Transparency in Transactions
Honesty and Excess
Cat's out of the bag: I'm looking to build an ethical and transparent business.
No fakery. No selling out. No screwing people over.
Just honest business. Supply and demand.
An affordable price and a plethora of fresh content until the day I die.
(Colorful class square gallery)
So, when I've been thinking about monetizing my blog and researching affiliate partners I have felt a tinge of discomfort.
As someone who questions excessive consumerism in our culture, I refuse to start pushing useless products onto the people I am trying to genuinely help.
(Look at this GREAT cosmetic product [I don't use] and these AMAZING hundred dollar yoga pants [I would never, ever, EVER buy for myself]!)
For real. Most everything I wear I bought from a consignment or thrift store.
People go crazy over my yoga pants and name brand outfits? Neat. I got them for $4.
The Divided States of America
American Excess
(Another tangent, as someone from a small and poorer part of America, seeing excess seems sinful to me. Hoarding and protecting: greed.
Seeing celebrities buying $50,000 dresses when whole communities of people are struggling is disgusting to me. It is grossly unfair.
If these people with power and millions of dollars really understood how much even a thousand dollars could change someone's life, I wish they would be more ethical with what they have reaped.
Nobody NEEDS a whole f*cking closet of thousand-dollar shoes.
What enrages me the most about millennials and modern day America is the obsession with those living excessive lifestyles.
Keeping up with plastic people and the impossibly staged lives of superstars that have done next to nothing deep for the people they have profited off of?
You are part of the problem.
Been watching ridiculously brain-draining reality television on autopilot the last decade of your life? Hope you're not one of the same people bitching about Donald Trump's rise to power.
If we are going to really claim to be "the" world power, then we have to step it the f*ck UP, America.
I'm done with the shallow, the superficial, the stupid.
We are POWERFUL and KIND and CAPABLE. We can change the world.
As Mother Teresa once said: want to change the world? Go take care of your family.
This division and hatred we are seeing on the grand stage of the American presidency, for instance--these are all hardly-masked projections of our own torn relationships with our selves, friends, family, and co-workers.
Where else can we start from if not first from ourselves?
If we do not heal ourselves and take time to figure OUR shit out, how is society magically going to become better?
As my hero Gloria Anzalduá once said: I do the work. Nobody is going to do the shit work for me. (Paraphrased)
If I do start to promote products, they'd have to be things I am already honestly using and loving now, other honest products and companies that benefit my life, bring me joy and streamlined ease.
(I'm talking to you: Spotify, NutriBullet, Dr. Bronner's Soap, FreshBooks, OneNote.)
Similar to how I found myself here: helping businesses I already work for and believe in with social media, content curation, artistic projects, and marketing endeavors.
At this point in my life, I am truly only working with those I am most aligned with: the gyms and studios I am grateful to teach weekly classes at, the Yoga and Ayurveda Institute I've spent years of my life training at, my family's insurance agency going strong for over thirty years, my own efforts at building website that becomes a hub of inspiration, positivity, and practices for people of all backgrounds, affordable and available to all.
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