Dear Universe,

Do you remember ankle tans? The ones we use to get unintentionally because we wore white (but mostly off-white) socks with our white (but really, brown) school shoes?

Remember when we turned 17 and we were done with the school-uniform life? We embraced cute skirts and shaved our legs and moisturized religiously. We squealed when we saw strappy shoes and anklets.

Then the realization hit us as we strutted our stuff for the first time. We had ankle tans. A very visible line that exposes the paleness of our feat and our tan calves.

We displayed our naivety that we were just out of our uniforms and had no business trying to make our mark into the real world.

This made us hid behind sneakers again. Skirts were longingly caress but never adorned. Never mind if we had chubby calves, that was saved for a different time.

So what did we do? I know what I did. I sunned my feet. I made a conscious decision to sit by the patio and lay just my feet in the warm (and then hot) rays of the sun. I envisioned even toned legs with toe rings and Ipanemas while roasting my feet.

Then the day finally arrived when I slipped into a pleated, laced skirt and put on my turquoise strappy heels.

First person who sees my outfit says, “came back from diving?”

Planner video binge

Do you have those old school books that are called “planners”? You know, those notebooks that deceive you into thinking they’re regular books that are filled with blanks pages, begging to be scribbled in but when you open them up POW! These pages are filled with dates! We’re talking pages with months of the year listed in chronological order, appointment spaces egging you to fill something in at 10:00 am.

As much as I love notebooks (I should really wax lyrical about them someday) I adore planners. These are supposedly hard to come by because who uses paper anymore? Everything is either on the computer or on your phone. I understand this because I use them all them time. I’m in an office where nobody attends a meeting unless there’s a reminder 5 minutes before it’s due. I will forget my father-in-law’s birthday unless my phone reminds me a day before (I know it’s sometime in January *sheepish*)

But I still love planners. They can come in all shapes and forms. My favourite are ones with tabs with spiral binding. Easy for laying flat.

Since I literally have no money to buy a planner, or a notebook (yup, not even one from Daiso) I have been binge watching people showing off their planners on YouTube.

Have you seen this one? It’s got stickers. STICKERS!

Or this? The extra stationary! Free printables! *drool*

Or this one! So unique and creative!

I believe I will have to spend the rest of the day, binge watching these truly creative master planners showcase their notebooks and get planner-envy (I’m making it a thing)

Dear Universe, WHY YOU NO GIVE ME MONEH TO BUY NOTEBOOK?!

Missing but alive

There’s too much on my plate because of my ambitious visit to the buffet of projects.

This is why I am missing 2 month’s worth of content.

It’s not that I had nothing to say (or write), it was just that I had so many that my thoughts were all over the place.

I’ve been pulling back on some on-going projects so that I can prioritize on the manageable ones (goodbye learning Spanish) I also needed to set realistic goals so that I can feel good when I achieve them (so long baking month). I believe I was trying to accomplish so much and was not recognizing my own limitations, that I sort of set myself up for failure.

I’m the type of person that gets joy from looking at all those checked boxes, all those crossed out items and all those neatly arranged freezer meals. Call it OCD, but I am happy when there are signs of organization in my life. To see a to-do list that was made weeks ago, just staring back at me, un-finish, mocking me and gathering dust puts me in an irritable mood. I beat myself up for not getting to that task sooner (or ever!) and then spiral into a state of depression, questioning my very existence.

So while I have slacked for the past two months, I have been driving myself crazy by beating myself up on neglecting this outlet. I have things to say, thoughts to transform and rants to write!

The direction of this blog is still not clear to me but I have decided that it’s not the most important part to deal with right now.

I have one clear goal; start creating content. Once I have that down, I’ll work on a bigger (and inevitably more complicated) target.

I don’t care if my entry for the week is something random, or an incomplete thought. I believe half the battle has been won if I can get it down on (virtual) paper.

Dear Universe, thank you for being patient with a scatter-brained, self-motivated, self-sabotaging and neurotic person. I like you, let’s try to be friends. I should warn you that the next few entries will be weird.

But you like weird, don’t you?