Category: Journaling

happier 2023!

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The days are long, but the years are short.

– Gretchen Rubin

Normally, I agree with Gretchen Rubin but I am not so sure about 2022. Whew! What a year! It was a rough one. I started this blog ten years go, and one thing has been consistently true. You can always tell how I am doing by whether or not I am posting on this site and it has been about 10 months since I have posted anything.

I do this thing where I literally forget unpleasantness in my life. I have a difficult time remembering two years of college because I was suffering from undiagnosed depression. It’s only when I talk with friends with whom I have shared experiences and they remind me that “this happened” and “that happened”, that all those events come screaming back to me. 2022 was like that.

It has taken me years to learn that I am the only thing I can control. Which I often find it hard to believe and then don’t do very well. But I am determined to have a happier 2023, even if the only thing that makes it happier are the changes I make in how I move in the world.

These changes are not mind-blowing: more intention, being present for the Hubby and the Buddy Man, reading more, playing the Sims, cooking food I love, running, basically anything that allows me to enjoy life more, all things I have talked about before here on this blog. My issue is consistency so I took 2022 investigating (with the help of my licensed therapist) what is my major hang up to making any lasting change. Hopefully my new understanding will be a catalyst to a happier 2023.

Here’s to happier 2023 for us all.

enjoy life…

friday’s “secret” – there aren’t secrets

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When I do post on the third Friday of every month, I like to post about the “secret” to enjoying life.  First I hope you will note the tongue-in-cheek use of the quotation marks around the word, secret.  That’s because the truth is that there are no secrets to enjoying your life. 

I think most of us have an idea of what we like to do and what we could do to enjoy our lives. If you don’t know, you should definitely make it your mission to find out what those things are. But once you do know what they are, if anything, the “secret” or “trick” or the thing is that you have to actually do those things that you enjoy. Without guilt and without excuses.

That’s harder to do than it was for me to type. I struggle with this constantly.  I really enjoy playing the Sims 4, a life simulation computer game where you build homes, create characters (or sims) and have them live their lives.  Correction, I LOVE playing the Sims. It is one of the only things that I can do where I lose all sense of time and space.  My life challenges slip away and I forget about them as I redesign a house or build a studio for my artist sim, Grace Coddington. I have so much fun!

But somehow, through life experiences, books I’ve read stressing the importance of productivity and efficiency, and maybe a false sense of my own importance, I find myself feeling guilty about playing.  Shouldn’t I be doing something else that’s more important? Like reading? Maybe. But if the Buddy Man is fed, the house is humming along, and work commitments have been met, I’m learning it’s OK to stop and play the Sims 4.

So do the things that are enjoyable to you. That’s the “secret” to enjoying your life. I’ve got to go. Grace has another masterpiece to paint.

…enjoy life

PS. If any out there also plays the Sims, I’m MyCuratedSims.

Playing in the Snow

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We have been fortunate not to have to deal with the Winter weather that a lot of people in the South have had to deal with over the past couple of weeks.  Huntsville is nestled in the Tennessee Valley which seems to temper weather patterns. I’m sure a meteorologist could explain it but all I know is that most extremes in bad weather, jump over us. 

But two nights ago, around 7:15 PM, it started snowing.  And it stuck. And an hour later, it had covered everything in glorious white. The Buddy Man was thrilled.  It was the most snow he can remember seeing. The last snow storm with accumulation of 4+ inches occurred when he was just four months.  He (and, OK, I did too) kept going to the window to watch it fall.   

As I prepared him for bed, he couldn’t stop talking about waking up and playing in all that snow. I got in bed myself, looking at my weather app, my anxiety escalating at the thought of the Hubby traveling to and from work in this wintry mix.  Rain was coming which would inevitably turn to ice. Would he be able to make it home?

And then I had another disquieting thought; we wouldn’t wake up to the glorious winter wonderland that was happening outside our very door. It would be different, if not gone completely.

I called to the Buddy Man and told him to get up and to put on warm clothes and his boots.  We were going outside, right then, to play in the snow.  Yes, it was past his bedtime, and yes, his excitement would cause him (and consequently me also) to stay up and he (and consequently me also) would be no good for educating at home in the morning, but, I realized, we would never get this chance again. 

We went out and built a column of snow, which in his imagination became a snow castle.  We pelted each other with snowballs and got each other in the face, and ears, and hair more than a few times.  I tried to capture it all in a photograph: his glee, his excitement, the thrill of being outside in the dark, playing in the snow. I tried to capture the moment my heart soared away from my anxiety of earlier that evening as well as the anxiety that has encased me these past 12 months.  He shrieked and laughed and I laughed as I haven’t laughed in a very very long time.

Needless to say, no photo or video could capture it.  At best, what I have is a reminder of that glorious night. I will hold that in my heart as long as I live and can only hope that my son will always remember the night he and his mommy played in the snow. 

enjoy life…