How Planning Transformed My Life

In the past, I’ve always been a casual planner and calendar user. I utilized as many as I could. I had a calendar on my wall at home, I had a calendar on my desk at work, and I had a teacher planner and pocket planner that I carried with me everywhere. I had so many planners that planning was overwhelming. Two years ago, Christen introduced me to Happy Planner® and I fell in love. Instead of having so many planners, I committed to having one planner for all of the planning that I do.

Katniss helping me plan.

My Happy Planner®  has many sections that help me stay organized:

• Year-at-a-glance section
• Month-at-a-glance layout
• Weekly spread
• Daily entries

Different things I use my planner for:

1. Everyday events such as birthdays, due dates, date nights, weddings, etc. I also take it to the next level, and I have spiritual and literary events added, as well as the moon phases and Banned Books Week. Because I am an English teacher, I like to add the literary holidays because I like to plan around them and celebrate with my students. I utilize my monthly calendar for these things.
2. School dates such as school holidays, the nine-week grading periods, field trip days, testing days, and lesson due dates. We have a lot of school dates, so I utilize the weekly part of my planner. The weekly spread is also very helpful when planning out lesson plans and to-do lists. I try to organize the weekly calendar.
3. Budgeting. In every monthly section of my planner, there are pages for notes. I write a list of my bills and their due dates. I will also make a note of bill due dates in the daily section of the planner. I use a budget tracker to track my spending habits. You can also buy supplemental budgeting sheets to add to your Happy Planner®.
4. Lists. Listing is very important to me. I like to keep a daily or weekly goal list and to-do list. I write these lists in the margins of the weekly section in my planner. I also have a call list that I keep in the monthly section of my planner which reminds me of the phone calls I need to make.

Rough draft of to-do lists

Other key features I like:

• Stickers. I love stickers! When I first bought a planner, I immediately purchased cool stickers to go in my planner.
• Folders and pockets. You can add folders and pockets to your planner to keep loose papers and it gives your planner a notebook-like feel.
• The room to truly be creative. Not only do I like to color-code my dates but I also like to draw pictures in my planner to represent key moments in my life.

After all of this, I still do not consider myself an extreme planner. However, after changing my planning habits and consolidating all of my calendars to one catch-all planner, my life has been more organized and efficient. When I get to school, one of the first things I do is take out my planner and see what I have going on that day. Planning has helped me look ahead and not overbook myself. Planning has also helped me keep accountable in certain aspects of my life that used to challenge me, such as budgeting. Organizing to the extreme is not for everyone and you can still be a casual planner using Happy Planner® but if you are looking for an extra creative outlet in your life, I highly recommend it.

Let’s continue the conversation. Do you use day planners in your life? Join us on our Facebook Group: MMC Chat and on our Facebook page.

How I Filled My Cup

Filling my cup. What an interesting concept, this metaphor. As an English teacher, I am obsessed with words but what does this metaphor mean? It can be taken in a few ways. I have always thought of myself as a “glass half full” person – an optimist. I might be depleting something, but at least there is something left. Let’s call the “something” in the glass “energy”. Let’s also say that the “cup” in this situation is you, the reader. Is your energy half full or half empty? What are some ways that you can fill your cup with life-sustaining energy without overfilling it?

First, you need to sit back and decide what kind of energy your cup already has in it. Let’s back up. What even is “energy?” If you are not a metaphysical or “meta” person, you might not be fully aware of the energies surrounding us or our life force. In different cultures, the source of life, or life force, takes on different identities such as “Chi” or “Qi” in Chinese culture, and “Mana” in Hawaiian culture. This energy is, of course, different than scientific energy (kinetic, potential, mechanical, etc.). In Chinese culture, there are two types of energy: positive energy and negative energy. I’m going to go a step further and say there are different types of positive and negative energies. It is all in how you present yourself to the world.

A friend of mine has been recently struggling with a negative influence in her life. She asked me why she attracts such negative people. I told her that it was the energy she gives out into the world. In the past, I have called her “friend goals” because everyone wants to be her friend. She is the most positive person I know. Her cup is overflowing with positive energy, and she spreads it freely out into the world. People line up to drink from her “positive cup.” I know this because I have the same problem. I’ve learned to combat it over the years, but I often wondered why I felt so down and drained. It was because I was attracting the same type of people in my life (friends, relationships, family, etc) that wanted a drink of my positive energy.

