FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time. — Andrew Yang

This month, Carolyn encouraged us to have fun…and I spent a good bit of time thinking about how to work fun into my word…release.

So I started by filling in my clouds with what filled my day… things I liked and things I struggled with…

Then I gave things stars that improved my day… and the starless clouds all seemed to have the same recurring theme… FOMO.

And while not all the things that got starred are “fun”… they are absolutely necessary which inspired me to contemplate how to insert fun into the mundane daily tasks of housework and cooking… no solution yet…but I am thinking about it!

I did find some “quick and easy” (?) solutions this month and I am happy to report that those changes brought success… or at least started me on a path to solving the problem!

News Fix: I have found that listening to NPR’s Up First six mornings a week is MORE than enough news for me for any given day. I did not die by not checking news at ten am, or at noon, or at 5 pm…who knew! lol Steve consumes more news than I do and in July and if something earth shattering happened, he told me. (okay… he also told me news that was not earth shattering as well… but those tidbits provided some humorous topics for dinner conversation!)

IG/Twitter Doom-scrolling: I had fallen back into the “boredom trap” of doom-scrolling Twitter and IG… I am telling you this is a hard habit to break! I tried a different approach as July progressed…I stopped “carrying my phone” with me, but rather I am leaving it sit either on the kitchen counter or the dining room table. This way I have to physically get up to do any doom-scrolling and that is helping tremendously. Full disclosure… I do wear an Apple Watch so I am not entirely “disconnected” but so far, this seems to be working well for me.

Blog Reading/Writing/Email Hell…which often leads to Endless Internet Surfing: I set a timer on my phone when I sit down at the PC in the morning… the amount of time is still in flux…but, when the timer goes off… so does the pc… and I have not died. At.All. I am still working on a way to make blog writing feel fresh and still seeking solutions to that sticky topic. Sigh. Despite that huge hurdle…the timer has helped me see clearly just how much mail I do not need to read… look at… contemplate… etc. so I have begun “unsubscribing” to a plethora of things and it feels amazingly good!

Reading: Finally… reading, which only got a half a star (while reading for myself always, always gets at least one star!!) My big hurdle this summer… book bingo, and it pains me to say that. It seemed to me that I spent more time “reworking” squares to fit what I was reading versus picking a book to fit a square. I have one book to finish for a cover all and that feels like the biggest relief ever. It was an important lesson in how I should listen to that small, quiet voice instead of allowing that shouting FOMO voice to drown me out.

And there you have release for July…

I want to thank Carolyn for hosting us and for all her work on putting together things to make me think in new ways.

See you all back here on Wednesday for some Unraveling!

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