While the idea of “communal living” raises immediate red flags with some, if you know us very well you know that we have always had the desire to be a part of some sort of communal living scenario. We both went through a missions program called REACH, living in a house with 30-some people during our 3 month training and then on location with our respective teams for the remaining 8  months. My introduction to community living had been as a teen visiting JPUSA, though, and I’ve been fascinated ever since.

During four days of the Blank Canvas Tour last summer we were so thankful for the chance to experience as a family just a little glimpse into the lifestyle those at Jesus People USA lead. Tyler & Carolyn were gracious hosts, showing us inside their small living space and answering our questions candidly.

Our initial feeling when arriving at the old hotel which used to be home to Al Capone, was not unlike the feeling one would have stepping off of a spaceship onto a planet inhabited by aliens who, appearing to be human, nonetheless were aliens still.

In all actuality, we probably didn’t look too out of place if someone from the outside would have observed, and it didn’t take us long to feel at least somewhat at home. By the time we were leaving, we were actually a little sad to go. You can see what our days there were like in these vlogs (you can skip the intro at 25 seconds in – we would do a lot of things differently now!):

1. TAKE CARE OF MY DUCKS!
2. LOCKED OUT IN CHICAGO!
3. HIPPIES USE BACK DOOR
4. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR!
5. MEET ONE-EYE AWESOME

And you can watch our two-part interview with Tyler & Carolyn here:

What do you think about community living???

Last night I was chatting with a friend of mine, Nikkiana, and she sent me a link to a vlog she had watched recently in which the blogger was talking about the things with blogging that concerned her. The potential for narcissism seemed to be one of the biggest, but also just living “real life” in general.

Now, I’ve never really understood decrying social media and online interactions as fake or a waste of time. Maybe it’s because I’m just me online; maybe it’s because quality time is not one of my love languages.

We were talking with our pastor today about how some people really compartmentalize different parts of their lives and don’t seem to think anything of being a completely different person at work than they are at home, for example. I’m sure the same kind of thing happens a lot online as well…

I have this other theory that maybe if you can’t understand the validity and worth of online interactions that quality time might be one of your love languages, and in which case I totally get it.

In general, however, and this may be naive of me to say, but if so then I’d like to stay naive, people are people. “Real life” people are important, sure, of course, but “online people” are still people, too.

Obviously I would never advise anyone to ignore the people in their lives that they can interact with in person, and don’t neglect them either, but I for one believe that our online interactions can be just as important.

That said, there was something the blogger that unknowingly had input into this conversation said that definitely resonated with me. In all actuality, she was quoting her husband:

You’re not a blogger. You’re a person who blogs.

Blogland is an interesting place. Sniff around it for a while and you’ll dig up some crap, to be sure. All the usual social castes exist and come into play for bloggers, in my opinion anyway.

I thought of myself as a wannabe blogger for a little while. But I’ve realized that for all intents and purposes I’m really just a person who blogs. I don’t really want the title of blogger and all the unspoken requirements that go with it.

But we’re going to keep on doing what we do.

In fact, we plan to do more of it. Starting next month we are planning to start implementing a regular posting schedule here on the blog.

I’d not say anything because of not being sure we can really do it, but we’ve almost made it through a whole month of vlogging every day! and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the past year, it’s that you just have to START.

How about you?
What are your feelings about being online?

This past week we celebrated our 9th anniversary. I have mixed feelings about our marriage getting so close to its pre-teens.

We’re definitely in a very comfortable stage of our relationship, secure and maybe sometimes a little too lazy…

I don’t want to admit how close we came to not doing really anything on our anniversary celebration date night. We just didn’t really care too much buuuut, I had a random idea that combined several things we do enjoy…

In keeping with our frugal tendencies (it’s a necessity really) we waited for a few minutes in our car outside of Applebees so that it would be late enough to get half price appetizers, but alas, they wouldn’t give them to us to go so we just did the 2 for $20. Yes, I’ve had a bug in my salad there before, and later mud in the same night, fresh salad, but it’s still where we get our inexpensive wing fix when we can’t just make them at home.

