2023

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Cry

December 08, 2023

Image by Simon from Pixabay

I’m currently working my way through Susannah Conway’s free Unravel Your Year workbook (no affiliation), looking back over the events and experiences of 2023, and man, that post headline about sums up 2023 for me. Those of you who have been with me for the entire year already know that in 2023 my husband and I both lost our mothers rather suddenly. I was my mother-in-law’s caregiver, and while she was under Hospice care, her decline and death were unexpected and extremely quick. 

My own mom’s decline was even faster and more unexpected, and I spent good parts of the months of February through May flying back and forth to California, staying by her bedside as she transitioned, arranging for her funeral, and then closing up her home and preparing it for sale. I also contracted Covid while I was there in February and spent many of what would be our last precious days sick and in isolation (because the last place you want to go when you have Covid is a nursing home…).

How’s that for Bad?

And believe me, there was some ugly crying.

On the surface, the Good doesn’t leap out at me, yet I know there was good, and a lot of it. The support of my friends through this year has been more than “good”—it’s been priceless! My son and husband here at home kept everything going while I was otherwise occupied, including taking care of our pets and each other.

I read a lot of really great books (post to come) and saw several fantastic theater productions. I reconnected with a couple of friends from high school. Just as it’s impossible to keep bad things from happening, it’s also impossible to keep good things from happening!

This morning, I came across a phrase that describes something I believe to be happening to me: post traumatic growth. This year has been traumatic, and I don’t intend to waste the pain I’ve experienced. I feel different from the person who started 2023. While I’m a little shaky and unsure about how to move forward in my life after this transition, I also know that I found depths within myself and a safety net surrounding me that I did not realize existed. For that I’m profoundly grateful.

I encourage you to take the time to reflect on your experiences in 2023. What joys and what sorrows did you experience? What lessons will you take with you into the new year? (If you want some gentle prompts to help you reflect, I recommend the above-mentioned Unravel Your Year workbook.) 

I’m nearly ready to shut the door on the year and move into 2024. May we all find peace and closure with 2023. 

30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge: 2015 Edition

A Month to Be Grateful: The 2015 30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge

November 02, 2015

I’m joining Dani DiPirro’s 30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge again this year (I wrote about last year’s here and here). I figure concentrating on what I have and am grateful for will ease the pain of what I’ve lost.  Plus it’s fun!

I enjoy and welcome the chance to slow down and ponder the many things I’m grateful for and, I admit, take for granted. I’ll post my daily entry on Facebook and on Instagram if any of you want to follow along. If you want to join in, click here for DiPirro’s post announcing the challenge, and here for the list of prompts.

Today’s theme is “Inspiration.” So many things inspire me in different ways that it’s hard to pick just one. I’m inspired by the beauty of nature, by music, and by people I look up to, just to name a few. Since I’ve been reading the book What Makes Olga Run? I’m especially grateful for the inspiration of older women who live vibrant, exciting lives on their own terms. Reading about Olga Kotelko makes me push myself just a little harder during HIIT class and encourages me to believe that getting older doesn’t have to mean I can’t do the things I want to do anymore. While I have no desire to be a master’s level track athlete like Olga, I do want to be able to walk, bike, ride Tank, and do yoga for as long as possible. I don’t want to be held back from doing the things I want to do because my body is too weak or out of shape to allow me to. Seeing and reading about examples of people still active and vital in their 90s inspires me to believe I can be that way, too. (Ms. Kotelko died in June of 2014 at age 95. You can read more of her story here.)

What are you grateful for today?

Challenges

Three Habits That Trap Us in Our Comfort Zones

September 11, 2015

Photo courtesy Martin Wessley

So many times we’re tempted to procrastinate, to quit, or, worse, not to try at all, because something we want to do is complicated or doesn’t come easily. Just once, I’d like to try something new and find it immediately easy, but this has not been my experience with even my favorite activities: horseback riding, sketching, yoga, writing. These activities often push me well outside my comfort zone, but they have given me hours of happiness. I still don’t find them “easy,”—easier, yes, but not easy. Maybe easy is not the point?

Worthwhile pursuits—the ones that give us lasting happiness—often don’t come easy. We have to practice, to put in the time and effort to improve, or else we’ll be frustrated. And how many times do we opt for the easier choice: the TV program, the mindless internet surfing, and so on? What other factors keep us safe in our comfort zones instead of pursuing the very things we say we want to pursue? In my experience, there are three things that contribute to the inertia keeping us from enjoying challenging and happy-making pastimes: comparing ourselves to others; worrying about what others think; and not stopping to appreciate how far we’ve come.

