There is so much going on lately. I feel like I am carrying a million feelings simultaneously:
Anxiety for some changes I know are coming but don’t know what or how. I worry in the face of the unknown.
Grief for people I love who are suffering or struggling.
Joy for my oldest who accepted a summer job that he’s excited about.
Overwhelm with all I have to do but can’t muster the motivation for.
Disappointment for not being able to shed some bad habits I am so ready to be rid of.
Pride for my progress at the climbing gym and at my decent run at an 11a today.
Sorrow for reasons I can’t pinpoint but is here anyway.
Anticipation around vaccination and when it might ever be our turn and what it might mean.
Anger and despair for all the racism and hate that seems to be exploding exponentially.
Overwhelm and worry about the wellbeing of my kids. My husband.
Yearning to see my parents and family again in person. To hug my friends.
Fatigue due to a combination of emotional, physical, and mental overflow.
And overwhelming gratitude for the very large collection of privilege and luck I have.
All of this lives inside of me at every moment of every day. Different ones pop up at different times but it’s all jumbled in there and I am making space to acknowledge and sit with all of it.
Yes to living the width and the length of my life.
One of the side effects of covid has been living life in suspension. I feel like just moving through life’s regular motions has felt a monumental effort to me.
In the last year I’ve had to remove a d buy a new tree, get a new fridge, and install a new water heater. All of these are painful and hard for me and part of life. And they were exceptionally complex with covid layered in.
So was basic life like taxes and school forms and work decisions. Some days just making through the day feels like a major achievement.
All of this means there’s little room to think about goals, ambitions, life choices.
I feel like what I’d like the most is for everything not press pause for a while until we’re in the “after” and can have breathing room and can store some energy to live life again.
But then I also think about how life is passing in the meantime and how I have a lot of little choice points every day. I might not have the bandwidth to think about major life decisions but I still can think about how to spend this day. How much attention to give to my kids or to exercise or to connecting with friends. I can still make changes to make my life align with my values.
In the end, lots of little changes might end up being just as effective as a big one. What is life if not a collection of moments.
Yes to making small choices. Yes to doing the best I can. Yes to giving myself grace.
I’ve been thinking a lot about who I am lately. What I like to do, wear, eat and the people I like to be around.
I’ve been trying to understand how many of my choices are based on the conditioning or expectations I grew up with vs a genuine self exploration. How much of what I wear is what I was told was appropriate? How much of what I do was what I thought I should be doing?
I am very lucky that I chose at a very young age to live a life that felt true to me. I had kind and supportive parents and sister who cheered me on and didn’t hold me back.
And yet.
I still look at myself and my life and my choices and keep questioning the basis of many of my decisions. The invisible assumptions I make, the unwritten rules I follow.
I was thinking earlier this week that I would like to be done with all that. I’ve likely lived more than half of my life already. I’m running out of time and don’t want to waste any more of it.
I want to wear what I want and do what I want and to be able to do that I need to know what that is.
It’s time.
Yes to making the invisible visible. Yes to doing whatever I want and being and owning who I am.
I took a long walk this morning to get the ranunculus from the farmer’s market. When I got back home, I was quite sore and didn’t feel like doing anything else for the day.
Even though I read a book I loved, I was secretly still giving myself grief for not riding the bike or doing other productive things. And this doing thing x but giving myself nonstop grief for not doing y, thing is super annoying.
Because it means I am not getting to enjoy the thing I am doing and I am not doing this other supposedly better thing. So there’s no winning.
I have no idea what the way out of this is. Well I know one way is to just do the other thing and be done but what I don’t know how to do is to truly give myself grace and let myself enjoy doing thing x without any of the guilt.
Alas today I did read the book despite feeling crappy about it, and then I also ended up riding the bike after all. Just wish I hadn’t chastised myself all day secretly while I was resting first.
Yes to being aware of negative voices and cycles. Yes to doing things anyway.
I’m finding that there are some things I can do in moderation in my life and then other things where it’s just too much of a slippery slope.
16 years ago when I wanted to get pregnant, I quit diet coke and was off of it for over a decade. A few years ago, when I was at work one day, I had one thinking meh it won’t matter.
Next thing, I was having one at work daily.
And then I told myself that I can have more but only when I am at work.
And then I would bring home 1-2 cans from work but since I wasn’t buying them I could say it was still leftover from ‘work’
And then, of course, I started buying them.
And now I drink 2-3 cans a day. Some days more.
It went from one time to buying cases in less than six months. This is one reason I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs. I’m not sure I could do it in moderation.
So today I spent some time thinking about other things I need to just stop doing. Even if they taste good, feel good or whatever. There are a lot of ways to experience joy in life.
A lot.
