Settling Into My New Routine + Talking About Foodstuffs

 If you have been following along my blog updates, I have recently started a brand new schedule filled with so many good-for-my-soul things. All of these things are really fulfilling, so I can honestly say I enjoy that a lot of my time is otherwise occupied. I posted a new YouTube short of some snippets of my friend Julie and I getting together over the weekend. So normal - just my friend and I hanging out and catching up. It was one of those gal-pal afternoons. I hennaed my hair again this weekend as well, and this batch turned out especially well. I added a key ingredient I didn't have the last time - essential oil. It literally is essential to this process. Managed to get a fair stain on my hands, which you can see if you go on over to my Instagram where I am proudly showing off my mehndi hands and hair. So no, I did not go to a Middle Eastern wedding - that's all from my hair process. I think giving it the title Mandie's Mehndi is catchy. I dig it. 

I was able to film another social media collab that has been on the books for a while. Due to schedule conflicts on both of our ends this one has been rescheduled a couple of times. But fear not, fabulous things are happening! I have a couple of new videos for you that will go live next weekend, including this most recent collab, so keep an eye out for those! I am really hoping to work with this vegan vitamin company whose vitamins I have used in the past. I have had some initial communication with them, and am waiting to hear back about partnering up with their products. If this goes through, it will be a huge feather in my social media cap. These are all things that matter to me, Amanda, and if I can partner up to influence promotion of these things, that is what I want to do. I am not vegan, but I am vegetarian. In recent years, I have been eating wild caught fish occasionally, and I just LOVE sushi. I have been a strict vegetarian since I was 14. It is only because my partner (who has since passed) had a resurgence of cancer and didn't want to only eat tofu (for fear of soy + breast cancer) that we started incorporating fish into our meals together. I think my diet will stay this way, a pesky vegetarian as I say. I never wear fur or leather or eat jello (cow bones). I am still a strict vegetarian, minus this one part. It's still for ethical reasons, still for the animals. This is why I really want to be able to partner up and promote vegetarian/vegan vitamins. I think that we use animal products in things way more than we need to, and it's a waste. That waste translates to even more unnecessary animal abuse. I feel strongly about this, although I never get on a soap box about it. When I first became vegetarian, there were only tofu puppies and bocca burgers. Now, being vegan is this wonderful fad that has taken YouTube by storm. This is the one fad I can get behind. Also, everyone in the States (minus California, probably) ate a lot of meat then, so I have never been one to get on a soap box and talk about my food choices. I do it for me, for the animals. Period. I hope I can lead by example though, and if someone reading this or watching my videos thinks, hey, I love animals, I should be vegetarian, too. And they make a change for themselves, that's all I can hope for. I remember the exact moment I decided. It was after a conversation with this girl, Virginia, in my Freshman algebra class in high school (LT '07!). She said she was a vegetarian, and it just dawned on me. I love animals, I adopt cats and help rehab birds, I should be vegetarian. It just felt like the right thing for me, Amanda, and I never looked back after that day. This is truly who I am, which is why it was such an immediate and effortless transition. 

I am doing so well at meal and snack prepping for the work week. I am honestly really proud of myself for being so on top of it. I did my grocery shopping this afternoon for the week, have a few lunches in mind to cook, and a few easy ones to throw together. My lunch for tomorrow is packed and sitting in the fridge ready to go! Seriously, you have no idea how important this is in my mindfulness practice.

I was definitely NOT planning to talk about my dietary habits for the breadth of this post, but that's how it happened today! I hope you appreciated this post. Thank you so much for following along with my words. Please feel free to leave me a comment below - I would love to hear from you!

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Mindfully,
~Amanda

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Amanda Vander Kelen, MA is a geographer/GIS Specialist and now blogger. She creates a work/life balance by using her creativity in both making maps and writing blogs. Taking a mindful approach to life, she hopes you can utilize her writing to help create a peaceful space of your own.
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