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Around the house Diversions Health Politics Reading

June 2022

And what is so rare as a day in June? Then, if ever, come perfect days.

James Russell Lowell

I seem to always love the idea of planning but then, stress hits and my most well-worn response is avoidance. I plan to get things done and then they don’t and the next thing I know it’s bedtime and well, that’s about it really.

Yesterday (June 4) there was a “Daily Jay” on the Calm app about “time confetti“; about how little things add up to disrupt your plans and goals and break up your day and cause irritation. Prioritizing is definitely not something I am good at – but it’s comforting to know I am not alone and that there are so many external factors influencing this that I have no control over at all. Thankfully my work is one of those places that really is not there when it’s not supposed to be there. I don’t get messages on my personal phone etc. So that’s terrific. Work is also flexible enough that when I need to take breaks during the day, that’s fine, the work day doesn’t have to be precisely 9 to 5 but also understands that work is not all consuming.

white background with lots and lots of little coloured pieces of paper
confetti 😉

Okay – so back to trying to plan, think about what’s important, not necessarily going off on all sorts of new and fun directions. I mean, new and fun directions are great. But I don’t have to follow the path RIGHTNOWTHISVERYINSTANT. I can make a note, and follow up later.

One of the ways I thought I would do this would be to think of big themes for the month and if something pops up that fits into the theme – yippie! and if not, and it looks cool, I can make a note and maybe use that to come up with another month’s theme.

THEMES FOR JUNE

There are some easy ways for my brain to group things and also a few topics I want to learn more about which themselves have lots of subheadings so the big overall groups are:

SELF

OTHERS

HOME

NATURE

SELF focus for June:

❶ schedule – a day

❷ mindfulness – being present

❸ health – menopause

Schedule: I’m trying to figure out what I would like “a day” to look like. Three different days actually: in-office work day, WFH work day, non-work day.

Mindfulness – just something I’m always working on; whether it’s a bit of reading about stoicism, the Calm app, yoga. Something.

Health – read the damn menopause book. That time is creeping up slowly but surely and I really want to be sure I have some sort of idea about what’s going on. We don’t talk about this stuff enough and I need to learn.

Also move more. I have an appointment with a specialist about weight management and stuff also.

OTHERS focus for June:

❶ reading – neurodiversity

❷ support – volunteering? politics?

The idea here is to not lose myself in my own little bubble. The Ontario election annoyed me to no end – the lowest turn out in years, maybe ever? WTAF?!? The cons killed people during the pandemic no less than if they had pulled a trigger on a gun and you will not be able to convince me otherwise. And they were rewarded with another majority? @#(P YPVDLI but rather than retreat to the safety of my world with only my people in it I want to do more.

Concrete tasks here:

① deliver egg cartons to the food bank

② bring black take out containers to the farmers’ market for re-use

③ chat with Laura about how to _do something_ about the politics stuff that’s frustrating me

④ read this: recommended by a friend:

Picture of book titled NeuroTribes

HOME focus for June:

❶ minimalism – organize/declutter

We live in a fairly large house. The problem with this of course is that we acquire enough stuff to fill the large house. And then some. This will really probably be the focus every month for HOME but key tasks for June:

① Lisa’s Stuff – organize jewellery; what do I want to keep; offer the rest to family / friends and then sell / donate what’s left

② Q’s Stuff – a big goal for the entire summer is to get everything out of Q’s rooms and really clean and maybe repaint them etc. So we’ve got to start whittling his stuff down too

③ Art – hang more of the art I love and offer up the stuff we no longer adore. This has already started which is great.

NATURE focus for June:

❶ birds – pigeons

❷ tree – northern red oak

Y’all know I’m weird right? I wanna learn more about birds and trees but I keep going off on all sorts of tangents and, while fun, it’s really not sinking in. So, thanks to a random chat with the wonderful Abby, I fixated on pigeons for June. I know nothing about pigeons but they’re everywhere. So I’m gonna learn about pigeons.

A stack of four books about pigeons
Sometimes I wonder what the librarians might be thinking…

Same with trees. There are a bazillion trees out there. So overwhelming to know where to start. But we just planted Tom in the fall – Tom is the name we gave to our northern red oak (Quercus rubra) – so that seemed like a good place to start.

