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welcome back to my personal ramblings! i hope this helps those going through it with acne right now (even if you haven't found your "glass skin" solution yet) or, if you don't personally have acne, i hope this helps you understand what it's like and how you can support someone struggling with the condition of their skin.
chill study with me for finals 📚✨ my productivity routine, study break ideas + ranting about school
come hang out and be my study buddy for today :) in exchange, i promise you some study break ideas, unintentional asmr, some Law School Wisdom™ (that's an oxymoron) and a brief mukbang.
staying focused and managing your time while studying is TOUGH especially this late into the school year... but we're gonna finish strong, okay?? we do NOT like toxic productivity advice and strategies here so i hope this vlog gives you some realistic study inspiration and motivation to get through your finals week. let's get STUDIOUS!!
my study playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1qBTePysZCF9h75G8IrLYR?si=3ce5198a27bf44be
♡ if you've killed a plant (or several) before, you're not alone ♡
if you're a beginner in plant care, houseplants, or indoor gardening, you've come to the right place. if you're a beginner in self-care, wellness, mental health, or self-improvement, you've also come to the right place (what an efficient video to get your life together, amirite).
i tend to notice that when my plants aren't being watered, are having pest/growth issues, or if i'm generally slacking in the gardening hobbies department, that means that my own self-love, self-care routines and personal growth habits are being neglected, too. so in this video, i've combined the best botany + self-care advice as a reminder that things like nutrition, sleep, and conscious living are crucial - for both our plants and ourselves!
this is also an homage to Anna Akana - i've been watching her videos since forever, so much so that her editing style is engrained in my brain. i'm still learning to play around with writing and editing, but it was fun trying to mimic someone who inspires me so much.
omg youre homepage is so iinspiring and touching now i'm thinking about coming back to tumblr after all these years i hope youre having a great time take care <3
aw thank you! hehe yes i'm all for the great Tumblr Revival of 2023
what i learned from 10 years of journaling: the story of the story of my life
guess who's back back again sruh is back tell a friend!
for the mathematicians out there... i am aware that i, in fact, am only technically beginning my 10th year of journaling this year and so, in fact, have yet to complete a full decade of journaling at this current moment. to that i say... i am but a youtuber trying to make a catchy title, not a mathematician.
also if my journal is considered female then we definitely don't always pass the bechdel test but that's between us.
I am healthy. My body is strong and taken care of. My body takes care of me. My body looks and feels exactly as I want it to. I appreciate my body, and all that it does for me. My body is nourished, energized, and healing.
I am beautiful. I radiate confidence. I love the way that I look, and I reflect my inner self through my outer self. I take care of my appearance through my skincare, makeup, haircare, fashion, and fitness. I am pretty, even on my worst days. I love myself.
I am wealthy. Money flows to me in expected and unexpected ways. I live in abundance. I am capable of overcoming any money obstacles that stand in my way. I am an excellent money manager. I control money, money doesn't control me. I have the power to improve my relationship with money. I have all that I need.
I am secure. I set clear and flexible boundaries for myself and the people in my life. My boundaries are valid and respected. I am in control of my boundaries. Setting boundaries is a natural, normal, and healthy thing to do. I have self-respect. Communication now prevents conflicts later. Boundaries strengthen bonds.
I am kind to myself. I allow compassion, forgiveness, and understanding to myself. I speak kindly to myself. I look at myself in a positive light. I emphasize my qualities and appreciate my growth. I am my own biggest fan.
I am my own person. I deeply connect with others, without absorbing all of their emotions and stress. I draw a line between others' emotions and my own. I am only in control of myself, my emotions, my actions and my reactions. I can make my own choices.
I am sociable. It's easy for me to meet new people. I create meaningful relationships with others. People enjoy my company. I have lots of interesting and important things to say. I welcome new social situations into my life comfortably. Being social is important to me. It's easy for me to be myself around others.
I am passionate. I express my creative energy through things that matter to me. I allow myself to commit to things that are important to me. I make time to do things that I am passionate about. I respect my own opinion. I am free of shame. I am artistic. I am multi-faceted. I explore different creative outlets.
I am in control of my thoughts. I live my life through the world, not in my own head. I don't have to believe everything that I think. I live in the present. I am capable of making the right decisions. I am looking at things in a new way. I find peace in focusing on things that I can control. I am relaxed.