Three years ago, I decided that I needed to make a major life change, and I continued to do so as I shed physical weight and the mental weight of the unrealistic expectations of toxic people. The more I did these things, the more I realized that I had a lifetime of negativity fighting for my positivity and that included negative expectations I had of myself. The first thing I did was quit my job and then I moved to a new town. I thought that physically distancing myself from all the toxic energy would help, and it did for a while, but I had to do more than that. My cup was drained of positive energy.  The negative people in my life were suddenly making themselves known, and my cup began to fill with their negative energy. I started doing things in my life that I wouldn’t normally do, such as calling in sick to work and spending money carelessly.

A year and a half ago, after my ex-husband and I separated, I started on a journey of self-reflection. There were still so many wrong things in my life that I needed to change physically and mentally. My cup began to fill again with positive energy, and it attracted positive people in my life once again. I reconnected with old friends and family that I hadn’t seen for years. I even started doing the things that I loved again, which led me to write this blog and start a podcast with my friends.

Things I did to fill my cup with positivity and bring my life back into balance:

• I started writing again: Writing is my favorite pastime over anything else. I started writing (and reading) at a young age. When I was in sixth grade, I wrote my first book. I published my first poem when I was 17 years old. Last year, Christen convinced me to start creative journaling, and it went from there. Now I have truly adopted a concept I teach in my classroom, which is to write every day.

• I tried new things: When I started writing again, I started exploring the area near my house (amid the pandemic, of course) and I began ordering from new restaurants that I wouldn’t normally have tried. I also started writing restaurant reviews on Instagram. When restrictions eased up, I started trying new coffee shops, and I began to develop a small following. In January, I implemented a “22 coffee moments in 2022” challenge on my Instagram Ms.Garvin.Writes.

• I reconnected with my spirituality: In 2014, my mom had a series of strokes, and I gave up my job and everything I knew to move in with her and take care of her. Until my marriage separation, I had become a caretaker of others and not for myself. Aside from writing, I also put my spiritual pursuits on the backburner. Recently, I started studying them again. I had never lost my spirituality and my interest in the metaphysical, but it had become dormant as I began to live my life for other people.

• I unpacked: I moved to my current place last summer. As I was moving, I realized that I hadn’t opened any of the boxes since I moved in with my mom in early 2015. I hadn’t seen my things in six years. I had moved so much in that time that I started to leave things in boxes and never unpacked. I decided that I was going to unpack ALL of my boxes. That was cathartic. I laughed and I cried at all of the memories I had missed.

• I got rid of the excess: After I unpacked every single box that I had carried with me from place to place, I began to declutter. I had so many things that I didn’t need or want, such as kitchen gadgets I would never use or books I would never read. I had boxes of mail from years before. If you have never decluttered before, it is the most uplifting feeling.

• I started self-care routines: I have written before about losing weight and losing clothes to mold damage. As I replaced my damaged and oversized wardrobe, I began to buy clothes that fit properly. In addition to my new body confidence, I started a skincare routine, and I started wearing makeup that interested me.

• I started counseling: This was a big turning point for me because I hadn’t fully worked through the death of my parents. When I began the divorce process, the stress in my life came to a peak, and I began to have almost daily panic attacks. I had used the excuse in the past that mental healthcare was unaffordable and that I didn’t need it. I suddenly realized that my cup was empty. I needed to talk to somebody about the things that had been going on in my life. Someone that didn’t know and wouldn't judge me. We all need that sometimes. 

All life has to have balance. In a perfect world, your cup would be filled with an adequate amount of everything you need, and it would have the right balance of positive and negative energy. We have to actively work to keep that balance, or we spiral out of control. It is an everyday struggle for me not to give in to the negative influences that drain my cup. The best advice I can give is to find the things that make you happy and work for them. Fill your cup with that. If something is draining your cup, detox it from your life.
I want to hear from my readers: What has been draining your cup lately? Comment here or continue the conversation in our Facebook group, MMC Chat.

Hocus Pocus or Bogus... You Decide

Hi everyone, Christen here. Earlier this week on the blog and yesterday on the podcast we discussed bargain shopping where we touched on common household items and quality vs price. I wanted to chat about something a little different today. I'm still discussing shopping, but I want to dive a little deeper.

I was at a holistic-wellness fair over the past weekend, which showcased many booths offering crystals, lotions, art, oracle cards, and jewelry. I noticed that many vendors are offering items made from resin too. Resin is a versatile material, it comes in a clear liquid state and can be poured into molds to create an innumerable amount of goods in varying shapes and colors. The neat thing about it is that you can put things in it, like glitter, color, charms, and even printed images. After many hours, the resin sets into a hard plastic. I have seen resin items cropping up in the metaphysical shops around town, too. Sometimes they are in the form of a “polished stone” but most of the items I have noticed were in a pyramid shape, typically two to three inches in height. I always wondered how and why those stores were “getting away” with selling resin and hoped that buyers were aware that they were paying for plastic-like material, albeit very beautiful. I hope that people are not buying them thinking they are actual stones or crystals! I wanted to know more about these pyramids I kept seeing everywhere! 

