Home Posts tagged "self-care"

Tag: self-care

Journaling for Self-Love

So, one of my goals for 2024 was to cultivate more self-love/self-care for myself. And I had a brilliant idea one day in the shower (as one does). I decided to pull a Tarot card each day and think about what good quality I had that matched it — and journal a bit about it. For example, if I got The Chariot…the Chariot is about victory, attaining your goals, taking steps to move forward…I’d write about how I’m driven to succeed, I’m a go-getter, and how I’ve accomplished many of my goals because of this. And so on. And then I thought, hey, it’d be cool to decorate this journal a bit, kinda like a scrapbook, make it kinda fun and pretty. I’m not the best scrapbooker, to be honest. I used to scrap back in the day, with my sister and a mutual friend (we even did those 12-hour events which were a blast) and I did okay, but my pages were never gorgeous. But they were decent. My sister brought me supplies in boxes for this project and one of them was mine. I saw some of my old stuff, and I was a bit taken aback because…wow…twenty-some-odd years ago…I didn’t even remember creating those pages…and they were of things I’d done with my ex-husband…but they weren’t bad. Not at all. The journal is for me only, so I am not about making it perfect. Just fun and pretty. I want to add pictures and poetry and collage-type…

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(Phone) Pictures in an Exhibition(ish)

One of the main reasons I looked at the house that I now own was, as the saying goes, location, location, location. It’s very close to one of the largest parks in the city, the park where the zoo is. I love both the zoo and the park, and love being able to visit either or both after a five-to-ten-minute walk. (It’s also really nice to be one long walk through a lovely park and then a pretty, low-traffic neighborhood from a Starbucks. Love coffee. Love.) My last home was also next to a park, and just like then, now that I’m getting out and being more active, the park is a big draw. If you’re thinking I’m about to throw a bunch of phone-camera pics at you, give yourself a prize. NOTE —->>> Do not pet the palo verde tree, or at least be very careful. (you don’t pet trees? Oh, I guess that’s…maybe just a me thing?) I love our zoo. When I can, I maintain a membership to support it. It is a nice little zoo, easily browsed in a couple hours, and they work hard and do well at taking care of the animals and presenting lots of education on conservation. And currently, baby meerkats! What’s not to love? They’ve been trying to expand the zoo for a while now, to renovate and give more of the animals a better habitat. A few years back, they put it on the ballot, and people voted for it!…

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A Soothing Ritual

Recently I saw a comment pass by wherein someone asked how a person could “hate tea.” There are about a billion different kinds, so how could you know that you hate all of them? And it’s true. One can know if they hate coffee. If you only drink it with a ton of sugar and milk added (hello, roommate, child, other child…) you hate coffee and you need to stop drinking mine. No, seriously. Go get a cup of tea. We have all the choices.We do. We have a piece of furniture devoted solely to tea. We have a wide selection of teas. I usually start my deciding with considering how much caffeine I feel the need for. I try to avoid coffee every day (because I don’t want to have to have it every day, and also to keep it special.) So yes. Choices. Black, green, white, herbal…our vendor of choice is Harney & Sons, for the dual reasons of delicious tea and pretty tins. (We are almost to the point of building a house with tea tins.) Sunday morning I enjoyed a delicious Florence blend. H&S sells most teas either in sachet or loose. I usually prefer a sachet (easier), but I wanted to try this one and the cheapest way since they were out of samples was to buy a small tin of loose. Also, I do enjoy the whole process of making myself a cup of tea, on a Sunday morning when I have the time.…

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Life in the Time of Pandemics

