birth­day balloons!

Today is my 26th birth­day! In lieu of my usual 17 ways I make magic hap­pen posts, I’ve decided to share with you 26 lessons I’ve learned in my short time as this Sara-ego.

1.Clean up after your­self! I’ve writ­ten about how my whole life I’ve a messy unor­ga­nized git & the ways I’ve learned to infuse my clean­ing rou­tine with magic. Keep­ing things in a non chaotic state has really been a rev­e­la­tion. The act of clean­ing makes me feel pro­duc­tive & zen minded. I’ve read that cre­ative peo­ple are inher­ently messy, so we need neg­a­tive spaces to make those messes in. There’s a plethora of men­tal ben­e­fits to hav­ing a clear envi­ron­ment as well (you know-clear, unclut­tered spaces = clear unclut­tered minds.) I’ve learned how much sim­pler & more in the flow I get when I can ACTUALLY find things, or when I don’t acci­den­tally step on things I love.

2.Appreciate neg­a­tive space. Those afore­men­tioned clean rooms, blank note­book pages, empty blog posts all speak of an impor­tant truth of life– the value of neg­a­tive space. Appre­ci­ate the moments in life when you feel as if you have a lack of peo­ple in your life, if you’re sin­gle & don’t want to be, or when you’ve just lost your job. Neg­a­tive space is beau­ti­ful & uncom­pli­cated. You can’t fill what’s already full, so empty the well every now in then & spend some time bask­ing in the void.

3. Keep a note­book! I’ve kept a jour­nal since I was in the 4th grade. They’ve evolved from more tra­di­tional diary entries, to places where I take notes from my life, write down quotes from books, draw, brain­storm, write posts, poems, sto­ries, make art. I love being able to exper­i­ment, play & free think with­out fear of scrutiny. I think my note­books are my most inte­gral life tool.

4. Vine­gar can replace most expen­sive, chem­i­cal clean­ers. It’s true! I use vine­gar for basi­cally every kind of house­hold chore there is! See how use­ful vine­gar is?!

 5.It’s ok to have too many inter­ests. I think the idea that you should just set­tle into one job, one hobby, one passion-that you need to focus on just ONE thing is total bull­shit! It was always such a strug­gle for me to pick between art, writ­ing, sci­ence, fash­ion, sports, etc. There was a time in my life when I wanted to be a nun, a rock­star, a cheese maker, & a saucer all at the same time. I’ve learned that you REALLY don’t have to choose. Inno­va­tion often hap­pens when com­par­ing & con­nect­ing for­eign ideas. In the past hav­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent inter­ests was con­sid­ered a virtue. The renais­sance men with mul­ti­ple tal­ents like da Vinci, & it wasn’t uncom­mon for peo­ple in the 19th cen­tury to explore any­thing from archae­ol­ogy to nat­u­ral­ism, poetry, astron­omy, a whole whirl­wind of sub­jects. Lik­ing a lot of things (or heck, every­thing!) really strength­ens your cre­ative mus­cles & also has the added ben­e­fit of allow­ing you to con­nect socially with so many dif­fer­ent types of peo­ple. Life­hacker agrees! 

6. Get a web­site! Cre­at­ing Cosmicoutlaw.com has been one of the very best things I’ve ever done. It’s reward­ing in absolutely every way. I love shar­ing my ideas & the things I do, its teach­ing me to edit & refine my work, I’ve made a ton of friends, it gives me a real sense of pur­pose & there’s so much oppor­tu­nity that I can cre­ate for myself online. My web­site has cat­alyzed my evo­lu­tion in absolutely every part of my life.

7. Learn to never stop evolv­ing new sys­tems. 

8. You have to cre­ate magic your­self. Magic is a way of look­ing at life as a rich, soul­ful, jaw tin­gling, Tantric expe­ri­ence. Seek adven­ture, beauty, art, poetry, won­der. You can choose to see the uni­verse as alive & preg­nant with mean­ing. You can choose to believe in omens & signs; in astrol­ogy & tarot; cre­ate tal­is­mans to wear for extra oomph; make an altar, cre­ate spells for abun­dance, bless cof­fee or tea to turn it into a deli­cious magic writ­ing potion. If you knew you could make your expe­ri­ence in life absolutely filled with magic, why wouldn’t you?

