As I was doing my Life Organizer prompts this week, there was a question about life insights. I couldn’t remember what she referred to so I had to go back and reread the section. And then I realized I had never read it. One of the things she recommends is to go on a search and create a list of my life insights.
I love this idea so I immediately jotted some down:
- Nature heals my soul.
- Kindness comes first.
- Be you.
- Respect yourself and others.
- You don’t have to be right.
- Always say bless you.
- I crave growth and learning.
- I am at my best when I help others.
- Self-worth is not something others bestow upon you. You have to believe in your own worth.
- Quiet time is essential to my soul.
- Always apologize to those you love. It’s never too late.
- Journaling is how I see my thoughts.
These are just some of mine. I will be thinking of more for the next week. I love the idea of having this insight list. Sort of like personal commandments but slightly different context.
What are some of your life insights?
I’ve been quiet here because work’s been insane and my back is acting up and honestly I don’t really know what else. I just haven’t been feeling like writing or able to write. I am still making plans for next year. I recently reread a few old posts and if you’re busy making plans for next year, too, maybe this one will help you out: Making Three Lists.
I’ve decided what I need next year is a lot more pre-planning. One of the reasons I struggle when sticking to plans is that I have to spend so much time coming up with ideas. When I sit down to sketch, I need to spend hours online finding something to sketch. I figured that if I had it all ready ahead of time, I wouldn’t waste as much time coming up with ideas each week. And, of course, if I have a new idea, it can supersede my list. But it’s no pressure this way.
Or maybe I am fooling myself.
Either way, that’s what’s on my mind. Since I am all excited about my projects, I figure this is a good time to do research and groundwork. I’ve also been thinking about my list answers from the thee lists post above. And what kind of thoughts-posts I might like to do. And what projects I might want to do with David and with Nathaniel.
The planning is making me happy for now so I am trying to keep at it. Here’s a dump of all that I am considering in case it’s helpful for any of you. This is just a dump of what’s on my head at this moment. It might all stay and it might all go or some combination in between:
Things I want to learn/do in relation to Art:
- doodling – been on my list three years in a row now!
- sketching/painting faces – been on my list three years in a row too!
- lettering
- collage
- using my photos with my art
- sketching people in different poses
- drawing trees/wings
- making signs/sayings
- sketching scenes
- large scale paintings/drawings
- using some of the materials I haven’t used in a while: oil pastels, pan pastels, neocolor crayons, watercolor markers, etc.
- digital design – maybe
So when I am designing my art projects, I am thinking about these things.
for health stuff I am thinking about:
- pilates
- yoga
- weights
- incrementing daily steps
- no sugar
For thoughts posts, I am thinking about posting around:
- Learning: I plan to take classes/learn more regularly next year, so I’d be sharing these.
- Coaching: Some exercises, thoughts, learnings in the coaching area
- Listen: this is my word for next year so these would be insights/intentions around my word
- Getting things done, being organized, just random thoughts from that day, etc.
Also thinking about:
- volunteering more.
- building community again (this is a struggle for me.)
- gratitude
- whether i want to sell my art
- whether i want to videotape while doing art
- what classes i might want to take to learn new things
- maybe David and I can learn together for his project with me
- what can i do with Nathaniel? Maybe something that practices reading or writing?
- how can i organize my projects so they have a monthly theme within the yearly project?
That’s what I have so far. I’m also starting/thinking about my December Daily. So happy Christmas is coming soon.
What’s on your mind? Any ideas/recommendations for me? Would love to hear your thoughts.
I have things I’ve been meaning to write about but then the days pass, the night comes, and I am tired and don’t really feel like writing. Not sure if it means something or if it means nothing. I’m trying not to over-think it and I hope you still come visit and check on me regularly even if I’m not being so diligent.
What I have been doing is making plans for next year. I’ve been thinking about projects I might like to have and what my word might be, etc, etc. This is the time of year when I usually start getting antsy and feel the desire to already start working on new things.
