Today is my 24th birthday!   

I want to share the reason for my blog, but before I do let me digress for a second and direct attention to the picture below. 

My mother is 24 years old in it! Look how beautiful +Emilia Roldan is and how small and duckling-looking I am! I can't believe I'm now 24 myself because time has flown by so quickly. I hope to age like my beautiful mom =)


Anyway, one of the goals I had for myself this year was to start a blog. So, as a gift to myself, here it is! But you're probably asking yourself, why should I write a blog and why should you read it? 

Because although I'm 24 years young today, I've gone through quite a bit in my short life that has forced me to grow up quickly and wise up. I learned through life experiences, wise mentors, and positive psychology researchers (some of which I've had the honor to meet and take classes with!) that many people have been living their lives chasing an artificial image of what constitutes the "good life" and ultimate happiness.

The "good life" chase, which is technically termed the Pleasant Life in positive psychology research, is characterized by elaborate spending, hedonism, and the never-ending hunger of wanting more, and it leads one to live a substantially meaningless, cluttered life. This may resonate and sound like common sense to some people, but for others who are so used to chasing the next thing - from the next look, to the next expensive toy, to the the next fling in hopes of the happiness of honeymoon love - this may sound a little disconcerting. No one who cares about the impact they make in their lives voluntarily wants to lead a meaningless, cluttered life, but unless they're willing to move against the current - against popular demand and the voice of mainstream mass media and advertising - they are most likely living the consumerist life prescribed to them by our big business-biased society. It takes constant effort to choose to live the ultimate good life, which positive psychology researchers consider the Meaningful Life.

The Meaningful Life consists of pursuing actions that directly relate to one's well-being, such as actions motivated by personal growth, personal excellence, and contributing to the lives of others. Hence, to contribute to the lives of others, I'm sharing what I know and learn on my own personal journey along my Meaningfully Simple Life. (I added Simple in the title to remind myself to not always feel like I need to complicate my life with more, but rather to have a "simple by design" mindset. Very Zen Buddhist of me, I know.) I share different aspects of my journey from daily living, to juicing, to planning a meaningfully simple wedding.

The idea of starting the blog first came when I was initially planning my wedding, and as I looked online for ideas I realized that the majority of people had bought into the idea that to have a normal wedding you had to either have $25,000 on average to spend or be content with starting a marriage off in debt. I personally didn’t buy into it, and my fiance and I felt as though we'd rather use that money toward our own place. Hence, we set out to throw a wedding celebration together for approximately $5,000. People thought it was impossible, so I wanted to start a blog to illustrate my journey toward the impossible. Also, I wanted to use my blog space to share juicing recipes online, since I'm a big advocate for living a healthy lifestyle and juicing!

If you're interested in the concept of or living a meaningfully simple life, and you'd like to see how a fellow meaningfully simple lifer is doing on her journey feel free to follow and connect.