Lifestyle – Dina Klarisse

I’m not shopping in 2020, here’s why and how

It’s already midway through January and I’ve barely started thinking about my resolutions! What diets, challenges, detoxes, or goals will I do?? I only have 353 days left this year!

Over the past few days I’ve thought over in a panic what kind of goals I want to set for myself this year. There’s the usual lot that has rolled over from the last: be more active, lose some extra weight, maintain healthy relationships, spend less time on social media, blah blah blah.

The new year is a time where everyone is itching for diets and detoxes, to rid their bodies of sugar, toxins, and simple carbs. But in the past few years, my Youtube and blog-creeping has come up on a new type of detox: the Shopping Ban (or No Buy).

A typical Shopping Ban as I’ve seen it is a restriction on buying anything but the essentials for a determined amount of time: usually 6 months or a year. The fun and interesting part of this exercise is determining what really is “essential” for us. There are the no-brainers:

Food
Toiletries
Fitness

But I’ve seen a lot of Shopping Ban-dits (does this name work?) define other forms of essentials that require spending cash money. After all, we are not robots who can live and thrive off of carrots, tampons, and 15-min cardio sessions at Planet Fitness. As Cinzia from The Personal Philosophy Project states, a Shopping Ban or No-Buy year is not about punishing ourselves for the past years of spending. Nor is it a challenge to prove that becoming a hermit and rejecting all forms of modern socialization is the best way to live.

For me, a year-long Shopping Ban is a challenge for me to truly understand what I need to feel human and to feel myself.

I have come a long way from the crazed shopping addict I was in high school and early college. When I was around 16-18, I felt a need to define myself through material objects. I thought that my clothes and possessions needed to not only reflect, but project, who I was on the inside.

What better way to celebrate studying abroad in Florence than to shop at Brandy Melville?

My room needed to be filled with tons and tons of books and statues of owls, otherwise how else could I reinforce to myself that I was a quirky bibliophile?

My wardrobe needed to overflow with grandpa sweaters and kimonos and pashminas, otherwise how else could people see that I love vintage and am artsy and creative?

I became much more frugal in my 20s and gave up shopping as a hobby, which I think was an effective way to stop the constant need to acquire more and more things. At the present, I don’t really buy things on impulse and I spend time reflecting and researching big purchases.

Then why the Shopping Ban? I’ve already come so far in confronting my shopping addiction, so why put myself through this challenge?

Although I’ve become better and more conscious about impulsively buying new clothes and decor, I still find myself itching to acquire things to reflect and reinforce the person I am and want to be. I still feel the need to define myself more through material objects and appearance than action and thoughts, which in my opinion is ineffective if not counterproductive.

Here’s an embarrassing but probably common example:

I own tons of books, and many of them are unread. I love reading and want to finish all the books in my library, but the rate of my buying books is grossly larger than my rate of reading them. Of course, this is normal, but does that make it okay? Last year I must have bought more than 30 books, but I only read 22!

I justified this habit because most of the books I bought were second-hand, from library sales, independent bookshops, and thrift stores. I didn’t spend as much money as I would have in Barnes &Noble, and I was supporting good causes with my dollar vote, but I still feel guilty for it. Why?

Image result for beauty and the beast gif — Basically I wanted to be Belle

Because when I was making these purchases, I wasn’t thinking about the present. I wasn’t thinking about the dozens of books I already have that are still unread.

Instead, I was acting on this fear that I would run out of things to read, or that I would never have access to these certain books ever again.

Realizing this FOMO of material objects has helped me acknowledge one of the reasons why I buy things. I buy hoards of books because I’m afraid that I’ll want to read them one day but I won’t be able to find them. I buy souvenirs during trips because I’m afraid I won’t otherwise be able to capture the experience and emotions of a certain place if I don’t buy something to remind me.

I’m launching a Shopping Ban this year to confront this FOMO, this fear that my life and experiences are meaningless without the material totems I have assigned them to. I’m also doing this challenge to address my long, complicated relationship with having and spending money, which I will discuss on a later post.