I haven’t fully formalized my projects yet but I am thinking of incorporating two classes into my plans for next year. One is a project from the Soul Comfort class I am currently taking. As with all the Brave Girls’ classes, I am loving this class and it has gotten me back into daily journaling for which I am deeply thankful.
I have never taken one of Tam’s Life Book classes before but I am seriously considering signing up for the 2014 class. I’ve taken several of Tam’s classes before and she’s amazing and the lineup of the other teachers looks fantastic, too. So, if I sign up, this will be one of my weekly projects.
When trying to sort out what I wanted from next year’s projects, I made a little grid for myself. I wanted to make sure I had a varying set of things so I wouldn’t get bored and so I could stretch myself a bit. So I picked a topic, format, media, and skill to focus on for each of my projects.
We’ll see if any of them hold up but I am at least having fun thinking about them and trying them out and adjusting here and there so far.
Is there a class you’ve taken this year that you’ve loved? I haven’t taken many this year and I am planning to keep it that way for next year, too. A few core ones and that’s it. I’d rather spend my time really honing some skills I’ve been craving to learn.
And here we are. Have you begun thinking about 2014, too, or is it just me?
As I was journaling yesterday morning, I realized a distinction that’s become interesting to me. I noticed that, for me, there are two kinds of Joy. Real-time and in-retrospect.
Real-time joy is joy I am feeling in that very moment. I feel this when I am hugging my kids or we’re all laughing out loud. When I am making art. When I am driving and a song I love is turned up loud and it’s sunny outside so I have the windows down. This kind of joy comes from a happy experience combined with presence and the feeling of aliveness. The feeling of being in this very moment, feeling grateful, and really just soaking it in.
In-retrospect joy comes in cases where I am not always enjoying the moment while it’s happening but the memories of it bring me a lot of joy. This can happen on vacation sometimes. With little kids and a lot of moving parts, vacations can sometimes we hectic in the moment. But then I come home and I look at our photos and relive the moments and I am swept with huge, deep joy.
This also happens with my projects sometimes. There are weeks when working on the Savor Project isn’t maybe super-joyful in the moment (or even the art is like that sometimes) but it’s always always joyful when I sit down with the album. Deep, satisfying joy.
I think both of them are valuable and add to my life in different ways. The in-retrospect joy helps develop delayed gratification which is an important skill to have in life. It also allows me to tap into joy in moments where I might not be feeling it. I can grab my Savor Project, spend some fifteen minutes and I am guaranteed to feel the rush of joy.
The real-time joy gives meaning and light into my days. If I had no real-time joy, I think life would be a lot harder to get through. With a four-year-old, however, there is plenty of real-time joy, thankfully. Having said that, when he’s not around, I am not always good at this one. And, as I was journaling, I was thinking that what would be good is to have a balance between the two. So that each week (and even each day) is full of both: things that make me joyful right now and things I do because I know they will make me joyful later.
Part of this is knowing what those things are. Identifying them, noticing them. So for the next week or two, I’ll be keeping track of the moments of joy and making a list so that I can then infuse them into my weeks deliberately. As much as I believe in serendipity and being in the moment, I also believe there’s something to be said for life by design (another post for another time) so this is how I start to design mine to be full of joy.
PS: I have a blog post up on the big picture classes blog today. You can read it here.
Last week had some rough moments for me. I went through a few days where I struggled so much that I had those times where the world just looks dimmer. It doesn’t even matter what started it and what added on top, what matters is that I found myself sinking and the hole was narrow and deep.
When I find myself in one of those, it requires a lot of clawing to get out. It seems easier to give up and just sit there. Easier to just cry, yell, or unleash it on others in some way. But, of course, that doesn’t get me out of the hole and I do more damage, and continue to look at the world with the glasses that block out the joy.
