Artsy with Mya

 Home is such a funny concept to me and I feel like it has been for a long time. I have a lot of homes and I consider them all my home in one way or another even up to this day.  Obviously my first home is the home that I grew up in Kandiyohi. It was the home that I most remember from my childhood. It was my home before my family and I went to Zambia and it was my home afterwards too. I had lived in pretty much every single room of that house before we moved to our new house and that place will always be my childhood home.  Then of course there is my home in Zambia, the first one there. It's the home that my dad built for our family and I can still remember the exact layout of the floor plan and the outside garden and landscaping. I especially remember the huge porch that we had and back then I would actually get up early enough to watch the sunrise when it was still cool enough in the mornings to need a blanket outside. That house in Zambia is such a special home to me a...

 I haven't posted anything on here for a long time because I honestly have been really in such a weird place of limbo for most of this year. So close to the start of this year, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life beyond the same old, same old. I was working at my parents store and living with them and my siblings.  I thought about what I could do to jumpstart my life (in a way) or at least what I could do to make a change in some way. So I decided to apply to teach English in a foreign country. Did I know what country? No - I figured that out later. And as most everyone probably knows - I decided to teach in Thailand.  Some people (including my parents) have asked me why Thailand? - why this job? - what made you choose this?  The long and short answer of it is that once I started preparing for this; I just never stopped. Over the past two years after I graduated from college I have thought about pursuing a lot of different things/careers/ideas with vari...

 This was a pretty interesting biography of a women that strived so hard to be remembered and commemorated by the world, but she never full achieved that feeling and got that fame and prestige that she so desperately wanted.  Miriam Leslie was a woman who came from a hard background and she seized every opportunity in sight to better herself and her circumstances in the eyes of the world. She went through several men, quite a few different scandals and pulled out some truly stunning business deals throughout her life.  This is an extremely well-written and put-together biography, but overall I had a hard time reading just based on the formatting of the story. The author puts Miriam Leslie's story together very well and does not shy away from the different stages of her life that she went through. However, I did not enjoy it as a whole book and would not reach for this again.  I received this book free from NetGalley and Abrams Press to review and this is my honest re...

 If asked to describe this book, the best answer would be "comforting" and "lovely". This story is all about family - the loss of it, the finding and building of it and most of all - all of the different feelings that come with having a family.  Olive as the main character, having just lost her last family member and is trying to figure out what she should do next in this weird time occurring after World War II. So when her old friend Margery comes back to town and decides to operate two different businesses including a boarding house and she wants Olive to manage it.  A classic drama book that manages to skillfully incorporate several ideas and themes from each character into the story. Themes like found family, ableism, living with disabilities and homosexuality are consistent throughout and are written very well. The ending of the story is such a beautiful ending where it is not absolutely perfect but Olive and the others are content and healing. Sometimes what h...

 Suffragette history has always been full of queer women in all aspects and stages of its evolution. However, these people were not always treated well or respected even among the very movement that they were working with.  The author organized this book into several different sections and talked about how being a queer person affected so many parts of the activism and life that these people were trying to lead.  The different aspects of life that the author discussed  in regards to being queer included how they presented themselves to the public, how they decided to live, how they participated in the suffragette movement and how they mourned and also prepared for their death.  This book is really interesting and shows just how important queer people were to the suffragette movement in every part of its evolution even when they were not appreciated or recognized by the movement at large.  I received this book free from NetGalley and NYU Press to review and ...

 There are a lot of self-care, self-love and all sorts of books that are supposed to tell you and help you make your life better and this book is honestly one of the best versions of that type of book that I have come across in a long time.  The author herself states that this book can be completed in whatever way the read wants to do it. There are some sections that make mention of other parts but nothing that would stop the reader from completing the prompts. That means that the reader can do this book starting from page one or they can open the book each day to a random page and do it like that or they can even decide to do the book from Z to A in complete reverse order. This book is set up so that the reader can do whatever they want to complete the book and feel accomplished.  There is not much to be said about this book that can be said beyond that this is a fabulous gift from anybody, especially yourself.  This book will be released in January of 2022 I receiv...

 How many times do you have something in your head and then you try and put it out in the world and it just looks nothing like what you imagined? I know a lot of people feel like this and I know that a lot of artists can feel like this too - especially me.  Often-times I have these ideas for my art - these really cool focal points, landscape ideas or even people and silhouettes that I want to do. But every time I try and work it out either on paper or on canvas, it does not turn out anything like I was wanting it too. Sometimes what ends up coming out of the failed visualization of the idea turns out just as good but the rest of the time, it just sucks and I hate it.  I took approximately two art classes in college and the requisite art courses in high school and every time I set out my art supplies and work on creating something - I remember that and I feel like a fraud and that I shouldn't be doing this; much less trying to sell my paintings because who would want to bu...

