We’ve been going climbing three times a week for the last six months. And even though they are finally fully open, the gyms are not back to their setting schedule. This means when we go to the gym, there are 5-8 new routes since last time. Generally at least half of those are outside my ability range.
So not a lot of new routes for me to climb.
But here’s the thing: because I’m climbing so frequently I am able to do harder things every couple of weeks.
That means I can go back to the same gym and to the same routes but now new opportunities are available to me. A route that I had evaluated and wasn’t able to do Is it within the range of possibility now.
This has made me think a lot about my life lately. What might be something that I maybe wrote off at one point in my life thinking I can’t do it but now if I were just to revisit it, it might actually be possible or might create a new opportunity for me. Unlike the gym the routes are not always there and visible in my life and I’m not regularly going back and revisiting them.
I wonder if there’s a way to actually make them more visible. And this way I could rethink or retry them.
And just like that the ranunculus are gone. As I was bemoaning this fact to the flower people at the farmer’s market, the farmer said: “Yep they are gone now it’s the season for sunflowers and dahlias and we will move on and enjoy them.”
It was a good reminder and perspective shift for me.
I love ranunculus the most and I will not enjoy dahlias as much but I still enjoy them and many other flowers (peonies, man they are exquisite!) and if I spend all my energy complaining about how It’s no longer ranunculus season, I miss out on all the joy I can get from the millions of other flowers whose turn is right now.
And of course this made me think about work as well. There are definitely some changes and new seasons happening at work. And part of being able to show up for that and lean into it is noticing the beauty and the joys that I can extract from this particular season.
Paying attention to what is here now in leaning into it and really being present with it is a major part of my word. So I really appreciate it this good reminder.
Yes to being here now and yes to appreciating what’s here in this season.
I made a mistake tonight at work. It wasn’t a big mistake but it still made me trigger when it was pointed out. I took extra long being careful with every word I used in my email reply. And of course I thought about it for a while after and felt shame.
But now I am sitting here and deciding that I am ok with it.
We have a lot of change at work and there are new work dynamics, people dynamics and I am working hard to learn to grow to pivot.
That means that I will make mistakes. Because it’s hard to learn without making some mistakes. The only way to not make any mistakes is to do nothing.
So I made one today. I will learn from it and not make this one again. Next time I make a different one, I will hopefully learn from that one, too. And if I do it well, I the distance between mistakes will get wider and wider.
Here’s hoping.
Yes to releasing the shame and yes to learning from my mistakes.
Weekly Intention: Ok here’s the plan this week. Lean in. Show up, be curious, be open. You can make all this work.
This month’s intention is:June: Yes to Light: Breathe in the fresh air. Summer is here. Smell the water. Go outside. Sit in the sunshine. One more school year is over. Celebrate your life. For now it’s all about sunshine. I will lean into the sunshine.
One way I will leap this week: changing my perspective at work. show up differently.
One boundary I will set this week: not getting on the rollercoaster.
One area where I will go deeper this week: journaling and an art practice are the two i still want to do.
What do I need to sit with this week? just being here, now.
I am looking forward to: having some of the conversations we will have this week.
Focus onCore Desired Feelings (lighter, kinder, enough, magic, wild): trying to pay attention to the little moments of magic and light.
This week’s challenges: i am hoping this will be a week where i can make some solid progress at work.
Top Goals:
Work: get through my todos, catchup, send more emails.
Personal: restart journaling plan, come up with art plan, find one class.
Family: be with J, get david to enroll in class, plan milestones for N
This week, I want to remember: i play a part in all this and i can choose what that part is.
I was journaling about my word today and when I looked it up, the dictionary said we can use yes as an opening to ask for more details, to be more curious, and we can use it as an affirmative as a response to something.
Yes as a beginning to a conversation and yes as an ending to a conversation. Yes to enthusiastically doing something and yes to accepting what is here now.
I love how this one small word can be used to create completely different possibilities.
I also love that I get to choose which yes I want to use in each moment. I can be intentional.
The Best Part of this Week: I had some tough and deep and meaningful conversations this week. Even though they were tough I think they really helped me.
I celebrate: i managed to do some lead-climbing for the first time ever on Saturday. I am proud of myself.
I am grateful for: having endless chances to get things right.
This week, I exercised: I climbed 2 times a week, rode every day for 20 mins, did 10 mins of core and 10 mins of arms and 5 minutes of stretching, 20 minutes of intro yoga, and 10 minutes of restorative yoga daily. And I did some outdoor climbing.