I will admit I almost bought one when I was at the fair; it really spoke to the sci-fi girl in me. The resin pyramid had a base of small crystals and suspended in the middle was a perfectly polished crystal or mineral, that looked like a planet hovering over a disc with a metallic or engraved Metatron's Cube. It was very beautiful, but I knew it was resin, and I did not know what the purpose was, so as I had done in the past, I moved on to look at other products. Later in the day though, I came to yet another booth with these pyramids for sale. This vendor actually took a moment to explain what it was! She asked if I had heard of Orgonite. I explained that I had seen the pyramids, but had no clue!
She informed me that Orgonite is a special substance of organic material (the resin is supposed to be organic) that is combined with metals and crystals. The combination creates a tower that “attracts negative energies”. So the curiosity in me has not put this subject down ever since. I wanted to know who coined the term “Orgonite”, and what the scientific evidence was behind it. Keep in mind, I took geology in college, and never heard of Orgonite, so I was already looking at this lady with one eyebrow raised in disbelief. I am a believer in many things that are unseen by the eye, but I am not a blind believer; I need more facts. My findings so far have been all over the place, so I will just bullet point it out rather than regurgitate word for word what I have researched so far.

• Orgone is labeled as pseudoscience and fringe medicine and science (according to Wikipedia).
• It is a term created by Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian Psychoanalysis from the 1930’s
• Orgone is esoteric energy, life energy, spiritual energy; it can be more commonly called Chi/Qi, vibe, vibration, aura, light, or simply just energy, to name a few.
• Wilhelm Reich created an Orgone Accumulator that was a large wooden box which had specific layers to it. The subject would sit inside and the energy around and within would (in theory) be transmuted.
• Orgonite reportedly absorbs negative Orgone energy flow (DOR - Deadly Orgone Radiation) and transmutes it into POR (Positive Orgone) and releases it back into the atmosphere.
• DOR is said to be harmful to your mind and body.
• Resin is an electrical insulation material - remember I said it was versatile!
• Resin is not plastic, although it is similar, it can actually be made from vegetable oils. Here is a cool site where you can get all your questions answered about resin. 
• The resin pyramids are called Orgonite or Orgone Accumulators because they follow the same principle as Wilhelm Reich’s original Orgone Accumulator.
• According to some, a proper Orgonite, or Orgone Accumulator will have a resin outer shell, a quartz stone, metal shavings and/or a metal coil. These parts aid the mechanics of the device.

So what did I learn? I learned a lot about resin, that's for sure, I legit thought it was plastic! I also learned that there is a whole subtopic within holistic health that I did not know was even there. Let's call it a can of worms that I opened, which I now cannot shut. I will continue my research into Orgonite, as I am intrigued. The more I read about the concept, the research that has been done, and the theories behind them, the more interested I am. I believe that there is a lot in our world that is yet to be seen, and although I am skeptical, I am also open to the possibilities. I believe in the human aura, and always have, and I am also a firm believer that what you believe in is your reality. So if you believe that the Orgonite pyramid is cleansing the energy around you, then by all means it must be. What’s to say that it isn’t, it is only considered pseudoscience now because no one has been able to actually provide strong evidence either way. We all know that trees convert carbon dioxide, even though we cannot see the process happening. I‘m not against owning an Orgonite pyramid now. Actually, I am more inclined to purchase one now that I have done some research. I mean, what’s the harm in trying it, right? I was actually just thinking that it would be nice to have one on my desk.

I keep the motto “Quality over Quantity” in my foremind when it comes to shopping for my altar or my homeopathic and holistic uses. The main reason is that unnatural substances are not as powerful, or do not have the same effect, and of course, I also appreciate the hand crafted aspect of things, especially when it comes to metaphysical products. I could go on about sourcing, ethics etc., but let's circle back to that another time. To ensure that you are buying something hand-crafted I encourage you to ask the vendors where they acquire their products and materials. Ask if their products are hand crafted, manufactured etc., and if they are handcrafted, who made them. Oftentimes, vendors at booth fairs fall into one of the two categories: artisans selling their hand crafted items, and stores, who are selling their stock of mass produced items and consignment all mixed together.

I might be over generalizing on many things, and if I glazed over something or misinterpreted the science, I apologize. This was a lot to wrap my mind around. If I mentioned something incorrectly, please let me know in the comments! I would love to know if you have used or own an Orgonite product and what you believe! Do you think it is Hocus Pocus or Bogus?