of editing that must be performed when you are releasing your thoughts and ideas into the wild and I like the challenge that presents. I like the idea of growing through, and with, my writing. I am coming to this website older, more mature, not jaded but more aware, and also with a better understanding of how life works. I always thought that I couldn’t be a “blogger” until I had a perfect vision of my “brand.” I couldn’t start until my writing was at its most polished. I couldn’t start until I had a thick enough skin to risk putting myself “out there.” My skin is thicker, having children will do that to you. Perspectives change. Challenges strengthen you. You experience the pain of breaking and the triumph of becoming stronger in the broken places. (Paraphrasing a famous Ernest Hemingway quote here -“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places”). Writing a few words on a website and hitting publish is a lot easier than taking care of another human being who is solely and completely dependent on you.

So this is my vision for Daily Moxie (and for my writing in general). I am writing to learn. I am writing to grow. I am writing to understand, appreciate, notice, and pay attention. I am writing to find the silver lining. I am writing to air my grievances. I am writing to make sense of the senseless and to find hope in the hopeless. I am writing to prove to myself and anyone reading that we exist in this time and space together. We are all connected. We may have different beliefs but we are more similar than we think.

I am writing because, as Joan Didion says, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.”

So yes, some of my writing will be deep and meaningful. It will ask questions and hopefully provide ideas and maybe even some answers. It will also show you the lens through which I view my life, what I see, what I like and love and what I feel it all means.

I’m just one voice. But sometimes, that’s all it takes to make a difference in your own life or someone else’s. So here goes…

 

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I have been blogging on and off for over 15 years. I have word counts that number in the hundreds of thousands and yet I am constantly comparing myself to other people who have done it “better” or are able to monetize a system so fluidly that it leaves me practically dumbfounded and fully overwhelmed. But what is the point of a blog? What is the meaning behind sharing our thoughts, views, ideas, and fears in a public forum? Because it helps unite us all in a common, universal experience called life. We are all in this together and never has this been more apparent than during the fear of an unknown virus (Covid-19). I truly hope (and pray) that one day we will all be able to look back on this time with feelings of triumphantly surviving a catastrophic pandemic. This is unchartered territory for every single human on this planet. This has literally never happened before.

As a constant silver lining seeker, I can tell you that I truly believe we can use this time as a learning and growing experience. We can take this time when we are forced to quarantine ourselves and shut ourselves off from the fast-paced, competitive world and actually do the work that we have always wanted to do. Be the people we have always wanted to be. Look inside and see what brings us happiness, what makes us eager to get up in the morning (even in the face of tragedy, fear, and uncertainty) and pursue that. What is worth our time and dedication? What brings us joy? What can we do to help others while helping ourselves and hopefully understanding more throughout the process?

I know that one thing I can do is to stop comparing, stop pressuring, stop questioning, stop worrying and START DOING. Here is something I know about myself. I love to write. I have dozens and dozens of journals that I have filled to capacity. I have been keeping some form of journal or diary since I was six years old and I don’t have any plans on stopping. It’s on the page and through words that I solve my own problems and, oftentimes, prevent future problems from coming up. In my journals is where I first explored the intricacies of true friendships, the unpredictability of love (and lust), desires for life and work and love, fears, hopes, dreams, children, loss, sadness, heartbreak, anger, betrayal, and optimism. Everything. I wrote it all down. I didn’t always come up with an answer, quite frequently the last sentence of an entry was ended with a question mark but that didn’t matter because sometimes life is lived in those question marks. Sometimes answers don’t come easily (or ever, for that matter) but exploring your thoughts and feelings will always help you understand yourself. Writing it down lessens the impact, takes the steam out of our fears and helps move us forward.

So often what kept me from entering the blogosphere or writing for magazines, was the negative thought pattern of “why would anyone care what I have to say?” Through writing out these fears and delving into them more thoughtfully and with wider perspective, I realized that my writing helps one person tremendously, me.

 

Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

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I crave time. I dream about having free hours that stretch endlessly ahead of me. I want to sit with my children and just stare at their beautiful faces without being bombarded with thoughts about planning dinner, doing laundry, cleaning, working, checking things off my never-ending to-do list. Why does it always seem that we have everything BUT time? The number of hours in a day has never changed and will never change. We all have the same amount but it is up to the individual to determine how they want to fill those hours. Why are we so starved for time?

This may be contributing to the popularity of the trend towards minimalism. We have too many distractions fighting for our attention. Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, politics, books, television, online shopping, radio, podcasts, websites, games, toys, YouTube. The list goes on and on and on and on. We desperately want to have a simple space to just sit with our thoughts, no distractions except the beating of our hearts.

With the increase in stimuli comes the rise in popularity of meditation and simplification. Every major designer has an Instagram account where you can get daily doses of the latest fashions, click and buy, and at the same time bloggers are posting daily about their capsule wardrobes (limited, seasonal wardrobes of usually 30 items or less). Home renovation programs rise, shelter magazines explode and the tiny house/minimalist movement is growing in popularity every day. We are an exercise in contradictions and we are always looking for the next “trend” that will help us achieve peace, happiness, and serenity. I love exploring trends to see if they do, in fact, deliver on their promises. Most don’t. However, the ones that do will stay with you for a lifetime and truly have the ability of changing how you view the world and your place in it. It is always worth a shot.

Marie Kondo’s THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP skyrocketed up bestseller lists the minute it came on the scene and it hasn’t diminished in popularity. In other words, the Kon-Mari Method seems to have staying power. People are hungry for scaling down on their possessions (and more accurately, obsessions). What exactly does Marie advise? What is the Kon-Mari Method, as it has been coined? Does it work and can it be applied to anyone’s life or just people who want to become minimalists?