For now, here are my personalized rules for my Shopping Ban in 2020:

Things I’m Allowed to Buy:

Substantial Food – groceries
- I’m challenging myself to prepare most of my meals at home
  - Only allowing myself (1) takeout lunch and (1) takeout dinner every week
Toiletries – bath products and skincare that are already part of my routine (NO buying new products unless I have run out)
Experiences – events, travels, concerts, etc. that I’m interested in

Things I’m Not Allowed to Buy:

Social Snacks- this is food/drinks that I feel the need to buy in order to be with friends (going out for coffee/drinks/lunch)
- During my Shopping Ban, I’m no longer going out to cafes or coffee shops just to socialize
- Exception is beer tasting (I like beer)
Clothes – no brainer. I have enough!
Makeup – Don’t wear it much, but I have enough for when I do want to jazz up my face
BOOKS – probably the hardest category
- My challenge is to only read the books I already own
- For books that I don’t own and am dying to read, I’ll make use of my library and the Libby app to borrow them
Home decor – any seasonal decorations or otherwise practically useless tchotchkes

So there are my rules for 2020!

I’ll be checking in on my progress/thoughts/failures/ruminations throughout this year, but reach out in the comments if you have any specific questions for me to address.

Are you doing any special challenges or detoxes this year? What are your goals for 2020?

Image result for shopping spongebob gif — I’m ready – to NOT shop!

More Info:

~i’M nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs~

I just finished watching Tiffany Ferguson’s video “I’m Not Like Other Girls” and it brought such strong feelings that I have to interrupt my highly prolific Alaska series that I’m definitely still working on and write about my experiences with individualism and internalized misogyny.

We have all seen posts like this scattered across Facebook, Twitter, and if you’re extra not like other girls, good old Tumblr. The nerdy, quirky girl who doesn’t wear makeup or care about fashion but is still somehow flawless and beautiful without much effort. She drinks beer and jokes around with the guys and doesn’t really fit in with Sorority Sarah because other girls are so vapid and dramatic! She doesn’t need flowers or chocolate, just buy her pizza and touch her butt.

Image result for buy me pizza meme — People actually posted this. Will future archaeologists study this as a mating call of earlier primitive humans?

I was guilty of being not like other girls. I read books and carried them around in the crook of my arm so my middle school peers could see that I didn’t care about Forever 21 (not just because I didn’t fit their clothes), I wore my brothers’ band t-shirts and played video games. My interests and hobbies during my early teenage years bordered between genuine interest and a feeling that I had to enjoy things apart from what typical girls enjoyed. Because to take part in those rituals of makeup and shopping and accessories would bring the risk of subjecting myself to the typical ideas of femininity and womanhood. And who would want that? Nay, I was a quirky snowflake who rejected girly things because girly meant not what men like. And to not be what men like is bad.

Looking back now at my thoughts and feelings as a tomboyish teenager, I wonder if my snowflake syndrome was the direct result of internalized misogyny or of a fear that trying to be attractive and pretty would simply highlight the fact that I was not either of those things. It was probably both. If you read my earlier post on my relationship with my appearance and makeup, you’ll know that I spent a good third of my teenage years looking like an actual boy. I guess I took the ~i’M nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs~ thing too far and teetered off the edge of looking like a girl at all.

In case you haven’t read the post and don’t care to, this is what I looked like:

And if you had read my post and are sick of seeing this picture, too bad. It is here to haunt you forever just as it haunts me.

Whether my snowflake syndrome stemmed from either hatred or fear of my fellow women, it does boil down to the fact that it was influenced by a system we all know and love to mention in our feminist slam poetry:

~The Patriarchy~

The oldest and most generic definition of the word is:

a system of society or government in which the father or eldest male is head of the family and descent is traced through the male line.

What does this have to do with my life in 2019 and why do these dang feminists always want to smash it, you say? Well, the idea of male lineage has constructed a social dynamic in which men and the typical traits that we ascribe to men are the default. Men are typically strong, aggressive, stoic, bearded and burly and eat flapjacks aside their trusty blue ox, Babe.

Wait, no, that’s Paul Bunyan.

Because of these internalized prejudices that we have towards typically masculine behaviors like stoicism, pragmatism, and wearing flannel shirts, we almost automatically denounce the attributes that are typically feminine. Putting effort into looking pretty means that you are frivolous and don’t care about the real issues at hand, like how to out-argue someone in a debate or how to chop down trees. Wearing false eyelashes and curling your hair means you hate democracy and don’t care about the Amazon burning to the ground.

And god forbid you like to take selfies. How can someone be so vapid and self-centered that they fill precious phone space with pictures of their own faces??!

It seems as though as soon as a personality trait or hobby or interest is connected to the female population, it is deemed stupid or unnecessary. Teenage girls get the worst of it. From the dawn of man it seems that anything that young girls or women take interest in is considered foolish. Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House was constantly ridiculed and belittled by her husband because of her spending habits and because she liked eating sweets. The entire conflict is based on her husband’s inability to fathom that his little songbird was capable of getting the family out of financial ruin. Because isn’t it automatically the devil’s work if a woman does anything worthwhile?

