Becoming minimalist..?

Travel unrelated, but this is something that’s been on my mind often lately. I don’t know when I got sucked into this thinking but I suspect it has to do with the indecision that plagues me everyday with the most minor of decisions. I have a tendency to be pretty sure when I make important life decisions like my career, long-term hobby, or the people to befriend, but somehow get extremely fickle when it comes to picking my outfit or purchasing everyday items like wallets or phone cases even. I do tons of research into something before I purchase it, and it’s ridiculous how the amount of time I put in is never in proportion to how important the item is. In fact it’s quite the opposite. I could decide in a snap to buy a $400 lens, but spend 50 hours of research for a wallet less than $100. It’s bewildering really, and recently I had to do some real thinking about why this was the case.

It’s probably because we live in abundant choices, where there’s always an alternative that could be better than what you’re looking at. The more choices there are (i.e. a wallet has 100x more choices than a camera lens), the harder it is to make a decision. I’m starting to overcome this a little through an article a dear friend shared, called The Power of Good Enough. It was a perfect little article that sums up all of my indecision and hands me the solution. I felt incredibly satisfied reading the article because the answer is as simple as it looks. If it’s good enough, that’s all you need.

But I want to achieve much more than a change in my purchasing behavior. I’m still riddled by daily indecision even when I’m not purchasing anything, and the biggest contributor to that is clothes. Fashion. Material stuff that’s likely to be the most abundant in your life.

I spend a good 10 minutes everyday thinking about what I want to wear. 80% of the time I end up settling for the same few clothes I rotate through and I sometimes leave the house bitterly thinking I failed (again) to wear the rest of my wardrobe. I force myself to try to utilize all that I have, thinking that would justify why I purchased them, but always default back to the same few items. I used to think I was super uncreative, unfashionable and boring because I refuse to wear other clothes, but now I’m beginning to realize I don’t actually need these other clothes. I don’t need new clothes all the time to feel confident, comfortable or fashionable. That’s a false sense of security that consumerism has successfully sold to me.

Hence I started to plant this little seed in my head called minimalism. When I read up on it, watch documentaries on it, I get excited. That was exactly the kind of lifestyle I wanted. Having just enough to make you happy, and never too much to add unnecessary stress or anxiety in your life. It brings me right back to my Korea days where I lived off very few items (I literally owned ONE mug for all my drinks, I just wash it immediately after using) and was super happy. I never felt like I lacked anything. I didn’t miss all the sentimental or just-in-case items I keep at home. I loved that my room wasn’t cluttered with too much stuff. I loved that I wore every single item in my wardrobe and I liked every piece.

So I’m gonna start, baby steps first. Obviously the first thing I’ve got to to is throw shit away. Try to sell some of them if i can, donate whatever’s still in good condition and throw the rest of the junk out. I’ve purged maybe half of my room in the past year and added new storage furniture to keep things organized, but it’s still not good enough. I look at my room right now and feel confident I can purge half more, if not 3/4 of it. Once I’ve purged all of those stuff, I’ll start on a quest to purchase a few value items in their place. For example, buying better quality, versatile pieces of clothes that can last me a few years.

I am super positive this will help me along in my daily life much better. It also sets precedence for when I move into my new house eventually. Less items to consider moving, and a better attitude to prevent clutter from ever happening in that new house.

#endrant

Life Update: Graduation, Jobs and more…

Wow it’s really been some time since I last blogged. And look, even the blog entry font has changed!! Or have I forgotten cuz it’s been so long??

Anyway, I think it’s an apt time for me to post an update considering the several milestones I’ve hit recently. First of all, I finally got a job!! Yay! 🙂 I can’t share much about that too though because of the whole privacy thing with social media, I’m just happy because it was what I wanted and it’s crazy how many elements of this job fit into what I wanted. I just have to be careful not to romanticize the job and get disappointed later on.

Secondly, I’m finally graduating!! Haha strange that I post the job before the graduation huh. I guess it’s becoming so typical for SMU students to find jobs before graduation that about half of us hit our milestones in that order. Anyway, I’m not sure what to feel about graduation tbh. I don’t know whether I’m happy or sad? It is kinda bittersweet and sad that four years are finally over. It really has been a long time and we’ve all come so far. At the same time, when I look back at how I’ve grown over these years, I can’t help but to smile because really. It’s incredibly rewarding to look back and acknowledge how silly you really were and realize how far you’ve come. Sometimes I think back on one of those harder times and feel a twinge of regret, but then realized those are what made me who I am today. And I can’t really be angry at myself.

Life Update: Driving

Hi. Idk who is reading this as usual so I’ll just be talking to myself hahahhaha.

Major major thing I finally got around to doing was driving. I signed up for it before I went to Korea which is over a year ago, but only got to passing the BTT before I flew off. Idek why I bothered signing up at that time because now I’m paying a lot extra for membership renewal every month after the first year ._.

Well that aside! Wanted to write this post to talk about my driving experience so far because hey it’s considered a decent milestone right? Part of the whole growing up thing I suppose haha, though I’m about 3-4 years late.

So first of all, I suck at theory tests. The BF never fails to poke fun at me for this but I failed my BTT AND my FTT evaluations the first time round. Lololol. For those not familiar, I signed up with school at BBDC so I had to complete evaluations first before booking the test. When i first took the BTT evaluation I only read the book and didn’t have any practice books/sessions so I flunked. Then I used my bro’s book and passed. FTT was taken almost one year later and I did purchase a practice book but it was useless because the questions came out all different. I realized later that practice sessions at BBDC were only $3-ish!!!! That is super duper affordable and you can complete like 3 booklets if you’re fast. So in like 3 lessons you would have completed the entire BBDC FTT database and it’s a guarantee pass. I was like -_____- so yeah I did one of those lessons and took the FTT evaluation immediately afterwards and passed. Id why I refuse to take the mainstream route and had funny ideas in my head. Ugh.

Anyways that’s past and I already have my test booked in March. I started my practical lesson and I was honestly really scared at first. Like driving looks mega scary and I signed up for manual so how?? But it turned out I was just paranoid because I actually turned out to be okay at driving. Legit okay. I was surprised it wasn’t as scary as it seemed, and by the 2nd lesson I was out on the roads (though, that instructor was apparently not that ‘good’ according to the 3rd instructor the following lesson). I have some weak points like not checking safety more often, speeding, not changing gears frequently enough, etc etc etc. But overall it was okay. More than once instructors have taught me ahead of my session but told me to stay hush hush about it. But like one time I kept quiet about one instructor teaching me U-turn early, and the next instructor told me “Eh I’m now going to teach you U-turn. You haven’t learned yet right? Ok don’t say a word to the next instructor.” LOL. So it’s like an endless cycle of pretending i don’t know stuff.

But nevertheless those instructors are always friendly and I’m always up for practicing newer things so I don’t waste my time. Then there’s the other type of instructors – I had one who was extremely fierce and scolded me for every mistake but it was good because it made me really change. And then there’s this one asshole who micro-managed and taught me confusing opposing theories compared to other instructors and only passed me one decimal. Idek i hope i don’t meet him again.

Ok short update because of lack of pictures making it really boring haha. Gonna mass update this ‘Life Update’ tag with major things in my life. As always, i may not see the purpose of this post now, but it’s gonna be a precious memory later on. In fact, aside from this public space, I’m keeping a private diary just quickly updating my daily life haha. I hated that I had this gap during my JC and early uni life because I kept no tracks of my life, no photos or posts, and aside from a few major events it’s a whole blank in my mind. 😦 Won’t let that happen again.