I’ve lost track of the days. I keep thinking it’s Sunday. One tiny extra 24 hours tacked onto the weekend and it’s mayhem in my mind.
We did some wandering yesterday, went for brunch, visited some loved ones, came home for dinner and watched the fireworks from our balcony. They happen literally right in front of us and we live so high in the sky, that we kind of look down on them. The tallest explosions happen at exactly our height. I regret not getting it together enough to have people over to watch them with us, but I’m not going to let myself get hung up on it.
This month, we have a couple of family birthdays and many friendly gatherings to look forward to. There’s a lot of lacrosse left to watch and the gardens are just getting ready to be harvested. At this time of the summer there is so much to look forward to – the canvas is blank and we can decide now how we want to paint it.
THINGS WE’LL DO THIS MONTH: July 2018
Goal setting is fun. It’s great motivation to sit down and hash out the things we want to do and fantasize about the roads that will take us there. When we talk about goals, we talk about money and career and real estate and competition, but we rarely talk about good, old-fashioned leisure. What I’ve found is that having some fun and light-hearted goals is a nice way to interrupt the monotony and drudgery of obligation. Month to month, I will publish a list of things I would like to do during the month ahead. Of course, this list doesn’t take the place of all of my standard goals related to health, wellness, money and spirituality, but I reserve the right to, in some cases, blur the lines.
Next month, it’ll be two years since I started this exercises. Two years and maaaaaaaaaaybe ten instances of follow through. What are you going to do? We’ve already covered my allergy to routine and, hey, I’m working on it.
- Jaunty July. I chose jaunty as my July descriptor because I thought it felt fun and carefree and that is what I want this month (and, let’s be honest, any month) to be. When I double checked to make sure it wasn’t just a word I made up, I found, “having or expressing a lively, cheerful, and self-confident manner.” Uh, hell to the YES. I want July to be jaunty. And that is, in itself, a goal. We’ve been weighed down by a lot of obligations over the past couple of months, in that way that there are so many obligations that every little thing starts to feel like another one. We have to shake that off.
- Dietary experimentation. I feel like this is a constant state for me, but, hey, I like to try new things. I’ve been a little bit fascinated with Ketogenic principles lately, though it seems a bit complicated to mesh my preferences (high produce, low animal product) with full keto. I know it’s possible, but I’ve been too lazy to work out the details. In the past week, the Bulletproof model (similar, but different) has been intriguing me more (and not only just because I tried this fudge brownie bar at the Seattle RnR expo and it was OUT OF THIS WORLD. but a little.) and this weekend I decided that starting with Bulletproof Coffee and expanding from there seemed doable. I like the Bulletproof emphasis on feeling (better, healthier, smarter) without the focus being on looking any particular way. There’s still the challenge of making it work with my lifestyle, but I’m willing to explore that.
- Morning routine. I didn’t know whether to call this a sleep experiment or a morning experiment. Since the real goal is the morning side of things, that came out on top, but really this is a two-parter. My vision has me in bed by 9pm every night ideally. I have some commitments that will get in the way of that, but such is life. My plan is that I will be awake by 6am every morning. As much as I sometimes hate it, I’ve learned enough about myself over all these years to know that if I want to get things done, it needs to happen early in the morning. Running, meditating, writing, journaling, prayer, yoga. All of that needs to happen before I get my day underway. I do it for the quality of the practice of all those things, but I also do it because it’s a way better way to start off the day, too!
- Go to Ladner Market. Because it is the mother of all farmer’s markets.
- Can something. I recently pickled the garlic scapes that a friend and I pulled out of our gardens. It reminded me how much I enjoy the process.
- Go berry picking. May or may not be related to the activity above.
- Be beside the water. Whether it’s a lake or a river or the ocean, I’m being called to the waterside.
- Tarot for the Wild Soul – July Tarot Challenge. I started this yesterday and it isn’t too late if you’re interested, too. Basically, there is an intention for a daily draw every day of the month and people are sharing theirs #tftwstarotchallenge. I already posted yesterday’s card, but here’s today’s:
The Six of Cups speaks to nostalgia and looking back at the past. It can symbolize memories and it can also represent renewal. It is joyful and relates to friendship, love and pleasure. To me it is correcting new habits and the return to old processes and though patterns which relates very closely to what I was leaping into yesterday: change, transition, intuition, emotion. I saw this on a Buddhibox Instagram post this morning and it felt like it was speaking to me. ????????
What are the things that you’ll do this month? Is there something that you feel like you’re ready to manifest?