Comparing ourselves with others. When we see someone perform effortlessly (or even just better than we do), we compare ourselves to them. Problem is, we compare our “inside” to their “outside.” We don’t know their lives and experience. We don’t know what’s going on in their heads and hearts, how easy or hard things are for them, how long it has taken for them to make it look effortless. It may feel just as hard to them as it does to us, only we can’t see that. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” according to Theodore Roosevelt. If we must compare, we should compare ourselves to ourselves. (See below.)

Worrying about what others think. If we’ve been comparing ourselves to others and feel we’re falling short, we probably also feel others are looking down on us. If we are new to a pastime or putting our work out there for everyone to see, it’s only natural that we feel worried about others’ responses. The truth? Most people don’t care what we do, or what we look like while doing it. They are too busy worrying about themselves. While they’re otherwise occupied, we can do what we want without fear of what others think.

Not appreciating how far we’ve come. The first time I took a horseback riding lesson, I was scared. Thrilled, but scared. My school horse was big and, to my mind, unpredictable. My body was confused about pretty much everything it was expected to do. Now, many years later, I’ve learned a great deal about horses and riding, and many of my actions on horseback are automatic. But since I’m still learning new things, I do have times when I perform awkwardly, or just plain badly. I could get frustrated by this, but because of my past experiences, I know not to give up if my first attempts are awkward or embarrassing. Compared with how I rode as beginner (sorry, Tank), I’ve come a long way.

Most things, if we keep at them, will become easier. We won’t always feel awkward and embarrassed, we won’t always have to think so hard about every action. Even if we’re trying something for the first time and we’re awful, by stepping outside our comfort zones, we’re miles ahead of all the people who haven’t been brave enough to try in the first place.

What challenging pursuit would you like to begin? What’s holding you back?

Art

Sketching Challenge Completed--Next!

February 02, 2015

Saturday I completed my 31 Days of Sketching challenge—and I’m proud to say I didn’t miss a day! On most days I spent at least 15 minutes sketching and/or painting, and there were only a couple of days that I scraped together a few minutes and a few pencil strokes just so I could say I’d sketched. Winter Interrupted came at a good time and helped me add watercolor sketches to my sketchbook. I posted all my sketches on Flickr. (Belle of Belle, Book, and Candle took up the challenge as well, and you can see her sketches here.)

Watercolor pencil
I wanted to become more comfortable sketching, and to make it more a part of my life instead of just done every now and then. I’m still not as comfortable as I’d like, and I did find that I didn’t experiment as much as I would have if I weren’t posting my sketches publicly.  Of course, I could have chosen not to post, but that felt like cheating. This tells me that I still care too much what others think. I don’t like to share my mistakes or what I think will be perceived as not very good. I will continue sketching, though probably not every day. I have several ideas for more sketchbook pages from Winter Interrupted, as well as (ahem) pages I want to complete from our New England trip a year and a half ago.

My favorite page from Winter Interrupted
The month-long challenge seems to work well for me. It’s both finite and concrete; long enough to see progress, but short enough not to be overwhelming or boring. These challenges keep me focused when my natural tendency is to be easily distracted by new and shiny ideas or projects. So what’s next? I’m leaning towards a horsemanship challenge for the month of February. I’m off to a poor start because I did nothing horse-related yesterday—but I could still pick it up today. Do I need that concrete, I-will-do-this-every-day structure? I suspect yes. I could easily do a horsey thing every day, whether it’s play with Tank, finally watch the horsemanship DVDs gathering dust in my bedroom, or delve into the books, articles and internet research on horse topics that I seldom seem to have time to get into. There is tack to clean, or ground work exercises to try, and, of course, February is a lovely month for riding. I’d love to see my riding and horsemanship skills take a big leap forward.

Right now I’m taking delight in these monthly challenges. Will they continue? I’m not sure. In the meantime, I have some riding boots to clean…


2014

The Weight of the Year

December 29, 2014

I know the calendar is an arbitrary division of time, but I feel the weight of the old year bearing down on me. The weight of goals achieved and not achieved, of challenges met and unmet...the days and weeks and months of 2014 feel heavier each moment. A new year is about to dawn, and it feels like a weight will fall off my shoulders with the passing of the old year. Do you feel that way too? The endings and beginnings of this time of year feel like a good chance to shrug off the old and look forward with optimism to the new. But before I go all philosophical on you, let me just quickly review the public challenges I set for myself in 2014:


 Reading Challenges
I succeeded in all three of my reading challenges—click here to see the results. I am just finishing up that last Mt. TBR book, but it will be done by the end of the month. I managed just one bingo, but I filled a number of other spaces—just not in a line! And I read all the “required” classics, and one of the optional books.

