Three quarters of last year was fabulous, but we closed the year out with a lot of stress and anxiety. Every time we thought we were on our way to resolution, it skittered away. It seemed stress was everywhere and issues seemed to crop up in every part of life. It was incredibly frustrating.
No, I'm not going to rehash all that here, and certainly not now. But I will say that closing out 2015 on such an unsettled note didn't encourage me to skip into 2016 with shiny goals for improvement.
But I did reflect, and one of the things I decided to make a priority was a daily list for my sanity. Not a clean house, or an organized pantry or a better diet. I wanted to give myself a few moments each day to center myself. Moments where I would tune out the anxiety and stress and worries about life.
Here's my daily list.
Write in My Journal
"But you have a blog!"
True. But my blog has evolved and it's not really a journal space anymore. I missed having a space to free write and just get all my thoughts out on paper. So on January 1 I grabbed one of the many notebooks floating around my bedroom, my favorite pens, and I started writing. So far I've written 6 out of 7 days, and I have to say, I'm enjoying having a place where I can write.
Read a Book
This was bizarre for me to have to put on my list, because I'm a huge bookworm. I love to read, re-read, and re-read again. Then I realized that over the past few months I hadn't been reading as much. I don't know that I wasn't reading because of the stress, but I know that it certainly wasn't helping my stress. So although I won't replace my magazines, and I'm sure I'll do some mindless game play, but I'm making an effort to keep a book close by so I can't make that my excuse.
Right now, I'm reading this one. My MOPS group started a book club, and although I was sad to hear that the timing isn't going to work out for me to attend (I have one volunteer committee, and somehow, that's the exact time of book club) I still wanted to read the book.
Get My Coloring On
I jumped on the grown up coloring bandwagon this fall. It seemed like the perfect way to end our homeschooling mornings. Madison and I would color together, each in our own book, and just chat as we worked.
What happened? Same as always. We got busy and I got stressed and it was lost in the shuffle. Every night I would look longingly at the coloring book and colored pencils sitting on my desk, and promise myself that as soon as I got caught up with my writing/lesson planning/cleaning/organizing/paperwork/stressing/trying to control the universing I would take time to color. And read. And journal.
Well, shockingly, I'm not caught up completely. I've also decided that I don't care. If I wait until our lives are totally in order to read, journal or color, I can go ahead and throw all those things out in my decluttering.
It seems like we're finally on the upswing, and hopefully that good energy will carry through and settle things back down. Then I'll put my focus more on organizing and working on my weekly housekeeping chores and my daily chores. I've already got my baby, my Erin Condren planner, set up for 2016, and that makes me itchy to get the rest of my life in order too.
But for now, I'm loving the time that I take to center myself every day. I love ending the day with my journal, I love coloring while the girls are resting, and I love spending some time in the evening with my books. There might be a pile next to me, but my mind is clear. And that, I've found, is exactly what I need.
What do you do for yourself every day?