This morning, as I was journaling around 5:45am, I made a decision about the next three months. I gave myself the challenge that each time anything upset me, angered me, frustrated me, or even remotely irritated me, I have to immediately stop and think of something I am truly grateful for. Not one of those general “I love my kids” or extreme “isn’t it good to have arms and legs” ones. (Not that those aren’t amazing and important but I wanted to make sure I got specific, detailed and not hand-wavy to ensure I was taking it seriously.) I have to think of a specific thing I am grateful for in that very moment that makes my life magical. That’s special and wonderful about my life. Every single time.
This is not as much to replace the “bad” thoughts as it is to balance things out. I think that I have a tendency to assume “everything is terrible!” when I get in a downward spiral. The plan is that these moments I have to take to acknowledge the good will keep me and this potential spiral in check.
I already do a daily gratitude practice but I’ve come to think of this as gratitude on steroids. Gratitude with more in-the-moment presence.
I don’t know if it will work but I am going to focus on it consistently and try to make a practice of it and let’s see what comes of it. If you’ve ever tried anything like this, I’d love to hear how it went for you.
On Monday mornings my son’s school has an assembly called chapel. The kids all sit on the floor in groups and the parents who choose to show up, sit toward the back of the room. One of the things they do in each chapel is have class reporters come up for each class, first through fifth. One student from each section shares something they did at school that week. The fifth graders do a slideshow on a topic of their choosing.
What struck me this time was the huge change from first grade to third grade to fifth grade. In a matter of four years, these kids go from barely being able to read and write to expressing their thoughts eloquently, putting together a coherent presentation, and adding their own unique voice into their project. The difference between first grade and third is wide and deep and the amount of growth and learning from first grade to fifth is mind blowing.
All in four years.
This got me thinking about my life and growth and learning. I know that we spend the years between six and twenty-one in school and our full-time job during that time is to learn as much as possible, so it makes sense that most of our learning takes place during that period of our lives. But does it really have to stagnate so much after we leave school?
I love learning. While I have my favorites (like languages, art, math, literature, statistics, and psychology) I am always happy to learn anything at all. It’s rare to find a class I wouldn’t love to take. And if you’ve been around here for a long while, you know that I take a lot of online classes. But, sitting in that chapel made me realize that the growth rate I’ve had in the last four (or ten really) years is much lower than I’d like.
More importantly, it made me realize how much we are capable of growing in a short amount of time.
It made me wonder why this is something that degrades over time. Is it just because of time limits? Is it because we don’t go to school anymore so we don’t have to work so hard at it? Is it that our brains are not capable of such acute growth anymore? (I know they used to think that, but I also know they’ve proven that our brain grows and learns and adapts our whole lives.) Is it that we stop believing we can and just stop trying? Is it that there’s too much going on? Is it that we just don’t care?
I am not sure what the answer is. I don’t even know what it is, for me. I spent a lot of time learning when I was in my twenties. I took a ton of college courses locally in NYC just for fun. When I lived in Japan, I took daily Japanese classes and when I returned to NYC, I continued them as well as Italian and Psychology, Sign Language, Literature classes and many more. But when we moved to the West Coast, I stopped. I think it’s partly due to the lack of freedom I feel because I can’t drive around as easily as I’d like and partly due to the more hectic life I lead as my family of two became a family of four.
As I sat in that room, I realized how much I missed learning and growing.
(In honesty, another part of my life that I dropped around the same time is volunteering and I miss that dearly, too.)
I know my kids are still a little too young and that as they grow up, some of the liberties I had will come back but I noticed that, like most things, these muscles need regular attention or they atrophy. Since I’ve begun working from home, I’ve become less socially comfortable and taking a class online seems so much easier now than physically going to one. But I know that it’s less enjoyable in many ways (while more practical in others).
I’m not sure what my point is with this post except maybe to share some of my thoughts from Monday morning and the realization that we humans are capable of mind-blowing growth and progress in a short amount of time. I don’t ever want to lose sight of that. I don’t ever want to think it’s too late.