For 2015: I plan to read from my shelves again, since (surprise!) I continued to buy new-to-me books in 2014. I did end up with a small reduction in the TBR pile, but I still have many, many books secreted on my closet shelves.  I’ll also participate in the updated classics challenge here and once again in the Vintage Mystery Bingo Challenge.

30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge
I’m so happy that I completed this challenge—it was fun, uplifting and gave me the boost I needed to take on…


31 Days of Sketching with Belle from Belle, Book and Candle starting Jan. 1. She plans to post her art on a separate blog (address to come), and I’m not sure yet how I’m going to post mine. I’m still working out the details and collecting prompts so that I’m never at a loss for what to sketch. My goal is to make sketching an activity rather than an event.

This year has been a year of emotional stress and upheaval (and dying computers and dogs going to the emergency vet), though I haven’t publicly written much about it. It was also a year of seeing old friends and family, reading good books and discovering Doctor Who. I’m grateful for the gifts 2014 has given me, but I want 2015 to feel different—less frustrating and anxiety ridden. I can’t control what happens to me, only how I react. Optimistically, I turn towards 2015, hoping for a happier and more successful year. But hoping will not make it so. If I want 2015 to be better than 2014, and I do, I will have to make some changes—in what I do and how I think. I’ll share what I learn in hopes that it will help and encourage you, too. As always, I’m especially grateful for all of you who have taken time to read my words and share your thoughts with me.

What gifts has 2014 given you? What do you look forward to in 2015?

30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge: 2014 Edition

30 Days of Gratitude Revisited

December 01, 2014

I did it! I stuck with my 30-Day Gratitude Photo Challenge, posting a picture and a few sentences about what I’m grateful for every day in November. This is an encouraging first for me!

I enjoyed being able to focus on all the good things I’m grateful for and having them recorded in one place means I can revisit them when I’m unhappy, stressed, or frustrated. In addition to that, I learned that I can, indeed, stick with something for 30 days straight, and that yes, sometimes it is easier to do something every day rather than once in a while. (See Grechen Rubin’s post, “Proposed Resolution: Do Something Every Day.”)

A couple of things made this challenge doable for me. First, there were specific boundaries. I knew how long the challenge would last (30 days), and I knew the theme of each day’s post ahead of time, thanks to Dani’s prompts. While I did have to decide what aspect to write about, having the prompt meant I already had a topic, and that made it a lot easier for me. I mostly posted at night, but I kept the prompt in mind all day. It probably took me about 15 minutes at most to choose the photo, write the post and put them both up. Once I had my post done, I didn’t fret about doing more—I knew I had finished that day’s challenge and could move on to something else.

The second thing that helped was accountability—I announced I was doing this challenge here on the blog, and that I intended to post the photos on Facebook. Even though I doubt that anyone was waiting breathlessly for my next post, I did feel accountable for making sure one made it up there every day.

Speaking of posts, here are four of my favorites:

Day 7 prompt: Attire. I'm grateful for the riding boots my husband gave me for Mother's Day 10 years ago. They help me feel more secure when riding, and help my horse understand my cues better. Plus, I think they're pretty cool looking (though they need to be cleaned and polished)!


Day 8 prompt: Friendship. This should be easy, because friendship is hands down one of the things I'm most grateful for. To the women I've met only virtually through blogging, to my barn buddies, to the far-flung friends I only get to talk to occasionally, and to those special few who have supported and encouraged me through all the highs and lows of life, I say a big THANK YOU! I don't have one photo that can express all that, so I'll go with this one of a little plaque that hangs in my kitchen--given to me by a friend, of course!


Day 21 prompt: Scent. New Orleans is a town full of sights, sounds, and smells--not all of them pretty. There's one scent I absolutely love that you can occasionally get a whiff of as you walk down the street there—Sweet Olive. Today I'm thankful for the Sweet Olive perfume I bought in NOLA. Whenever I open the bottle, I'm whisked back to one of my favorite cities.


Day 28 prompt: Desire. I'm grateful that there are things I desire—things to work and plan for, and look forward to. One of my biggest desires is to have the money and freedom to travel more—hence today's photo.