Content warning for depression, anxiety, discussion of self-harm  Have you ever tried doing stuff when you just can't do anything? I honestly thought that it was semi-normal for years to go through life with periods where you just can't do anything and the thought of doing anything - even something that you were excited for and ready for and you just didn't go. There were times in my life where I would be laying down waiting to go somewhere - a bible study group or a friends hangout and I would watch the clock tick down to the time I needed to leave by and I just never moved. It felt like I didn't have the mental or emotional strength to get up and go through with my plans. And I thought that it was kind of normal for people to feel and maybe it is, but other people just know how to deal with it better.  There were weeks at a time where I would just stop my entire social life without even thinking about it - it would just happen and one day I would look back and notice ...

 So starting yesterday, I decided to try and expand my reach of my artwork in hope of reaching more people. Therefore, I decided to start a Facebook page. I created a whole other Facebook page with my name and started a page and shop as well. I probably didn't think that all the way through cause I got several messages about whether or not I had been hacked, but no not hacked. I just wanted to make sure to keep certain aspects of my life separate from each other - not completely separate but still having boundaries between them.  So I have a new Facebook page under Mya Kallevig and an art page with the name Art by Mya. I am working on getting a Facebook shop set up that is linked to my Ko-fi shop as well so that my work can be shopped from either Facebook or Ko-fi.  I currently have about 8 of my works listed on Ko-fi and I have more that I am working on getting up, but my family and I are in the process of selling our old house and moving into our new one and so it is ha...

  So as I have been posting on my Ko-Fi, I have been making a cross-stitch picture for my friend who was getting married at the end of May. Well, she got married last weekend and I was able to finish it before the wedding and frame it to give to her, but unfortunately in between prepping for the wedding and the other stuff that occupied the weekend - which not only included the wedding, but also a birthday party and a memorial service for my grandmother. With everything going on, I kept forgetting to take a picture of the completed and framed cross-stitch, but just now that it really turned out amazing and if my friend posts a picture of it, I will repost it here. However, another friend of mine is getting married at the end of August of this year and I have started on her wedding cross-stitch. I am hoping to be better at posting updates about it this time - so check back on my Ko-Fi or on my Instagram ma.ri.ah.an to see any updates.

 Over the past year or so with everything that has gone on in my life, I have found a new love of non-fiction books, particularly history books that are about subjects that are not super common to think about. This is one of those books that I saw and I thought about how I have never read something like this before.  This is a very factual book and in being that it can be very surface-level on the specifics of the stories that it was telling. The lack of information and records from the time period contributes to that as well. There are some parts of the book that be a bit hard to read as the subject is a very dark one and the things discussed can be gruesome, but it is also informative. The author does an excellent job of being blunt and factual with her writing while also infusing it with understanding and not harshness.  If you want to read an interesting book that has a lot of history in it and is about a topic that is not often talked about, then this is a book you s...

 When I first started this blog, I wanted a fresh start in my writing, I had done other writings before and even another full blog. But that blog was something created for a specific purpose which was for my trip to the New Day Orphanage in Zambia, Africa and that was the sole purpose of that blog - so I didn't feel comfortable using that blog. The blog is still up and available to read, so if you are interested - I have that blog titled 'It's a New Day With...' attached on my reading list of this blog.  However, even if I didn't want to use the exact blog that I used for my trip, that experience is still very important to me. That is why I still incorporated the idea of a new day into the new blog. I went through a lot of different ideas for names and I kept coming back to the whole idea of new days and how that concept made me feel.  So I decided to go with the title of 'New Days Ahead' because I want to go through life with the attitude that no matter wha...

In year 22ish of my life, I thought that my life would be a lot different then it is right now. In 2020, I graduated with a major in social work and a minor in psychology. I immediately got a job working in social work in the Child Protection Unit of my home county. I started there in May of 2020 in the midst of a pandemic, so I never thought that the job would be easy, but it was far harder than I thought it was going to be or even what it should of been.  I worked in CPS for three months before I quit. I tried really hard to convince myself that what I was feeling at work was just normal growing pains and that if I just kept working that I could get through it. I tried to believe that I just needed to work harder and become better at my job faster and then it would get better.  Looking back, the turning point for me seriously considering leaving was when I had a phone call with a client and they told me repeatedly that I was ruining their life and that they hoped that I was ...