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the Woman’s Rights movement IS still happening Ladies —thoughts?

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I love watching TED-talks. This one just became my newest fav.

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It was filmed over three years ago, in June 2013, yet I only just discovered it and it inspired me to write this.

Plus, lately, a big topic of conversation among my friends, family and clients has been women in power. Perhaps the recent presidential election brought light upon the issue and opened up a way for dialogue to happen, or it’s just something that I’ve been struggling with and keep coming back to so I’m talking about it.

I’ve come to find out that there is still lots of ambiguity around being a high achieving boss babe, and even more so around being a successful lady while having a successful family. 

The world is still very much a “man’s” world…

Though women are now expected to also be able to provide bread for the household, the expectations around the kitchen, laundry, cleaning and caregiving really haven’t changed.

The housework and the caregiving is still mainly a woman’s job…

Is it any different in your life?

Thankfully, I was fortunate enough to have wonderful role models showing me just how beneficial it is for children to have both parents participate equally in the role of caregivers.

No, it wasn’t my parents. They aren’t the role models. My mother was a stay-at-home wife and my father a very traditional breadwinner. The awesome people I’m referring to are the wonderful parents of two lovely children that I used to babysit.

Years later though I no longer babysit they are still dear friends, and I get to see them every few months. I get to hangout with them and I’m able to see just how well-adjusted these two children have grown up to be.

Their parents were both involved in caring for them throughout their early childhood years. They both put in equal time and effort. I got to witness just how beneficial that is for children.

It all has to do with equal parenting.

 

Now, that’s what I want for my family. And, that’s what the norm should be for everybody. The roles of caregiver, household manager, all the responsibilities should be equally shared —but are they…?

Looking back I can’t think of many more examples of equal dual parenting —other then that one wonderful family that I used to babysit for… okay, that’s looking back: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, coaches, parents of friends, other babysitting clients. Nope, nothing.

What about now? Many of my friends have started families… well, the females work and take care of the home and kids. The guys just work. Maybe the guys also hangout with their kids but it’s actually more like “play-time”, and when the kids are sick it’s most certainly always the mom’s job to take care of them.

Alright, so perhaps my friends just didn’t pick the right partner —but we’re Millennials!  It should be common practice for us to practice teamwork  —aren’t we the generation that’s open-minded, progressive, and unbound by the rules of the past…

The fact is that many of us are still bound by the rules of the past. Though we are open-minded and seemingly progressive we tend to look to our parents and grandparents to show us how to run our relationship with our partner, our family dynamics, and our household.

 

Should we be doing that?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. And because things are so ambiguous now we really must make an effort not rely on automatic responses for things, we must analyze everything, and question why we do anything. And, we must continue this dialogue.

Thoughts?

 

Dear Fear.

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…i’m so afraid.

I hear you Fear.

You keep talking. You keep telling me I’m not good enough. You make me bite my nails, pick at them, and you  won’t let them grow. You upset my stomach. You throw my breathing off. You make my heart beat faster. 

You make me anxious Fear.

Why do you care so much about what people think?

What about what I think Fear… don’t you care that you paralyze me with terror. You keep me from manifesting my dreams. Why Fear? Don’t you like me?

Doesn’t it hurt you to hurt me?

I mean, aren’t we suppose to be on the same team… If you hurt, I hurt. If I hurt… how does that make you feel?

Do you like hurting me?

What do you get out of hurting me Fear? Is it so important to prove yourself right. Why do you feel the need to always be right…?

People are judging you…

Let them judge Fear! Why do you keep trying to hide?

Why are you putting more importance in other people than me. I house you, I listen to you… i feed you.

Why do I feed you Fear!

…you’re not good enough.

Is that really what you think. Based on what? Who are you comparing me to…

Why do you have such a perception of me… why do I let you win.

…I thought you were a source of motivation, but actually you can get downright crippling.

It’s my fault, really. I listen to you, I pay to much attention to you —and, boy do I pay…

You haven’t proven to make my life any better with all your “advice” Fear, and all of your criticism isn’t very constructive.

What is it you actually want Fear.

Come on, let’s talk.

I’m willing to work with you. To hear what you have to say and come up with options, together.

I actually do know… you’re only trying to look out for me, while you also fight to preserve yourself.

Well, thanks Fear. And, please, know that I’m not trying to get rid of you.

Don’t you know that I need you fear. 

It’s true. I need you to put a little fire in me; from time to time I need some motivation. It just burns too much when you overdo-it.

So maybe you can turn it down a notch?

Do you think we can work things out, what kind of life do you want to live?

