A Mix of Emotions
Hello friends,
I've been deeply affected by the tree cutting around my house. The views from my home look much different now. I did some investigating and found out more about what is happening. I will talk more about this in a future YouTube video.
Today I saw my first moose! I was walking from the kitchen the living room and spotted it walking across the field. I ran up and down the stairs in a frenzy trying to find my camera. I felt extreme happiness and then a deep sadness seeing not one but two moose walking through the destroyed parts of the forest. Even writing things brings an ache to my stomach. I just feel so sad about this. I did find out who is responsible and wrote to them asking if they can leave the remaining trees to help the local wildlife flourish. I will tell you about this in the video.
I can't believe it's already September. How the time is flying. This Summer went by in a blink of an eye. As the days are getting shorter I welcome the darkness. I love spending the time in-between seasons reflecting. I feel like I have given so much energy this Summer toward the outside world; my house, friends, work.
I see Autumn as a time to come back to myself. Back to my inner light. A time of strength through gentleness, vulnerability, and simplicity. A time to let go. I welcome you Autumn.
Tender hugs to you this evening,
Annika ♥︎
Too Many Irons in the Fire
Good Morning!
It's 9:45am here. It's a very stormy morning. The thunder is rumbling and the rain is pouring. I woke up at 6:30 this morning when Leiana was outside crying to come in. Her usual routine. But this morning after giving her breakfast, I felt shaky tired. So I decided to get another 30 minutes. I slept until 9am!
I'm giving myself the grace today because I've been working really hard these past week. Not only professionally but also emotionally. It's been taking a lot of my energy.
Last week I decided, it's enough now! I need to change my approach. I knew something wasn't working. I knew the way I was working was the road to burn out. Why? Because I've been down this path before. Taking on too many different things at once and feeling immense pressure and overwhelm to get it all done. So I decided to take a step back, reflect, revaluate and change course.
To explain, I have had too many irons in the fire; too many passions. I've been asking myself this for a while now: "shall I dabble in everything or focus on one or two things for now?" I've decided that the answer is the latter. But I'm met with feelings of resistance! So I dug deeper into these feelings of resistance instead of allowing them to decide for me.
Turns out the resistance was coming from thoughts like, "you don't know how long you'll be able to have this freedom to create daily, things could change then you'll never have the chance to explore all your passions," and "don't pigeon hole yourself, you don't want be known as just a photographer." Even just writing this I can immediately recognise these thoughts for what they are: FEAR!
These fear-based thoughts are not productive and if this was my friend or higher ideal self saying these things I would respond by saying, "it's going to take longer to succeed at all your passions if you do all of them at the same time," and "you are more likely to excel quicker if you focus on 2-3 projects at a time. It might feel like a sacrifice right now, but long term you will arrive where you dream of being."
Last night I watched a YouTube video where he explains how successful entrepreneurs are able to succeed at many different things. It's because of the timing of taking off their projects and goals. He uses the plane runaway as an analogy. Entrepreneurs don't take off their planes at the same time, they do one at a time so they don't burn out.
The same theory applies to New Years resolutions. The reason why they don't work is because we have too many in January and we burn out in February. So they don't stick.
With all of that said, I have decided to discipline myself and only focus on few things. I think I have this thought that my YouTube videos will be boring because there won't be much going on. I'm sure that's true to some extent, but I will just have to get creative with the time and energy I have. Maybe it will also send a positive message to others to slow down and focus on fewer things. I choose to see this as a form of self care. I will probably post a YouTube video about this to reach my audience there. I see that not everyone are readers.
Anyway, just some words from me this morning.
I hope you have a beautiful and productive Monday. Feel free to share in the comments what your number one focus will be this week!
Lots of love to you,
Annika
Sorrow
I sit here carrying an ache in my heart. The kettle boils now to make a soothing cup of tea. It started yesterday late afternoon.
At first I thought it was the farmers working the fields, but it turns out it's some wood chopping company tearing down half the trees behind my house and across the field. It has brought such sorrow to my heart. I have heard them working all through the night, and all day today. It's now 5pm and I feel this tension weighing down on my chest. It's a horrible sound to listen to. Big machines and cranes lifting huge old trees. I hope today is the last day and they don't touch the rest of the forest.
I understand this is part of the world we live in today, and of course I need firewood to keep warm during the winter because it's a house from the mid 1800s. But it still feels so sad because I came here to live closer to nature, and watching it get teared down makes me feel afraid. I don't know why but I just feel afraid. I think about all the animals in the forest and how they must feel afraid. The noise and destruction has brought a sadness to my day.