I am flexible. I adapt to new situations with ease. I am comfortable with uncertainty. I don't need to have everything all figured out. I roll with the punches. Being adaptable is important to me. I enjoy positive rewards and opportunities by staying flexible. I accept change openly, and consider alternatives to my plans. I can adjust to any unforeseen circumstances.
I am vulnerable. I embrace my needs. I am proud to be me - including the vulnerable, emotional parts of me. I have the courage to be vulnerable. People love me even when I am struggling. I am allowed to be flawed and worthy of care. If it's important to me, it's worth sharing. I am my true self, not the version I think others want me to be. I am whole.
Comprehensive apartment viewing checklist! Fill one out for each apartment unit that you see, to keep track of all the important details during your apartment hunt. (colour and b&w options)
Tidying Up with Marie Kondo took the internet by storm, and naturally received critics against the KonMari Method in return. But the 15 minutes of fame glossed over the deeper meaning of the method— something established centuries ago, long before Marie Kondo ever even tried vertical folding.
I set the timer for 20 minutes. My face, stripped bare from two consecutive facial cleansers, feels like it’s being deeply pampered with this Glossier Mega Greens Galaxy Pack detoxifying face mask. Of course, my skin turns a bright shade of red every time I use it and I break out the next day, but this thing was not cheap, so maybe the seventh try’s the charm. I sit on the corner of my bed, folding the pile of clothes that’s been growing on my chair all week. To feel productive and smart, I put on a Spotify podcast telling me how to build the habits of successful people and prioritize my mental health, or something along those lines. I usually get bored around two minutes into the podcasts anyways, so I eventually turn to Netflix instead.
Ringing in the start of 2019, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo has taken over not only Netflix home screens, but nearly every part of online media. The signature approach to decluttering known as the KonMari Method claims to deep clean a house in such a way that it will never have to be deep cleaned again. By discarding possessions from easiest to most difficult (clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous, sentimental items) and subsequently using unique tricks (such as folding clothes vertically) for organization, Marie Kondo intends to rekindle the joy and gratitude in people for the things that matter the most. Given this, the KonMari Method’s widespread popularity and supposedly “life-changing magic” are usually the two criteria necessary for my next attempt at a self-care trend. I’m a total self-help junkie. The “Treat Yo Self” mentality has trapped me in this endless cycle of constant destressing, leaving me to wonder whether the consistency itself proves that it doesn’t work. A one-time, everlasting change such as the KonMari Method therefore seems like it would be my cure. It’s just my luck, then, that this one-time cure has already been tried before.
Three years ago, Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, was gifted to me on my birthday. After that initial rush of inspiration, I quickly dove into purging my closet. This closet consisted of four separate hanger rods, five additional shelves of folded clothing, and overhead storage packed with bins of everything from old schoolwork to stuffed animals, to gift bags and book collections. The senselessness of this organization could make a grown woman cry— and it did. My mother would wince every time she opened my door, as if the bursting amount of clothes induced slight physical pain. I knew that most of the things in that closet were kept for sentimental reasons rather than actual use, but the stress of the clutter had finally outweighed the good memories. After three long summer months, I had filled four garbage bags with my middle-school wardrobe, and packed cardboard boxes with old school supplies and unappreciated toys. I was just about done decluttering this section of my life, when my mother stopped me from tossing it out. For whatever reasons — sentimental, financial or perhaps logical — she refused to let these goods go to waste by giving them away. That was three years ago. The bags still sit in our spare room today, as the literal embodiment of my emotional baggage.
These feelings against the KonMari Method aren’t uncommon. Many people criticize the minimalist lifestyle for being bougie and unrealistic, or something exclusively for rich white people (although KonMari and minimalism are two distinct ideas, both include the fundamental step of throwing things out and living with less). In truth, some of these criticisms may be valid— out of every self-help method I have tried, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is without a doubt the most abstract, most arbitrary, and most spiritually-based thing I’ve never completed. However, it’s this very unrestricted element that makes it so easily applicable to more than just decluttering your space. KonMari isn’t just a passing trend or some falsely advertised miracle cure— it’s a mindset that has ancient philosophical roots, which speak to much more than just some trendy Ikea furniture and Apple MacBook aesthetic.