So the big question now is what’s next? I am one year away from forty and I’d really like to make this last year of my 30s count.
How do I bring on some mind-blowing growth?
Carrying with the theme of what I’m discovering from Gretchen’s emails, I wanted to share another one today.
She says:
When I’m reluctant to take a risk or face something uncomfortable, I ask myself these five questions, which, in melodramatic form, I call the “Five Fateful Questions.”
and then shares her five and encourages us to do the same but I decided I wanted to create my own five because some of hers resonated with me but others didn’t.
So when I am trying to make an uncomfortable decision or when I am thinking about something and it’s making me sad, frustrated, uneasy in some way, here’s what I want to ask myself each time:
- What’s this in service of? What’s the bigger purpose I am trying to serve here? Why is this important? What will be possible if I do this or don’t do this?
- How will this matter in five years? Will having asked for this or taken this step, etc matter five years from now? Or will it be insignificant? How will this particular thing possibly change the course of my life?
- Which of my values does this honor? By doing this (or not doing it) how am I honoring who I am. How is it moving me towards living my life more authentically? How am I being more “me”?
- What’s the worst possible outcome? Since I am a worrier, this one matters a lot. I tend to fear things going horribly wrong. If i really flesh out the worst possible outcome, I can see how this is often not nearly as bad as I might make it in my head.
- What’s the best possible outcome? Clearly important to balance #4. And also important to help be braver.
These are the four I have for now.
Here’s how I use them. Let’s say I want to ask for a raise. Here are the questions and some possible answers.
- What’s this in service of: better schools for my children, being able to afford more vacations together. So it’s in service of better education for my kids, more family time or even what i might consider to be higher quality time. Then I can think about whether these matter and whether I can achieve them without the raise. Do I really need a raise for higher quality time? Will more money really mean better schools for my kids? Will better schools really mean better education? etc. etc.
- How will this matter in five years? Well, getting a raise now might mean more money saved, more invested, and it might mean i can afford college more easily. It might mean more vacations we’ve taken. It might mean less daily stress on our economic situation.
- Which of my values does it honor? Maybe it honors my family and love values that I’d be doing this to provide better opportunities for my children. Or maybe it’s self-worth. Etc.
- What’s the worst possible outcome? Realistically the worst possible outcome here is that I wouldn’t get the raise. I can’t believe this would lead me to losing my job without my getting belligerent, etc.
- What’s the best possible outcome? I get a raise even more than I asked for and maybe my manager tells me what a good job I’ve been doing. Yey!
So there you go. What are some questions you ask?
I have long been a fan of Gretchen Rubin. I’ve read her first book and really enjoyed it and her second one has been in my queue for a while. Earlier this week, I saw on her blog that she was offering a few mini-courses on different topics. I decided to sign up for the Get To Know Yourself Better one. If you read here at all, it shouldn’t surprise you that this topic interests me.
The first email came yesterday and it was about writing your personal commandments. Gretchen’s are on the side of her blog and I always like seeing them. It’s easy for me to copy almost all of them but I wanted to spend some time thinking seriously about these and see what I would have come up with if I didn’t have her list to cheat from. Here are some things that have come up for me already. I plan to add/adjust as I see fit over the next few weeks.
- Be You: I know this one is similar to hers. But I like Be you instead of Be Karen. I use this phrase on all my art pieces and I have grown to believe that we work best when we know who we are, we accept it and love it and don’t constantly fight it or feel bad about it. It doesn’t mean I’m perfect but if I am being me, fully owning who I am and stepping into it, things are much more peaceful.
- Choose Joy
- Savor the Ordinary: Life is a collection of little moments. When I savor the ordinary, I am appreciating my life and living it and really being in it.
- Be Here, Now: The present moment is the best moment. It is all I have.
- Listen: It’s much better to listen than to talk. I am quite talkative but I learn more when I listen. I care more when I listen. I am a better person when I listen.
