September Morning Musings

Can you believe nearly ¾ of the year has already flown by? This fact quite strikes me. I feel a sense of urgency atm. Oddly it's an urgency to slow down, treasure time and live in the moment. I feel very aware of my time being limited. I am currently visiting home, as a family member is not well. It is the main reason I have spent a lot of time in Switzerland this past year. First and foremost I am very grateful that I am able to do this. Freelancing is a massive gift for me. Also being faced with our mortality puts many things in perspective for me. I feel very aware of my priorities in life. It puts into perspective who and what is most important to me. Second I also feel strongly that there are things I still would love to learn and explore, and don't want to make excuses to postpone them. I saw a reel on IG the other day, about how two years passed and nothing changed... the excuses are the same-but if one just starts moving towards one's dreams in small steps, two years later most things won't be much different, except we have small experiences that change our lives. This spoke to me and I am now writing a list of skills I still want to learn and things I want to do. A sort of bucket list of skills. I might share them later here. (Don't hold your breath, since I am terrible at writing posts these days)Do you have skills you want to learn? I am also reflecting on the year so far. The 100 Day Project was an interesting experience for me. It's been interesting sketching for 100 consecutive days. My inner overachiever still preens with the fact, that she managed to finish the 100 days. From a skill point of view, it was interesting and creatively I found it very expansive, even though I was worried I would run out of ideas or feel stifled.I did however not feel like it was very interactive with other artists. Maybe it's about the algorithms or we are all social media overloaded. Who knows? But one of the reasons I loved Damn Early Days was the sense of community it created. While I did my own thing and was one of the few people in my time zone who took part, others were struggling with me. There was an exchange of ideas and experiences. Also most importantly reminders to be patient with ourselves and our intentions. It helped me get even better at setting goals and pursuing them. And it helped me overcome my fear of routine, and how to build one that helps me expand rather than stiffle me. And last but certainly not least I learnt a whole lot about habits. When I told a friend about these experiences I had the idea to do another 100 days- for the last 100 days of the year. But then life happened and I kinda forgot that the last 100 days of 2024 start on the 23rd of September, so I decided to do a 30-day challenge instead with whoever is keen to join. Starting in October. The idea is to write a goal and make an intention to do something consistently for 30 days. This could be something creative or physical or studying whatever, for at least 5 minutes every day. Or if one wants the goal could be walking 3km or reading one page.. the sky is the limit. I think it is important to make time and to challenge oneself but not to make it impossible. For example, I would not be able to finish a sketch every day because it usually takes me at least 3 hours. Would you be interested in taking part in a 30-day challenge?

September 18, 2024

Reflections on January & February 2023

As I was writing a blog post about my reflections on January Turkey was hit by the biggest earthquake the area has seen in more than a century. So if felt frivolous to write about my goals and routines or post some pretty photos. I decided to stay off social media in general and concentrate on how I can help the community here. The destruction and loss caused by the three huge earthquakes are simply overwhelming. The Turkish community has been mourning and will be dealing with the repercussions of the disasters for many years to come. It is difficult to even comprehend the vastness of the losses. The affected area stretches over 400km and over 13.5 Million people are directly affected. So many people perished. Entire cities are in rubble. It's completely devastating. How does one even put words to loss of that scale? It felt apocalyptic. Yet within this devastation, I saw so many wonderful things emerge. People rallying to help, incredible generosity from all over the world but especially within the Turkish community, and many beautiful accounts of what can only be called small miracles, like people being found under the rubble 2 weeks later completely uninjured. So much hope despite the fear and pain. For me personally, it put everything into perspective. A reminder of the might of the Majestic, destiny, and that life is too short to waste it on unimportant stuff and toxic people.I found myself being grateful for the goodness in my life and the people love. I still feel like I am not quite ready, however, I am trying to slowly ease into social media. I have started a new photo project, instead of doing a photo a day I am doing a photo a week, so 52 photos in 2023. I find it actually more challenging to remember not only to take the photo but also to post it on IG. I am way behind with posting but have managed to keep up with taking photos, even if half the time I remember on Sunday to take the photo for the week. One of the decisions I made at the end of 2022 is to pursue more passion projects when it comes to photography. And I found that doing photo walks is invigorating, inspiring, and therapeutic. I find that I enjoy photography and creating more because of this. I will share my knitting escapades in a separate post. I have made the firm decision to finish my WIP before starting any more. I am running out of needles, that should give you a clue of how out of hand things have gotten. February was all about supporting those who need me, in all kinds of different ways. I think that in truth I am at my best when I help. Throughout my life serving my community has been important to me, and the events have reconfirmed that it is a pillar of strength for me. While I was planning and building routines, setting goals, planning, and starting new projects in January. Very simplified: restarting my outward life. February realigned my inward and spiritual striving. We also had our 25th wedding anniversary in February. This feels like a huge milestone, even if it is only one year more than last year. I am grateful for the wonderful companion I have had on this journey. How we still don't make much sense on paper, but we still work. I am looking forward to hopefully many more years of compassion and care for each other and plenty of adventures. Word of the MonthJanuary: ClarityFebruary: Remembrance

