And also, a couple of photos of my things now sitting cozily in the beautiful shop that is Pony Boy Parlour. I can honestly say that I’m completely enamoured with its decor, and am itching for some of the goods I can see from the other designers!  If you’re in Melbourne and looking for a fabulous new source for vintage wonders and unique Australian-handmade designs, do pop in and check out the store (at the very least so I can live vicariously through those who have seen it in person)!

Wrist cuffs and Scarves by irninology, Bow hairclips by Whiskers Lane

Milk magnets by ME! (top shelf), Resin Rings by Kelly Christie, Flower Cocktail Rings by Savage Kitten and Pom-Pom hair pins by Pom By Pomegranate.

Retro-chic Necklaces by irninology

All photos courtesy of the lovely Pony Boy Parlour team.

‘Are You Satisfied?’ is a response to the ubiquitous need for balance in daily life, as this is the ultimate key to achieving sound health and wellbeing.

Modern life places a large emphasis on wealth and thus, it’s easy to believe money is a fast track to happiness. While it is linked to wellbeing, it’s not our bank balance, but rather the balance between our social relationships, our contribution to the world and our level of self-satisfaction, which has the largest effect on our state of wellbeing.

For the month of May, I’ve decided to take on the challenge of eliminating all negativity from my life.  After the Vegan Challenge where I dealt with self-control in regards to pre-meditated actions, I thought I’d try my hand at administering my own Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (which teaches people that they can change their behaviour if they are aware of the impact of their negative thoughts). I think it’ll be a great detox of sorts, and a true challenge to change the way I think and react to things, large and small, from losing a source of income to missing a train.

Rules:

1. No complaining or expressing words of the “woe is me” variety.

2. No gossiping or bitching, even if it seems harmless.

3. No temper-induced words.

4. No sarcasm.

5. No more cursing or flipping the bird at people (even though they never see or hear me) when they wrong me whilst driving.

6. Curb any negative opinions.

7. Make sure my words or actions don’t make anyone else feel down.

Tools:

1. When I feel my temper or rising or frustrations surfacing, take a few deep breaths.

2. Think about every word before I speak it. Find positive ways to express myself.

3. When a bad situation comes about, strive to find the sunny side of it and know that it will turn out OK (it always has before).

4. Smile at everyone, even if there’s unresolved beef there.

5. Remove some negative words and phrases from the daily-usage-bank: hate, this sucks/ bites/ blows, bad, never, I can’t/ won’t, fail.

6. Change a negative opinion into either a positive from another angle, or at least a neutral.

7. Use the affirmation cards I made a few years ago as daily feel-good sources.

8. Treat everyone with the kindness and politeness I daily show to strangers and acquaintances.

9. Aim to not only focus on the negatives I’m avoiding; truly celebrate the positives too.

.

I challenge anyone who reads this to join me, in any degree you like… I’ll send along my daily affirmations to anyone who’s interested as well

1. Wacom tablet

2. Dress form

3. Magazine subscriptions to frankie, yen, russh

Causes for Happiness

1. Priceless time spent with friends… old, new and best

2. Reading feverishly

3. Embracing new habits and challenges

Achievements

1. Creating a logo

2. Finding a near-doppelganger of a favourite cardigan I lost on a flight

3. Making a model of a building

Why do we do it after all? What’s the driving force? Passion or glory? Do we end up working harder just to stay afloat?

e-flux journal no. 24

Let’s be clear about something: it is infuriating that most interesting artists are perfectly capable of functioning in at least two or three professions that are, unlike art, respected by society in terms of compensation and general usefulness. And compensation—which is money—is not only for feeding lavish lifestyles or taking spontaneous beach vacations. Ask anyone who has children or sick relatives in a country without good health care—which could now be almost any country as the administration of life is deferred more and more to the private sphere of personal finance. This only makes the question of fair compensation all the more pressing—it is no longer an issue of some kind of moral or ethical principle, but of life itself. So why should so many talented and hyper-qualified artists submit themselves willingly to a field of work (that is, in art) that offers so little in return for such an huge amount of unremunerated labor? For some reason, either due to artists’ own vanity, to being hypnotized by some sort of authorial diva imperative that promises large-scale recognition, or due to the expectations of the culture itself (not the field of “cultural production” but the de facto one, the less dynamic and slower moving one) and its own befuddlement with regard to artists’ usefulness, the artist is left to expend an enormous amount of professional energy in the doldrums of a murky pseudo-profession that absorbs work under the auspices of some kind of common belief in its higher value. But art is not a religion, and, though it often seems structurally similar, it is not a charity either. This idea of a “higher value” that presides over—and indeed fuels—an idea of art labor as free labor must be contested. All are to blame for it: though classical exploitation is rampant, it may actually pale in comparison to the amount of self-exploitation—the willingly inconclusive, highly generative work that is either too useless or too stubborn to ever align itself with the mundane, but remunerated, field of average labor: that of bakers, garbage men, police officers, cobblers, lawyers, engineers, day laborers, and so forth. These are the people you make your work about, and perhaps who your parents are. Art, you would like to think, is a shining vision of a possibility for something else. So you secretly support your art work with your money job, even a high-paying one. You are your own sugar daddy and trophy wife in a single package. Your gallery sells your work, maybe for a lot of money, yet something does not line up there either. The work does not find its reception even when it is well received. You keep dumping your personal resources into producing your work, your relationships crumble, and the work simply doesn’t find its audience the way an engineer’s building plan will inevitably be constructed, for better or worse. One option is to blame it all on authorship and the cult of the author. But that seems frankly ridiculous. Erase your name, and not only will you not get paid for your time, you will not get credited either. It’s like performing an act of charity for a plant. The only option available could be to simply work more—but while claiming the privileged capacity of the artist within the fields where your determined amateurism has made you a functional expert.