Young girls are constantly ridiculed and chastised for everything they do. From pumpkin spice lattes to pop music to makeup to genuine nihilistic dread about the fact that life is a meaningless void, whatever girls come up with is just stupid.

Now we have the VSCO girl. I get it, making fun of trends is funny and not at all a cheap joke. But if reusable water bottles and comfy clothes are becoming trendy then I’m all here for it.

VSCO girls are a new internet phenomenon that I’m particularly interested in because it entails an intriguingly meta self-study of teenage girls reacting and dissecting their own trends. It seems like a self-parody of the ~i’M nOt LiKe OtHeR gIrLs~ trope and a possible light at the end of the tunnel that is internalized misogynistic hate we’ve instilled into our societies.

I’m not going to tell you to stop saying it, because you should have stopped after graduating middle school, if you did say it at all. But I will tell you, because it is still an annoying trope that persists when people want cheap laughs without taking the time to think of actual jokes, to stop relying on teenage girls for your humor. It’s old, overused, and frankly a little weird how society seems to be so obsessed with young women’s interests. Drink your Starbucks (with a reusable straw, of course) and wear that scrunchie on your wrist, or wear a flannel and frolic through the woods. Girls are awesome and strong and spunky, and I’m proud to be like other girls!

Selling Out?: Getting a “Real Job” as an English Major

“What’re you gonna do with that?” I heard this question many times throughout my educational career as an English major — eventually I would just respond with a blank smile and allowed the inquirer to speculate on their own. “Ooooh, a teacher?!?!” They would smile wide and nod: a self-congratulation as they had brilliantly rationalized why anyone would choose to gruel over the humanities as their field of study. And of all humanities studies — English! You can’t write code or do surgery or found the next brilliant tech innovation with an English degree!

“I’ll just be broke or homeless, I guess,” I would say sometimes, watching the look of inquisitiveness move into either mild shock or annoyance. After all, that’s what it seemed their question was leading into. Why put myself through 4 long years of school just to read?

No one is ever asked what they’re going to do with a Computer Science or Medical degree, because those indicate specific career fields after graduation. Even some art degrees have logical trajectories: the exploding world of technology and entertainment will always have a designated home for designers, illustrators, and musicians. But for the humanities it’s not always quite clear. I’m looking at you, students of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and of course, English. If you look so disdained and irritated at the thought of teaching, what the hell are you going to do with your life? You can’t highlight and discuss Dostoevsky for rent or bulk quinoa, you know. In this economy??

During the very last months of college I found myself wildly panicking over what was to come after graduation. I had seen the light after long, stressful nights of postcolonial essays and cursing Descarte, but what exactly was it that awaited me outside the tunnel? I had worked at Starbucks and as a math tutor for most of my time at university, but now I had to leave the lull of part-time work and join the work force as a full-fledged, blazer wearing adult. I began the arduous task of filling out applications and writing enthusiastic-but-not-desperate cover letters. The more company websites and Glassdoor reviews I read, the more I began to doubt and question myself. Just who the hell did I think I was, trying to penetrate into these money-flooded, world-changing industries with but a mere English degree?

The first thing I learned was that job applications are nothing but a numbers game. That posting on LinkedIn might have been there for weeks by the time your grubby hands clicked on it — imagine all the other souls that have already applied and posted their resumes and cover letters and hopes and dreams.

So you’re probably 189th in line to interview for a decent paying job in the Financial District with great benefits and catered lunches, and I’m sorry to say that statistically you are unlikely to even get an in-person interview. Maybe the recruiter won’t even see your profile. Don’t fret, dear friend. Remember the numbers and do not put all of your eggs (and your hopes and dreams) into one catered lunch basket. Take advantage of the “Easy Apply” button and up your game. The more applications you put out, the more likely you’re going to get a call. The more calls and interviews you’re granted, the more likely you’re gonna get a job.

If you’re feeling as insecure as I was about your major, don’t. The education section in your resume is only what, 3-5 lines? There is an entire 8 1/2 x 11 sheet (or A4 if you’re not American) on which you can paint the intelligent, competent, and hard-working individual you are. The skills you learn as a humanities major are useful and important, but you have to know how to market them to fit corporate expectations and needs. For example, my long, grueling nights over analytical essays and presentations became:

Efficient and thorough analysis of written text
Effective written and oral communication on different scopes and levels of detail

It’s all about selling your skills and customizing your resume and cover letter to fit the job application. Technical writer? Emphasize your quick and accurate copywriting/editing skills. Project coordinator? Highlight your communication skills and the high- and low-level detail work you put into that senior thesis.