I need you to work with me Fear. I’m really tired of the way you’ve been handling things so far. I think we both know that you can approach things waaaaay better…

You have a purpose Fear, you are needed, but the way you keep coming at me is no longer welcomed.

Please think things over and revise your approach.

Why am I doing this? What am I doing?

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I started this blog over a year ago, has it already been two? It doesn’t matter. What matters is why I started it…

WHY DID I START THIS BLOG?

I guess I began this as a way to figure out my life purpose… I studied communication design in college, but very quickly I figured out that I wasn’t a graphic designer. I like making my life “pretty” —my home, the things I wear, the stuff up on my walls, greeting cards to friends and fam, etc.—but when it comes to designing things for other people/companies all I can do is refine, I look for ways to make things better.

So, then I’m an art director. I become managing editor of my school’s literary and arts magazine, and I get to call the shots. I envision a beautiful magazine, I come up with great ideas on how to get advertiser and entries, then I start getting scared… the theme is too heavy, I’m not getting a good reaction, how could I possibly have the audacity to actually go all out with this magazine and make magic: fully allow my vision to realize.

I HAVE TO BE AS GOOD AS THE PEOPLE AROUND ME.

You can’t outshine then you won’t be liked —when did I start thinking that? It also seems ridiculous that I could even think I’m that shiny… 

THAT’S HOW I FELT.

By the end of the school year the magazine got done; it was nice/different but I could have done so much better. In the end I was only disappointed in myself: I let fear win…

But, at least, it became clear that I wasn’t a “graphic designer” —and, I got to learn so much 🙂

That summer I participated in month-long community design project in the Dominican Republic. It was one of the best adventures of my life. The dominican people are so happy, always smiling and dancing, my teammates were such fun people to work with and after loooooooong work days to hangout with, and I also realized that I’m really good with children.

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If I wasn’t dancing, reading or working most of my time was spent engaging with the children of the La Piedra community. They all seemed to really like me —they followed me. And, it became so important for me to influence their lives for the better.

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MAYBE I SHOULD WORK WITH CHILDREN.

I came back to the States thinking that maybe majoring in Communication Design had been a mistake that I should have done psychology instead  —like I had been interested in— so that I could be helping children.

I had friends that were getting their doctorate in psychology at that time, and seeing how much they struggled, all to end up with tons of debt only to be able to help-out a handful of humans, didn’t really appeal to me. Plus the thought of having to go back to school… Don’t get me wrong, I love education and learning— I just couldn’t do that to myself again.

GO BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD.

Alright, so, I couldn’t go back to school and going to work for a design agency wasn’t an option either.

I CAN’T WASTE MY TIME.

I can do design, I’m good at design, but applying to company after company all to try to work my way up to art director to do work that I  didn’t really wanna do seemed like a waste of time.

ALRIGHT WELL IT’S TIME TO FIGURE OUT WHAT I REALLY WANNA DO…

I had some money saved up so I traveled around for a few months. It wasn’t a lot of money so I mostly couchsurfed around. It was fun having some me time, some free time, it felt like rediscovering myself.

And, that was the beginning of that journey.

WHO AM I? WHAT DO I WANT OUT OF LIFE?

I guess this journey may have started long before my mini-traveling sabbatical but going back home after my three-month excursion I had no job to go back to and everywhere I looked there was no job that I was truly interested in.

For the next ten months I made my living doing what I had done all throughout college: promotional marketing, dog-walking and teaching/babysitting.

I was still learning and exploring other options but nothing was coming up.. I had too many interests.

HOW DO I COMBINE MY PASSIONS?!

I ended up packing up my things and moving to China. After a few months of living in China, of being on my own again and getting a fresh perspective on life this blog was born.

I guess I started it as a way to document/combine all my dreams/passions in one place…

I created this blog while I was living in China, and got to write a handful of posts throughout my year there —but life was hard in China, and I had completed my goal, plus I really missed the love of my life…

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Yes, I was doing great work in China, really pushing boundaries and constantly stepping far outside my comfort zone —I loved it! It was thrilling, empowering, it was wonderful but at the end of the day all I wanted to do was share my success with someone special —with him.

FOLLOW YOUR HEART

Realizing this I packed up again and moved to the only place in the world I ever wanted to be —where ever he was.

That was a little bit over a year ago. A few months ago he ended our relationship…

I don’t blame him. We were at different points in our lives. The whole year he was busy with 12-hour workdays, and even some weekends, on top of studying for a huge licensing test. I was busy trying to come up with a definite life purpose.. we were barely making time for each other.

