Mary’s Morning Musings: En Route to Watch Caitlin Clark Risk it Allll

Good morning, world:

Yet again, I found myself extraordinarily inspired at 5:00 AM in the morning, so here we are!

You can read more about my experimental writing style here.

In short, in “Mary’s Morning Musings” I play around with how I document my stream-of-conscious thinking by employing different timebound writing constraints. It’s a bit of art. A bit of public thinking. Nothing too serious, and we’ll just keep seeing how this goes.

👾 Time & space context:

• Start time: 6:48am
• Disrobed in my living room after essentially 1.45 hours of universe chitter-chatter
• At 9/9:30AM, I’ll start heading out to a quick game of basketball with Puget Sound Basketball League (PSBL), then scurry over to Rough and Tumble pub, self-described as “Seattle’s Pub for Women’s Sports.” It’ll be my first time there, and I’ll watch the women’s basketball game between Iowa and LSU with some members of my Seattle ball fam. Let’s go, Caitlin!!! If you’re reading this: I love you — literally.

Mindfulness body check-in:

• Overall energy levels: My body is feeling pretty good — outside of my strained neck.
• Sleep & rest: I fell asleep around ~7:00 pm on Saturday night after a super-fun, albeit relatively painful day of snowboarding at Steven’s Pass with my new friends Janna and Michael.
• Food & nourishment: Although not home-cooked, I have been hitting my daily nutrition goals. My mindful eating goal is literally to just make sure I eat enough per day. We’re ramping it up to eating healthy++. I am guilty of having a habit of skipping meals due to tendencies of forgetfulness.
• Overall body and energy cleanse: Inside and out, generally, feeling pretty restored which is great. I’ll eat in about 30 minutes or so, to make sure I have enough fuel for my basketball game. It’s been about a month since I played a time basketball game.

Okay — so what did the universe and I discuss this morning / as of late?

Mary’s Morning Musings TLDR —

I try to love in little ways, and I hope you have a great day.

Mary’s Morning Musings Unfiltered Cut —

I fundamentally think about my life as a story. And in my mind, I hear my story narrated in two voices — that of my innocent inner child and that of my life-informed adult self. This is the ~somewhat simplest way I can explain my personal vantage point for life.

This internal dialogue has narrated my life verbally since I was quite young — and so I can trace back some of my logic for decisions, my key influences, and core memories by recalling some of the conversations I was having with either myself, God, the universe, etc.

At the risk of sounding unrelatable, abstract, and too supernatural — in short, I feel like I can access and empathize with my Little Mary at specific periods of time and space as if she is her existing own entity and not within me. Stay with me here.

When I was 16 or 17, I set an intention during my Catholic Confirmation program to “always look at like through the eyes of a child” when I selected and confirmed under St. Therese of Lisieux, a Carmelite nun, as my patron saint.

With earthly life happenings over the last 10 years, I basically forgot that I had studied St. Therese, her legacy of the “Little Flower,” and her “Little Way” of leading life. Simply put she taught, “Though we all have different roles and responsibilities in the world, each one of us can love, right where we are.”

Though I shifted the teachings of “The Little Way” into the back of my mind, I do not think I ever truly forgot her teachings. Today, I have my own understanding of religion, God, and the universe — all evolving and informed by my own life perspective, experiences, and spiritual journey. I won’t go into that here and now.

As my language and vocabulary evolved with modern education, my intention for the overall direction of my life, beyond loving in day-to-day “little ways” grew to:

How can I use my life’s story in service of a greater mission? How can I use my life to serve with whatever I have and in whatever way I can — whether time, money, resources, knowledge?

During my writing in college from 2014–2018, I wrote and thought about this intention almost daily.

It was a big driver as I established my early career, and it influenced the win-win culture I tried to incorporate in my passion projects — namely starting up Davis Women in Business and teaching my undergraduate seminar, “Redesigning Design Education” — on top of how I interact with the universe, world, people, etc.

This intention was essentially the core theme of both of my business school cycle applications when I responded to Stanford’s “What Matters to You Most, and Why” prompts. (To catch ya up — I applied to deferred admissions back in 2018, and I’ll be off to London Business School, starting on ~August 11th 😉)

Mary’s Morning Musings Cuts —

I have about 5-minutes left, and I’m trying to make these parts coherent, but I don’t think they will make the time cut. So, here’s where I was headed at one point. And I’m sure I’ll get back to it another time.