Minimalists at first glance seem to be just one of the many types of people in the world, like those who fill their daily Vitamix smoothie with chia seeds, goji berries and acai powder before their morning 5k run, and those who don’t. The minimalism undertones of KonMari, namely the mass decluttering and disposal of your possessions, are often criticized to be classist and irrational for those struggling to make ends meet. After all, the problem of having too much can only arise if you have something in the first place. Furthermore, minimalism (and by consequence, KonMari) has been associated with white privilege in developed countries. Those raised in developing countries (and their children) often have different cultural views of materialism, which can continue to thrive even after starting life in a developed country. Clearly, KonMari critics are coming from all angles to prove the problematics and “cancel” the next big thing. Though it’s easy to simply dismiss the criticism as overthinking, the real life impacts of class and culture on materialism do not stray far from the critics’ messages.
“Minimalism typically arises in circumstances of plenty,” Rachel said. Given such a lofty subject, Rachel MacKinnon, a philosophy graduate student at the University of Toronto, helped me trace the roots of the KonMari Method all the way back to Ancient Greece. In general, ancient minimalist philosophies avoided attachment to material goods to rule out any possible pain that would arise were they to be taken away. “But these philosophies were all written by pretty wealthy people,” Rachel explained, “who were happy to give the illusion of being able to live without their wealth, knowing that they won’t actually face conditions of scarcity anytime soon.” The image of an old philosopher living only on bread and water by choice, knowing that he has the means to indulge in delicacies if he ever chooses to do so, is not far off from our modern day idea of the “minimalist” with a small closet full of high-end, monochromatic designer clothing. Even at its origins, minimalism appears to have been an elitist lifestyle. “Minimalism didn’t appeal to me when I grew up poor,” Rachel added, casually. Coming from a humble maritime home to her current downtown apartment, she admits to thinking about how her values have changed. “Now that I live in Toronto, it’s suddenly very compelling— I only need minimalism because I have stuff.”
The living room had stacks of plastic storage bins lining the walls, which shrunk the already confined room. Inside the bins sat old phone books, TV guides, receipts, school supplies, and various papers. The narrow hallway to the bedrooms no longer served as a hallway, but rather as home to rows and rows of these same bins. The only way to bed was through the kitchen, since the dining area was lost in even more piles of paper. With five people living in a two-bedroom apartment, the bedroom wasn’t much of an escape either. “I hated it,” Joanne said. “I hated that we didn’t have a dinner table. I really wanted a family dinner, but we never had one.”
“If you asked my dad what sparks joy for him, he would say that everything sparks joy.” Joanne Banh is in her fourth year at the University of Toronto, and is the Co-Vice President of the University of Toronto Vietnamese Students’ Association. Her family struggled in the past with her father’s intense hoarding problem. “My dad was a Vietnamese refugee whose family lost everything while moving to Canada. Obviously it’s not the case for everybody, but maybe there’s that harbouring fear that he’ll lose it all again. It’s hard for me to understand, because I didn’t live through that.” About 8 years ago, Joanne, along with her brothers and her mother, took a year to clean out the apartment, but her father slowly grew his collection again. “I guess it just became habit,” she said. “It’s easier to just throw it in the bin, forget about it, and have it pile up.” Given that they lived in the predominantly white city of Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Joanne would use the excuse that her home was just too ethnic to have friends over. She would avoid the topic, and they would avoid the space.
The KonMari critics may have a point, to some extent. KonMari isn’t a guaranteed miracle cure for deep-seated issues with materialism such as hoarding, nor is it typically impressive to those who already involuntarily live with less. Even as a certified KonMari consultant, Michele Delory admits that the KonMari Method has not worked for everyone. “I once had a client who was going through personal things in her life,” Michele said. “Sometimes she would leave me in her home, and obviously it doesn’t work when the person’s not there. She was the only one who couldn’t follow through with it.”
Be that as it may, to say that KonMari isn’t for everybody is not to say that it’s worthless. Those who do complete the KonMari method rarely, if ever, revert back to their previous ways of life. Living her own minimalist lifestyle for the past three years and doing KonMari consultations in and around the city of Toronto, Michele has never lost faith in the method. “With every change that you make in your life, you have to first change your mindset, or else it won’t actually happen,” Michele said. In regard to that particular client, Michele believes that her mindset was the issue: “She was seeking happiness, but she wasn’t looking for it in the right way. She thought that I would just magically do it for her.” Michele still keeps in touch with past clients who regularly show her images of their organized homes, months after her consultations. Though the KonMari skeptics may remain unsure of Marie Kondo’s seemingly paradoxical anti-consumerist business model, they can’t deny the reality of Michele’s joy as a living, breathing minimalist and KonMari expert. What better way to understand the KonMari Method than straight from the horse’s (or the certified horse consultant’s) mouth?
