Saintly St. Ana

Image via Elizabeth Gilbert I recently started reading the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and so far I'm loving it! You probably can't really tell from the title, but it's essentially about living a creative life. She has a pretty interesting philosophy regarding ideas, inspiration, and how humans interact with them. I suppose it's technically a self help/ user guide type book, but she doesn't approach it that way. She simply writes about her own experiences and the observations she's gathered from others. Still, it's pretty interesting to learn about someone else's perspective on creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the famed novel Eat, Pray, Love . I never read the book (sorry, just didn't interest me) and fell asleep during the movie (sorry again)! I had no idea until I started reading this book that it was by the same author. For someone who had a book on the New York Times Best Sellers list for over 200 weeks and then had ...

So I got a new book and I think it's awesome so I'm gonna share it! As I've mentioned probably a million times before, staying motivated is kind of a challenge these days so I was intrigued when I stumbled upon Adam J. Kurtz' book 1 Page at a Time . I initially found Adam's work on Instagram (of course) probably through some dumb hashtag. I'm dedicated to dumb hashtags. Anyway, I instantly fell in love with his sense of humor and illustrations. I pretty much admire anyone that can draw because it's hard and I think it's 10x harder to actually develop your own style. He does both of those things while making awesome products like balloons, pins, books- you name it! Clearly, I was obsessed. At first this book seemed kind of cheesy but then I realized that it's a-okay to be cheesy. I contemplated buying it online for a while but I haaaaate ordering things online and waiting. If I can get the same thing in a store and have it in my hands in ...

We are living in a material world and I am a material girl. Madonna knows what I'm talking about. I don't really consider myself materialistic. I like to think that I value real interactions with people and life experiences more than I do objects. But at the same time I'm pretty sentimental and that makes it easy to attach emotions to objects, therefore making it harder to get rid of them. I believe this started early in my life so I'm gonna tell a little story. If you don't wanna stick around for story time feel free to skip ahead! I was always the kind of kid that tried to keep everything. My poor mom had to sneak into my closet when I wasn't around and try and throw out little bits of junk at a time so I wouldn't notice. Like literally junk. I used to collect the cardboard centers of toilet paper and paper towel rolls (I have no idea why). I also had several pencil boxes full of pens and pencils I thought were cool, but were usually broken. There wa...

Another one of my friends has moved away. Cue F.R.I.E.N.D.S. theme song. I'm not trying to be dramatic but sometimes I feel like everyone around me is moving forward with their lives and I'm stuck in the same place. I couldn't be happier for my gal pal- she's moving to Boulder, CO (!) with her gal pal and they're gonna have a blast being Colorado gals. She's going back to school in an awesome city and I know she's going to do awesome things. Having another friend move away obviously bums me out, but it also reminds me that I'm not moving forward as fast as they are or even as quickly as I had planned. My friend Annabelle and I at her going away party. #dirtymirror Lately I've found myself being more anti-social and in turn having a hard time making new friends/meeting new people. I've also been dealing with an increased level of social anxiety, so that always helps. Not that I'm unhappy with my circle of friends at the moment, b...

Forgive me, Internet, for I have sinned... Okay. Confession time. My first two blog posts were made at work. I KNOW. Who am I!? I'm really not a terrible employee. I get all my work done on time and it's done correctly. It's just that sometimes there's not a lot of work to be done. So lately instead of mindlessly browsing the internet I'm trying to be a little more productive in my time spent online. Hence the start of this blog! (Disclaimer: I realize the risk of putting this information online, but I've made the commitment to be completely honest on here. While I do sometimes feel guilty for using my work time to do non-work related things, I'm not really provided with a lot of opportunities to move up or fill my time otherwise. So here we are.) Over the weekend I started reading Sophia Amoruso's #GIRLBOSS and let me tell you, I'm only 50 pages in and I'm already really fucking motivated. She definitely tells it how it is- no sugar coatin...