I wanted to figure out a way to take on the world and make it better, together… but we weren’t working like a team —I wasn’t being a team player.

WHAT IS LOVE ANYWAYS?

We might have fallen apart just to be able to fit nicely back together, maybe. I don’t know. All I know is that my heart lead me here, and it’s keeping me here, but I wasn’t consistently open with it, I kept shutting down and  —yet again— I let fear win…

FUCK FEAR

I’m tired of letting fear knock me down. I’m back at square one and this time my best friend’s with me —so what am I doing?

I guess we’ll see…

 

 

7 traits that will help you make the best out of life in China

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China, public art

Alright, so you heard that China is a great place for foreigners right now and you wanna give living there a shot.

Before you begin packing any bags, check out the following seven traits, see if you have what it takes to go to the PRC and really make the best out of your time spent living there.

  1. Determination — you need lots of determination to even make the trip. To begin with, it takes a lot of paperwork to get a Chinese visa. Then there’s not much info on the internet about China, or the info that is available is in Chinese therefore unhelpful, so you gotta be determined to continue your journey then once you get to China and the culture shock finally hits you you gotta be determined to stay there.
  2. Endurance — living in China is not easy, there are many strange Chinese habits that are really unusual for foreigners. Some can get very hard to stand, so just endure through those “classic China” moments and you’ll give yourself the chance to enjoy another day.
  3. Curiosity — you have to be really curious about China to make the best of of your time here then you have to maintain your curiosity specially strong through the tough times.  Things may get challenging or frustrating but you must remember that everything around you is still unknown, so you cannot use your typical way of thinking to judge what you see and experience. When you’re in China you must see everything through your lens of curiosity, things are very different here.
  4. Positivity — $#!+’s bound to happen, you’re bound to get annoyed, you’re bound to begin complaining. When you see yourself start to do that you must engage your positivity. Remember that there are actually many cool things about living in China, about being a foreigner in a monocultural country, about just living in a different country.
  5. Drive — you definitely need drive to make the most out of life in China. Sure, you can just endure through the initial opportunities China grants you or you can make life even better for you. There are many opportunities for foreigners in China, but they need to be active in pursuing them.
  6. Humor — you definitely need to use your humor to help you deal with some of the things that you experience in China. For example, China is actually a very safe place for people but if you’re not careful you’ll end up paying the foreigner price for nearly everything you buy. Just learn the standard pricing for the things you need otherwise you’ll be getting ripped-off too much to be able to use humor to laugh it off.
  7. Patience — always use your patience and stay relaxed, specially through the “classic China” moments — stress is no bueno.

China, public art

My Thoughts on Life

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Simply put life is just a figment of our imagination. Life is a dream. That’s it. It’s all created in our heads.

If you think about it, waking life is as real as any sleeping dream. At least for me. My sleeping-dreams are so vivid. Everything is so clear and detailed. I can hear things, taste things, touch them, feel them. When I am asleep — and dreaming — even my emotions don’t stop, I experience all of them: excitement, fear, terror, happiness, anger, love, ecstasy.

It’s. All. So. Real!

Then there’s lucid dreams. Those are the best! When I have lucid dreams everything is as vivid as my usual dreams plus I have full control over everything that happens and everything I do in those dreams. 

So then — let’s just take a small hop here — if awake life is not much realer than any other sleeping-dream and dreams are things that can be controlled then, by nature of the fact that none of us really know what life is, that must mean that we actually have a lot of control over our awake life.

Right?

That’s what I think.

Many of the experiences that happened in my life have lead me to believe this. That we have more control over our own life than we chose. For example we can chose to focus on a sad life and make that the reality, or we can be imaginative. We think about all of the joyful things going on in our life and focus on those, thereby making them the primary reality. We can even create new great things in our imagination and put our energy into making those the reality. Whatever we shine a light on that will be the brightest. If we imagine the best life we can accept and we work towards it we will get it because we are actively searching for it. It’s really as simple as the old adage “seek and you shall find”. Why has this saying traveled through time? Because it’s true and we should come to know it. I’m sure there are many old sayings that speak truths that we should internalize but instead, at least like me, tend to forget.

I really must remember these things — specially during times when I become too afraid and inevitably stop walking towards my dreams. I hate those times…

Maybe that’s why I am writing this down. There are times I need a quick reminder and I am not sure where to turn to. I guess I don’t have something to remind me that I have more control over the outcome of my day to day life. That it is my choice what I chose to be present for and how I chose to react to things. Everyone is already caught up in their own illusion of reality to remember themselves, so I can’t rely or depend on another person to remind me. Plus, some times I need a quick reminder.