An Unexpected Morning
Yesterday I was enjoying my morning cup of coffee and morning cuddles with this cutie, when suddenly I spotted something on Leiana.
Not one, not two but several small creepy crawlies! I immediately put her in the bathroom, gathered all the blankets and took them outside. I stripped and threw my cozy long jumper in the washing machine.
After some research I embarked on the very unpleasant task of giving Leiana a bath. It was one of those moments where I thought video would capture this experience the best so here we go. I hope you enjoy watching this little unexpected event.
After she was washed and dried, she slept for the rest of the day while I worked on paying some bills and taking my storytelling course. I'm deep in learning and fascinated by this new world. I enter a flow state where the hours fly by and before I know it the sun is setting!
The evenings are getting shorter now as we transition into Autumn. A new season with new beautiful possibilities.
Can't wait to see what adventures today bring!
Speak soon!
Annika♥︎
A Slow Rise
Happy Monday to you! Today is going to be a wonderful day filled with lessons and optimism. I recently started listening to a two hour podcast about visualizing your ideal day. There is power in it! What does your ideal day look like? Let me know in the comments ♥︎
This morning I slept pretty late because Leiana kept waking me up in the middle of night wanting affection and companionship. I don't usually let her in the bedroom but she was crying outside the door, and I was desperate to get some sleep. She slept on the foot of my bed after some minutes of cuddling. She is such a sweetheart.
Now I'm sitting on the couch enjoying some of my favourite music, which you can find on my Spotify playlist. I update it every now and then with the songs I'm currently listening to.
It's afternoon now and I write this from my sofa. Leiana is here sleeping next to me. Aurora is currently singing her song Butterflies. Beautiful!
I have spent this morning reading a chapter from each of the two books I'm currently reading. I'm exploring the power of Alter Egos by Todd Herman and Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen. I am fascinated by human behaviour, film and storytelling. On my own therapy journey, I have decided to go beyond talk therapy and explore the human body as an instrument for healing. That is how I came across drama therapy. It was during a lecture with Better Help on how to find your authentic self and break free from your trapped self. They talked about the power of drama and how cathartic it is. I loved drama as a child, and with my strong respect and need for inner child healing, I became curious about the world of acting. I have learned that acting is the act of empathy. I have become fascinated by this world of imagination, hence why I'm reading Uta Hagen's book.
I will now get up and get some things done. I have a bunch of Ikea furniture that arrived for my art studio. I can't wait to finally be working in my very own art studio. A dream I have had for years! It's happening!!! I will vlog the whole process.
I hope you are having a beautiful start to September ♥︎
Art is a Mirror
Happy Sunshine,
It's past noon now and I'm sitting here with a cozy hot chocolate. I was overjoyed when I found that I had chocolate Oatly in the pantry. I experimented by putting it in the milk frother and ended up making a hot mocha! It's delicious!
This week I've been in full planning and manager mode with John Williams playing in the background. I ordered a new planner and feel much more motivated now that I have a realistic plan for the next three months. If I work day by day with no end goal, I feel like a leaf lost in the wind.
The windows are open again and the breeze is flowing in through the house. My favourite feeling. Today is quite warm and sunny. Summer is still here and I'm soaking up every warm breeze, every sun ray and all the twittering birds. The seasons are quite drastic here, and in many ways nature is helping me remain even more present. I've learned a lot from living closer to nature and away from the big cities.
This morning I was looking over my YouTube videos and got the idea to make a short film of my life from the last 6 months. I challenged myself to make it into a short 2-3 minute video. I really enjoyed making it this morning. It's amazing to watch your life fly by so quickly and to see the positive changes each season brings. I was in such a low place in January this year, as you can see in the film. I wanted to capture my emotional changes and building myself back up internally. Sometimes it's so hard to do that through words, and sometimes words can evoke heaviness. I wanted to challenge myself to communicate visually. I hope it communicates. And if it doesn't, that's okay too. I've learned that art is there for the public to interpret. Art is a mirror after all.
I hope you have a beautiful day. Speak soon!
No pictures again today. I've spent the past two weeks deep in planning for Autumn and involved in a storytelling course. A passion for all things film related has reignited, and I've been trying to focus on few projects at a time so I don't get overwhelmed. I'm also pacing myself according to season because I know when it's dark outside and the wind is howling and the fire is burning, that is the time I'll want to paint most and nest upstairs in the art studio. For now I'm going to enjoy the outdoors and prepare for my creative September classes that I've signed up to.
I'm also going away on a spiritual healing retreat in October. But more on that later!