—Julieta Aranda, Brian Kuan Wood, Anton Vidokle

I now know that first, I’ll try to stay calm and tell myself I’m not too far from home (while the car spontaneously weaves around on the road). Then when I see the spider jumping from the door handle onto my pyjama pant, I’ll screech to a kerb-side halt and jump around in the car seat, trying to find it and simultaneously trying to convince myself that it isn’t on me anymore, and no it hasn’t gotten inside my clothes! And all the while I’ll be panicking about where it might be if not in sight! I’ll barely be able to stop myself from stepping out onto the street in humiliating pyjamas and jump around like a Wiggle on a sugar high to ensure the critter has made itself scarce.  When I’ve stopped myself from thinking that this is a viable option, I’ll start slapping things… myself, the door, the seat (just in case its camouflaging abilities are hiding it from me, and my random slapping might kill it). Suddenly, I’ll stop in disgust, remembering that killing it by slapping would mean dead spider remnants on my hands! Suddenly,as quickly as it disappeared, it’ll re-emerge from the back of my jumper and crawl back onto the door handle… just in time for me to open the door just a smidgen and flick the creeper out onto the street. I’ll take a moment to calm myself, drive home and vigorously scrub myself clean in the shower. Just in case sometime during that minute where I didn’t know where the spider was, it actually crawled on my skin and laid eggs or something.  JUST IN CASE.

Admittedly, while I was running around between work and uni relentlessly, namely the first three weeks of the challenge, I was eating terribly- not enough healthy food, and really just not enough food! A whole lot of junk food was had! Shameful amounts really.  And because junk food doesn’t really fill you up at all, I found I was also constantly hungry and consuming ridiculous portions! Another unfortunate side effect of not eating well was the lack of concentration to any task, despite my personal despot-determination when it came to school work, and the fatigue. OH the fatigue!!! The worst part was that because I wasn’t concentrating properly, I wasn’t getting as much done during the day as I should have been, leading to staying up most of the night and upon completion, sleeping like the dead. Vicious cycle.  Not to mention that if I happened upon a nap in the late afternoon/ evening slot, I was physically unable to revive myself from the seemingly-eternal slumber til a minimum of 4hrs later!!  During the last week, when I’ve finally had time to cook (and I love the cooking), it’s definitely been a much more pleasant experience.

Today, I awoke, crept into the kitchen cautiously, scared of the great possibility of becoming overwhelmed by food choices. Deciding to keep it simple, I went with my poached egg breakfast, and in all the excitement, forgot to turn off the stove afterward!  Not wanting to over-do it too quickly, I left it at that until my late afternoon lunch, which I’d planned weeks in advance- pizza.  I am simultaneously proud and ashamed to say that I put it away, all by myself, in less than an hour. Personal best and worst all in one.  No dinner, and redemption tomorrow with gym time!  But worth it…. sadly, heck yes.

The Vegan Diaries.  Over and out.

p.s. Stay tuned for updates on a Vegan Diaries zine (currently in the works)

p.p.s. my daily sources of inspiration to stay focused and further hone my love of fruit and veg came from The Agile Rabbit Visual Dictionaries of Fruit and Vegetables. I can’t get enough of looking at these books, they could easily be my favourite possession at the moment.

Week two has seen me take to more packaged foods than I should.  To be fair, I think part of this is due to my uni assessment based on logos… since I started it, I can’t stop obsessively finding them everywhere I turn. Whilst avoiding animal products has become markedly easier, cravings have become my number one challenge. I’ve noticed that whenever I’m unfocused or unoccupied, my mind tries to convince me that I’m hungry! And as soon as the thought enters, I can’t seem to banish it with any other action than eating! I’ve become especially debilitated by the power of suggestion.  A person might casually mention pizza and my brain starts screaming “CHEESE!! CHEEEESE!!!”, and although I won’t feel driven to the fridge instantly to stare at a block of cheese longingly, I also can’t stop thinking about it for a good five minutes or so.  I’ve always suspected that I’m partial to trivial addictions, and now I know it to be true.  This has happened to me a few times before, the last being when I thought I’d been consuming far too much bread and decided to go cold turkey.  The upside there was that about three or four weeks later, my brain calmed down. I stopped having bread-dreams and the cravings went away.

I can only hope this will hold true for this challenge too. Fingers crossed. Craving cheese, but determined.

Clockwise from top left:

1. Shopfront plants

2. Corner store’s rear-entry display (way to attract attention to bottled water!)

3. Fresh vegetable spread at the same corner store

4. Food stall at a trade fair

But in the meanwhile, I’ll attempt to record my weekly progress in a post, and thought it might be fun to also keep a daily, illustrated record of my food intake. A food diary of sorts! Here’s a peek at the progress so far…