Today I am grateful for messing up.  I missed posting yesterday.  I feel like there was something in the air that brought me to that moment—perhaps that I’d put it out to the universe myself.  I love my writing but this has been a challenge to keep up with over the last few months.  There have been so many times I just wanted to stop and focus on something else, so many times I questioned if this little piece of work was worth the stress of keeping up that posting streak. I knew I wasn’t doing it all the justice it deserved by forcing myself to post every day just for the sake of posting.  Some of my pieces weren’t my best, they barely made sense even to me.  But I was more worried about keeping my streak going than I was about quality content.  I’d mentioned the other day I’d thought about what would happen if I just decided to stop for a while because I knew I needed a break and I knew I needed time to create a better thought out piece of work..  I got distracted yesterday and truly thought I’d had that post scheduled.  When I logged in today, I saw that I never scheduled the piece.  It was done, just not scheduled. 

Today I am grateful for boundaries.  Forgetting to post yesterday forced me to take some time to really categorize and focus on what’s important.  Normally I give in to every little distraction while I’m working because I want to get the distraction out of the way.  What that’s really telling the universe is that I’m prioritizing anything that crosses my path over what I’ve been saying I really want to do.  Because I forgot to schedule a few things, I needed to ignore the distraction of the animals and even my husband and son. And it was ok to do that.  I don’t ignore the needs of those I love often or lightly but this was a scenario where productive thought needed to be tackled in that moment and doing so, doing the work when I was inspired and ready to do the work, made it flow so much easier than stopping in the middle of it and then trying to pick back up again.  It’s ok to do the work that needs to be done even if it doesn’t make sense to others.  There are always ways to figure it out—and no one died for having to wait an extra 30 minutes for some attention.

Today I am grateful for boundaries.  A continuation on the boundaries mentioned above but from a different angle.  With my career change from last June, it’s been easy to get distracted and fall in the trap of working nearly 24/7.  When I’m on call I do in fact work 24/7 for a week straight.  I work from home now so I’m ALWAYS connected to the job.  Sure, in these past 8 months I’ve learned what actually needs to be prioritized (it was so easy in the beginning to think everything was an emergency) but it’s also as easy to fall into the habit of, “This will only take a minute, just get it done.”  So, fully aware I did it to myself, and fully knowing I needed to stop and take some time off (I’ve got nearly 5 weeks of vacation from my previous role and my transition into this one), I knew it was time for a day off.  I had a doctor’s appointment so I put in for the entire day off on Friday.  One day didn’t change everything for me, but it showed me that maintaining boundaries around my time and taking the time to clearly focus on something else that needed addressing is crucial.  I’d been pushing and pushing and persisting and exhausting myself to get it all done and thinking I had no reason to complain about being tired because I have all the time in the world to do what I need to do—but no one is designed to be “on” 24/7/365.  So, recognizing I’m not super woman nor is that the expectation because I work from home helped.  I am able to work from home because I’m expected to have a different availability than other people—that doesn’t mean I’m expected to work 24/7/365.  We all need to recharge and I’m allowed to do what’s necessary to do just that.

Today I am grateful for fun.  Ok, this isn’t new and I’ve talked about the importance of taking time for fun a lot but there are moments (like what I mentioned in the boundaries section above) where fun is the last thing on my mind or I feel like I’m supposed to be “on” all the time.  My heart has been crying for fun for a long time.  Like, I have this vision of such a balanced life with work, play, my own projects, a clean house, a loving family, vacations, work that means something to me and supports us, etc. etc. but I put so much focus on my job to prove I’ve earned my time off, to prove to those around me that I work too, that I lost sight of how to even have fun.  Even the nights I’d be in the basement with my husband trying to play a game of pool or darts, I’d been entirely distracted by something else or I’d take the game itself so seriously (like having to do it well to prove I’m a worthy partner or some crap like that) that I still wouldn’t be able to have fun.  I WASN’T having fun.  So we went the full opposite this weekend.  We went shopping (and probably spent more than we should have) but it was for things we always wanted but never took the time to bring into the house.  It was for experiences together as a family that we normally don’t do.  It felt amazing.  The point is if we are going to play, we need to play.  It isn’t about the result of the play in terms of who wins/loses—it’s about letting go of the result and taking the time to bond. And on top of all that, today is the Super Bowl and we love watching football so we’re taking the time to enjoy the game together as a family (from home, of course 😊).

Today I am grateful for cleansing.  There had been such a negative energy around me that, as I mentioned in the play section above, I couldn’t even let go just to have a good time.  The play never felt fulfilling and it felt like more and more of a waste of time as we tried to do it nightly.  We’d scheduled the time together to do something different, to get off our butts from watching TV and to actually do something together—something we’d wanted to do together for a long time which is why my husband had worked on rebuilding that pool table in the first place.  I digress.  The energy surrounding the house and ourselves was thick and painful.  Always heavy and difficult to walk through and it was so heavy that it made even the things we WANTED to be doing unnecessarily challenging and painful.  So I took the time to sage ourselves and the entire house last night and it was amazing.  There’s still some stuck energy here so I want to go through and physically clean the house as well, but cleansing was the start of something amazing for us.  I could feel the attachment to being angry and resentful because I didn’t feel like the “play” was worth anything more than a waste of time.  So, cleansing to detach from the stigma of play and work, to clear the stagnation from all that negativity of the last year, to create a clean and safe place for my family and I to enjoy our time together felt amazing.  We still have work to do, but it feels like an amazing start.  We will keep going and removing the pieces that hold us back until we find where we’re supposed to be—and I know we are getting there. Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.