Hi, I'm Alive

I’m glad you’re still with me, I’m still here too.

Hi everyone. I’m glad you’re still with me, I’m still here too. It’s been a long time since I’ve publicly shared a post in this way, and I’ve been itching to come back to it for the past year.

One update for you all: I migrated from my own personal email newsletter to a more public blog that everyone can enjoy. I added an official title for more pizazz too (The Wanderer).

Photo by Reylia Slaby

The above picture was taken in Assisi, Italy at 5:30 in the morning. This was the first time in ages I found the energy to pick up my paints (the Italian coffee didn’t hurt) and created a temporary studio on the table for the entirety of the morning. It was life-giving, and I felt that little amber inside start to glow— first time in months. Immediately after the trip, however, my transitory lifestyle started to weigh on me again and I fell into an intense brain fog, an apathy unlike I’ve ever experienced. While living out of a few suitcases may seem like the goal, I can say with certainty that complete and utter burnout was the result of my nomadic lifestyle. I became disinterested in sharing my process and lost my vision for what I wanted to put out into the world. It’s a cry me a river story no doubt, but loosing my passion to create was a small tragedy. So the question I had to answer was: How does one recover from feeling like an incomplete version of themselves?

Finding What I Love

While my sister and I were together in Japan earlier on in the year, we were put on a mission to create art together at a forest home designed by Kazuyo Sejima. It was a fascinating space, but the timing was not the best. We were both in the midst of the looming reality that we were soon leaving our home of ten years and found it extremely difficult to focus on our practice. With the pressure of being displaced over our heads, it dawned on me that I had been in survival mode for the past couple years and my excitement for the little things in life had dwindled. I couldn’t tell you what I liked or didn’t like, and worse, I didn’t care. It was a scary realization and decided that I needed to start at the bottom. I got my pen and paper out and wrote down 100 Things That I Love.

There were a few things that piqued my interest during this experiment. For one, it was a lot more difficult than I anticipated it to be. I walked into this challenge thinking that since I’ve been on this planet for thirty years I’d be able to quickly recall and jot down a quick list. After I hit 15# I had to start wringing out the rag. The second eye-opener was that I had attempted to cheat (how do you even do that?). But I began to search the web to see what others had on their random lists. After I came to my senses and remembered that no one was grading this project, I decided that it would be utterly pointless to copy another person’s preferences. This list was for me and no one else.

Without the help of the internet, it took me four days to reach 99# on the list. One more to go. I felt accomplished looking down at this list of happiness, a catalog of joy I could turn to if I found myself in a blue mood. This bulk amount of likes and loves made me immensely pleased. My mind wandered back to my childhood and remembered hobbies that came naturally to me when I was young. It suddenly dawned on me, the one thing I would do daily as a child and smiled. How did this not come to mind instantly? How did I ever forget?

I slowly jotted the last item down: I love to make lists. Got 100#.

I’m happy to share that since writing The List, my art has been coming back to life. One step at a time, I’m slowly piecing together a practice that I love, not one that is riddled with pressures of how I should do things based off of social media trends. Thinking about what I love got me to realize what I had to remove from my life to allow what I adore to grow and expand. I gave away clothes and books and allowed unnecessary things to peel off. I am building the “no” muscle and am gaining the strength to turn down events and plans that aren’t life-giving. Having this list gave me a point of reference to better understand myself and the reasons why I wake up in the morning.

I’m writing this in my family’s Midwestern home with two dogs at my side helping me regain perspective. I’m slowly discovering a tenderness for small-town living, an huge jump from Tokyo and New York. For the first time, I’m looking intently at the same tree everyday, the same sunset, nowhere to be/nowhere to go and I’m loving it. The days are quickly slipping off the calendar, but what I’m finding is that the spark is slowly starting to return to my life without the distractions I usually have in my day-to-day.

No matter where you are in your life, whether you are overwhelmed or perfectly content, this list is a great way to fine-tune your existence. Writing down the small things can help you visualize how the positive and negative can add up.

We are constantly given the option to make decisions out of love or fear but us humans are inclined to focus on the next moment. If we allow it, the “what-ifs” become paralyzing and it can be all too easy to wade in an ocean of anxiety. Alan Watts said it so so beautifully, “You can only live in one moment at a time, and you cannot think simultaneously about listening to the waves and whether you are enjoying listening to the waves.” This Love List allows you to to tune into the light of reality. It encourages decisions based in pleasure and not pain. I can’t recommend it enough as an annual practice.

Let me know if something surprised you if you make your own Love List. The outcome might look differently from mine, but I believe the benefits are outstanding. And it could be the coffee jitters, but I’ve been feeling that special spark come back again; the little amber I had felt that early morning in Italy is returning to life.

For now, I’ll be sitting tight in this 2000-people town for a couple more weeks but will eventually make my way back home to Japan later in the Fall. I hope I can grab a coffee with all of you back in Tokyo soon.

Keep Wandering,

Johnna

Instagram Website