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INTENTION


To say that I’m always on the hunt for a good deal… well that’s an understatement. The day I discovered that Pinterest existed so that I could digitally pin all of the outfit ideas I loved together in one place was a life changing moment for me. When I want something, I figure out a way to get it. Even if it’s just a hint of a challenge, it lights me up inside. I do enjoy a good chase - especially if it’s for a material object that I desperately want!!

My constant battle is balancing the things I want with the things that I need. Going into TJ Maxx gives me a high. The thrill of finding something (anything) that I can get for cheaper, is something that made me feel so freakin clever. It made me feel so smart to have bypassed this ridiculous notion that everything has to be designer, high end, and top of the line.

Now, I still am in the mindset that you should never settle for buying anything at full price, but I try to be much more mindful of the objects I place in my “dwelling.” Recently I downsized from a one bedroom to a studio, and let me tell you- none of the stuff I had fit into that space. I felt like I was having an existential crisis! What was I to do with all of this stuff that I lovingly bought, and collected over the past two years? I felt like New York City was ripping all of my prizes from my hands. What did I have to show for curating my collection of themed “stuff?”

The irony of all this is: my MO is organization and cleanliness. I know where ALL of my stuff is. I buy canvas boxes to thematically place all of my stuff together in a way that makes sense to me. I used to feel so cathartic getting rid of bags and bags of stuff. But I always ended up buying new things, in the new “theme” of stuff I was suddenly focused on.

Being more intentional about my actions is something I am going to try and focus on in the new year. It’s definitely something that is a challenge for me. I think that one thematic principle I’m finding more and more interesting is the action of wanting vs. needing something.

My generation, (and I’m not saying “my generation” generically so I can use myself as an outstanding example about how I’m “rebelling against the status quo,” because I’m really not) is so used to this concept of “instant gratification,” that I’m convinced that it gives us anxiety not to get what we want, at that very moment. The women I am friends with, myself included, were brought up to believe that if you want something hard enough, and you work long enough, you can attain any goal. When I find something I like, I feel like if I don’t get it now, if I don’t complete the task, it’ll nag at my thoughts until I do.

"Intention, accountability, and follow through"

We grew up in an age of learning the value of a “like.” A “like” on facebook, instagram, twitter, oh, and not to mention any dating platform that we came across. The “swipe right, swipe left” concept made us make a judgement about a human being in a split second of time, basing it off of just a picture. We have grown up in an age of making decisions with a sense of urgency and very little sense of accountability. After all, you can always take back whatever you messaged the guy with “oh so sorry, my friend took my phone and messaged all the guys on bubble I matched with!”

A guy my friend once dated uploaded a picture of him making out with another a girl, 2 days after they had broken up. She went to see who in the WORLD had liked the picture, and SHE ended up liking the picture herself! She called me in tears, and we spend the next hour liking each other’s pictures, and then unliking them, to see if we still got a notification on facebook that we had liked that picture even though we unliked it almost immediately. Of course, the notification always appeared, and clearly the guy saw she liked it… whoops.

When I look back at moments like this, I think - my God, were we that shallow? We really weren’t. We were just feeding into the social media frenzy that occupied us for the majority of our later high school and college years. But what a monumental waste of time, right? We don’t talk to each other anymore, we express our emotions and reactions through “likes” and “dislikes” and weirdly anonymous messages that we can simply “take back.” What does that teach us?

It all comes back to intention. If I knew that I couldn’t return everything I bought within 90 days, maybe I would be more thoughtful about buying it in the first place. Intention, accountability, and follow through; skills I definitely need to polish this coming year. Sometimes I think that part of growing up is adjusting your expectations to fit your circumstance, recently though, I’ve been more and more convinced that you create a life you love, and you adjust your expectations to the life that you want.

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