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It's a strange, strange time in our world.

During this period of isolation, uncertainty, fear and loss, I want to continue showing up for you and serving you by having a small positive impact on your days, through my words or my colorful art. 

In today's post, I wanted to share some tips for managing the very valid feelings of stress or anxiety many of us are experiencing during this difficult time. 

We are all home and more glued to our devices than ever before.

So many people in our personal and professional networks are sharing news, articles, opinions, memes, videos, TED talks and recommendations. It's normal to feel overwhelmed.

Limit your information consumption to reputable sources and verified information (and to a few funny memes), and be sure to give yourself time to UNPLUG.

Comfort eating is a real thing. Be gentle with yourself and do what makes you feel comforted, but also avoid overeating out of boredom or stress. Be sure to keep sipping water all day long, try to reduce caffeine, sugar and alcohol (even / especially if they are comforting!), and boost your fruits and vegetables during this time. Your body will thank you when we emerge from our hibernation in time for swimsuit season!

Our minds might be racing with worries about our work, our businesses, our income, our loved-ones, our time slipping through our fingers, our boring life in quarantine... the list of worries may be absolutely overwhelming. 

What helps me in times of overwhelm is a strategy like rationalization. 

Make a mental list (or a physical one, if you're a visual person) of everything that you are worried about - everything, big or trivial.

Go through the list and eliminate those which are unfounded (no evidence) or beyond your control. Then, come up with a strategy or comforting thought to tackle each of the worries that remain. 

Challenging your thoughts is a way to stop them from "poisoning" your mind. This strategy also helps you come up with solutions to mitigate some of our worries.

Action - any action, even if imperfect - helps boost our mood and motivation.
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If you're worried about unemployment or finances, look into the measures your government is putting in place to help you. Reach out to your network or support groups where you will feel less isolated and where you can find solutions to your problems.

Taking action prevents you from feeling helpless.

I am a firm believer that the most difficult times in our lives are also periods ripe with opportunity.

Take a moment to think about how you've always wanted more life-balance or family time. What interests have you always wanted to pursue? What were those "when I retire" goals, or those "rainy day" plans you had? Which room needs serious decluttering? 

Without putting tremendous pressure on yourself to perform or achieve incredible things, treat yourself to something you love or have always wanted to do.

Many artists are giving free tutorials on social media. Many museums and opera houses are offering virtual tours or concerts for free. There is an abundance of online resources, books, podcasts, movies and TV you can devour.

You can decorate, shop online, spring clean, cook, bake, dance, start a new business, read and create. 

Find your joy!

It's easy to get carried away watching the news, reading article after article about the coronavirus and scrolling endlessly through our Facebook and Instagram feeds.

But, let's face it: that's really not relaxing, and not the best thing to do while in bed. To face the next quarantine day with pep, be sure to maintain a regular sleep schedule (sleeping and waking at roughly the same time each day), avoid your device before bedtime, keep your bedroom cool, reduce your caffeine intake in the evening, and relax your mind and body with breathing or imagery techniques before falling asleep.

Depending on your location, your government may have put measures in place to limit your time outside your home. However, if possible and if you do not have symptoms, step outside to get air and sun, either on your balcony or in your garden, by exercising outdoors or by taking a short stroll around your block. Fresh air and movement will help boost your mood and allow you to take a breather from the information overload waiting for you on the other side of your screen.

​Remember to practice social distancing if you do go outside - even if you feel invincible, it is your responsibility to protect society's more vulnerable lives. 

It's a strange time in our history.

Yes, it sucks to live through this. Yes, the economy will plunge. Yes, we are making sacrifices EVERY day.

But there will be an end to this at some point, and we humans are incredible in the ways we cope, help, adapt, grow and survive.

​Try to remember that when it feels like too much to bear.

Gratitude has tremendous healing properties for the mind and body.

Make it a habit to practice gratitude daily by introducing it into your morning or evening routine.

Think of 1-3 things you are grateful for each day. 

What is going RIGHT in your life?

Take care of yourselves and your loved-ones.

From my heart to yours,
Kristina

I was the four-year-old who wanted to know what was for supper while she was sitting down to eat lunch. 

I was the teen who secretly created competitions with herself in her head to speed up her productivity and set new personal records.

I grew into an adult who became a restless traveler, always looking to fill my heart and notebooks with feelings and experiences. 