This week, I said yes to: practicing multi-pitch.
I said no to: letting things unravel.
I honored my values (love, learn, peace, service, gratitude):i have been leaning into these values so much in the last week. I have been thinking a lot about what they mean to me and how i can show up to honor them.
Top Goals Review:
Work: partly got through my todos, caught up to email, did not send more emails.
Personal: did not really restart journaling plan, did not come up with art plan, did OLW journal journaling, did not find one class.
Family: was with J, did not get david to enroll in class, planned schedule for N
My mood this week was: all over the place
I am proud of: i am proud of being open and honest and vulnerable and also not getting on the roller coaster
I release: everything from this week and start fresh every day, every moment.
Here’s what I learned this week: it get to show up and be me and i get to pivot and lean in and be here.
I have been thinking about this book ever since I read the first one over a year ago. I loved Sunshine Vikram then and I love her now.
This book has a lot going on. It’s romance, mystery, and comedy all rolled into one. And just to keep it even more fun, in this one, there are several romances, several mysterious plots, and the comedy is just oozing from every dialogue. I totally understand that might not be everyone’s cup of tea.
but it’s totally mine.
I love every one of the characters in this book. I love that there are like 5 mysteries that come together and get solved and I just love this author’s voice. I love the way the characters love each other and tease each other. I love the nonstop commentary. I even love the absurd scenes.
I was waiting for this book for over a year and it absolutely did not disappoint. I know it looks like many of the subplots from book one are tied up in this one but I really do hope there are more in the series. These characters are too good to not have more books written about them!
with gratitude to macmillan audio and netgalley for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review
I don’t want to write too much about it because I think the best thing about this story is how it unravels and how you as a reader are constantly trying to figure out what’s going on and each time you think you have it, you realize you don’t. And it keeps going again and again.
This is not a story with a twist, it’s a story with a million little turns. It’s like each time a layer of the onion gets peeled your perspective of the onion’s actual shape changes. And in the end, the book leaves you devastated.
I almost didn’t request this book because it said it was horror and while I think the atmosphere and mood of the story definitely feels like horror, I don’t think calling this horror is the right fit. It’s a very atmospheric mystery maybe but really at its heart it’s a character study.
It’s absolutely phenomenal.
with gratitude to netgalley and Macmillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
What an unusual novel. I think this one will have polarizing views. One will either enjoy the gimmick and laugh the whole time or will get stuck in it and feel it’s too absurd. I think as a short story this might have been cute, especially in a year when many of us lived on chat since we couldn’t have face to face conversations at work.
But alas, for me, it was too absurd. It got long and weird and not super funny. I also didn’t like some of the consent related issues that were glossed over as a joke. No need for those to be in the book but if they are, they should be handled not as a joke.
I did like the idea of this book and I did think it was cute and funny and even hilarious at parts. I think as a short story with a much tighter plot, it would have hit the mark more.
with gratitude to edelweis and doubleday for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
2.5 stars, rounded up. I have a lot of thoughts about this story.
On the one hand, I will say that it was a quick and light read in that I read it in one sitting, and enjoyed the time I spent with it.
On the other hand, I felt like most of the characters were not as layered as actual people are and this left the novel feeling not as enjoyable because everyone was playing a part in some ways. The really cold and distant mom (though she has a reason she’s that way, don’t we all?) to the point of cruelty. The really nice man, Mark, Brinkley meets that starts changing everything and he is just so nice again and again (even though he messes up once.) The weird closed-off boss who’s doing it all for your own good…. The other women who work with Brinkley were some of my favorites in the book. The side characters were fun, light, interesting and added the color the story enjoyed.
But the way women and men are treated like single dimensional beings in this story both makes it light and frustrating and frivolous. If you don’t spend too much time on it, you can enjoy the story and see it as a journey Brinkley is experiencing during what’s a low time in her life and how she’s building it back up. But if it’s hard to get past it, it will shadow too much of this story for you.
with gratitude to netgalley and Gallery Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
My favorite mystery novels are character-driven stories where there happens to be a mystery in the novel. This story by Belinda Bauer accomplishes the rare feat of being an interesting plot and character driven story. There’s a reasonably convoluted plot that unravels in pieces but there’s also deep and interesting character studies in this story. It’s also really fast paced. Accomplishing all that in a single novel is quite hard. I really enjoyed this one.