And I communicate my life story through every little decision I make — whether consciously or subconsciously — internally to myself and externally to the universe, God, the world, and everyone all around me.

I can trace back the fundamental origins of that belief system, how it’s helped me/hurt me, how it has evolved consciously/subconsciously, and so on as I’ve gotten older. A lot of this intention comes back to— for better or worse — my most innocent youngest self-first learning about God’s love before I can really process conscious thought.

I view my childhood and upbringing essentially as an output of systems — particularly cultural — and as a function of space and time.

It goes:

Setting influenced by key macro-influences

• Legal Government Name: Mary Catherine La Madrid Serafin
• Ancestry: 96.7% Filipino & Austronesian — according to my 23&Me report
• Culture informed by macro-influences at play: Dual mixed Filipino-American immigrant culture, informed by key macro-forces including social, political, religious/ideological, technological, environmental/geographical, and economic [And then there are key “earthly” players in modern society like public/private — government, business, big tech, and so on.]
• The systems at play also informed by macro-forces: Include health, economic, education++
• Spatially: The universe — then world — then earth —then continent — then country — then state — down to the city and geographical coordinates. This translates to: “this universe” — “this world as we know it” — planet earth — North America — United States — California — Chino — Chino Valley Medical Center.

My relevant academic and professional background here is that I’m a systems designer with a focus and passion for global social change. I work in gender equality and get to think about improving women’s and girl’s lives every day.

During my first quarter of college, I was advised to just studied whatever naturally interested me and so I opted into Global Social Change and Introduction to Poetry on top of my then Economics major requirements for Microeconomics, and Business Calculus.

Other cut topics

• It was my late Mom’s birthday yesterday — Check out this Instagram reel for my writing reflection and how I spent that day/
• It’s day 10/40 of my “dating fast“ ”— And I’m reflecting on what love means to me. I’m reading Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules of Love, and I’m worried that I am having a spiritual calling to the church. Literally. I used to want to go to nun camp growing up, and I’ve been researching a lot about Faith Justice for other Catholics in LGBTQIA+. I keep having visions of talking to the Pope if I can get into Harvard Divinity School and increase the ways I communicate with the literal world through my life story. I called a friend about it yesterday who said “The church has a way of bringing people back to it by 30.” Lol. I never really “left” but we’ll plant discernment in the garden. Fun.
• Navigating grief, loss, and caregiving PTSD: I’m still sad.
• Daydreaming: It would be really cool to be a Chief Purpose Officer like Jay Shetty one day. I still feel uniquely positioned to change the world — more on this later. (Ref: The Little Way)
• Mary’s March in Conclusion: See this Instagram reel and my last blog post on those reflections. Highs and lows — such is life.
• Intentions for “Mary’s April:” Love, rest, nourish, cleanse.

Per usu — I welcome your outreach —

“Usu” = my new shorthand for “usual,” if that caused you pause lol.

If your body, heart, mind, or soul reacted to this piece in any way, at some point please let me know somehow. I get and interpret information via digital mediums like likes/comments either on Medium or on Instagram, texts, phone calls, emails — and human mediums such as just letting me know the next time you see me. To me, it’s all data and means something different.

Some digital options for how you and I can connect:

1. Medium: If you like my writing or thinking, please subscribe here on Medium to stay updated as I share new pieces.
2. Instagram: My personal Instagram for friends I know is @marycserafin. I love making friends from the internet, so if you choose to follow me, I’d love if you could DM me and say hi. Otherwise, I have a periodic regimen to clear out unknown followers who I wouldn’t say hi to in public. Gotta keep IG safe — naw mean. This was my intervention decision after a two-year social media fast from 2019–2021.
3. Website: If you want to see what I’m up to at large, visit my website at www.marycserafin.com. At the point of publishing this post, it’s under-construction with a rebrand in process for summer 2023.
4. Email: For anything else, send me an email at mary.c.serafin@gmail.com.

With love,

Mary Catherine La Madrid Serafin

👾 Time & space context:

• End time: ~9:09 am
• I did “enrobe” while writing — I got cold. Walking the Brune soon, then basketball-related activities with friends! Game is at 10am. Oop time to go.

Mindfulness body check-in:

• Did not each much lol. Game time.