I am glad the challenge is done, and while I wasn’t exactly getting bored with it, I am ready for a change. So what’s next? Armed with the realization that I can stick to something, I want to choose another thing to do for 30 days, something that will take approximately the same 15 minutes per day. Perhaps sketching—think how much improvement I’d make if I sketched every day for 15 minutes! I know that to be successful, I need boundaries and accountability. I’ll need to find or make up prompts for sketching every day (any suggestions for a book or website that could help me do this?), and I’ll need to have some accountability. I don’t want to post my sketches on Facebook, however, because I want to feel free make mistakes and try new things without being too embarrassed and without inflicting my learning curve on others. Plus, in order to post my sketches, I’d have to scan them into the computer daily, and that might just be the straw that breaks this challenge’s back. Do I have enough gumption to be accountable to myself? I’m not sure. I’m still pondering this. (Plus, I’m not prepared to commit to a 30-day project over the Christmas holidays. This will have to wait until 2015.)

Have you ever participated in some type of 30-day challenge? Would you like to? If so, what would you choose?

Challenges

Paying the Price

April 21, 2014

Fannin Hill, 2012. Photo courtesy Holly Bryan
We did get to go to Fannin Hill on Friday, and it was awesome. Unfortunately, I have no photos to show for it…just some sore muscles and good memories. And , of course, a whole lot of things to clean: my bridle bag, Tank’s shipping boots, my saddle bag and even Tank’s bridle (at one of the water troughs, he immersed his face up to the eyes and shook his head side to side, sending water cascading onto the ground and turning the leather of his bridle into a mucky mess). An outing like this means extra work before and after, as well as stepping outside my comfort zone during. Tank gets excited when we ride off site, and sometimes I feel like I’m on top of a rocket ready to explode. I have to work at communicating what I want in a way that makes sense to him and doesn’t frustrate him:

Tank: “If all the other horses are cantering and jumping over there, why are we over here jumping over this little log?”

Me: “Because those jumps are beyond my abilities and confidence right now—I know you could do it, but would I still be on your back on the other side?”

 Tank: “OK. I guess I don’t want you to hurt yourself. Who would bring me carrots?”

Every time we go to Fannin Hill, we try new things and come home inspired. This time, we practiced going up and down a small bank, which required him to jump up to a higher level while going up, and to step down (into the scary unknown) when going down. He did just fine going up, but was pretty skeptical of going down. We tried several different approaches until he hopped down like it was a non-issue.

Sometimes the best things require effort. In the past, I tended to give up too easily when faced with challenges. Tank is teaching me to think things through, break them down into smaller steps, and to keep trying slightly different approaches. I still find myself avoiding things because I either don’t know what to do, or I think it’s too hard, but I’m becoming more willing and able to pay the price for what I want. And that’s a lesson worth learning.

What dream are you willing to pay the price for?

#100HappyDays challenge

Three Ways to Focus on Happy Moments

January 06, 2014


Sometimes an idea just keeps presenting itself to me until I have to pay attention. In this case, the idea is noticing and recording things that make me happy.

First, I read about something called the “What-Went-Well Exercise” (also called “Three Blessings”), in Martin Seligman’s book, Flourish. He writes, “Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you have a physical record of what you wrote. The three things need not be earthshaking in importance…but they can be important.” (Seligman also encourages recording why the event happened, but I find that more problematic—many of my happy events, like “I rode Tank today” or even “I finished everything on my to-do list today,” don’t seem to have a “why” beyond “I just did it.” Maybe I’m missing something?) 

Next, I heard about the 100 Happy Days Challenge. Every day submit a picture of what made you happy to a social media site such as Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, with the public hashtag #100HappyDays. If you don’t want to do this publicly, you can come up with your own hashtag that you share only with those you want to see your photos, or you can send your photos to myhappyday(at)100happydays.com. (Of course, you don’t need to share your photos with anyone, but it helps keep you on track and “honest” if you do.)

According to the challenge organizers, “People successfully completing the challenge claimed to:
  • Start noticing what makes them happy every day;
  • Be in a better mood every day;
  • Start receiving more compliments from other people;
  • Realize how lucky they are to have the life they have;
  • Become more optimistic;
  • Fall in love during the challenge.”

Doesn’t that sound great? For more information, or to sign up for the challenge, click here. 

