Someone I follow on Instagram recently posted an image with a caption that stuck with me:

IT’S OKAY …

To wear old clothes.

To not upgrade your phone.

To buy second-hand items.

To live in a simple home.

It’s okay to live a simple life.

It so happens that I agree with each of these statements – because they reflect my own values and priorities – but that isn’t why the caption lingered in my mind. More than the words themselves, I was drawn to something that I felt the caption alluded to but failed to say out loud.

It’s okay if your life doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

For me, *these* are the magic words. The words that bring me a deep sense of contentment and peace. The words that feel like a deep exhale, a release of tension, worry, and anxiety.

It’s okay if your life doesn’t look like everyone else’s.

The original caption seems appealing (to some of us, at least) because it is validating certain experiences or values that are somewhat outside the norm. But in its specificity, it is missing the point (in my view). The point isn’t to delineate a specific way in which it’s okay to deviate from The Norm. The point is to demolish The Norm as a point of comparison. Better yet, to demolish comparison altogether.

The message need only say: IT’S OKAY.

[I mean, if we want to be extra specific, I guess it should say IT’S OKAY _{as long as it does no harm}]

For me, the last 2 years have been a journey of twinned, sometimes intertwined paths: self-discovery alongside grief; self-discovery through grief. I categorically reject the notion that hardships or loss are allotted to us as means to an end – “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – but I acknowledge that grief has fundamentally changed both the landscape of my life and the way I perceive it.  

One of the things I’ve reflected on a lot in the last 2 years is the concept of a “rich life”, a term I’m borrowing from the personal finance world even though I am not especially interested in the financial side of it. Your “rich life” isn’t what happens when you have the best that money can buy; it’s what happens when you live exactly as you feel called to live. Picture your ideal day in your mind; your “rich life” is your ideal day, every day. Of course, in a capitalist system, money is inevitably a necessary ingredient to any version of a “rich life” – even if that means nothing more extravagant than sitting on a porch all day, sipping coffee and reading a good book; but the capitalist credo of “more money for the sake of more money” isn’t what a “rich life” is about. A “rich life” is a life lived with intention – as though each day were a full cup that you savour to the very last drop. What the cup is filled with, that’s up to you to decide.

Ramit Sethi writes that “[p]art of creating your Rich Life is the willingness to be unapologetically different.” This is what has been resonating with me a lot lately. Grief was a world-shattering experience for me, but the upside is that it unmoored me – fully, for the first time – from a lot of the “shoulds” that had provided the framework for my life up to that point. Should do this. Should be that. All gone in the blink of an eye. In its place there was suddenly room. Room to look around, to take stock, to decide the “this” and the “that”. And in that process of discovery, I was isolated from the outside world because that’s something else that grief does. But, in this context, “protected” might be a good word too. I made decisions about what kind of life I wanted to live going forward, and I never once asked myself “how does this look to other people, how does it compare to what other people are doing”. I realized later, of course, that many parts of my “rich life” looked very different than The Norm and that realization brought forward another journey, this time of acceptance – and, beyond that, of celebration of being “unapologetically different”.

I want to be careful not to suggest that understanding your “rich life” is only possible through grief. While it was certainly a part of my journey, it wasn’t the key. What’s necessary is the willingness to go inward and find what is meaningful to you, without external judgments or values to distract you. Whatever prompts you or helps you along that path is going to be as unique to you as the destination itself.

IT’S OKAY.

Details: Pilcro sweater, Prairie Trail Goods vest, Cartonnier pants, Rafael Alfandary necklace, J. Crew shoes

Thoughts: This vest is one of the pieces I’m most excited to wear this summer… so excited, in fact, that I couldn’t wait any longer to wear it. So I tried to come up with a cozy way to make it work for the current season. I chose this sweater based on the colours in the quilt pattern, and I am pumped about the combo! The striped pants add a bit of subtle pattern-mixing, plus the colour works better with the palette here than a simple black would have done.

Details: Wilfred sweater, Ports blazer, Ralph Lauren skirt, Nocona belt, Chelsea Crew shoes

Thoughts: This outfit was, once more, inspired by some RL runway looks. This belt-over-sweater-over-skirt formula is making me very happy right now. An outfit in head-to-toe shades of brown is very “RL country” which is my style sweet spot, especially for spring/fall. Do I wish the skirt was a smiiiidge longer? Yes, always. But overall, it’s all good.

