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Social Media Challenge – Day 1

Yesterday was day 1 and it went pretty well. I did not take my phone out of my bag until it was time to go to sleep, and even then, I left it on the charger in my room because I didn’t trust my circa 2000’s alarm clock to go off at the correct time, so my phone served as a backup. I did not touch it once it was on the charger though. So I think that is success. My alarm clock did go off as scheduled though and it was extremely loud as I expected. It was effective at making me wake up with the first alarm.

What I did with my evening instead of scrolling was the dishes that had piled up a little bit and then I set up my new planner for the next few days. This is so I have a list of the things that will need to be done when I inevitably find myself bored from not having the constant contact with my phone. Instead of trying to remember or notice everything that needs to be done, I’ll refer to my list of checks.

I will try to update you about day 2 tomorrow!

January 10, 2023
Social Media Challenge

Today is the day. So it’s not really like a New Year’s resolution because I’m coming up with this on January 9, 2023, but I am fed up with myself, so we can call it a resolution if you like. I have decided that I would like to stop mindlessly scrolling on my social media. I do this on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook, and YouTube when deciding what to watch “in the background.” I waste countless minutes each evening after work with this scrolling and it shows in how much of a mess my home is.

To accomplish my resolution, I am making a few choices. First, I will be pulling an actual, circa 2000’s alarm clock out of my closet and setting it up out of arm’s reach of my bed. This will make an ungodly sound when it goes off and will make me rush over to it in order for it to not wake my whole house, including the baby.

Second, I will be placing my smart phone on my computer desk with its charger so that it has a place to sleep every night that’s not in my bedroom. I will place it in its place every evening upon getting home. This means that text messages will go unanswered for the evening but I will be turning the ringer on, effectively turning my smart phone into a 1980’s wall phone. If I hear it ring, then I can answer.

Third, I will be sharing updates as often as I can in posts here, sharing the things that I did instead of scrolling and the struggles that I had with actually taking my practical steps to not scroll social media.

My goal with this is to have an actual, cozy home instead of a cluttered house. a few random extras that may also come into play in this plan is that I’m a married, working mom of one baby, and two fur-babies.

Let’s start the challenge.

January 9, 2023
Plastic Free Deodorant

One of my goals this year is to reduce the packaging and plastic packaging that I end up buying when buying household products. One of the products that I have to buy regularly is deodorant and it almost always comes in a proprietarily shaped plastic container. This lead me to search the internet for plastic-free deodorant and of course, the first one to come up is the deodorant from the brand Native.

Native three pack of deodorant

Native is a brand that comes up frequently when one is searching for deodorant and body wash but they also have lotions and toothpastes. Currently, it appears that soap and deodorant are their only plastic-free or low-plastic product options.

Reviews of their deodorants seem to be fairly good but I will have to put them to the test compared to other aluminum-free deodorants that I’ve tried. I hope to have a good review of the deodorants soon!

(This post is not paid or an ad)

August 11, 2022
Plant Based or Vegan

After doing some research into veganism, I’ve started seeing some of the ways that vegans tend to think and I think I will continue to say that I am plant-based rather than vegan. As I said in my last post, I still buy and make food for my husband who is not interested or required to follow my diet so it tends to be animal products. While I am looking into product replacements for environmental impact and cruelty-free products, there are some that I won’t be able to replace in my household. There are some vegans who say that veganism is about doing everything that you can to be as close to vegan as you can get but there is a large number of vegans who are much stricter in their gatekeeping of the vegan community. Additionally, while there are pieces of veganism that can fit into my faith of Christianity, pushing veganism or any particular diet for ethical reasons is spoken against in Romans 14:2-3, “One person believes he may eat anything, while the weak person eats only vegetables. Let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgement on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.” (ESV) What I get from this is that everyone who is Christian has different convictions in their walk with God.

I am interested in hearing what you think about this as well. Do you prefer vegan or plant-based and why?

January 10, 2021
Whole Food, Plant-Based

I started an interesting journey at the beginning of December. I had a doctor’s appointment and it was suggested for my health that I look into a whole-foods, plant-based diet. Knowing me, I immediately went all-in since I tend to be very all-or-nothing about things like this. I had done a similar personal change of diet about three years ago but it was difficult because my husband has no interest in the same diet, so I was making two of everything, one plant-based and one animal-based. Again, with how I am, I have a very hard time not being completely committed to something like this, so this time upon getting the recommendation, I am also heavily researching veganism from the ethical point of view. There is a lot of it that resonates with me but because my husband has no interest and I am the person who makes the household meals (including his animal-based meals) I hesitate to say that I am vegan. I would like to be vegan otherwise. For that reason, I will say that I am plant-based.
Some of my favorite resources this past month include the Forks Over Knives website and recipe app, the documentaries Forks Over Knives, Game Changers, and Food Choices, as well as numerous YouTube channels including Cheap Lazy Vegan, Sweet Potato Soul, and Avant-garde Vegan. There are many other YouTube channels as well.
As I continue to go into this journey ethically, I am planning to make many changes in what I am purchasing and using, especially with regards to clothing, makeup, and essential care items like shampoo and toothpaste since these are things I have never thought about before but now I can’t really unsee it without going into some sort of denial. This also makes me step back and really think about the kind of fashion business I would like to work for or with because of the environmental impact that clothing businesses have on the planet.
As this continues, I plan to share more of my favorite new cruelty-free products and how I’ve made the transition in some of these areas. Full disclosure: in some areas, I haven’t started the transition because I am going to finish using what I have before I begin purchasing new items because I believe it would be more of a waste environmentally to simply throw out what I have now to buy something new.
Please let me know if there’s anything in particular you would like me to answer about this transition process. Also let me know if you have any tips if you’ve already made the transition to a vegan lifestyle. I would love to hear your tips!

