Episode 20: My Favorite Things
- Tina Boogren
- Jan 18
- 7 min read
Description: In this episode, Tina shares a few of her favorite everyday things, simple items that bring comfort, creativity, and quiet joy. From journals and pens to pencils and stickers, this is an invitation to notice the small rituals that support everyday wellness and to reflect on what your own favorite things might be.
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Transcription: Hi everyone. I am so grateful that you are here. This is Everyday Wellness with Dr. Tina H. Boogren, and I am your host, Tina Boogren. This week's invitation is a little bit different. A couple people had suggested this idea to me and it has been on my mind because I love when other people do this, so I thought, I don't know, I'm going to try it out maybe once a month or once a quarter or just whenever, I might share with you some of my favorite things.
I love when I listen to other people's podcasts or read their Substack or blogs or posts on social media where they share their favorite things. I don't know. There is just something about that that appeals to me so much. Like if it's someone that I trust and respect, if they love this particular brand or this journal or this book, then I might like it too. And I'm not talking about just in general, influencers, which probably that is a thing that I might like as well. What I'm talking about are like, oh, my favorite authors, or my favorite, like I said, podcasters that just happen to share some of their favorite things that I really particularly love when they say, and I am not getting paid for this, that, you know, it's just something that they love.
And so a few people have asked me a couple questions in the past about some of my favorite things, so I'm going to share a few. And so my invitation this week would be to maybe try some of these. By the way, I am not getting paid for any of these. These are just truly my favorite things. And to think about for you, like what are some of your favorite things, because I will tell you what, in thinking about this episode, just identifying some of my favorite things brought me joy because these are things that I love, right? So this is one of those teeny tiny things of like, oh yeah, I absolutely love that. So I'm gonna share a few.
To start us off, what I'm going to share is my favorite journal or notebook. And this one's a tough one because I'm sitting here in my office looking around and I have a gazillion journals and notebooks. I love them. I really, really love all journals and notebooks. But I will tell you the one that I come back to again and again and again is the soft cover mole skin, the soft cover mole skin. So we'll put links to these, again, I am not getting paid for this, but man, if moleskin would like to send me some, that would be amazing. Anyway, the soft cover.
So for me, I love a soft cover and this particular mole skin is one of those smaller sizes. It fits really easily into my purse, my backpack. I can carry it. It's got a little band that kind of holds it all together, which I love. It also, in the back has a little pocket so I can put oh, receipts, sticky notes, reminders of things in there. I like to use just the college ruled one. And I just love it so much. And one of the things that I love about having my own journals is putting stickers on them. I don't know if this is a Colorado thing or a Gen X thing. I love stickers so much, so I usually, I'm pretty boring, black is my favorite color. I buy the black one and I cover it in stickers. So I'm sitting here looking at the current journal that I have, and I've got, oh, stickers that make me happy. One from New York City. I have one that says Hike and Hydrate. You know, I love that. I've got one that says I love SB, which is from Santa Barbara.
So I pick up stickers as souvenirs. That's another favorite thing. Whenever we take a vacation. It's a pretty cheap little souvenir that I can bring home that doesn't take up a lot of room. And I always have tons of stickers on hand. And so it's kind of fun, like when I start a new journal, I'm like, ooh, I get all excited because I get to go find my stickers and fill it with stickers. So the Mole Skin soft cover, smaller journal, just college ruled. Oh, makes me so happy.
Now when I write in that journal, I think a lot about my favorite pen. Now, this is controversial. We have strong opinions on what the best writing utensil is. I absolutely get that. So you may very much disagree with what I'm about to say. Please, please know this is a personal opinion. I'm just going to share my favorites. So I kind of seem to rotate actually in my favorite, so I'm going to say what my favorite writing utensils are right now. So I actually have two that I go between.
So one is the Sharpie S Gel. Ooh, that is a smooth, smooth writing utensil. I have it in black and I just love it. I have the 0.7 size, I guess, is that what we call that? And I also love, love, love, love, love a good old Pilot G2, which is also, oh look, that one is a 0.7 as well. I must like that. I don't even think I think about that. It's just, I'm looking at the pen. So I go back and forth. I keep both of them tucked in my journal actually. So one is black and one is purple and I just kind of, whatever I'm in the mood for that day.
Now, I'm not going to lie, I also love a pencil. Oh my goodness. I love pencils. I love mechanical pencils, and I really, really, really love Blackwing pencils. Those are like old school pencils that you use a pencil sharpener to sharpen them and they feel so good. The lead is so smooth, they have these cool erasers and it's a whole kind of thing. In fact, I've seen Mole Skin and Blackwing partner up and just my head nearly explodes because that's like two of my favorite things altogether.
So Blackwing has all these different colored pencils, but then they do these like special series. So last year on Independent Bookstore Day, I went to one of my favorite independent bookstores and Blackwing had done like a special series highlighting independent bookstores. So I'm looking at these right now. You can hear them, don't they sound? I just, I got a whole bunch of 'em. And it just says Blackwing x times or together with independent bookstores, but it is like green and gold and just kind of a fancy design and I love it so much. So I have been known to use a pencil in my journal as well. I use pencils in my planner. I just, I love a pencil. I don't know, maybe that's the English teacher in me, but I love a pencil. Some of you know I love pencils so much that I actually have a tattoo of a pencil on my forearm.
So I'm going to pause there. And those are just a few of my favorite things that I thought I would offer up and invite you to check them out if you are someone like me who loves to hear other people's recommendations or maybe, I love that this might hit you, someone listening is like, oh my gosh, it's like she read my mind. I am looking for a new journal or a new pin, or I forgot about those sharpie pins that I used to love. Or pencils. Let me try a pencil and see what that feels like. There you go.
And then I also invite you to think about what are some of your favorite things. I love like, sharing favorite things with friends. I love, love, love doing like a favorite things party where you bring enough, like you decide on your favorite, one of your favorite things, and then you bring eight of those things to share with the other people at the party. You keep it under whatever, you know, dollar amount that you want. I just think it's so fun to share our favorite things with each other. I know I have a lot of, of course, educators that are listeners and man, when you get us going on anything like school supply related, we can go on and on and on.
If you are not an educator, talk to your educator friends about their favorite kind of school or office supplies because they will have some really, really good recommendations. And I'm guessing probably my smile is because we probably have some really strong feelings too. We're pretty passionate about our school, about our school supplies. So that's it. That's my invitation for this week. I wanted to share some of my favorite things, invite you to think about your favorite things, and make it a great week you guys.
As always, we're so grateful to Adrienne. We're grateful to Solution Tree and Marzano Resources that provide the foundation for me to do this work. And to you, all of you amazing, amazing, badass listeners who are here to think about how we can bring everyday wellness into our lives so that we live our very, very best lives. Feel me cheering for you so hard as you move through your week. I love you. You're amazing.
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