by Kat | Sep 29, 2020 | General, Words
I am joining Honoré again this month to share an update on my word.
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher
September was such a hard month. And that sentence is such a damned understatement, but I honestly have no words for how hard it was for me – even with a weekend away!
I thought that I was a pretty good manager of stress… oh boy. September showed me how I am managing nothing, and it is managing me, and it has been all along, if I am being completely honest with myself. Maybe I was just better at ignoring it.
One would think that 8 months into this insanity, I would be used to the mind-numbing sameness of the days. However, the reality is that 8 months in to this pandemic the “fake it till you make it” well has finally run dry. Instead September woke me to the malady known as cabin fever. Foolishly, I would have sworn I had experienced it before being snowed in a time or two, but no… being snowed in for a day or two, or maybe even a week ain’t got nothin’ on Pandemic Cabin Fever.
The things I can choose these days are not the things I want to choose, that is for damned sure! And so in September I chose to be absent from lots of things. Which, in light of my very bad attitude, is probably the smartest decision I made all month.
I would love to share with you that while I wallowed in the Sea of Self-Pity that I had some epiphanal moments resulting in a dramatic change of attitude. Nope, but what I did learn was that it was okay to not feel good. To not feel happy.
And that is okay.
You can see all of my Intentional Journey here.
by Kat | Aug 25, 2020 | General, Words
I am joining Honoré and friends again this month to share an update on my word.
Let’s start with my guiding quote, one that has served me well each and every day!
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher
Eight months in and I am *finally* starting to see intention in a very different way. A way that I might never even considered in “normal living” times. I have stopped fighting with my word. I am no longer wishing for a different word. I am no longer feeling like intention is beating me down but rather, it feels like I have made peace with my word, it is lifting me up, and I have opened myself to learn where I can go with it.
So how’d all that happen?
Well, for starters…the overwhelming lack of “normal living.” No normal living chaos or over-packed lists. The daily idea that more is so much better has really no space in Pandemic Times. And with it goes all the “more” things. More wardrobe. More shopping. More sewing. More knitting. More. More. More. More. and yes, even more more.
But in Pandemic Times, I have found that more has an entirely different meaning. As in…
Yes, absolutely more texts/phone calls/FaceTime with family, but my days have also been…More thoughtful. More creative. More realistic.
And included…More quiet. More reflection. More decluttering. And more less of so many things. And not missing any of them!
More intentional!
I think that is the biggest thing that struck me this month. All those things from lists, the feeling of never doing enough, the need to be more, to go more…are all entirely unnecessary to intentional daily living and they did not fill me in a meaningful way, they just made me feel busy. I am laughing at myself at all the things I signed up for so I could “do less” which, in reality, just meant more things on a list… yep, I have let them all go. And it has been so freeing!
Learning to let go of all the noise has been a learning process, but eight months in I feel like I am finally getting it!
You can see all of my Intentional Journey here.
by Kat | Jul 28, 2020 | General, Words
I am joining Honoré and friends again this month to share an update on my word.
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher
I am discovering that living intentionally in Coronavirus Times can be more steps backwards than forward. July was one of those months. In a very big way.
There were so many steps back (I shared a bit here) and it felt a bit like a month of failure. But as I look back and contemplate, perhaps that is not one hundred percent true. I found that my day was a bit like filling buckets… time spent filling my meditation bucket, time spent reading, time spent knitting, and the largest bucket of all… my garden where I spent oodles of hours watering, picking, and tending…in the 900 gazillion degree weather. My garden truly needed my attention and it was an excellent diversion.
But I also intentionally ignored many things…the internet and my PC topped that list. I learned that living with intention means stepping back from things that are not good for you…finding a new rhythm and breaking the cycle that was fueling my stress. All that was surprisingly easy, which is shocking to me – who knew I was so good at avoidance! Haha! I think August will be another month to avoid those things that are stress-inducing.
No big “ah-ha” moments, but a series of small “oh!” moments worked for me!
You can see all of my Intentional Journey here.
by Kat | Jun 30, 2020 | General, Words
I am joining Honoré again this month to share an update on my word!
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher
Six months in and I finally got it!
What intentional living is. What is should be. What it feels like.
And it is incredible!!
News Flash: I have been living such an unintentional life!!
Aimless (yes, maybe focused aimlessness…but still so aimless!) I am sad that it took almost four months of at-home-quarantine to figure it out. (but I am not sure I would have been able to any other way…)
I started out the year with an entirely different journey in my mind for this word. Haha! Well, it sure showed me!
So what changed? I finally gave up trying to pick the path and let the word show me where I needed to be. I stopped fighting it and gave myself over to it.
Here is what this month revealed to me:
Time in meditation is the best time I can give myself. And meditation paired with some time listening and a bit of writing sets the best tone for the day. (Listening, you ask? Yes… listening. Some days it is poetry, some days it is nature, and some days it is listening for a still small voice.) I have done some form of mediation regularly for a very long time, but this quarantine has helped me hone my meditation skills… or maybe it is that there is less on my “shopping list” (see below) and that has helped remove the noise and just be immersed in the meditation time.
Time mindlessly shopping was such a colossal waste. We have been grocery shopping once every 4-ish weeks…and you know what? We have not run out of things…once. I have not done any “clothing shopping” at all this year and have not died and my wardrobe is not lacking (see Me Made May for proof of that!) No aimless wandering in a store buying things out of boredom.
This month I’ve gone to bed earlier and I am sleeping better and waking up easier! (Most nights that is… sometimes the news just can’t be avoided and then queue the tossing and turning with a dose of worry)
I am giving up trying to control.all.the.things! (it’s a work in progress…) And as a result, I have started to stop worrying about those things. (okay, maybe not entirely…but I am working on it…see above, lol)
Now, here we are on the last day of June and I am excited to see what Intentional Living will look like in July.
You can see my Intentional Journey here.
by Kat | May 26, 2020 | General, Words
I am joining Honoré today and sharing my Little Word update for the month!
Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen Hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is. — Mary Anne Radmacher
I am positive that this was not the word I should have picked for 2020 because here we are closing out May, and my struggle with intention continues. This was absolutely not what I ever imagined when I settled in with a word for 2020 late last year.
Words like uncertainty, circumspect, and home-body seem like they might have been better word choices, but I am not a quitter – so onward with intention!
But Mary Anne Radmacher’s quote still beckons and this month Choose with no regret has become my daily mantra. And sometimes I was even successful!
- All month long as areas began to “open up” I confidently elected to stay home.
- We have a Primary Election next week so I applied for a mail in ballot… and sent it in.
- I trimmed my hair.
- I have not yet given myself a pedicure, but I have been using this delightful scrub regularly accompanied by a foot massage!
- I wrote more, thought more, and read more.
- I had long (and frequent) conversations with my kids…perhaps talking longer than we would in person!
- I spent time knitting (of course) and practicing my meager crochet skills.
- I wrote down little bits of gratitude every day, even when it was hard.
- I also found myself back in the circle of grief, visiting stages I thought I was done with.
Choose with no regret was absolutely what I needed this month.
You can see my Intentional Journey here.
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