(I am sharing my new experiences as I change my own lifestyle. I am not telling anyone else how they should or shouldn’t live their own life. All links in the post above are for convenience for the reader only and are not sponsored.)

December 26, 2020
One of My Favorite Resources: AllSides

After I had watched the documentary “The Social Dilemma,” I have been off of social media and permanently deleted my profiles from Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter. After a couple of days of the quiet of not hearing all the opinions and news from my social media newsfeeds, I began to search for other sources of news. Through my research of the people in the documentary, I went to the website for the Center for Humane Technology and on the “Take Control” page, I found different news sources that allow you to have more control on the news you see. The main resource that the page highlighted for this use is AllSides, which is a balanced news source that filters multiple articles for many of the same stories based on user feedback to say which “side” the news headline and article comes from. Some are labeled as being from the Left, the Right and the Center. This allows you to understand the writer’s bias, since many if not all writers and news organizations have a particular bias. For example, my local newspaper has even announced its chosen presidential candidate that it endorses and the reasoning why. This leads me to compare its news stories to those of other writers to see what is common between them and what is different. In using this system, I hope to view news stories with a clear mind and to understand what is actually happening rather than what each side claims about the other. I know that they do this because it’s their job to make their own side look good but I find it confusing. I also don’t want to just find news stories that I agree with but basically want to cross-examine as many stories as I can.

(No sponsors, the links are provided above for convenience.)

October 14, 2020
Show Review: Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

As any Gilmore Girls fan may know, Netflix just released an exclusive four-part season 8 of the series as a revival. I spent the last day watching them, and I have some thoughts to share. There will be spoilers down in this post, so if you haven’t seen the episodes yet, make sure to watch them before reading this.

I want to start with Rory’s story part, as I can appreciate the struggle that she is facing in her career. She’s 32 and doesn’t have a full-time job or even a steady gig in journalism or writing even though she has a degree from Yale. She isn’t getting the job she had always dreamed of, just as she didn’t go to the school she had always dreamed of in the original series. This is a very relatable story path for those of us in that sort of age range. I can relate to having studied for a job, and then when the opportunity comes, I can’t sell myself to the potential employers, as she needed to do and failed for the website Sandee Says. This is a struggle of many in my age group and even those older than myself, and I truly appreciate that they wrote this as her story, rather than as the successful journalist everyone thought she would become.

I also liked her relationship with Logan. It’s very true to both of their characters that they primarily meet in secret. I could never picture them getting married and having a family as Rory’s grandparents dreamed. Logan is also exceptionally kind to her, as only he could be as a lover. I can’t help but imagine him being like his father as a husband, so I enjoyed the impression of him that we were left with after the Life and Death Brigade reunion in the 4th episode.

Lorelai’s story is simple but takes a turn as only Lorelai can do when she feels scared about what’s coming or not coming. We all knew that she and Luke had to get married, but of course, it couldn’t have been a linear path. This path also goes through her relationship with her mother, Emily, since her mother is the one trying to convey to her that getting married is different from just being together. This story through Lorelai’s relationship with her parents is a wonderful resolution. We see her and her mother struggling through therapy, which doesn’t do much for their relationship by itself but helps them begin to open up to one another. We also see Lorelai beginning to open up about her relationship with her late father and even sharing that with her mother.

Emily is also facing her own struggle of self-searching and she is grieving the loss of her husband Richard. She is feeling her mortality but also learning who she is now that she has lost her other half. Before his death, her job was to manage her household to the approval and appreciation of her husband. Now she is figuring out how life will look for her as she is on her own. She even has a lively household since she unknowingly invited the maid and her family to live with her. We see a much warmer side to Emily, and it makes me happy to know that she is living outside of her sterilized, white-washed, wealthy community. I will admit that her volunteer job at the whale museum was a little weird, but I think it fit her character.

Overall, this season is beautiful. We saw many of the familiar faces from before, even if it was only briefly. I can’t think of anyone that was missed from before. It was funny to see some of the actors back in Stars Hollow since some of them have grown in their career past the role they had played in this iconic series, but it was nice to see them back in those old roles. It felt like coming back home to the little world we had come to love in the town, and I couldn’t be happier with the resolution we were given. However, there is one part at the end that leaves me believing that we may hear more from our favorite town in Connecticut. I will leave you to discover what the infamous “last four words” are when you watch it for yourself.

(opinions are my own, not sponsored, image from fanpop.com)

November 27, 2016