BIG HUG
Annika
A Happy Tired
Greetings from a very tired computer nerd. It's just past 1am and I just now finished all the video descriptions and captions on the vlog I uploaded yesterday. It took a whole day to upload because I live so remote! At 11:30pm tonight I had a spark of inspiration, and since then I've been working on the final bits of the video. It took a while to do all the translating.
Anyway, I just wanted to post it here before saying goodnight.
Sweet dreams ♥︎
Happy Sunday!
Good Afternoon,
I'm sitting here in my pijamas still. I just finished editing a 25 minute vlog for you lovely souls. I notice I'm very self critical when I edit but in a weird way it's also a cathartic experience because for me it's a consistent practice of self-acceptance. I can learn how I sound and accept how I look and find the beauty in my behaviours and weird quirks and interests. I believe over time the judgement will fade but it's still there. It's a lot better than what it was. I feel I'm in a much happier relationship with my self.
This video I'm working on is a little mix of everything. I welcome feedback on my videos because I want to improve. Let me know if there are any topics you want me to talk about or places you want to see. Share everything with me in the comments 🙂 Also what is your preferred video length and how often would you like to watch? All of this will be incredibly helpful as I plan my Autumn schedule. I've learned this summer it's been fun to act on inspiration and be in the flow, but I need some structure otherwise all my self care goes out the window.
The vlog is processing now and my internet is so slow because I live remote away from the big cities. It can take 2 hours to upload a 1 minute video. So the video might not be live until tomorrow.
Last night was so cozy. Leiana, my cat, slept inside all night because of the weather. She is a ball of tiredness today too. We have had a coastal storm here the past few days with lots of rain, strong winds, and thunder and lightning. Thor paid me a visit!
What are you up to this Sunday? How has your weekend been? Let me know in the comments. I will answer all your beautiful comments this evening. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your heart with me.
Lots of Love
Annika
I Am Human
The more accepting of my humanity, the more free and light and happy I feel. I am learning so much about what it means to be human. I'm learning about this in therapy, and through my own reading and research.
This week I have been learning a lot about storytelling in the film world. Everything from camera, music, emotions, acting. It's a world I have fallen in love with. Well, the love has been reignited because I studied film in school and loved drama as a child. I lost that along the way. I became afraid. I could not pin point one exact moment, perhaps it was a repetition of moments and different negative experiences that impacted me. I didn't have the support and tools to know how to keep going even when I felt afraid. I needed someone to help me understand my emotions. For a long time I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel okay most of the time. I felt anxious all of time. But it was because I didn't get the mirroring and emotional support I needed. I grew up feeling like I didn't know who I was. I felt like I had to fit in, to accommodate others, and criticized for having needs. For many years I felt ignored. And this led me to believe that I was unworthy. Even today I struggle with feeling not enough. But I take action that I know is in line with someone who believes they are enough. And slowly I start to undo all the wiring in my brain and change those neural pathways.
I think this is a big reason why I started YouTube. I wanted to overcome my fear of feeling judged. Every time I hit publish I think "Oh God!" But I do it anyway. Over time I know it will be okay. I know it will get easier with time. Even today I feel less afraid than I did a month ago. There is something to exposing yourself to the fear that will help you grow and become a stronger and more skilled human being.
So many of us struggle with this fear. But I'm here to say that it is not too late to respond to the fear in a different way. I would like to say I'm living proof but the humility in me says, I am just one example of a human being learning and sharing their journey with the world. I just hope it helps someone. I hope I can guide someone the way I wish I was guided five years ago.
I believe we are all on this star in space to help each other. I believe my purpose is to help others by sharing my human experience.
I've overcome so much fear and learned to identify the fear when it pokes it's head out. And what do I do in those moments? I take the healthy action anyway. The action I know is in line with my highest good. The action that I know will get me to my vision. But that is the key here, vision. There has to be a direction. Like getting in the car to go to the grocery store with no plan of what to buy. Dreams work in a similar way. It's very simple. I think as humans we complicate things with our fear based brain.
Yesterday I attended a mindset workshop and they talked about negative bias. In my own therapy session yestereday I learned about internal family systems. I encourage you to explore this and see if it helps you become aware of why you have certain thoughts, emotions and behaviours. It's definitely helping me not identify with my thoughts and choose healthy positive thoughts. Not toxic positive thoughts.
Today, I felt so inspired to share some of my thoughts relating to shifting your mindset, and how understanding your past can help you overcome the current obstacles you face today. It's not too late to change your life.
Sending you light and love ♥︎
Annika