That being said, I’m going to have to get honest with you, fellow humanities major. Unless you’re intensely brilliant and prolific, Hermione Granger incarnate, or you were able to land and work unpaid internships during college, I’m sorry to say that you are probably not going to be a tenured museum curator at the Smithsonian or a publishing editor at Random House right after graduation. If you have the financial means to do so, put in that entry-level time at creative companies and work your way up. If you do need to make that cash, maybe take some time in another industry while you keep working on your creative pursuits. I say this because unfortunately, you will probably have to weigh in between having a higher, secure salary versus lower pay while working on your passion project and dream career.

I personally had to choose between taking a lower paid entry-level position at a small publishing company and a higher paid position in an industry I don’t love. Call me a sell out, but I chose the higher paid position for now because I want to build up financial security while I keep looking for better paid creative work and endeavoring on my own passion projects (like this godforsaken manuscript). At first I felt guilty because I gave up the opportunity to work in literature for a corporate job, but I can still love books and writing while paying my bills and building my savings.

So yes, I did get a real, big-girl job with my English degree! I am not finished with my education and constantly scour free classes on Udacity and Coursera to learn new skills (Mandarin and Python just because they’re interesting) but I am proud of my education and what I’ve learned. I like the work I’ve found and admit to settling, but I’m also on a constant lookout for transitioning into creative work. Do not fret, dear English major. The world is abundant and full of jobs: careers that you will either love or careers that you can take for the time being while you gain more editing experience and/or finish that manuscript (finish it, dammit!).

Breaking Up with Makeup

There was a moment in my life where I never let the sunshine touch my skin. Before I stepped out into the world, I needed to paint over my acne scars, flick a wing at the edge of my eyes, and color in where the hallows of my cheeks should be. I played with pinks and reds and purples and spent unfathomable amounts of time and money on figuring out how to look flawless, chiseled, highlighted in order to make myself feel powerful, fierce, capable, beautiful.

For a bit of context, I spent most of middle school looking like this:

middleschool

I was in the midst of the existential turmoil that comes with puberty, and looked up to punk icons like Sioxsie Sioux and Brody Dalle, thence the awful haircut that definitely broke my mom’s heart. There were many instances where it was me versus the daughter she had imagined: a daughter who would have had long hair and worn clothes besides her brothers’ band t-shirts and the godforsaken Jack Skellington hoodie I refused to take off. I remember crying one evening before church because my mom insisted I wear a green and yellow floral top; we begged each other without much avail to understand the opposite sides of that blouse. On another instance, she confided in me the painful embarrassment she went through over how I looked, all because someone had mistakenly referred to me as her son. This was also the time where I was beginning to explore my sexuality and gender identity: I started researching about the LGBTQ community and came to realize that not only was I queer, I didn’t really identify with the standards placed onto women. I wasn’t beautiful or feminine and didn’t want to waste my time on striving to be either of those. As the sole girl in a litter of 4 rowdy kids, I had abandoned my Barbies in 3rd grade and turned to WWE, Tekken, basketball, and all other things that frustrated the hell out of my mom and dad. So I abandoned society’s preset principles of femininity and embraced the fact that I just happened to look like a pudgy teenage boy. But freeing myself of these expectations didn’t make me happy — quite contrarily I was still miserable about being ugly even though I had already accepted it as my fate.

The melancholy of middle school began to wear off towards the end of 8th grade. My friends and I, the Nerd Cave Crew, shunned the idea that girls had to be petite and cute and have shiny long hair while we proudly rocked our completely-punk-and-NO-my-mom-did-NOT-buy-this-from-Hot-Topic identities. I comforted myself from the fact that I was not conventionally attractive by completely disregarding society’s expectations of attractiveness, but I still avoided mirrors and stooped my head in social situations in the hopes that I would not be seen.

The first time I remember actually studying my face and seeing that it really wasn’t that bad was the night of the 8th grade formal dance. Having no makeup of my own, I used one of my mom’s Estee Lauder palettes and swiped a pale glittery purple on my eyelids, then smudged a bit of eyeliner on my lower lashes just like the girl on YouTube showed me. After applying mascara and curling my eyelashes with the terrifying metal contraption, I looked in the mirror and saw a girl. It was the first time my Nerd Cave friends saw me in a dress or wearing makeup, and the first time in my teenage years that I felt pretty. I couldn’t help but feel a bit more human because I finally resembled what I assumed society, my mom and dad, what the world expected from me.