Details: Club Monaco turtleneck, Le Chateau vest, Twinset blazer, Banana Republic pants

Thoughts: I was going for a little baroque, a little dandy vibe here, and I think I mostly pulled it off. The pattern mixing works for me, and you know I am a ride-or-die for vest+blazer combos. I’m slightly undecided on whether the turtleneck is a bit too heavy, but I am also not sure if a better alternative was at hand (I don’t think a button down shirt would have worked).

Details: Wilfred sweater & coat, Denim & Supply dress, Ecco boots

Thoughts: When you’ve got a patchwork of patterns … adding one more to the mix is the obvious outfit-making strategy, no? As always, I am relying on a cohesive colour palette to push me into that “YES” territory. I think I made it 😉

Details: Le Lis top, Holding Horses tunic, Topshop skirt, Lena Bernard necklace, Zara shoes

Thoughts: This is very similar to a couple of other outfits I wore; I’m just mixing up the same (or similar) pieces in different ways. If the formula ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Just improvise on the same!

Details: United Colours of Benetton poncho, Frame jeans, Office London shoes

Thoughts: This poncho was not an automatic thrift buy for me, believe it or not. My husband pushed me into getting it, as I was having doubts. He was correct. It’s too strange and wonderful — wonderfully strange! — of a piece to pass up. I don’t normally like overtly-branded clothing, but the colourful lettering here works for me. It’s so fun! Plus, I like the message (cleverly) worked in: tutto va bene (tton). Everything is okay. Some days you need that reminder, you know?

I am sure no one was waiting for this update with bated breath, but here it is: I did not get accepted to the Royal Bison spring art market. It was a long shot and (perhaps) a more political process than I realized, so while I was very disappointed initially, I’ve become pretty philosophical about it. Reading The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin helped, especially bits like this one:

“How shall we measure success?

It isn’t popularity, money, or critical esteem. Success occurs in the privacy of the soul. It comes in the moment you decide to release the work, before exposure to a single opinion. When you’ve done all you can to bring out the work’s greatest potential. When you’re pleased and ready to let go.”

So I am choosing not to see this as a setback but as a window of opportunity. I am once again free from any need to consider market dictates – what people might want to buy – when deciding what to create, and free from deadlines as well. I haven’t decided whether to apply to other markets this year. I kinda like all this freedom, to be honest, and at the end of the day … all the finished hoops that have been piling up don’t take up a lot of space. If I don’t sell any of them, it’s fine.

Speaking of which, let’s take a look:

Another abstract floral. It always makes me happy when I’m working with bold colour. Something like this doesn’t challenge me in a technical sense, so it’s the kind of thing I like to work on when I’m looking for space for quiet reflection. The work (which is still time-consuming even when it’s not challenging) is a sort of meditative ritual.

Landscapes have been the challenge I’ve set myself this year. They take a lot of time and are, therefore, a commitment and sign of confidence in my own ability to bring a design vision to life. With a lot of these, the picture doesn’t fully come together until the end so I have to trust my own skills while I’m doing the laborious leg work. Sometimes when I am part-way through a project like this, I am convinced that I’ve messed up and then I have to talk myself into continuing to the end … and usually, it does come together!

This was just a quick little hoop I made for myself because I’ve been wanting a Matisse print for a while. And I went on making a few other things for myself too:

A fancy peacock to join my frog prince.

Can you believe I didn’t have any cactus hoops of my own? All the previous ones I made were sold.

Queen Elizabeth I was one of my first cartoon portraits. It seemed fitting to add her mother, Anne Boleyn, to the line-up.

This was my second attempt at a Margot Tennenbaum cartoon, and I think it’s miles better than the first. It was meant for the Royal Bison market but now … maybe I’ll just keep it.

Ditto with this Frida portrait – perhaps my fave one yet.

Back to the Klimt floral theme, but a slightly new/different take. I loved this so much – designing it, making it, AND the end result – that I’m working on a second one now.

Last but not least, I wanted to experiment with thread painting in a non-landscape design and what better than one of my favourite flowers. Very happy with how this one turned out.

Spring is the start of the “busy season” each year, and this year I have a lot of extra “life stuff” on my plate, so I’ll be taking a slower pace with, well, every creative pursuit including this one. Which is ok. And it’s the upside of putting monetization on the back burner. For now 🙂