I am a sentimental person. I scrapbook. I have memory boxes. I keep ticket stubs and receipts and business cards that spark memories. Being a minimalist did not seem like something I could ever embrace. But here’s the thing about minimalism, it’s not about living with nothing, it’s about appreciating everything and in the process of recognizing and appreciating what you do have you begin to let go of the things that are no longer serving you. When you start to strip down and prioritize what matters to you, what “sparks joy”, a popular Kon-Mari phrase, you start to really see what brings you happiness and what you want to have in your life.

So how has my life changed since reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up? I have become more aware of myself. I now pay attention to what I like, what brings me happiness, what defines me, my life, my style and my place in the world. I have become a sentimental minimalist. I no longer keep everything but everything I keep, matters to me in a significant way. Just like Marie, “the space I live in is graced only with those things that speak to my heart. My lifestyle brings me joy.”

Delicious Ambiguity

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“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.” -Gilda Radner […]

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Enough

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I worry that I’m not doing enough. I have an incredible baby book for Grayson where I have documented so many tiny details of his first year. But I still worry. Did I document enough? Did I take enough pictures? Enough videos? Did I keep enough? Why is it that we so often feel that we […]

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The Fringe Hours

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  I have recently been consumed with the idea of time; how little there seems to be to get things done. And what about time for doing things we love? It seems that is the first to go.  I’ve always felt extremely “busy” and constantly pulled in many directions. Elise Cripe recently wrote about our […]

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Nautical Themes

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I love all things nautical. I live by the sea and I think it influences my style. I love greys, blues, whites. Neutral colors with many variations. I’m loving these shower curtains from West Elm! How cute are they?! What is it about the sea that is so calming, soothing, and healing? Does everyone feel […]

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Inspiration for Action

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 Image via WeHeartIt   I am a blog surfer. One of my favorite things to do in my down time is find a blog, a writer, a voice that speaks to me and scroll through the archives. I have a list of favorites that I check pretty regulary (Hi Elise, Ali, Joanna, Aidan, Lindsay, Jordan!) […]

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PopSugar Must Have Box: February Edition

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I am obsessed with my PopSugar subscription! I think these boxes are the best subscription boxes out there. I gave my sister, who is the hardest person to shop for, a subscription for her birthday and she loves it. The best thing about these subscription boxes is the feeling of receiving a surprise gift every […]

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Random Bits

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In my goal to continue posting daily, I thought I would share some cute and interesting things I found online today. Cute bag. Habit forming.   Want to read this book! It’s getting some fantastic praise! Currently reading this book and it HOOKED me last night. I couldn’t put it down. Mhairi (pronounced “Var-ee”) McFarlane […]

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Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda…

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Four days in a row, people! This is HUGE! Today I have some helpful news from a recent study. I was flipping through SELF Magazine and found an article in the Personal Best section. I really find that SELF Magazine provides some of the best life skills and advice for improving your happiness. Sometimes making […]

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The Missing Piece

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I’m always looking for the perfect book and it seems to be a lifelong quest. I don’t know what makes the perfect book, perhaps it correlates to specific times in my life, seeing myself in various characters, or just becoming so enamored with a plot that I am utterly consumed. It’s amazing the way books […]

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Begin Where You Are

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“We begin right where we are with what we have right in front of us at any given point in time.” – Ali Edwards Sometimes the right words find us at exactly the right time. Today is my first official day doing my “morning pages” (Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way) and following my plan to […]

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Hello February

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  I’m so excited about this month. February always feels like the turning of a corner. We are making the slow march towards spring and leaving the frigid temperatures of winter behind us. February is also a time when I start to really look at where I stand in the year. We are already one […]

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December Daily

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  This year I will be documenting Grayson’s first Christmas season through a December Daily album created by Ali Edwards. I have just started putting together the foundation pages (in between work, naps, and playtime with my little guy). This year I have less time than ever and yet I have a stronger desire to document […]

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Thanksgiving via Oprah Magazine

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A More Festive Feast…This is something I will definitely be incorporating into my Thanksgiving celebration this year. I absolutely love the idea of not only recognizing and acknowledging what you are grateful for but documenting it, as well. Being able to reflect on your gratitude the following year is a charming tradition to bring to […]

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I’m back

I’m hoping to make blogging here a more regular thing…because I honestly have so many thoughts to share and ideas to explore. I am hoping to make it become a habit. A routine. I also want to have a home on the internet for creative exploration. Let’s see how this goes. For now, to have […]

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Day Planners

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  Whitney English’s Day Designer, Emily Ley’s Simplified Planner and Erin Condren’s Life Planner are changing the way we look at our calendars. These three life planners (calendars, day books, agendas) are so popular that they are selling out faster than their creators can announce release dates.  I’m currently using the Erin Condren Life Planner […]

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What’s Your Parenting Style?

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A new study out of Australia found that overprotective moms may hinder their child’s growth and development. According to the study from the Telethon Kids Institute, children whose mothers are highly protective are more likely to be overweight or obese by the age of 10. The study followed more than 2,500 children from age of […]

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Stationary Entertainers

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I’m on the hunt for a stationary entertainer for my 5 month old son. We received the Fisher-Price Go Wild Jumperoo as a baby shower gift and just attempted using it the other night. The springs on three sides makes the apparatus very fluid. It provides quite a bit of movement, which is great for […]

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Sophie the Giraffe

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I will admit that I bought Sophie the Giraffe not knowing what it even was, I just liked the look of it and I liked that it was made in France. How glamorous for mon petite bebe! Then I started reading on some of my favorite blogs about the benefits and popularity of Sophie the Giraffe as […]

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