At first makeup was liberating because it gave me control over how I could look like. I was never the pretty girl, so to finally have these tools to emulate some sort of beauty felt like finally grabbing hold of mjolnir after a long battle where I had been fighting naked and vulnerable.

I began buying my own makeup and religiously watching beauty videos on YouTube during my freshman year of high school. I experimented with eyeshadows and lipsticks, developed a detailed face routine with foundation, contour, and blush, and perfected the art that is winged eyeliner. High school was pretty fun for me: I still wasn’t skinny or as pretty as the other girls but every morning I sat in front of the mirror and studied the canvass of my face, thinking Yeah, I can work with this.

makeupdina

Of course, plastering one’s face every single day with cheap foundation and powders in the throes of puberty is going to be rough on anyone’s pores. My skin had never been the greatest, but throughout high school and my freshman year of college it was constantly a cycle of covering up those swelling, pus-filled bumps on my face, scraping off the makeup at the end of the day with expensive acne-fighting products and desperate hopes, then finding new inflamed bumps the very next morning. Makeup was my tool to feel human and deserving of social interaction, but what good is hammering a few nails on a wall with no foundation?

Studying abroad in high school and college did wonders for my self-esteem because I had proved to myself that I was smart and brave enough to explore the word. I lived in cities I had never even dreamed of visiting, and met and befriended people of different walks of life. But being the teenager that I was, neither intelligence nor courage sufficed. I still felt like the one in the friend group who had to be funny and outrageous to make up for what I lacked in looks. Looking back now, I can’t help but regret all the time, money, and space I wasted lugging around my makeup to different parts of the world. I would wake up in my dorm at school or whatever hostel we were staying in and rush to the bathroom to put on my face. Without the comfort of foundation, contour, and eyeliner I didn’t want others to see me, see the red mountains lining my jaw, the bulging lack-of-cheekbone, and the short and straight eyelashes that left my eyes dull.

It was after I had dropped out of NYU, started working at Starbucks while finishing school online at Arizona State, and discovered my love for the outdoors that my relationship with makeup began crumbling. At first it was sheer laziness — the early mornings and 6-8 hours of steaming milk and pouring espresso shots just didn’t seem to call for any makeup.

Then, seeing my bare face on a daily basis began to desensitize me to the insecurities I had garnered over the course of puberty and my young adult life. I found that the shape of my eyes were actually quite pretty, and that I do indeed have cheek bones. My features are not as sharp or defined as others’, but why do they have to be? After years of abusing it with pore-clogging concealers and powders, and harsh chemicals to negate the effects of the former, I began taking better care of my skin and body. In turn it thanked me by clearing up the acne that had riddled my face and self-esteem for so many years — the less makeup I wore, the more beautiful I realized I actually am.

20190317_150436 So here I am at 23, with a full-time “big girl job” at an office and a dream to travel the world while helping others while I do it. One of the ways I want to help you is to open up a discussion about makeup and insecurities. Sure, makeup can be used as a medium for self-expression and empowerment. AOC’s iconic red lip and hoops are a way of paying homage to her Bronx background and a big “Fuck you” to those who don’t think fashionable or pretty can exist alongside intelligent and strong. Frida Kahlo was known to accentuate her unibrow and facial hair despite the ridiculous expectations that women should not grow hair anywhere besides where society has deemed appropriate. Drag queens bake and highlight and carve out impeccable eyebrows while questioning gender identities that are forced upon us by social norms. These are just a few examples of how makeup is freeing and empowering.

But when it becomes the crutch upon which one desperately leans in order to feel worthy to face the world, I’m afraid it’s the makeup that is wearing you.

I was a bit afraid of going to work without makeup, terrified that people would think I don’t take myself seriously or care how I present myself. While I do reject what society says how I should dress/act/feel/speak as a woman, I also care deeply about the image of myself that I put out into the world. But I can paint myself just as well and even better with words, action, and work as with some blush or eyeliner. So I am dumping you, makeup. As the title suggests, this is my official breakup letter.

Dear Makeup,

We have had a long and complicated relationship over the past few years. I discovered you when I was young and quite vulnerable, and you embraced me with open arms and showed a side of me I had never thought to look for. Thank you for helping me find and accept my femininity, and thank you for being on fleek for so many years.

