I believe that the simple is the best in every aspect of my so-called life, so I try to plan my budgeting as minimally as possible to make it realistically achievable in the way that works for me.
This year, I have started keeping a personal ledger book to discipline my expenditure habits that worked adversely. So, I got a pocket-sized personal budget planner I carry about to record my daily expenses against my checking account. Also, I save $100.00 from my paystub to my savings account. I used to save $200.00, but then I habitually spent it all on my Amazon shopping. $100.00 seems more achievable, and it has worked so far.
Every night I write my diary and review my budget planner to reflect a day’s work and progress. It gives me a sense of control in myself because by writing with pen to paper, my acts of a day become visual through actualization. Aristotle said we are what we repeatedly do, so I want to try it myself.
Breaking the law springs up a grim faced judge with a wig with a gavel prone to sentence: “Death by hanging.” But no one is immaculately clean, and to err is a human. I broke the following laws, but I am not a hypocrite, as supported by Robert Frost: “Far more violence has been done in obeying the law than in breaking the law.”
1. Diatary Law – I enacted this law on the first day of 2024 to return to the disciplined dieting I used to keep five years ago. I broke the sections of eating after 6:00 pm, indulging in carb-enriched food articles at home, and consuming a load of junk food. Now that my doctor has ordered me to lose weight until a follow-up visit in three months, I shall abide by the law in full force and effect.
2. Law of Affirmation – I have violated all of the sections of the law: Imagination, Visualization, and Manifestation, all of which unintentionally – and intentionally. It is unintentional because when things do not go well as I expect them to or life seems unkind to me, my eyes become blind, my ears mute, and my head blank. I become comatose, thus violating the law. Intentional in the sense that when I am lost of all, including the will to live, the law seems needless, just as I am not here.
The consequences of the violation come not in they do a single spy but in a battalion. Health risks, such as high cholesterol and diabetes, may be foreseeable. Mental health will be put in critical care if they do not adhere to the above laws. Give me a month as a corrective period, and I will reinvent myself.
Are there any activities or hobbies you’ve outgrown or lost interest in over time?
Scene from The Sylvanians
I should have gone to bed after a long day at the doctor’s office and a trip to the pharmacy to pick up my medication. But today’s prompt question is too inviting to decline.
I used to write weekly episodes of “The Sylvanians” with the pictures I took to illustrate each episode before my brother left us for his life abroad with all the yokes of filial duties thrown at me. I still have the Sylvanian figures and the miniature items used as pictorial illustrations for my episodic writing. By the way, the German Romantic composer Wagner, also Hitler’s favorite composer epitomizing the greatness of the Germanic/Aryan race, used to wear costumes or grand wardrobes as a visual aid to provoke his musical muse.
The stories evolve around Sally
But that was the time when my mother did not need medical/psychological attention daily. That was when I used to work in a boutique law firm with no office politics among staff. Now that I work with and among people who are as philistine as the inhabitants of Earth after the end of the world, my energy is nearly exhausted at the end of a day’s work. Yes, I must gird up the loins of my spirit to push myself to take pen to paper. Still, I am neither a zealous would-be writer who wants to wow the world, nor am I a demimonde of the intellectual elite nor a fabulous amateur writer who wants to exhibit a perfect command of English.
I am all sweetness. I have sweet teeth. Too sweet to discipline, not to be sweet. My darling sweets are Gummies, and chocolates must have sweetness filled with flavors, preferably from Germany.
Of all gummies, gummy worms are the sweetest. I’m not too fond of worms, but strangely, I am charmed with gummy worms. Nothing macabre or carnivalistic is associated with ritualistic pleasure, but I like its flavor, which tastes particularly delicious to be addictive. The gummy worms from Black Forest are the best. And I like the gummy worms from a market or a sweet store sold by weight. American gummies are the best.
As for chocolates, my love goes to Milka’s strawberry-filled chocolate bar and Lindt Sport Chocolate bars with flavors. Who says Godiva chocolates are the finest? They are overpriced and overhyped even though they are only chocolates. On the contrary, Milka and Lindt have democratized quality chocolates so everyone can enjoy the delicacy. I may be biased in my preference, but how can it be when it is an empirical opinion?
My sweet teeth may bear the consequence of my lifelong love affair with sweetness, but I will not forego it to wear a prim and grim face of being freakishly healthy. Because without sweets, the world will be drab and dreary. And I don’t want to grow old without the sweetness in my soul.
Ad Astra (2019) and The MArtian (2015) from L to R
I know a thing about loneliness: willing and unwilling. It is lovely when it is mixed with white noise, like the sounds of raindrops or bells tolling afar. But too long quiet becoming dead silence unwanted is dreadful and miserable, as if I were forcibly cut off from the rest of humanity. That’s what happened to the spacemen on Neptune in Ad Astra (2019 film) or Mars in The Martian (2015 film) in their fated space odysseys.
Fall from heaven and the man in search of life
Ad Astra shows Major Roy McBride (played by Brad Pitt) is a cinematic version of Classical Greek drama. Roy is a hero because he has conquered his fear of not being true to his sensitive nature. It is also an epic tale of man’s voyage to the end of the world in the sense that he reaches his ideation of dream in truth. One of the most memorable scenes is when Roy falls from the ladders of the International Space Station’s spacecraft to the Earth, a spectacular rendering of the Fall of Man from high to low. Still, it also means an escape from darkness to light, which the Blue Marble symbolizes.
Left Alone On Mars
If Ad Astra is sentimental, the Martian is jovial in approaching a man in solitude. Mark Watney (played by Matt Damon) is a resourceful botanist who makes the possible out of the impossible. His brilliant mind, blended with his adorable wit tipped in cheerful disposition, propels him to survive on Mars and never surrender to hopelessness. Watching Mark growing potatoes on Mars and telling jokes to the camera to cheer him up reminds me of Horace Walpole’s following quote: “This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.” Charlie Chaplin adapted thus: “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.”
Miss Universe
Man in space seems romanticly adventurous and mysteriously atmospheric. Still, it is a metaphor for being alone, the existential distress with no sense of direction in life with no one to speak to but the sound of silence that echoes loneliness aloud. Yet, those moments of darkness will pass if you let them go away with the will to live. Indeed, Matt Watney is brilliant in figuring out how to live in such an adverse environment, but he would perish soon without his will to live. So is Ron, who could have been lost in space had he given up to disappointment. They are Nietzschean superheroes who have whys to live and thus huddle through any hows. Also, nothing is more beautiful than Earth, sparkling like a gorgeous blue marble. Therefore, there is no point in war, conflict, or any unrest among ourselves because we are all family in Humankind in the universe.
Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh 
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