9. Erle­ichda!

 “The word was a tran­si­tive verb, an excla­ma­tion, a com­mand, of which an exact Eng­lish trans­la­tion is impos­si­ble. The clos­est equiv­a­lent prob­a­bly would be the phrase: Lighten up!”- Tom Robbins

10. Embrace your Jun­gian shadow self. There are pos­i­tives & neg­a­tives in play absolutely every­where, thus is the dual­is­tic nature of maya, this of course, includes our­selves. It’s naive & insult­ing to our own souls to glo­rify the good & ignore our slightly more demonic selves (in facts, it’s self-abuse!). Sweep­ing our faults under the prover­bial rug will only amplify them, like a bel­liger­ent, neglected child. My shadow self is stub­born, cold, pre­ten­tious, nar­cis­sis­tic, moody, melo­dra­matic, lazy, bor­ing, she-hulk. She likes to show up when I’m pms­ing or dur­ing dark moons (some­times when I’m too hun­gry…). She’s a lot of chaos that only devolves fur­ther if left unac­cepted, mis­un­der­stood & locked away. Our shad­ows can be our great­est teach­ers, they hold a lot of power-both ben­e­fi­cial & mali­cious in our lives. Study Jun­gian dream analy­sis & arche­types & really get to know that less lovely part of your­self. Once I began pay­ing atten­tion to my shadow side, I felt like my life began to evolve expo­nen­tially & added depth to my exis­tence. & hey if you can accept your shit­tier traits, than noth­ing any­one can say about you will hold any power.

11. The world we expe­ri­ence is a col­lec­tive illu­sion. Mat­ter isn’t solid, but mostly empty space, empty space doesn’t really con­tain noth­ing; par­ti­cles are both par­ti­cles & waves & can affect other par­ti­cles with­out being at all near them. Every time we think we’ve fig­ured it all out, things get deeper & stranger. Real­ity is a mys­tery. There could be mul­ti­ple uni­verses, or the uni­verse could be one big super organ­ism; we could be liv­ing in an extremely com­pli­cated soft­ware pro­gram or all be a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of math­e­mat­i­cal for­mu­las! Every­thing that exists could be made of tiny vibrat­ing strings, con­scious­ness could per­me­ate the cos­mos, we might be some hiber­nat­ing god’s lucid dream, or we might be noth­ing at all. The point is, we don’t know & that mys­tery, won­der & awe add to the beauty & inher­ent com­plex­ity of life. Think­ing about all this makes mun­dane tasks like doing taxes or those moments where I’m over­come with anx­i­ety, a lot less demand­ing of my time & emo­tions. What appears to be a mun­dane, anx­ious world becomes trans­formed into some­thing really fuck­ing beautiful.

Col­or­ful Mod­ern Art by Andy Gilmore

12. Get­ting all dressed up is a really easy way to boost con­fi­dence, ele­vate moods, & alle­vi­ate boredom.

13. Prac­tice OUTLAWISM 

14. It’s ok to not write things down right away. This is con­trary to every­thing I’ve ever been told, & I still believe in writ­ing every­thing down, but it’s more about hav­ing faith in your­self & your ideas. I’ve found that if I’ve had a bril­liant idea that I’m truly meant to have, my sub­con­scious brain won’t let me for­get it & it will recur in my life. I’ve redis­cov­ered ancient lists writ­ten years ago with thoughts & projects very on beat with the ones I’m hav­ing now. I try to get things recorded asap, but I’ve learned it’s ok to let go & the thoughts that are meant to be, will come back.

15. There are many widely loved things that are just not meant to be in my life & that’s ok. Beer, musi­cals (minus Grease, shhh…), board games, whip cream. I can be open minded & still accept who I am with­out forc­ing such unpleas­antries in my life. We like what we like.

The Holy Moun­tain is a really strange film.

16.These thinkers are vitally impor­tant to read: Alan Watts, OSHO, Tom Rob­bins, Sera Beak, Michio Kaku, David Eagle­man, Ter­rence McKenna, Mar­shall McLuhan. Bonus points for Salinger, Von­negut, Phillip K. Dick, SARK, Thoreau & Emer­son. Watch Jor­dorowsky weirdo films (THE HOLY MOUNTAIN) & look at art by Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko & Car­los Cruz Diez.

17. Every­thing is progress!

18. Learn­ing to cook is the best thing ever! It’s of course, cheaper than eat­ing out, you can have total con­trol of your health, you’ll always cook exactly the kinds of foods you want to eat (no more mush­rooms!), it’s a great form of active med­i­ta­tion & as Steve Martin’s Shop­girl taught me, “the self pre­pared din­ner is a great time killer for lonely peo­ple & as much time should be spent on it as pos­si­ble.” For foodie inspi­ra­tion, I watch a lot of food porn (Top Chef, The Taste…) & spend a lot of time brows­ing Pin­ter­est food boards.