My third exposure to this idea came from Dani Dipirro at Positively Present: The Jar of Happy Things. During all of 2013, she wrote down favorite moments on bright scraps of paper, storing them in a jar (she had so many she had to buy a second jar!). I love the visual of the jar filling up with happy moments, and the idea of being able to read through a year’s worth of them all at once. Her post, titled “Five Benefits of Noting Happy Moments,” is worth a read. 

Why do any of these things? My reasons include, first, awareness in the present moment of all that is good and happy in my life. I have the habit of allowing myself to worry about what is not going right—or what bad things might happen in the future—instead of appreciating the good things (and there are plenty of them) right now.

Second, actually recording happy moments should help me remember them in the future if and when bad things happen.

Third, what you focus on expands. My hope is that by focusing on the happy moments, I will have more of them!

I’ve been doing the “What Went Right” exercise most nights since I first read about it, and I’m quite tempted to join the #100HappyDays Challenge—I love the idea of a photographic record of happiness! What about you? How do you keep track of the happy moments in your life?

30 days

30 Days

April 26, 2013


If you’re at all familiar with home organizing websites (or Pinterest) then you’ve probably come across the concept of “30 Days of Organizing.” With my affection for lists and for clearing out and decluttering, I’m always drawn to these lists and often start off making my own with a burst of enthusiasm—enthusiasm that fades approximately five days into the whole deal. You see, I’m always attracted to the fantasy idea of “getting things under control” in a set time, like 30 days. Never mind that life itself resists efforts to control it, and likely will never be under control. Never mind that my list often sounds about as fun as 30 days of dental appointments. (How much interest can I really drum up in cleaning the bedroom ceiling fan?)

So as I was making my latest dreary home organizing list, I pondered taking the 30 days concept in a much more enjoyable direction. What about scheduling 30 days of creativity? Or 30 days of sketching, writing, gratitude, or even pampering? Oh, oh, oh—or 30 days of chocolate! Gee, those sound a lot more fun! Frankly, I have more need of scheduling creativity and fun that I do chores. Despite my sensitive conscience and obsession with contributing to family life, I do enough. Instead of adding more to my workload, I’m going to schedule in some fun.

As I was thinking about this idea, I also remembered something I’d read on Matt Cutts’ blog—a slightly different take on the 30 days concept.  Matt is a software engineer and head of Google’s Webspam team and he chooses a new 30-day challenge every month. Some of his challenges have been 30 days of: exercise; acts of kindness; avoiding reading, watching or hearing the news; drawing something; and ukulele! Here’s a link to a video of Matt giving a short TED talk about 30-day challenges: 


I decided to go for 30 Days of Creativity, and here are a few things I’ve jotted down on my list (any suggestions?): go on an artist’s date; finish filling my sketchbook that only has two or three blank pages left in it; write a haiku; take some photos. At this point, I’m not going to limit myself to any one area of creativity, but I am going to try hard to make it 30 consecutive days. That will be a big challenge for me, because I often find it hard to do anything for 30 consecutive days, even fun things. I usually miss a day here and there, but I won’t beat myself up about that. Any step in a more creative direction will be progress. To keep me honest, I’ll let you know when I officially start my experiment, and post updates about it here on the blog.

In my opinion, we don’t need to add more work to our lives. We need to add more joy, more play, more fun and creativity. There will always be more than enough work to fill our time—but is that really how we want to fill it?

What would you like to try for 30 days?

Challenges

Pleasure

April 18, 2012


“Don’t ever forget that God speaks to us in pleasure, as well as challenges and growth pains. Our genuine desires and yearnings, they don’t feed the greed that is destroying our world if we keep listening.”
—Jennifer Louden, The Comfort Queen’s Guide to Life

Challenges

Three Little Words

February 07, 2011

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m learning natural horsemanship techniques so that I can be a better leader to my horse and have a closer bond with him. While watching one of the Parelli Level 1 DVDs recently, something one of the instructors said resonated with me. She posed the question, when someone asks you if you can do something you’ve never done before, especially something hard or scary, what should you say? Her answer:

“I don’t know.”

Not “I can’t.”

Because, really, you don’t yet know if you can do it or not, because you haven’t tried. You don’t know what is possible.

Some other alternatives she came up with included: I haven’t up until now. I haven’t done that yet. In the past, I haven’t tried that.

These phrases leave the door open, instead of slamming it shut with an “I can’t.” I’ve found “I don't know” very helpful when I’m offered the chance to do something that scares me. I don’t always rise to the challenge—but sometimes I do.

What are some things you say to yourself when faced with a challenge?

What's to be scared of?