One month ago, I was in here writing about imperfect friendships. Then the world entered a time warp called COVID-19, and ten years later, here I am again. What a surreal month it’s been, and from all accounts, things are going to get less like reality before they settle down into…well, whatever our new normal is, anyway. Last month, I was gloating about having had four weekends of contra dance in a row. I didn’t know then that our Leap Day dance would be our last for the foreseeable future, or that I would soon be really glad I decided to attend that dance weekend in February again. (For one thing, I bought a twirly skirt that weekend and wore it to one dance before everything ended. It’s the only contra dance skirt I can stand to wear right now. It cheers me up because it’s teal with purple patterns and swishes beautifully when I walk, but it’s not loaded with memories like my other skirts.) Four weeks ago, the dance organizing committee I’m on was debating whether it would be smart to cancel our March 14 dance. We could see what was coming, but hoped we could squeeze in one last event. But I’m glad we didn’t know we were saying goodbye on February 29…it would have been too sad. Three and a half weeks ago, all the schools here in Ontario closed, and we knew we had no choice but to cancel the entire rest of the dance…

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Continuing to Create When Life is Trying to Eat You

It has been a time period, friends. My husband has a major, ongoing medical issue that is potentially fatal. My father was chased by a crazy guy with a machete. My cousin died of a drug overdose. The coronavirus might cancel a much needed and much anticipated vacation. That’s on top of the normal, day-to-day issues (I am forgetting to do something for the small, mobile ones, I can almost guarantee it). As one might imagine, my mental state varies widely at the moment, and sometimes it’s a struggle to get out of the house, let alone sit down and write a couple thousand words. (Daylight savings is helping nothing, but it does give me a convenient excuse.) But I am still writing, and I am still drawing, and I think it all comes down to being gentle with myself. Should I have written yesterday, or the day before? Oh, yes, absolutely. Have I? No. Should I feel bad because there was a writing challenge in one of my writing groups that I completely failed at? No. It’s fine. (And also, if I do end up completing it today, I will count it as a win.) If it gets done, fantastic. If it doesn’t, there is always tomorrow. In the great scheme of things, a few missed days isn’t the end of the world. And, like I said, things are still getting done. Not as many, not as quickly, but it’s happening. So giving myself a break isn’t the end…

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Resting

On my Instagram, I’ve been following this account called The Nap Ministry, a performance art project by Tricia Hersey about how resting is a form of political resistance. She posts about how rest was something practiced by the leisure class as they exploited the working and enslaved classes (with both economic and racial inequities). Today there’s an emphasis on hustle, on being busy, on having side gigs. That’s at least in part because it’s hard for many folks to get a regular, steady 9–5 job with benefits that pays the bills without side gigs, but also because being busy is glorified in our society. Lean out, Hersey argues—lie down, and reclaim your right to rest. I’m thinking about that today because we’ve just had a long weekend, heading into a week off for me. My day job has been incredibly busy as we race to get a big project out the door. (It’s not quite out yet, but my colleagues are handling it, thank goodness.) At the same time I’ve been doing edits for the next Turtleduck Press novel, coming from KD Sarge in just a few months. And I even ended up spending Saturday afternoon working on a piece of the day-job project that arrived, naturally, on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend. After all that, I’m feeling more exhausted and brain-dead than I have in a long time. I spent the rest of Saturday staring blankly at things. Sunday and Monday I started to feel human again,…

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The Hibernator

Surprise, it’s me again! Kit had to bow out this week, so you’ll get her twice later on instead. It’s been a tough spring around here. The weather has been cold and wet for months (my day-job boss made a crack about how we seem to have moved to Vancouver — think Seattle if you’re American, or Scotland if you’re British), the world continues to be a dumpster fire in new and exciting ways, and all I want to do is hibernate. So I’ve been hibernating. Aside from the attempts at nesting I told you about last time, I’ve been reading more, watching Netflix (our new favourite show is The Good Place), and getting constantly sucked into Facebook. Some of those things are healthier coping mechanisms than others, I will admit… On the nesting front, we’ve also been tinkering with recipes. Most recently we’ve worked out: an excellent salad — arugula, cherry tomatoes, walnuts, some kind of cheese (blue, goat, Brie, Camembert, you name it), and homemade vinaigrette (based roughly on this) our new favourite brunch dish, huevos rancheros — our somewhat inauthentic version involves layering cheese quesadillas, BBQ pork or beef (fried up with some vegetables), and fried eggs, with maybe some hot sauce on top roasted beets — why do we never think of buying beets? Roasted in the oven with a little oil drizzled on top, they’re so flavourful, as it turns out! Perhaps helped along by all this delicious food, I’m gradually coming out of this…