And throughout my unconventional life, I maintained an uneasy relationship with Time. Possibly like many of you, I constantly felt like I didn't have enough of it. I had trouble imagining myself in the future, as though I wouldn't get there, and this subconsciously propelled me to fill each day past the brim. I never wanted to finish books; I'd read them up to the last couple of chapters and stop, almost defiantly, not wanting the story to end. I always negotiated extra time before bedtime, before school, before supper, or while at a friend's house. I refused to keep countdowns, even if my friends would be counting down to something fun in our lives, like prom or graduation. Whenever I traveled, I hated the question, "When are you back?" and, to this day, I always need to have cancellation insurance because I'm notorious for changing my return date on tickets to prolong my stay. My watch has been on Italian time since my teens, since my first trip to my happy place. Every New Year's Eve, when the ball begins to drop over Times Square, my feeling of anxiety outweighs my excitement. 

When I think about all these insecurities around Time, it amuses me to think that I am so passionate about writing and photography, two ways of cheating it. Both have been my allies in pausing time and revisiting it at my heart’s whim. 

But what I realized only rather recently, is that photography has allowed me to practice daily mindfulness, to slow my rhythm, to consider a different perspective.

Photography came to me at a time when I was finding my wings, stretching my legs and testing my creative voice. 

When I started dabbling in photography back in 2007, way before highly visual platforms like Instagram changed our way of seeing the world, I did a couple of 365-day challenges to commit to practicing my skills every day. If you've ever done one of these challenges, you'll know how difficult it can seem (initially) to find something worth photographing, especially on the dullest of days. I mean, if you're on vacation in the Greek islands, you'll have no shortage of inspiration, but if you're home doing laundry, capturing mismatched colorful socks sitting on a drying rack doesn't quite have the same appeal, does it?!

But photography was the perfect antidote for my hurried step and my busy mind. It was the perfect relief from my scientific career and the most natural complement to my writing. 

As time went on and life got more and more complicated, I unknowingly leaned on photography even more. I depended on it to help me see, to help me feel, to help me move, to help me hope.

Whether I was exploring a new neighborhood, recovering from surgeries, or falling in love with another faraway place, I could always count on photography to allow me to look around, look back and look within. Photography was always there to inspire me take it all in, and to feel gratitude - a powerful emotion that only invites more blessings into your life. 

Mindfulness was, for a long time, a concept that I didn't quite get. Everything I loved about myself - my creative mind that never shut off, my machine-like productivity, my restlessness, my ability to do and be multiple things - seemed to go against living mindfully. 

But I think there is room for mindfulness, even in a full schedule and a passionate existence. The trick is to be in tune with your surroundings and your own self, and to know when there is a disconnect between them. Photography is an outlet that helps me create the space and time for observation and feeling. It's not about rapidly collecting images on a memory card. It's about looking with the eyes first, feeling something, and holding onto that micromoment of inspiration and gratitude.  

When shoppers comment on how ordinary some of my photographs are, I smile. I love to glorify mundane daily details, because it's those ordinary moments that have the power to become extraordinary. And because of my own journey with photography, this personal training of observing differently, being open to inspiration, of celebrating details, whether at home or away.

It's a dangerous world we live in nowadays, where everything is urgent and we are measured on our productivity, our audience, and on other metrics that didn't matter as much a few years ago. We are being taught to work faster, reply faster, ship faster, expect faster results, buy faster, heal faster. But what does that do to our body and mind? To constantly be in that state of adrenaline, of fight or flight, of do or die.

My instinct, as that restless little girl who wants to know and do and be everything, is to fear that if I don't hurry, I will miss out.

But photography has been diligently teaching me that urgency is an illusion.

To read road signs, one can’t be whizzing past. To notice, we must slow our step. To take sharp pictures, we must stand still. To heal, we must rest. To savor our wine, we must breathe deeply. To have new creative ideas, we must take a step back.

And so, to me, this is what living mindfully means. And my photography, which was started only because my parents gifted me a camera when I moved to Europe, helps me tune into what matters and to freeze it in time. 

From my heart to yours,
​Kristina

I have always loved taking long exploratory walks around urban neighborhoods, no matter whether I have traveled to a faraway place or I am happily acting like a tourist in my own city. I don't necessarily always plan to collect photos, but they seem to be inevitable. The simple act of moving, observing and being in the moment fuels my creativity.

Knowing this, I have gotten into the habit of scheduling a seasonal "staycation" -- a mini vacation (sometimes just a day or two, sometimes a whole week) in my own city of Montreal, where I devote time to exploring different areas and appreciating how they change with the seasons. 

