I share with you the products I have used up in the months of February through July and provide mini-reviews on how I liked them while I was using them, and if I would repurchase them in the future and recommend them to you. I have hair products, body care, face, and makeup items as well. This will probably be my last empties video, as I’m a little over them, and don’t want to continue storing trash in my home. I hope you like it! #makeupmonday #makeuprocks #empties #toiletries #skincare #reviews #usewhatyouhave
I’m trying a new vanity organization and sharing my favorite primers and foundation at the moment. #usewhatyouhave #makeuprocks #makeup #getreadywithme #grwm #chitchat
I found a couple of organizing bins from Tahari Home Collection at TJ Maxx and they are perfect to complete my #vanity organization. It looks so polished now that everything matches. I love it!! #makeuprocks #makeup #organizing
I share with you the products I have used up in the months of December and January and provide mini-reviews on how I liked them while I was using them, and if I would repurchase them in the future and recommend them to you. I have hair products, supplements, body care, face, and makeup items as well. I hope you like it! #makeupmonday #makeuprocks #empties #toiletries #skincare #reviews #usewhatyouhave
Have you heard this? I hear this constantly. People don’t believe in God, but they believe in the Universe. What do they mean by this? It has bugged me for years, not because I think everyone should believe in God, or have the same spiritual understanding of what life means, or “god forbid” (pun intended), share the same religious faith. But, because to me the universe is a conglomerate of rocks in space. How does one not believe in God but believe in rocks? What do they expect rocks to do for them? I mean, don’t get me wrong, I for one love rocks. I have been collecting them in various shapes and formes since I was a kid. But, aside from the energetic vibration that all animate and inanimate objects and beings have, can we really expect rocks to guide our lives? Do rocks answer when we pray to them?
I believe in God. Not the white man, with a white beard, sitting on a thrown, who is almighty, and likes to play sometimes not so funny jokes on us. But, in a God that is pure spiritual energy, of which we are all made. The mother source of spirit, from which all souls come from. More of an It than a him or her, more of a force than a superior man-like being. I’ve begun to call It the mother source, but people don’t easily relate to that term or fully understand it, so I continue to call It God.
When folks talk about the Universe, I believe this is what they are referring to. It just bugs be that they use that word. And you see, I think that is the crux of the issue. We don’t have words to describe the spiritual realm, that are distinctively spiritual and not tinted by religion, science, or the physical-material realm we find our selves in our day-to-day. This is why it’s so difficult to explain, to verbalize, to communicate, what happens in the spiritual realm. How do we even begin to explain everlasting love and peace? How do we explain, truly explain, stillness and being present, in a way that it gets to the essence of it, while we are still constrained by our current lexicon?
I’ve been studying and researching spirituality for over 15 years now, and still we don’t have the language to truly explain it. Scholars talk about spiritual experiences (SE), spiritually transforming experiences (STE), near death experiences (NDE), death bed experiences (DBE), shared death experiences (SDE), past lives experiences (PLE) both through regressions and spontaneously, and even life between life experiences (LBL). And yet, still when I ask people about their spiritual background, I typically get another question as a response, “Do you mean my religious background?” and follow it with an explanation of how they were brought up with a particular religious faith, which some continue to practice, while others have moved-on from.
The religious practicing folks seem to have no issue with the word God. Those who have been burned by religion, steer away from it. The spiritual but not religious group, those who don’t think religion contributes anything to their life, yet still believe in something guiding them in the spiritual realm, are the folks who typically believe in the Universe. Who will call the It the Universe. Why? How did this term come to be in vogue when referring to a spiritual guiding source?
I share with you the products I have used up in the months of October and November and provide mini-reviews on how I liked them while I was using them, and if I would repurchase them in the future and recommend them to you. I have hair products, supplements, body care, face, and makeup items as well. At the end, I also share some of my new buys I recently purchased and currently enjoying. I hope you like it! #makeupmonday #makeuprocks #empties #toiletries #skincare #reviews #usewhatyouhave
Because of the Corona Virus we couldn’t host Thanksgivng this year like we would have wanted to. So it was just Mike and I. We cooked up a storm! Made our first full turkey from scratch. A 17 pounder, mind you. So we will be eating left-overs for weeks.
We made the most delicious garlic mashed potatoes, green bean caserole (from scratch, no cans were used), a surprisingly delicious cranberry sauce, and delicious stuffing.
I share with you the products I have used up in the month of September and provide mini-reviews on how I liked them while I was using them, and if I would repurchase them in the future and recommend them to you. I have hair products, body care, makeup, and some health and miscellaneous items as well. I hope you like it!
I’m trying on new lighting and sharing with you some new makeup products I’ve recently bought because my #nobuyyear is over! I’m using the new Colour Pop eyeshadow palette called Wild Nothing.
I woke up at 3:30 am, having gone to sleep around 1 am, and my alarm set to ring at 6:00 am, I was a bit worried about my productivity level for today. In fact that worry was exactly what woke me up in the first place. I have 3.5 articles I should have already submitted, which aren’t yet ready, a dossier that I need to finish, 2 courses I need to finish polishing, so they are ready to go online in two weeks, and a massive case of imposter syndrome that sometimes paralyzes me into a full day (sometimes weeks) of doing nothing much more than sleeping and eating.
At 4:00 am, when I still couldn’t go back to sleep, I decided to put my worries into a to-do list to tackle today. All the thoughts I was having about an article I worked on all last week needed to come out. All the things pending, the tasks I need to complete this week, all the to-dos that were preventing me from falling back to sleep and had woken me up in the first place.
Of, course once that was done and I still wasn’t sleeping, I went to my phone and checked my emails. My feed had The NY Times headlines, like it has had since 1998, and a COVID related article caught my eye. I read it and as it turns out it was exactly what I needed to read.
The article speaks to the emotion of envy that is festering and growing, in some cases not so slowly and quite noticeably, in those of us that are focused on the grass being greener in our neighbors’ yards. Social media has been facilitating us to do this to ourselves for years now, and because COVID is something that has happened to us and not necessarily by us, we are reaping the consequences of social media envy much more painfully.
I wanted to repost this article, which took me briefly to Twitter and then down the rabbit hole that we know as FB. I found out some sad news about a colleague’s wife passing, and going through his feed I found this gem, which helped me gain a bit of perspective.
Yes, social media seems to be a spreading disease at times. But the reality is that it keeps us informed and connected to our current reality. The trick though, is to be able to filter it, and not let it turn into an emotional leech. Easier said than done.
It’s now 7:00 am, an hour after my alarm went off, and I still haven’t gone back to sleep. I remembered how this outlet has helped me before, back in the days when I lived in NYC, reason why I’m subscribed to The NY Times to begin with, and I’m glad I decided to write. Now the problem is going to be getting through that to-do list without crashing half way through it. I see a lot of tea and Coke Zero in my immediate future.
Social media induced envy and the feeling of not being good enough because I have not accomplished what I needed to this summer, have had me in a vicious circle, that ends today. I understand better what is happening: I’m crushed at an emotional level, that then gets into my mind, and reflects very clearly in my actions, or lack there of. Today, I’ll be productive again. Today, I know why I’ve been unmotivated, sluggish, and procrastinating to no end. Today, I am productive, because today I am in control. #knowledgeispower #nottodaycorona
Life is too short... 