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Fits and Starts

Did you know that writers are not just brains-in-a-jar? We actually have bodies. I know, I’m shocked too. It turns out that bodies have needs. I’m fairly good at remembering to feed, water, and rest mine (mostly because I turn into a giant grump if I don’t). Moving is harder (see this Awkward Yeti comic). I’m currently trying to establish a daily yoga habit…again. Here’s how it has been going: Last fall/winter: Okay, I can’t stand inaction anymore. It’s too painful (literally). I have to make a lifestyle change. January: Did a “30 Days of Yoga” challenge. It took me slightly longer than 30 days because I missed one here and there, but I was pretty consistent and finished within an extra week or so. It felt great! I was less creaky and sore! More flexible! Yay! February: 30 days is over and I feel much better. Now to keep it up! But I don’t have the challenge to guide me anymore. I have to make up my own yoga practices (or at least make decisions about which online yoga video to follow). This is hard. March: Down to once or twice a week…maybe. But I still feel a lot more limber. Now I don’t have to do yoga ever again! … June: I’m getting kinda creaky. Better pick it up again. Once or twice a week will be enough, right? July: No it will not. Ow. August: 30-day challenge, here I come again! OOPS, I got too enthusiastic. Ow.…

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Lessons in Letting Go

Last month, due to a file transfer glitch, I lost all my cell phone photos from the past year. I had taken a lot of pictures–maybe three or four hundred. I tried troubleshooting, but as far as I could tell, they were just gone, vanished into the ether between the phone and the computer. At first I was shaky and stunned. A whole year, gone. I don’t usually take pictures of people, so I didn’t lose precious baby photos or anything like that, but I love shooting day-to-day photos around my city, my garden, architecture, and far-flung locations when we travel. (We’d gone on one international vacation in that year. It was the only time we brought our full-scale digital camera. So I didn’t lose all evidence of our trip.) But by a few days later, I felt much calmer. It’s true that not all the photos were exactly gone. I’m on Instagram and post often, so many of the photos survived there, though only in a low-res, square format. It may also be true, as my spouse pointed out, that I took so many photos that no single one was particularly special to me. But I think something else is going on. Theory the first: I use photography as a form of mindfulness, to remind myself to look for moments of beauty in my not-particularly-beautiful urban life. It’s why I enjoy Instagram challenges, taking a photo roughly every day for a month. It’s a form of self-care. The value…

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Comfort Reads for Troubled Times

Some days it feels like the world is really going downhill. Natural disasters (as I write this, Texas and India are still recovering from massive floods, large chunks of western North America are on fire, and another hurricane is gearing up to hit some vulnerable islands on the way to Florida), politics (’nuff said), bad days on a personal level…and if they all combine, watch out! On days like this, one of the best cures is a comfort read. Simply defined: it’s a book you pick up because you know it will make you feel better. It’s by a favourite and trusted author. You’ve probably read it before (perhaps many times), or else you’ve been looking forward to reading it (maybe it’s a new installment in a series you love). Maybe you discovered it at an impressionable age and love it beyond all reason even though you know it’s not objectively the best book ever. It has stood the test of time…at least for you. What books qualify as comfort reads? Obviously, the answer to that is very personal. Some people might crave works that are light and funny, or sweet and romantic, or even dark, so that they feel less alone. Here are some of mine… The Lord of the Rings Yup, I’m one of those people. *grins* I’ve read the books multiple times. Most of those times were long ago, but I’m slowly rereading them now, and let me tell you, it’s a bit weird revisiting them for…

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