“The philosophies of minimalism and KonMari are very similar to each other because it’s all about having a more meaningful life,” Michele explained, “but KonMari is considered different because if you really want to have 100 pairs of shoes that spark joy, you can.” This is where KonMari is often dismissed as unreliable, for its extreme subjectivity. Yet, this concept was not simply pulled out of thin air by a single peppy, 4-foot-7 Japanese woman (not that there’s anything wrong with being a single peppy, 4-foot-7 Japanese woman, just that historical evidence of the same argument can often provide more support than a single individual). The idea of minimalism in philosophy began close to the Roman Era near the end of Greek political stability, and if Marie Kondo were alive then, she might’ve been labelled as a bit of an Epicurean.
Contrary to popular beliefs of minimalist philosophies (if any beliefs of philosophies can even be said to be popular), Epicureans thought that pleasure was the good. “The point isn’t to deprive yourself,” Rachel clarified about the school of thought. “It’s to give yourself a comfortable life.” Epicureans divided pleasures into different categories based on their level of disruption, defined by how much further pain the pleasure could cause down the road. Keeping something that you love and use regularly, for example, is much less disruptive than keeping something unappreciated that constantly has to be stored and reorganized in the future. The absence of pain, for the Epicureans, also counted as a pleasure. In KonMari, the disposal of unwanted material goods is better than the stress of keeping them stored somewhere in your household. “As long as on the whole, you’re enjoying your life more than you’re not,” Rachel said, “the Epicureans gave you a much more general guideline.” Thus, although you could be a perfect Epicurean and live on only bread and water, they wouldn’t mind if you had a bit of tea — a bit of extra pleasure, like a cherished shoe collection — so long as it wasn’t too disruptive. No one said that you had to be an Epicurean, just that if you wanted to maximize pleasure, this was their way of doing so.
In the same way, the KonMari philosophy is much more lenient than most minimalist methods. “There shouldn’t be rules to the amount of stuff you have,” Michele said, “because then it becomes very competitive. It should be a positive experience when you’re going through a change like that.” Michele wears a couple basic pieces in her wardrobe, which she continues to style over five years after their purchases. She lives with her non-minimalist husband and eight year old son, who is by no means deprived of his own collection of books and toys. Her mother has not embraced minimalism or KonMari either, which Michele attributes to her cultural values back in the Philippines. Michele is not a radical minimalist living out of a backpack, but she is a genuine woman that seeks to have less stress, less anxiety, less material goods, more gratitude, more experiences, and more purpose in her everyday life. She is minimizing pain and maximizing pleasure. The KonMari Method does not claim to be the only path to happiness, but like Epicureanism, if you want the things that bring you joy, why not just choose them? History truly does repeat itself, and the KonMari Method is the ultimate revival of an age-old philosophical idea that’s finally getting its moment in the spotlight.
The real question of it all is: do I pick the rejuvenating, refreshing, or revitalizing face mask today? At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of them had life-changing magic slapped across the label, either. I could also pick none of them. Instead of adding another mask, another podcast, another quick fix to my chronic stress, I could step back and focus on why I’m driven to so much self-care in the first place. Clearly, these methods don’t bring as much pleasure to me as I thought, but maybe I’m going in for the wrong reasons. Maybe I’m seeking happiness, and I’m expecting these things to just magically do it for me. Maybe instead of choosing the right pleasures, I’ve been dealing with disruptive pain. Sure, vertical folding doesn’t solve everything, but maybe changing my mindset to one that cultivates the good instead of running away from the bad is what KonMari is all about.
Whenever people are about to come over, my mother goes into a berserk state of cleaning to the point where it seems like no one actually eats, sleeps or breathes in that house. Out of all the minimalism achievements and KonMari success stories that Michele told me, the one that struck me the most was this: Michele is an Airbnb host for one of the rooms in her home. She has guests coming and going every day. “There’s no clutter in my home, to be honest,” she said. “I’ve been able to create a space that I feel good about, and I don’t ever have to worry about guests coming in. I don’t have to say ‘let me clean up first’, I never have that excuse.” If that doesn’t sound like the closest thing to a cure from chronic stress, to me, I don’t know what will.
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