Today was the first day this year I sat outside to take my meetings. I decided midday that I was done sitting indoors and I am still sitting outside with the birds chirping and fresh air as the sun sets.
I have been doing all the things I can to help fill my own cup lately. And I see a tangible difference in my level of calm and centeredness. Being outside contributes to that significantly.
I was talking to my husband a while ago and asked him what will matter more in ten years, and I’ve been thinking about this a lot. In ten years when I look back I want to be able to say that I went on adventures and lived my life fully. I want to be able to say I was kind to people and helped lift them up and cheer them on. I want to have learned to sit silently and be still. I want to have grown and learned new things. I want to have poured love all over my people.
That’s all I care about.
That’s the stuff I want to get right. So that’s the stuff I want to lean into because what you pay attention to blooms.
Yes to living life. Yes to outdoors. Yes to adventures. Yes to doing what matters to me.
[ Restorative yoga is still saving my sanity daily. 10 minutes in the morning and I feel grounded and calm. ]
Big boy took the Calculus AP test today. I can still remember the room where I took my test some 30 years ago.
Life is moving and things are happening and yet I also feel like so much of life is suspended at the same time. I can’t figure out what the fallout will be on the other side of all this.
So, for now, I am waking up each day, doing my exercise, doing my yoga, working and being there for my people.
As for all the other stuff, I’ll deal with it when I can. Which is not now.
Yes to being here now. Yes to doing what’s needed. Yes to restorative yoga.
I painted today for the first time in a long time.
Long time.
I’ve been wanting to make more art but having a lot of trouble with getting started. So over the weekend, I bought some paint, a 6×6 journal and I made a box full of some stencils, ephemera, and a few other materials.
I set my timer to 15 minutes and got to work.
Is it the most beautiful page I’ve ever creater? Absolutely not. Do I even like it? Not sure. Am I glad I did it? Yes yes yes.
The feel of paint in my hands and the freedom to just have fun was exactly what I was seeking.
For me, boundaries help Witt creativity and fun and freedom. Two containers of materials, 6×6 page, and 15 minutes. Those are my boundaries.
They help set me free.
Yes to painting. Yes to boundaries. Yes to finding ways to make it work. Yes to art.
Sunday nights used to make me sad. I’d be worried about the week ahead and all that I didn’t get done over the weekend.
Lately, I have been relaxing and slowing down a lot during the weekends and I find myself less anxious. Yes it would have been great if I’d done a bit more work.
But what’s even more important to me lately is using the time to fill my cup. To exercise, to work with my kids, to climb with my husband and to read while soaking in the tub.
Work could easily fill up 100% of my life if I let it. So it’s up to me to draw that boundary. It’s up to me to not let it take over my Sunday night.
Tonight, I will relax more. I look forward to another productive week hopefully. Or maybe it will be a disaster. Either way, feeling relaxed tonight is going to help me enjoy this day for as long as I can. Tomorrow, I can tackle whatever Monday throws my way.
Yes to being here now. Yes to taking back Sunday nights.
One of my sweet, wonderful nephews graduated from college today. I feel like just yesterday my pregnant sister was visiting me in NYC and just yesterday I was playing with her toddler boys and just yesterday they were little kids.
And today he graduated college.
Life passes by in the blink of an eye. And I am using this reminder today to ensure I am living the life I want for myself. Life is too short to live by others’ rules and priorities. Life is too short to be worrying about ephemeral things. Life is too short to be wasting a moment of it.
I want to spend my remaining moments being the kindest person I can be, helping others, lifting them up. I want to be inspired. I want to be in nature, to create art, to tell our stories. I want to be present and calm and patient and content. I want to go on adventures. To be brave.
I want to have my soul dance inside my body.
In the blink of an eye my own kids will graduate from college and in the blink of an eye, I will be old and my minutes here will start getting fewer and fewer.
I love looking a the open sky, wide ocean and super tall redwood trees. I love being immersed in the vastness of nature because it reminds me of how big the world is and broadens my perspective.
