The Tao of Dana

What does Feng-Shui mean to you?

To me it meant reading complicated articles in newspapers that explained what the different corners of your home should be like. It meant bamboo plants in little glass containers from the dollar shop. It meant a Laughing Buddha and Chinese coins.

Crazy superficial stuff that didn’t make a difference to our lives.

Then I discovered The Tao of Dana.I found the blog through Pinterest. Dana has some gorgeous images on her blog and I was hooked. I read her entire blog backwards (which was no easy feat considering she doesn’t have an archive category and you have to figure out what the last page number is…). At that point I was still looking for those gorgeous, envy-inducing images but also stopped to read Dana’s elegant posts on feng-shui in a contemporary context.

And she makes so much sense.

One of the posts talked about Feng-Shui at your desk. The post had an image of Anna Wintour at her desk. Dana pointed out the good Feng-Shui going on with the placement of various objects on the desk. You can read the post here.

This got me thinking. As an experiment, I made two tiny changes to my desk. This is where I do all my writing, my correspondence, my plotting. The desk holds my notes, part of my stationery stash, artwork and pretty things I like to see every day. After reading the post, I added a plant to the left corner (Wintour has flowers), and shifted a photo of my son from the centre to the right hand corner. All the points on the post were checked.

You won’t believe what happened next. It’s kind of spooky, really. Almost immediately, and by that I mean in a few hours, new work started rolling in. In the next three days, I had more work commissioned than the entire last month. Coincidence?

The inflow of work, good work, has continued steadily since. I’ve got blogging jobs, magazine articles, grant-writing offers. I’m having editors contact me to write for them (not Anna Wintour. Yet.) and while I continue to send out pitches and ideas, I have a full plate. At one point, I even contemplated taking the plant off and hiding it somewhere, but I don’t think Feng Shui works that way :)

Whatever it is, I’m truly grateful for this shift in energy. Next step – get a job at Vogue (or Elle Decor. or AD).

Whether you believe in Feng Shui or not, do visit The Tao of Dana. It’s a lovely blog full of eye candy and you’ll be glued. Promise.