I don’t have to receive it from something that also causes harm. So I will have to start making a list and eliminate things that cause more harm than good.
Yes to taking better care of myself. Yes to owning my own truth.
So grateful to have made it to this Friday. I worked a lot today but also got some meaningful work done. Not as much as I wanted (never as much as I want) but made progress.
Now I want to mark an official boundary to pause work and start personal time. It’s been even easier than usual for work to bleed into personal time as the covid life extends out to be forever.
At first it was emergency sprint mode, then it was finding some new adjustments and now it’s about finding a normal for at least six more months. We have no clear path to vaccination soon in CA and I have a kid under 12 so he has no vaccination plan at all yet. School is about to be over in 6-7 weeks and my office doesn’t open until at least September.
All this means at least six more months of some sort of weird covid life here. Which means that I have to draw some boundaries or by the time life opens up, I will be so burned out that it will not be easy to recover.
So now starts my weekend. Rest, relax, rebuild.
Yes to me time. Yes to boundaries.
(Photo is remnants of big boy’s photography homework)
I am grateful we made it Thursday. Even though I have a lot to do tomorrow, I have only two meetings and I am hoping I’ll be able to pace myself well.
We’ll see.
This was a long week and I can’t really even put my finger on why. I have felt depleted all week.
Feeling depleted starts this negative cycle because then I am too tired to eat well or make good choices. Sometimes unintuitively I even go to bed late during a week where I feel depleted. So I just keep making one poor choice after another.
So I am trying to put some checks in place to help. Midmorning healthy snack, middle of the day visits to climbing gym, breaks to walk outside, connecting with friends in the afternoon and closing computer when work is done.
Some help, some help less.
Realistically I need several days off so I can rest and rejuvenate.
I was talking a colleague today about being reactive vs proactive. I tend to be proactive and organized and intentional about my life.
And that’s at the crux of the word ‘yes’ for me. Diving in, choosing to take this head on, designing the life I want.
Being proactive is awesome when you know what you want.
Then there are times or areas when I don’t. Where I am a bit lost or don’t have super strong opinions. And saying yes is also about receiving things. Taking what comes and reacting with openness and possibility instead of judgement and fear.
The unexpected always surprises you. And what you do with that surprise is totally up to you, too. So much of life is about how we receive it.
I want to get much better at receiving it with grace and enthusiasm.
Yes to receiving it with possibility, optimism and unbridled joy.
I’ve been quite cranky for the last two days at work. I am not even sure why but I’ve been moody and everything is getting on my nerves.
I’ve experimented with several things: sitting outside, hosting talks, connecting with people I love, sleeping in, getting up early and exercising and a few other things.
They all worked for a while. But didn’t last or shift my perspective.
So finally we went to the gym today and I saw how they were setting new routes and I started climbing. Climbing is one of the very few things that completely gets me out of my head.
It’s just hard enough for me to climb a complicated wall that I have to be absolutely present. I can only hang on for dear life and figure out my next move. I have no room to think of anything and that’s my favorite thing about it.
Now I’m sitting at home and feeling centered and calmer (and more sore!) Here’s hoping this sticks and I can be less grumpy tomorrow.
Yes to getting out of your head. Yes to finding something that really helps me be present. Yes to climbing!
Big boy has managed to rack up a lot of accomplishments in his short life and tends to have many academic accolades here in our house. So he gets celebrated often.
Little boy is still too little for many of these opportunities but this week he’s had his first big accomplishment and we wanted to make sure to celebrate it.
It’s not about the size of the accomplishment here in our house, it’s about looking for a reason to celebrate each other. As a type-A person, I find it very easy to move from accomplishment to next goal without acknowledging or pausing for too long.
And I want to make sure I don’t do that for my kids. It’s important to celebrate accomplishments, risk taking, stretching out comfort zones, and sometimes just making it through a tough day.
Big fan of celebrating over here. Big fan of remembering that there’s something to celebrate each week, each day. Taking a moment to acknowledge that and finding a way to cheer each other is so joyful.
I am not a fan of competing with others. I don’t subscribe to the ideology that there’s only so many slices of pie to go around. I think we each get our own pie. So today we celebrated little boy making his own pie a little bit bigger.
Yes to celebrating each other in big ways and small ways. Yes to cheering each other on.
Last year, this week was the first ranunculus of the season for me. I had this shot of me with flowers from the farmer’s market while my husband was away with his brothers.
Today, I was incredibly excited to get to walk to the market again and buy these amazing, beautiful flowers that bring me more joy than any other purchasable item ever has.
They are $6 a bunch and they fill me with unlimited joy.
Yes to simple joys. Yes to color. Yes to spring flowers. Yes yes yes.