Having said this, there were parts of our journey that weren’t so great. I spent so much time and resources on you, time and resources that could have gone to things that make me feel happier. I missed out on precious sleep and countless breakfasts because I was so dedicated to you and thought you were the only thing that could help me face this world.

What I have come to realize is that I simply don’t need you anymore. I can’t say I’m sorry that I’m ending it like this, so I just want to you to know that we’ll still be friends. There are still weddings and parties in the future where I might reach for you, but only because I want you. Not because I need you.

So thanks again for making me look skinnier when I thought that was an important thing to strive for, thanks for making me feel powerful when I wore red or purple lipstick, and thanks for the fierceness I found with winged eyeliner. I am so grateful you helped me find these things, but I am beginning to realize that I can feel powerful, fierce, strong, capable, and beautiful without you.

All my love,

Dina Klarisse

Where I am at 23 and Where I Want to Be

Admit it, we are all whirling into the craze that is decluttering and have the urge to pick things in our lives that will either spark joy or will spark the donation bin. Every other Youtuber and Instragrammer has picked out the worn Forever 21 sweaters and five-year-old single tube socks from their drawer, but I have also come across some articles from the web that talk about decluttering the more abstract parts of life.

As I take heed of Marie Kondo and her ruthless demolition of all things unnecessary or unsparky of joy, I’m beginning to reflect on the things I want to be known for or what I want myself to focus on as I become (dare I say it ) a real adult. So here is a list of things of big picture things that I still care about. General life aspects that spark that anime joy in me or that I know are good for me even though I don’t wanna go to the gym dammit:

Health: I’ve always been fat. I was a fat toddler, a fat kid, a fat teenager, etc. etc. While I appreciate the incredible and charming personality that came with having to compensate for my looks, I have realized in the past years that my body just wasn’t responding to my lifestyle in the way that I wanted it to. My legs couldn’t carry me up the mountains I wanted to climb, my lungs wavered at the thought of running or jumping or swimming. My boyfriend helped me immensely by reintroducing vegetarianism into my life (more on that later) and becoming my adventure buddy. While he led me to this new path, I developed my own rhythm by learning how to cook, joining the gym and finding a routine that I like, and focusing on foods and movements that nourish me.
Deeper Relationships and Understanding: at the risk of sounding like every other aging Berkeley hippy, I must say that this is so important to prioritize now that we live in such a fast-paced, social media age. Our minds are becoming more attuned to novelty rather than deeper relationships and understanding. I have found that it’s gotten a lot harder for me to focus on one task as my mind has been conditioned to await a new notification or shiny new post. We’ve all read enough articles on Facebook (ironically enough) that social media will rot our brain and is the ultimate doom of the human relationship so I won’t go into that. And I won’t go depriving myself the bliss of scrolling through puppy Instagram, but I am also taking an initiative to be more present and selective with what I choose to spend time on.
Writing! Here it is, my big goal for this year. Since I was about nine-years-old and reading aloud my stories about android 4th grade teachers, I knew that I wanted to be a writer. I have always been a storyteller — one of my famous numbers was composed at the tender age of three, when I spun a tale about the paniking kalbo, or bald-headed bat, who flew into the mall and wreaked havoc. I’m sorry to say my ideas have become a lot less adventurous, but they are there nonetheless. After years of conditioning myself to search for a practical career path just in case writing doesn’t work out, I realized that it never will if I don’t give it the dedication it deserves. I’m making this promise to write once a day, either on this blog project or on my manuscript and you, my friend, or the 2 people reading this, are here to hold me accountable.

I made a goal last year to finish the first draft of my novel and to start a blog and while I did write a few posts, I am not proud of the time and effort I had put into writing. This is something that brings me joy and something with which I feel I can make a contribution to the world, so it deserves more than a few scrambled posts.

In order to juggle my endeavors to get healthy, work on my relationships, and write more, I’ll have to sacrifice a few things. I am limiting the amount of time I consume in order to make time to produce and create. This means that I’ll have to spend less time watching TV or the black hole that is YouTube, which seems daunting now because GAME OF THRONES TRAILER JUST CAME OUT!! But relax, Dina. Everything in moderation, even moderation. When you deprive of yourself you truly start craving it — I learned this the hard way when I tried going vegan and spent those two weeks eating more cheese than I ever have.

That being said, I am also reaching out to you, family and friends, to support my passion by reading and sharing my posts, and also giving me feedback! I will take constructive criticism, suggestions, requests, whatever you have to say about my writing as long as it drives me to work on my craft and will not piss on my hopes and dreams.

Thanks for reading!

Dina Klarisse