A wonderful new blog has begun. It’s called “Scrimp or Splurge” and it’s all about how to live life to the fullest without getting caught in the money pit. It’s about enabling us Victorians to make conscious decisions about how we spend our money in the “pursuit of happiness”, by giving us a wonderful resource of places and events ongoing in Victoria.

To my absolute delight, it turns out that the force behind this powerhouse of useful, up to date and most relevant information is a regular guest at Hernande’z. I caught up with Anita the other day to learn more about her project and to hear about her approach to taking risks.

Anita left her high pressure job as Editor of Beautiful BC Magazine last year. She’d been at the helm of this magazine (which has 130-140 000 subscribers worldwide)  for the previous fifteen years and after much consideration, she decided to take the risk of stepping away from the familiar and secure in order to also step away from office politics, screaming deadlines and administrative duties. Her partner, Honey (who is a regular character on the Blog) told her, a few weeks after she’d left her job: “I’m so happy to have you back”.

I asked Anita what the transition was like for her and she replied, “I missed my creative team, but I also really missed the readers. It was difficult to step into the unknown where all my skills of planning and organizing were suddenly not needed. I had to ignore the little voice inside that demanded security and stability and to trust myself.”

Honey was supportive of Anita’s drastic change and encouraged her to believe in herself and to trust the process she was going through.

Once she’d quit, she had more time–so:

Anita started reading books, like The Happiness Project and  found herself  writing again–this time,  lengthy twenty page handwritten letters to her parents. As the distance and time between Anita and her old career widened, Anita found herself  allowing repressed and forgotten talents to emerge again. She says: “You don’t realize how much stress you’re under until you’ve left it.” As Editor of  Beautiful BC, she’d given up most of her creative outlets–she managed deadlines and orchestrated the publication of other peoples’ writing. Now, she felt a resurgence of creativity and life itself and she began to nurture friendships and relationships with family that had long been neglected.

Slowly, imperceptibly, yet with a new steadiness, Anita began to reconnect with herself and the gifts that she wanted to bring to the world. She realized that there were important aspects of the Editor job that she loved–like the connection with the readership. In order to birth a new career, she pondered how she could integrate the things she loved doing into a new direction. The book, The Happiness Project became the catalyst for her emergent project.

Anita decided that she could use her newly rediscovered writing skills to reach community using the new social medium: the blog. The theme of her blog “Scrimp or Splurge” is to help her readers and subscribers to get more out of life. The gift that she needed to give herself is the gift that she is now giving to others.

The time that she freed up when she left her steady job has enabled her to reconnect with the beauty of Victoria. She now has time to actually visit the four to five festivals that we hold here and it gives her an impetus to get out and experience life in this beautiful city. As time continues, she has realized that the she’d been unconsciously trading in her friendships, her family relationships, and her childhood dreams of being a journalist for the oversold benefits of prestige, steadiness and security. Now, she wants to encourage others to create authentic experiences by getting out and experiencing Victoria–without having to spend a lot of money to do it.

Part of the whole formula, according to Anita, is to make conscious decisions about how you invest your money. If you decide to splurge, great–go ahead and splurge on something fun and wonderful! But, don’t think that you need to spend  a lot of money to have the right to go out and experience Victoria. Anita’s blog has put together a wonderful array of ways to get out and have fun in Victoria without spending money (that you  may not have as much of, initially, once you’ve taken that risk to leave the stable, but unsatisfying job!).

Now that Anita has re-centred her life and career, she finds that she works the same amount of hours as she used to as an Editor, but now she is no longer anxious, stressed, tired and exhausted. Now she is full of energy. She says “…the path is so much more effortless when I’m not trying to ‘control my financial future’ and when my focus is instead on connecting with community, creativity, and ecology.”

Anita is a living example of trusting that idea “do what you love and the money will follow”. Scrimp or Splurge is a strong supporter of independent merchants and business owners who have developed tenacity, courage and smarts to follow their dreams, too.

Check out her blog at www.scrimporsplurge.ca