Simplicity

Recently, I've been trying to simplify, compact, reduce, and organize aspects of my life. I figured that it would be too much of an undertaking to try to simplify every facet of my life and so I decided to focus on one or two specific things for now. Once I've manged to to sufficiently simplify these two things I'll move on to something else. Hopefully, this will mean that by the end of this year I'll feel like my life and surroundings are more clutter free and zen like!

Food

I've been a notoriously picky and somewhat unhealthy eater all my life. It's only gotten worse these past two years as I find myself having less and less time to sit down and enjoy a meal. There's many times I'm racing off to classes in frantically wolfing down a sandwich and slurping down a drink. This pretty much  is a surefire way to get yourself a nice case of indigestion. Yuck :( Plus, it's pretty unhealthy to subsist on chicken salad sandwiches, chips, and hummus day in and day out. To ensure that I had better control over what I ate, I decided to start cooking. It's a little bit more time consuming than just buying premade food or going out to eat but the results are worth it. It also gives me a good excuse to wear a cute apron which is always a plus :)

-Soup: I like to have a soup with every meal and it's very easy to make a healthy flavorful one. In order to sneak in more veggies into my meal, I've been making veggie puree soups which there are an endless variety of. I like using cucumbers, avocados, and carrots but really almost any vegetable can be used. Technically, you could use just two ingredients (your choice of vegetable and chicken broth) but I usually add some more spices to mine for more flavor.

-Pepper and hot chili sauce: Apparently spicy foods are good for your metabolism and having the added hot flavor to my food allows me to cut back on using so much salt to flavor my food.

-Cookies: I really like baking but I'm really wary of the amount of fat and sugar that goes into cookies. I try to exchange the butter for an oil based butter substitute and use whole wheat flour instead of all purpose flour. That way I can have my sweets that are a tad bit healthier.

Journaling

I've liked writing ever since I was little which accounts for the dozens of half filled notebooks lying around my room. I was looking around the house the other day and stumbled upon some of my journals from middle school which were more than often than not indecipherable (as a 13 year old I thought cursive was all that). I took up journaling again because it helps me stay focused and I have an excuse again to doodle nonsensically in the margins. Also, when I look back on these entries that I have written now I'll have a better perspective on what was going on that day and realize that my embarrassing fall down half a flight of stairs in front of my crush wasn't the end of the world.