Some days feel like progress and other days feel like a huge step back. And I find that it’s hard for me to predict which day is going to end up where.
So I’m aiming for more good days than not. Let’s see if I can increase the chances that a day will end up in the progress bucket.
Here are some things I’ve found that helps me:
1. Exercise early in the day: I feel better about myself when I’ve exercised so doing that first thing increases chances my day goes well because I know I did at least one thing for my health that day.
2. Get my veggies in: the smoothie in the morning loaded with broccoli and spinach is another way I am paying my body first thing. Even if I eat cookies and chocolate the rest of the day, at least I got 2 servings of broccoli and 2 servings of spinach and some fiber from the chia seeds.
3. Tell my people I love them: a bit of gratitude never hurt anyone. I tell my kids and hubby how much I love them. On a good day, I send some appreciation notes to folks I work with and on a really good day I call my mom too. Best thing for getting out of my head is reaching out to others.
4. Write stuff down: making a list of what I need to do increases the chances that I will do it tenfold. I just can’t count on my brain to remember so when I write it down, I no longer have to. And once I write it, there’s something to cross off. Crossing tasks off is great joy for me and a visual sign of a good day. Writing stuff down also works well for journaling and clearing out my head. Morning pages are gold.
5. Setting structures and routines for the things I want to do more: making room on my calendar to go climbing three times a week and having a partner to feel accountable to. Meditating first thing in the morning before I get up. Etc. Just small things to increase the chances that the day is more likely to go well then not.
I am trying hard to pay attention and notice what is meaningful to me and what drains my energy. Some days are still a net loss but if I can get more good days in then net net there’s progress.
The people who built our house made choices that conflicted with each other. They put a large, deep tub in our bedroom and then they put a small water heater that ran out of hot water before the tub filled about halfway.
When I was younger, one of my favorite ways to relax was to fill the tub, grab my book, some fruit and a delicious drink and soak in the tub for hours.
It’s one of the few ways I can relax fully into the present moment.
After we moved in, it quickly became clear I wasn’t going to be able to take baths in this house. My wonderful hubby thought of some crazy, creative ideas that involved having two simultaneous kettles going and mixing boiling water with cold water to fill the tub. The amount of effort required overshadowed the peace pretty heavily.
Ten years passed and I pretty much gave up on taking baths.
Then this past winter, it was finally time to get a new heater. This is when we had the option to spend a little more upfront and get a tankless heater. I knew that this could mean I could take baths again. But at this point I’d forgotten all about how it felt and wasn’t sure it was worth the money after all.
But we did it anyway. ( For a multitude of reasons including this. )
At first, I didn’t take any baths even though I now could. I had made up stories about how I didn’t really need it or how it was a waste of time or water.
But then I decided to commit to one bath a week for my 100 days of radical wellness project.
And once I started there was no going back.
I remembered how calming and relaxing it feels. Like a warm hug all over. Like all the weight is lifted off my body and soul. Like I can release all that I’ve been dragging around with me.
And now I’m wondering what else have I talked myself out of in the last ten years. What else am I missing out on? How can I recover it?
Yes to baths and relaxing and yes to re-finding the calm and serenity they give me.
Tonight we drove to the climbing gym in San Francisco. Since I hadn’t been there for over 14 months, all the routes were new to me. The other two gyms where we go haven’t changed in a long time so this was a giant gift.
Even more wonderfully I got to climb several 10a and 10c routes tonight. Slabs and overhangs. And it was a full, hard workout.
A year ago I couldn’t have done any of the routes I did tonight except maybe one. And a year ago I would have wanted to quit an hour in at best instead of going the full two hours of our appointment slot.
I am not athletic and any progress feels like it’s so hard to come by when it comes to physical ability, but tonight I could see and feel that I’m getting better. That a lot of practice does in fact lead to progress. That I have to just keep going and keep showing up.
Yes to progress. Yes to getting stronger. Yes to showing up again and again and again.
Little boy and I ventured out into the world today. Just for 30 minutes, we drove to a small coffeeshop/bakery and had a croissant and coffee and dessert.
And it was magical.
I did a lot and nothing today and now I sit here, wiped, and look back upon my day and wonder where it all went.
This is part of the year of yes for me. Yes to having unexpected days. Yes to socializing so much in one day that the introverted side of me feels completely depleted. Yes to helping my husband for a long time. Yes to taking little boy out into the world for the first time in months and months. Yes to being there for others.
It’s ok if today wasn’t planned. Yes to what is.
I want to be able to sit here with what is and be not just but grateful for it all. For how full life is. Books will be here forever. But people won’t. So here’s to celebrating the people today.
Yes to connection. Yes to social time. Yes to unexpected days.
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.