19. Music is bet­ter than tv-especially when you’re sad or bored. In fact, some­times I believe too much telly is what’s caus­ing my sad & bored states. I think tv is a pretty cool thing, but music is in the realm of the soul.

20. It’s a lot eas­ier to do things before they’re due. Web­site posts, school work, what­ever– I’m a grade A, pro­fes­sional pro­cras­ti­na­tor. I like to think I’m a genius at the last-minute paper & I’ve even con­vinced myself I work bet­ter in this mad cap frenzy, but really I’m just roman­ti­ciz­ing it. In real­ity, I spend the 2 weeks prior to the dead­line con­stantly think­ing about what I should be doing, sick with worry, sleep­less & stressed. I know a lot of my pro­cras­ti­na­tion is really fear & resis­tance, so instead of mak­ing myself feel guilty for being a lazy prick, if I just deal with the core issues, & just get to work-my life is so much more flowy-er. I can take my time, if print­ing or pub­lish­ing issues come up, I have time to resolve them, instead of just freak­ing out. I can actu­ally enjoy social­iz­ing or watch­ing tv or what­ever with­out that con­stant anx­ious voice in my head dis­tract­ing me. This goes just as much for sim­ple things-hanging clothes up after laun­dry so they don’t wrin­kle, wash­ing the dishes after you eat takes a lot less time than a whole sink full of crusty cups. Not doing isn’t easy-not doing is plagued with doubt & frus­tra­tion, not doing is chaos, doing is easy.

21. The best think­ing is done stoned on porch swings in beau­ti­ful weather, tak­ing a hot bath, on walks with no pur­pose. It’s called the shower prin­ci­ple & it has a lot to do with alpha brain waves. Those eureka moments are more likely to come to us when com­pletely relaxed. When stuck it’s really bet­ter to just quit & have some tea than it is to keep pow­er­ing through, & reg­u­lar lazy brain­storm­ing (or brain­calm­ing more like!) should be made a priority!

22. The inter­net can teach any­thing! I’ve learned how to knit, taken span­ish classes, learned to make crafts & recipes, taken open course mar­ket­ing & quan­tum physics classes! There’s so many ways to learn too! Ebooks & blogs, youtube & TED lec­tures, ITunes U, online magazines-the biggest prob­lem is with the abil­ity to learn any­thing any­time with lit­tle to no cost, where do you start?

 23. Adapt­abil­ity is key. Fail­ure to evolve is what kills off species. Fail­ure to evolve mind­sets is the mark of a dying breed. Those who learn to adapt-thrive.

24. Diva cup > any­thing else. 

25. Doc­u­ment & track EVERYTHING. Track­ing progress is the first thing any­one will tell you in devel­op­ing will power. I do monthly & yearly check­ins with a set of basic ques­tions, I log what I do each day in my mole­sk­ine plan­ner, I keep check­lists, charts, etc. Since I’ve started reg­u­larly review­ing my life-I’ve found that each month I get bet­ter & bet­ter. The fact I’m observ­ing myself sub­con­sciously pumps me up to do more things, I notice pat­terns of behav­ior I oth­er­wise wouldn’t have, & it helps me avoid the trap of feel­ing that life isn’t going any­where– see­ing how my life has unfolded shows me I really am grow­ing. It’s a great way to build moti­va­tion & I think it’s why archives are so impor­tant (at least for the con­tent cre­ator to see how they’ve evolved.) This is also the rea­son my panties didn’t get all in a twist when Face­book switched to time­line. At first it made me uncom­fort­able so much of my life was avail­able for view-but then I real­ized that it’s only proof at how much bet­ter my life’s got­ten in the last 7 years.

26. Don’t fear grow­ing up! Like I just said, my life has only got­ten bet­ter. I’ve spent much of my youth in the throes of a Peter Pan com­plex, & I think fear­ing death or aging really takes away a lot of the fun of being young. You get old, you die, that’s how it goes (thanks the sec­ond law of ther­mo­dy­nam­ics!). Grow­ing older means evo­lu­tion– I look the best I ever have, I’m doing things I love, & I know I can only con­tinue to get more awe­some! If you don’t believe me, or just need some aging inspi­ra­tion, Jane Fonda is the best.

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I’m off to go cel­e­brate my birth­day now! I’d love to hear what you guys think of these & every­thing you’ve learned in life as well! <3 

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• 17 ways I make magic hap­pen: new year edition
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