- Be Kinder than Necessary: seems self explanatory to me.
- Yes, You Can
- Do It Anyway: I might be scared but I do it anyway. Be brave.
- Remember What Matters Most: Never lose sight of what matters most, what I am doing it all in service of.
- It Just Happened: This is a new one I’ve been chewing on. It didn’t happen to me or because of me. It just happened. Remember it’s real but not true. I will write more about this one, still thinking it all through.
- Wait 24 hours
So there we go, here’s my first attempt. It was interesting to see how many of them are similar to what I did for my OLW assignment. I will work on it more and flesh it out and see how I feel. What’s on your list?
This morning, as the kids ate their breakfast and brushed their teeth, I decided to squeeze in some work right before we left for school. Clearly, not a good idea, but I figured if I did it, I’d feel less guilty about going to the school meeting I wanted to attend.
I am assuming you already can tell how this goes…
In my rush, I made a simple, silly mistake that made it look like everything was broken. In my panic, I couldn’t see the mistake no matter how hard I looked. I finally asked for help from one of my teammates who told me there was something super-obvious I was missing. I kept looking but it might as well have been a blank page because no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t see it.
And then I saw it.
It was dumb. So super-dumb that it put me right into a huge shame trigger. I felt horrified that I’d bugged him over something so obviously dumb. In the middle of that, more things went wrong and I just kept panicking more and more. Yelling at my family to be quiet, still fighting to finish the task and making even dumber mistakes along the way.
I’ve written before about how when you’re in a state of reactive panic, your fight/flight kicks in and literally shuts down your prefrontal cortex where all the higher level thinking happens. And even knowing this, I just continued to live inside the panic state (and shame state) until the whole task was finished. At which point, I got dressed in under two minutes and was out the door with Jake and the kids.
The climax (or nadir) of this story is that I didn’t even end up going to the school event because I was feeling so super-crappy from the morning’s events. And then I started feeling shame around missing that and having let Jake down and having yelled at the kids. The shame from my coworker was also still live and breathing inside me.It felt like I was spiraling and every small or big event was contributing to the story I was already telling myself. It wasn’t just that I simply could not snap out of it, I kept feeding it so it grew.
This went on the whole day. I read blogs and found myself wondering how come other people could go through life achieving things they wanted and I just kept failing. Or, worse, not even trying. Wait, even worse, not even knowing what to try. I read work emails and made stories around those. On and on.
And here I am. It’s 4pm and I am still carrying the shame from 7:19am. The 2-minute issue that was resolved by 7:40 and had zero fallout. Yet I’m still holding on to it. Worse, I am still perpetuating it.
I want to stop.
I want to learn to be able to say “mea culpa, that was dumb,” and then move on. I want instances like this to not become identity-defining moments. Or even day-ruining moments. If there’s something to learn, I am happy to learn it and then move on. And yet, I am not sure how to do that. What I do know is berating myself for not knowing doesn’t help either. Telling myself to let go or being disappointed in myself don’t either.
So here’s what I am going to do: I will walk away from the computer. I will think of three things I am really grateful for right this minute. (Like my 4-year-old who is sitting next to me, giving me kisses, the perfect combination of sunshine and breeze in the backyard, and the wonderful package of art goodies I got today.) And I am going to go take a walk. Then I will come back and play with one son and help the other.
Sometimes the best path involves getting out of my head. Not trying to “figure it out” or “vent” but to reach out to others and to give and to rest and be kind to myself.
At least, that’s what I hope.
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted a thoughts-post. I’ve been thinking about writing them, even thinking about the content, but I just never seemed to want to make the time to sit and do it. I promised myself that September would be when I got back to doing these. So here we are. September 3. As good a day as any. To get my feet wet I decided to start with some “right now” thoughts. I figure my word for the year is present, so talking about what’s going on “right now” seems apt.