In the mood to stretch my legs and to spend a little time outdoors with my camera, I signed up for one of the Photowalk Montreal group itineraries, organized by graphic artist and photographer Elodie Le Pape.

Every month or so, a new itinerary is proposed to explore a different facet of Montreal. Essentially, you meet up with a group of people on a Saturday and take a leisurely 2-hour walk together, snapping photos of whatever inspires you.

When I met up with about 24 strangers at metro Mont-Royal for that day's "Colors of the Plateau and Village" itinerary, I felt a bit outside my comfort zone. For me, photography is usually a solitary act. It is how I unwind, how I practice mindfulness, how I pay attention to my posture, and how I reflect on my way of seeing and feeling things in this world. When I travel, I usually carve out time to walk around with my camera on my own. If I'm in a group, I make mental notes of where to return to when I have more time to observe and experiment. Being such a solo photographer, I had no idea how it would feel for me to be part of a large group of photography-lovers. Would I keep the pace and find inspiration without feeling pressured? Would there be a lot of discussion and comparison? Would be end up with extremely similar photos?

What I quickly noticed when we set out on our photowalk was that the atmosphere was pleasantly informal and relaxed, such that you could make the experience whatever you wanted it to be. For this group, it doesn't matter if you're a beginner or an expert, if you have a cell phone or fancy gear, or if you simply feel like going for a stroll (thus totally ditching the "photo" part of a "photowalk"). You can take your time (as long as you don't lose the group), and be as talkative or as quietly focused as you wish. ​If city photography is not your thing, you are totally free to take portrait photos with a buddy, while scouting out interesting backdrops for future photoshoots. 

I admit that it was still an odd sight to watch 25 people silently fill a narrow street and spread out into different directions like ants infiltrating a space! Some photographers were much more assertive than I was, climbing residents' staircases for better views, getting really up close and personal with their subjects. 

I stayed true to my usual style -- looking for unique compositions and details that highlight colors, textures and that celebrate the ordinary. I appreciated that there was room for every type of photographer, and that the photos would reflect our individual styles, in the end.

The highlight of the photowalk was to discover a couple of charming streets that I had not yet explored. I was so glad to have done something outside of my creative comfort zone. It was a refreshing exercise to try something new but to still find my unique perspective and style within that new experience. 

Since the photowalk, I have enjoyed a few leisurely walks on the Plateau, Little Italy and around the Parc Olympique, taking in the miracles of spring. It always astonishes me how a little bit of time outside, away from my screen and phone, can refresh my mind and spirit. (Though, between you and me, it can be a little overwhelming to come home to hundreds of new images to sort and process!) 

I am often asked for advice for beginner photographers, and I almost always say this: take long walks and practice. Whether you join an organized photowalk for a structured itinerary, or you just weave in and out of streets on a whim, you are sure to find inspiration if you are open to it. Once something makes you slow your step, capture it in different ways -- different angles and compositions will tell a different story, and different camera settings will teach you about light. Finally, always look with your eyes first. Especially when the goal of the walk is to take pictures, it's easy to become a hurried collector and snap, snap, snap. Slow down, relax your shoulders, look at the scene and pay attention to how it makes you feel. What draws your eye naturally? Try to recreate that with your lens.

But, most of all: have fun. No matter how your photos turn out, at least you've taken a nice walk through town!

Every season, I like to take a stroll in my hometown of Montreal to see what inspires me and my lens. It's a way to unwind, to look at my everyday surroundings with a different perspective, and it simply feels good to get up and move with no set itinerary or destination.

Strolling through the Plateau streets last summer, I was enchanted by this detail.

If I were to zoom out, I would have photographed two neighboring houses. But it's this zoomed in composition that felt most compelling to me, especially in a square ration that enhanced its symmetry and contrast. 

​I named this one "Tango", because of how two contrasting halves can still mingle and complement one another, dancing harmoniously as a pair. I love the vibrant colors of the brick, the way the phone line traces a boundary between the adjacent' homes, but how the twisting vine doesn't seem to care about any boundaries whatsoever.
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"Tango" has always been special to me, not only because of its composition and color, but because it sort of represents the many areas of life where it's not about choosing to be one or the other, it's not all or nothing, it's beautifully, wildly, paradoxically both.

Tell me: Has anything in your neighborhood made you stop in your tracks? Do your everyday surroundings inspire you too?