March 1, 2023

The thing about… Lemon Juicers

Let me start by explaining that I am a kinda minimalist when it comes to possessions. Why kinda, you might wonder. Well, I don't want too much stuff however, I do make an exception when it comes to tools and books. Tools to me are artisanal tools from fountain pens to knitting needles to a gnocchi board and all other creative tools in-between. And I honestly don't think one can have too many books. Any kind of books, notebooks included. But I digress. My brand of minimalism is that I don't have 2 or 3 of the same /similar things. I basically (try to) only buy an item I need or I will use and I get the best quality I can. This is my philosophy on all things I buy, be that clothes or household things even when it comes to tools. I rather wait a little while and get the perfect (for me) item, than get one that is cheap or not quite what I want. My husband has a different philosophy. He is of the school of thought that you get what you can when you can because he says you can always replace it with better. I also consider him a bit of a hoarder.. so we kinda clash on our buying philosophy. He feels I keep waiting too long or don't indulge enough. I think he buys too quickly and unnecessarily.But also I should say, one of the reasons I am careful in my acquisitions is that in my experience if you get a crappy tool, most of the time one doesn't replace it. You make do with it and I find I end up annoyed that I have to deal with the crappy thing every time I use it, but still make do with it. So it's better not to be stuck with one that doesn't fit. What does all this have to do with lemon juicers, you probably wonder. Well, let me tell you why I am telling you all this. So this is what happened: I dropped my lemon juicer a few months ago and it broke, It was one of those traditional glass ones. I love those, so I was a bit gutted when it broke because it was nice and I used it quite often.Now this doesn't seem like a big deal, right? It's easy enough to replace. I thought so, too. Alas, I couldn't find any of them at the shops around here. They only had ugly plastic ones, which I refused to buy. I found myself using a fork as a squeezer for weeks (more like months actually). So Mr O told me to get an ugly plastic one.I refused. This went on for several more weeks. In my defence, the ugly ones weren't just not-pretty, but they looked unpractical and like they could break easily. I try to avoid plastics, so I think I was justified here.Then the citrus season came along. I usually make preserved lemons, mandarins and kumquats. This time, I kept postponing making my yearly batch. So we ran out of preserved lemons and I lamented the fact that I couldn't make more. Mr O was not very sympathetic to my dilemma. He told me, "just get the bloody juicer from the supermarket."I still refused.Then on one of my photo walks through Tahtekale I saw a shop that had kitchen supplies. And there was a juicer that cost approx. 50cents and seemed ok. Not exactly pretty, but sturdy. So I bought it. Kid you, not a few days later they had the glass ones in the supermarket. Here I was with my not quite perfect PLASTIC lemon juicer. I was not impressed. But now I had one, soooo... (I am stuck with it) I bet you are wondering why is she yapping on about juicers, who cares? And I admit you are right. What's the big deal? But see I have just renewed my intentions, I want to have less stuff not more and I wanna have a more sustainable household. I feel like we have somehow accumulated way too much stuff in our flat. A flat that's a bridge solution until with find a place we wanna settle, which means we going to have to move it all. This all meant that the ugly plastic juicer went against my intentions but so does buying a second glass one. The perfectionist overachiever in me just couldn't kinda let go of this. I was thinking about that this morning. And while I still think Mr O is too much of a consumer (and a bit of a hoarder) I also have to admit he doesn't get caught up in these kinds of dilemmas. He will just go more with the flow, just take what happens and run with it. I am pretty sure he doesn't waste much thought on what kind of a juicer one should possess nor does he much care about trivial things. What I am saying in a roundabout way is: I tend to get stuck on the goals and limits I set myself. And while grit is great, there is a fine line between being stubborn and having perseverance. I tend to get caught up in the small details because I want each detail to be perfect but we all know this is unachievable so I waste a massive amount of energy on inevitable things.While goals and intentions are really important, I think it is more important to keep moving rather than get stuck on details and to focus on the end goal & the journey. In the end, it's all about finding a good balance.As always I guess. Also, life is full of little reminders like lemon juicers... I was thinking about all of this, while I was juicing some pomegranates this morning. And I had two epiphanies: First: the not quite ugly plastic thing is actually pretty awesome and it doesn't only work for lemons but also as... Continue Reading →

February 25, 2022