- Right now, I am really enjoying fresh air. I find myself seeking it and sitting outside as much as I possibly can. I am deeply grateful to be living in California where the weather is outside-friendly for so much of the year.
- Right now, I am reading voraciously. I finished three books this weekend and all I seem to want to do is read, read, read.
- Right now, I am trying to settle into some kind of routine but I have two more weeks before life goes back to “normal” so I am trying to take it all in stride and let myself off the hook.
- Right now, I find myself itching for something new, wanting to shake things up, but not knowing exactly how. I find myself searching.
- Right now, I am still trying to get back into the groove of things. Even basic things like doing art.
- Right now, I am already thinking about 2014. The year, my word, my wishes. My projects.
- Right now, I am starting to get excited about my upcoming class, slightly stressed that I haven’t taught it in a while and hoping it’s still well-received.
- Right now, I am reorganizing my coaching practice and figuring out what I want the future to look like.
- Right now, I am missing some of my friends and their company and making plans to reach out.
- Right now, I am waiting for some news in the mail that’s making me anxious pretty much constantly.
- Right now, I am listening to Sara Bareilles’ Brave on repeat and thinking about what I might do if I were braver. I want to be brave. Really brave.
- Right now, I am listening to Tara Brach’s wise words. There’s always something new to learn, even when I’ve listened to it again and again.
- Right now, I am loving my kids and my husband so deeply and wanting so badly to be the best version of myself for them all the time. I wish for more patience and so much more kindness. I love them so much.
- Right now, I am looking forward to going to get Nathaniel from school and seeing his face shine when he sees me waiting for him.
- Right now, I’m excited about some happy mail that I know is on its way to me.
- Right now, I am missing my mom and dad and sister and nephews.
- Right now, I am thinking about how to be done with Starbucks. However I can.
- Right now, I am trying to figure out how to fundamentally change the way I eat, the way I look at food, the way I want to live the rest of my life.
- Right now, I am loving the way Nathaniel says human (he pronounces it hooman).
- Right now, I still can’t believe David’s already in third grade. How is it that time is passing so quickly?
- Right now, I am so proud of my husband for how well he’s doing at work and how brave he is.
- Right now, I am tired. I always seem to be so tired.
- Right now, I find myself taking pauses several times a day to say thanks for my life. My imperfect but wonderful-in-so-many-ways life.
- Right now, I am thinking about all the things I’d like to learn and all the places I’d like to visit. I am thinking about making a plan to put both of these in process.
- Right now, I need to clean up my desk. There are several other areas of my house that I’d like to declutter. Where I feel the clutter is contributing to my frustration and nagging me daily.
- Right now, I am really inspired by Diana Nyad.
- Right now, I am thinking of this large gap. And what we all lose because of it.
- Right now, I am thinking about where else in my life I could be doing some clearing. What else needs attention.
- Right now, I am wishing I could be kinder to myself.
- Right now, I know my birthday is coming up and I will be going into the last year of my thirties. I am wondering what that means for me, if anything. What I might like to commit to, think about, shift, aim for, etc for this last year.
- Right now, I am taking Ali’s Hello Story class and loving the stories she’s telling and thinking about whether I’d like to scrap more and whether I’d like to type up my journaling again. About how and where I want to tell our stories.
- Right now, I am attempting to learn how to draw faces. Again. I seem to come back to this one often.
- Rigth now, I am trying to smile more, breathe more, be kinder, and have faith that all is okay.
How about you, what’s on your mind right now?
ps: there’s a giveaway of my class on the my mind’s eye blog today if you’re interested. there’ll be one here in a short while too if I can get my act together 🙂
Here’s this week’s gratitudes and celebrations:
Before:
it says: how many times must you do it before you know you can? You get to choose who you are and how you see yourself.
and here’s what the page looks like with all the gratitudes and celebrations:
Just another excuse to create art and remember the present that is my life.
Gratitude Journal is a weekly project for 2013. You can see a detailed post on my goal other details here.