All in all, we were proud of ourselves for vlogging in public
and being slightly less lame than we could have been

What do you guys do to keep yourselves young?

Rumor has it that the second quarter of 2013 will be starting next week. Um, what? Yeah, that’s just craziness.

So how has the first quarter of this year been for you? Have you been telling your time what to do or wondering where it went?

Although I admit that the past 3 months have gone ridiculously fast, I can also report that some changes we made at the start of the year have drastically helped to increase productivity and reduce stress levels.

(I’m not going to say these aren’t all obvious things, I’m just going to say that sometimes you want to try to avoid being a “real adult” for like the first 9 years of marriage. But I think we’re mostly real adults now, and at least sometimes it feels good )

If you want to try being a productive adult, too, here are a few ways to increase productivity and reduce stress!

1. A Loose Schedule

We believe that flexibility is always really important, but sticking to a basic, loose schedule is really imperative to making sure things (the RIGHT things) get done. It’s sooo very easy to let important stuff slide when deadlines are looming, but it’s also a little ridiculous how super easy it is to always find something more important to do than some of the items on the list that you really dislike doing.

2. Everyday Cleanup

Alright, this should be a given, I know, I know, but refer to the last sentence of the last paragraph. Dis.Like.

Actually, truth be told, our stuff combined with our hectic schedule for the past 9 years and my inner perfectionist had kind of taken over and overwhelmed me to the point of hopelessness. I have had to kind of turn off my brain to problems that I know I can’t solve in the moment so that I am able to focus on what I know I CAN do something about.

Fortunately, if you include cleaning up the day’s mess in the daily schedule + combine #3, eventually you can probably tackle a little extra every once in awhile. And that, my friends, is the way an elephant gets eaten.

3. Minimalism

We started the process toward minimalism right before we went to Costa Rica last year, then those 3+  months with much less stuff while we were there only furthered our burning desire to purge and we got rid of at least one thing every day in October.

The affair with “stuff” all starts romantically enough, with promises of this or that convenience and this or that entertaining quality, but I don’t think there is any adequate way to explain how much it actually imprisons you over time. Talk about a ball and chain…

There is a lot to say about this topic, and it’s something we’ll be discussing more here, but for now, suffice it to say that it’s a process. We have a long way to go, but every bit that we shed has felt like a weight lifting. (Trust me, you can fit way, way, WAY more into 1,000 sq feet – our living space – than you might think )

How it Fleshes Out

One of the important components of what we’ve done since the start of the year is to actually stop working. At 5:00pm every day we make ourselves stop and start cleaning up with the kids. It’s super annoying to interrupt the middle of projects, but at the same time, it’s been so good for us to just have focused time for specific things. I know, I know, obvious adult-like stuff.

I’ll usually start supper at the same time and we all do our thang for about half an hour and then do a family activity until supper is ready.

Sometimes we’ll call Saturday a project day and tackle one thing, like a few weekends ago we went through everyone’s clothes and got all of the too-small stuff and other things that didn’t belong, out.

Other times, like a few days ago, we’ve had two days in a row at home and been able to keep stuff clean enough that we could tackle a smaller project like cleaning off our hutch shelf thing that’s collected papers and other random junk for like the past year. I know that sounds pretty bad, but a year goes super fast, yo! Especially when you’re traveling for literally half of it…

Little by little we’ve been able to see progress in areas that we’ve gotten behind on over the years, whether projects or our living environment.

At this rate we may actually be caught up by the end of the year…? I hope

Catching up, combined with “doing something every day” might just be a winning combination…

What about you? How’s this year going so far? Have you made any changes and how have they affected your productivity and stress levels???

There are constantly so many things I want to say, so many things to write about, but I always have reasons why I shouldn’t or can’t… (other things I feel like I should be prioritizing – whether a client project, a personal project with a deadline, an obligation, etc. or parts and pieces of a post that aren’t ready yet)

I remember when my family first moved to China when I was 15. I thought my life was over for the 6 months it took me to acclimate and get to know a couple of friends.