Tom – June 5 taken from the balcony
Categories
Diversions

Half way through January

I thought I ought to check in with how I am doing with my habits and goals and stuff. You know, those daily, easy/hard, things?

Okay first, clearly drinking more water is actually easier than I thought it would be. Even when I did nothing for a couple of days post-COVID booster shot, I still managed to drink at least two of my water bottles full each day. That’s about 1.5L so not loads but more than I was drinking.

Okay – so booster was in the late afternoon of January 5. That first light blue box is January 5. I was soooo wiped out for the 6th and 7th at least.

picture was actually taken on January 21 – but yea, didn’t want to wait till the end of the month for an update

Moving – I was on a good roll there. That booster shot though really wiped me out. You see that lonely red box in there? I got the shot on Wednesday afternoon. On Saturday I figured I should be able to go for my walk – so I did: 40 minutes woohoo. And within 15 minutes of getting home I fell asleep. And napped for 2 hours! So then I guess I just lost my mojo? Will be working on that.

Yoga – ahhh yoga. Again. 5 days straight. Then wiped. And after a couple of days off I realised that my shoulder was actually NOT appreciating all the table top / cat-cow / downward facing dog poses. You’ll see at the bottom of the chart that I thought maybe yoga would take the place of physio maybe? Turns out I was wrong. So I am going to add a physio break to my work day to get me up off the computer at least. Ideally by the end of the month there will be a lot more of that line filled in!

Reading – ahhh reading is one of those things that’s on the list so I get the joy of crossing it off. Actually from the 12th to the 14th I did reading instead of “creating” because I needed to finish this amazing book by bell hooks and get it back to the library. (And yes, it will have it’s own post soon too). But I am also prone to not picking up a book for days, weeks even. So the ability to check it off (or fill in the box) is nice. Same with contests. I haven’t won much lately but it’s a small group of people I’ve known online for almost 20 years!

Ohhh and I made this today for tracking my books. A bookshelf! In my journal 😊

And at least the cats can’t complain much 😉

So creating – the plan from the beginning was:

☐ 1 x each easy list item per week

☐ 3 x each hard list item per month

Well, mostly I’ve been cross-stitching. Once I coloured. A couple of times I’ve written blog posts. Definitely not spreading out the easy list items.

And the hard list? No painting, no trumpet, and no knitting as of yet. At least we baked once before the 15th! Q asked for – and to help make – chocolate cheesecake for his birthday so I got one hard list item done in the first half of the month! Yikes.

And – I managed to bake twice again since the 15th so baking is okay. But none of the other stuff. You’ll see my little note to myself that CREATE is going to get it’s own chart in February and we’ll see if that helps any.

Categories
Health

Accepting compliments – mindfulness day 2

I’m starting today with some housekeeping.

First: the person who set up the 28 days on FB is Brittany Terotta. She is a clinical social worker and refers to what she does as holistic therapy. The stuff I’m posting here are my thoughts and digressions and things I found using her prompts as my start. Blame me though, if you don’t like something, not her 😉

Second: I’ve realised there’s no way I’m going to do this as a daily thing. Also a part of Brittany’s day two was thinking about values. I’ve been thinking and poking about online (psychology resources, career planning, budgetting pages! they all talk about figuring out your values) and it’s going to take me a while just to digest that. I’ll still subtitle the posts “mindfulness day X” where X equals the last mindfulness post plus 1. And they will all be tagged “mindfulness” and “mental health” so they should be all easy to see together.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program….

This day pairs nicely with the positive affirmations – this time the idea is to make a commitment to accept compliments you are given. No deflecting, no “it was nothing,” none of that. Say thank you instead.

Then write it down. Keep a list. Read the list whenever you need some reminders.

I’m setting up my journal for August today (yes, I know – but at least it was the 3rd when I wrote this!) and I will have a page to write things down on.

I did a bit of this back in February – it’s lovely to see. And because I am me, I wrote down who said it and in what context lol

I have to remember the point is to become the best version of me that I can be. And I am grateful to be here.