It’s easy to get caught up in the noise and hustle of daily life and it’s easy to let that shrink your outlook.
Being out in nature this way helps me remember that my worries are small and transient. That there’s a big world out there full of possibilities.
And they are all mine to seek.
Yes to possibilities. Yes to nature. Yes to living life full and deep and wide. There’s so much to life, yes to sampling it all.
I don’t have anything pithy to say today. Except for maybe one thing: it’s always worth it to be honest, open and vulnerable. Not with everyone and not all the time but in the right amount, with the people who matter, at the appropriate times.
I find that authentic connection in nearly impossible without it and so much wonderful connection happens with it. It makes us all feel less alone in the world.
I wish more of us did it more of the time.
Yes to being honest and connecting with each other through vulnerability. It’s a superpower.
It was finally time to switch my Christmas decorations so yesterday with the help of my awesome husband, I got plants and pots and soil and created happiness.
I am working really hard lately to add small joys into my life and find ways to be present and in the moment.
Plants make me happy. Flowers. Fresh food. Sunshine.
Most of these things are so easy to achieve. And relatively affordable. So here’s to doing more of these simple things that bring happiness and joy.
I can’t get enough of the ranunculus and the season is slowly ending so I am enjoying them as much as possible.
I installed SSL certificates on my machine this weekend and a day later I realized some of the features I was using were now broken.
I spent four hours last night surfing hundreds of sites trying to debug my issue, staying up well past bedtime. Each time I thought to walk away, I figured the next two things I tried might work so I couldn’t leave.
When I finally gave up and went to sleep, I dreamt about the certificates all night. I thought about workarounds, alternative features. I did not get enough sleep.
After I woke up and forced myself to do all my exercise, I walked downstairs and started to look into it again in the middle of a meeting.
Within 20 minutes I had found and fixed the issue.
There’s a reason people tell you to ‘sleep on it.’ it’s advice I need to heed more often.
Yes to fixing my problem, yes to the power of sleep. Yes to having SSL finally.
I used to watch a lot of TV. At least 3 hours a day. I used to watch it when I was in middle school as I did my homework, in college as I studied, and long after for many many years as I worked or did art.
I used to love the Oscars. I would wake up at the crack of dawn in Turkey as a little.kid just to watch them live.
And here I am tonight sitting at home, reading a book during the Oscars. I haven’t had cable tv in three years and I don’t even know who’s nominated.
This isn’t about the Oscars, nor is it about TV. It’s about things that seemed such an ingrained part of my day to day life that I couldn’t imagine a life where I wasn’t doing them. At the time, they felt like a core part of who I am.
But now they are not. And I’ve changed. And what matters to me has changed. And it might seem like a small thing that I don’t watch TV or the Oscars but it’s an indication.that anything can change. That my life could look completely different in a few years.
And likely will.
It’s a reminder to both not hold things too tightly and to enjoy them while they are here. Because while I have no idea what tomorrow will look like, I do know it won’t look like this.
Change is the only constant.
Yes to embracing change and yes to embracing life. Don’t miss TV one little bit.
It was little boy’s 12th birthday today. One of the traditions we have here is that I’ve been waking the kids up with a cupcake and a candle on their birthday morning for years.
Little boy had been teasing me that this would be hard to uphold as I’ve been sleeping until 7 most mornings and he gets up somewhere around 6am.
So I twisted and turned all night, worried I would miss my opportunity but my husband was smarter and set the alarm for 5am. I went downstairs, grabbed the cupcake and managed to wake up the little boy.
Even though this was his second time doing a birthday under a pandemic, home with just us and even though getting presents for a twelve year old is harder than anything, this boy was as gracious as he always is. He loved his presents and he setup a video chat with his friends where they played games for 3 hours. He said it was a perfect birthday.
His attitude and resilience and generosity of spirit always lifts me up. May we all be the kind of people who lift others up.
Happy birthday little boy, I love you with all my heart and soul.
Yes to celebrating, yes to traditions and yes to little boy.