There are those times when I get scared, overwhelmed, tired and I start to focus on the fear. I forget that it’s all just one big dream and I just shine a light on all the negative emotions that are swirling up inside of me, I make them real. Instead of using those emotions as fuel, I find truth in them and I freeze. I stop moving towards my dreams. I don’t get closer to my goals. Overtime the space between me and those goals actually starts to drift away. That just make things worse.

Thankfully something finally reminds me not to take this dream of life so seriously.

Then (again) I start focusing on the process of life, the journey. Again, I begin to shine a light on all of the beautiful things in life. Yet again, I take forwards steps towards my goals. 

This cycle tends to repeat itself, at least it has ever since I began to have my own thoughts about life. Maybe with the more that I learn those thoughts will evolve, but for now they have been useful — specially with easing the stress that comes with what life is now.

One day I hope to always remember to live more in the present, where the ride through this dream current is the smoothes. Maybe I can imagine myself being a real yogi and enjoy surfing through a harmonious life. 

Maybe.

A field of wonderful possibilities is just a paradigm shift away:

let’s start imagining. 

How to start a blog, my version.

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First. Have desire to start blog.* 

*You hear yourself saying often, “oh, I wanna start a blog”.
If you do you can begin your starting-a-blog journey.

Sit down and brainstorm a suitable domain name. 

Decide on a suitable domain name.

Wait around for months and months before actually going to register the domain name.

Log on to a blog hosting site and find out that someone else has already registered the domain name you want. 

Sit down again with a pen and pad to brainstorm new domain names ideas.

Settle on one domain name.

This time hurry, log onto hosting site and register the name!

Complete registration for domain name. 

Don’t log on to the server for months and months — the domain name is yours now (for a fee).

Finally sit down to design your blog — or pay someone that’s better at making beautiful things to do it for you.

Have a nice looking-blog with a bunch of empty pages! Maybe even your “about me” information is non-existent.

6.After a few months come back, full of inspiration, and start filling up the pages of your blog.

7. Take a long, long, time to write, and upload, just one post.

8.Go on another break from “writing” on your blog.

9. Start actually writing on your blog again.

10. Write, write, write.

11. Take another months, and months, break.

12. After a while realize that you have only two options, A) keep going or B) give up.
Option A: keeping going.

Repeat steps 6—12 then continue to choose this option every time.

Option B: give up

Never come back to your blog, probably continue to pay for it, and always wonder “what if”.

A game for living in China

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Living in China I have time to listen to a lot of podcasts. The most recent one that I listened to was an episode from Michael Hyatt’s, This Is Your Life, series. 
If you haven’t listened to it before I definitely recommend. It is a great podcast.  
Well, this episode that I’m talking about was about learning how to be a great follower. It was a particularly interesting episode considering that most people are teaching others how to be great leaders, not followers. Though I enjoyed the entire show there was one thing that specially resonated with the challenges that I have been facing in my life right now.
There are some aspects of Chinese culture that I’m really having a difficult time dealing with. I actually talk about all of them on an earlier post. Okay, okay, maybe I rant about them. So, since I said that I wouldn’t be a complainy pants on this blog, on the following post I talked about how being angry doesn’t solve any problems and it only hurts yourself. The thing is that I was still shining a light on the negative aspects of my experiences with China. So, on the podcast, when Michael said, “you have a choice on what you notice, you can choose to notice the bad or you can choose to notice the good and you can comment on either thing” a chill ran up my spine and I got goosebumps all over my body. I felt like the Universe was conspiring to get me to remember and internalize this lesson.  
I thought, this is exactly the lesson that I’m trying to relearn. Even a podcast is telling me to do it!
So, I decided to come up with a game. The game is simple. For every time that I notice something upsetting that happens I have to take notice of three things that are nice, pleasant, or beautiful about it. 
So far this strategy has really worked in my favor. My feelings of disgust, anger, and frustration no longer ruin my day because by playing this game they don’t last very long. 
The truth is there are many, many, things about Chinese people, about Chinese culture, that are good. 
For example, number one, the majority of Chinese people are so friendly and very eager to talk to, or help out, a foreigner. 
Two, China is actually a really safe place to live in.
Three, if you’re a foreigner your opportunities in China are abundant. 
I look forward to continuing to play this game. It is not everyday that people get an opportunity to live abroad, especially in a country that has made many notable advancements and revolutionized in such a short period of time, so I definitely must make the most of my experience here and I think this game may be the best way for me to do so.