It’s now been two weeks since we’ve returned from our vacation to Turkey to see my family. I’ve been meaning to write everyday since and it’s consistently not happened. I am reminded again and again that habits are hard to form, easy to break, and even harder to get back into. Even the ones we like are hard to get back into when routines are interrupted.
I still haven’t adjusted to being back.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about my trip and some things that worked and some things I learned. Many of the themes I’ve seen in my life over this year were reiterated and I think this trip was definitely the epitome of being “present” for me. As much as I am capable at least. (always a work-in-progress)
Here are some things I embraced:
Focus on This One Day: As the trip approached, I found myself stressing about all that could go wrong. Flights we could miss, luggage that could get lost, people not showing up, kids having meltdowns, no food the kids liked, etc, etc. The list could easily go on for a long time. I noticed that even though we hadn’t even left yet, I was already worried about the things that might go wrong in the return trip. At some point, I realized that there was no way I could survive my own insanity. There were simply too many moving parts to this big trip and if I were to make it through, I had to focus only on what was right there in front of my nose. My mantra became “this one day.” I only let myself worry about this specific day (and sometimes even less than that, I’d say this one thing and then i’ll get to the next one.)
Even though I, intellectually, know that all we have is this moment, this day, etc. it’s quite difficult for me to really live my life like that. I am a worrier and the future is ripe for things to worry about. I am not sure what enabled me to put on a different attitude during the trip, but I know that it totally worked. I was not worried. I just did what needed to be done and I was here and in the now. Ever since I’ve been back, I’ve been trying to do the same for work, with kids, etc. Just being here and now. There’s magic in that.
Change The Way You See Yourself: I’ve written about this one before, too. This was the first time I took a trip alone with the kids. It involved a 12+ hour flight, 4-5+ hours of layovers, and then more flights and several other things I was very worried about being able to handle. During the months leading up to the trip, I felt more and more doubtful that I could do it. But then, as it got really close, I pulled myself aside and gave myself a good talking-to. Along with the this-one-day attitude, I decided that I can do hard things. And that I am fully capable of handling whatever happens. So my mantra went something like: Nothing will happen, all you need to focus on is this day, this thing. And if unexpected stuff happens, you can handle it and you will handle it and things will be okay again.
And you know what? They were. It was all ok. Stuff happened, I handled it. And things were back to okay.
I noticed that my own way of viewing myself and my capabilities has a lot of bearing on the way I show up in the world. So, no more of undermining myself. If I want to do it, I can. If I have to do it, I can. I have faith in my ability to do hard things.
Remember What Matters Most: And the most important lesson of it all. I had a lot plans around what I would do when I was home. The books I would read, the art I would do, etc. I even bought a Smash! book to do while there. And you know what? None of it got done. Nothing. I did one sketch the whole time and barely read one book. The first few days, I felt myself stressing but then I actively chose to let go. I reminded myself that this is my family whom I see once a year (if I am lucky) and I am here to be with them. Even if we’re doing nothing, it’s more important to spend this time with them than anything else on my list. They matter the most. Playing cards with my nephew, hanging laundry with my mom, staying up late with my sister. These are the reasons I went home. These are the people who matter most. These are the moments I will remember and cherish. As soon as I decided to let it all go, my todo list didn’t stress me one bit. Even the items I’d chosen to put there, the things I wanted to do, weren’t hard to let go.
This is the one feeling I’ve been trying to hang onto the most since I’ve been back. I’ve been trying not to rush into the todo list. Not rush into doing in general but focus on the being. Being present with those who matter to me. Slowing down and soaking it all in. It’s challenging at times, and I definitely get less done, but it’s also wonderful.
There were many ways in which I got in my own way during this vacation. Many things I wish I could have done differently. But these three things guided me the most and each time I was able to embrace them and lean into their presence a bit, I caught a glimpse of what peace and joy look like.
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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