It wasn’t just me. My family was all floundering around in survival mode for a while.

Transitions tend to be that way.

Strangely, I feel like we’re currently in a transition. I’m not quite sure what it means.

The season is in transition – at least I pray to God it is. Spring, where are you?!

Our lifestyle is in a bit of transition – we’ve been clearing out more, taking more steps toward minimalism. It feels like we can’t get there fast enough.

Our church is in transition – it’s time for a new way of looking at how church integrates into daily life. And no, of course I am not speaking of a building.

My spirit, I think *our* spirits, are in transition, into a new and deeper place.

And wrapped up in all of that, I feel like our dreams are in a strange place of transition as well.

8+ years ago when we made a conscious decision that we wanted to someday work at home together with any children that we might have, it wasn’t at all about what we would be doing for work.

We always knew our hearts were passionate about creating in some capacity or another, or all of the capacities, LOL. But constantly everything seemed to stand in the way of really embracing that.

Both being an oldest child, I think it was probably somewhat ingrained in us to take calculated risks, to be responsible. So for years we worked at what we *had* to in order to keep making some sort of progress toward the goal of no more “day job”.

It didn’t feel like there was any room for the guilty pleasures of creating.

Looking back now, I honestly have no idea whatsoever how we survived. Only by the grace of God.

Programmed to do what had to be done, I wouldn’t realize how stressed I actually was until physical symptoms started to show up and I would think I was dying or something.

I don’t know where our life will be by the end of this year. I don’t even really know what we’ll be doing. If you happen to be a client of ours, don’t think you need to bail and find a new designer – we don’t have any plans to stop

It’s just that through the time it took to get here, through the being responsible and doing the things we had to do, we kept pushing our creative selves to the back burner with the promise that we’d let them out “someday“.

Now that we’re here – as tentative as “here” feels, we’ve realized that it’s still really hard to let our creative selves out. There are still so many things that need to be done. There is still that ever-in-the-future ideal when “this” and “that” are “thus” and “so” that we can finally afford to explore what we really love.

And it is at this point that I give you an earnest warning.

A perfect time will never come.

There will always be reasons NOT to do what you love.

You may not even really know or understand what  it is that you really want to do.

But you have to start now.

You cannot, I repeat CANNOT wait.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the smallest thing, but Do. Something. Every. Day.

That was the most repeated message when we asked 30+ people in some stage of following their dreams all over the country last year what their advice for others wanting to follow a dream.

Start. Do something every day.

You know what is so important about doing something every day? Time doesn’t stop. Before you know it you look up and a quarter of a year is already gone.

Life happens. Intentional life does not just happen.

Planning and scheduling may not seem glamorous or romantic, but if you do not make time in your life for the things that matter to you, they simply will not happen.

Exploring is good.

I’m not saying you should try to rush off on your own, bowling over those around you, or God forbid, God himself as you race past toward your personal goal.

I’m saying if you have something in your heart that you enjoy, something that is life-giving, make some space in your day for that. Whether it is half an hour, 10 minutes, even 5 minutes – do it. And do it again the next day, and the next.

The little daily choices we make, the seemingly insignificant things, even when we don’t feel like we  have any control over our life at all because it is just stuffed to the gills with obligations and responsibilities – those are the building blocks of the rest of our life.

Don’t underestimate what 5 minutes can do.

If you don’t feel like you even know which end is up, don’t know what your heart even wants, take that 5 minutes and pray for God to show you. Take 5 minutes and just dream with God.

We are firm believers that you cannot dream bigger than God. We know that he has big things for your life.

We make our tentative goals and do our best to move forward as we’ve been doing since we met, really. But we remain ever watchful for new doors which God may have for us.

Because he is always up to something, and it is always good.

We’re committing to Vlogging Every Day in April (VEDA) as part of the YouTube community and part of exploring what God might want to do in other parts of our life. I don’t know what we’ll find to vlog about every day, but I’m guessing there will be a little of this:

and a little of that

We’d love for you to subscribe to our channel and follow along on that journey

Will you commit to doing something every day? Whether or not it’s something specific, we’d love to know!