For someone like me, structure is a tough challenge to meet. In my world, it’s good to have rules and to follow them…except when you decide not to and that’s okay, too. Some rules trump others in importance. Some are just made up of words. Some are made and never thought of again. In this world of rules, there are not, ironically, any hard and fast rules.
When I was making the decision to revamp this blog space, I caught myself making rules to apply to how I managed it and quickly decided to thinking of them as guidelines instead. Take, for example, “I’m going to post every day.” That turned into, “I’m going to post every day except on day three, when I’ll embark on a little road trip to see a dear friend and a new library and to kick off a creative collaboration that is, without exaggeration, probably at least (and I’m being conservative) five years in the making.” It was glorious. And it was undoubtedly in the top three things I’ve done for myself this week along with sleep and meditation. But, it also meant that I didn’t get home until 8pm and after eating something and spending a few minutes relaxing, my bedtime alarms started going off. Yes, bedtime alarms. Because I’m not a sleeper, but I am a sleep praiser. It’s a conflicted state, let me tell you. And I had to decide which was the bigger and more important rule: go to bed in time for eight hours of sleep or write every day? As much as I wanted to keep my internal promise to my blog and satisfy my night owl creativity burst, I had to apply the spirit of my blog instead and take the healthier, happier and more beneficial road. Sometimes rules get broken, right? Sometimes you gotta break ’em.
I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s book Better Than Before. It tackles the question, “How can we make good habits and break bad ones?” For starters, she divides everyone into four categories that relate to habits and goal setting, rules and accountability in life then tailors her findings to each of the groups. I’ll talk more on the book later, but take the quiz now and let me know where you fit in.
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#AwesomeAugust is an endeavour I took on after watching my friend Jen post her gratitude throughout #JoyfulJuly. I’ve been sharing my daily pics on my Instagram and Facebook pages, but thought I’d do a round-up here. Since it’s #ThankfulThursday, today seemed like a good time. Here’s week one.
Day 1
Planning should be done on paper. Opening new and fresh calendars is a pure pleasure.
Day 2
I dug these potatoes out of my borrowed garden and felt pretty satisfied with myself.
Also pictured, my grandmother’s serving dish.
Day 3
The aforementioned library that hosted the aforementioned creative tete-a-tete.
Day 4
Cats are so weird. And necessary.
I also have a thing for rescuing plants like these 4/$1 late season tomatoes.
