Huge thanks to those of you who have written or checked in after my last post – Part 1 of Annie 2.o! Especially because I occasionally wonder if anyone’s reading my sometimes crazy, sometimes silly, sometimes serious, musings. I know this self reflection is a necessary part of the game right now and I am quite enjoying parts of it, but I do find it difficult to look inward when so much is going on outwardly all around us. My hope is that by doing this work, though, I’ll be able to allow my light to shine brighter and in joy, and in turn, hopefully bring a little more joy into other’s lives.
In the meantime, have you ever asked a retiree how they spend their days? The answer is never “oh, just sitting around, twiddling my thumbs”. It’s so true how you can completely fill your days even when you’re not working F/T. Hours pass quickly and some days I go to bed feeling incredibly productive, others not as much. I would really like to be better about getting a schedule and routine down though as I’m one that definitely likes structure. But honestly, this entire past year, I’ve found there are not enough hours in a day to get done everything I want to do or get done!
So for anyone curious as to how I’m currently spending my days now that they’re not spent sleeping, binging Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or self medicating with every sweet I could get my hands on. In no particular order:
- starting each day with meditation, sometimes guided, sometimes not, and ending each day with a short guided on via my Daily Calm app (highly recommend if you’re looking for a meditation app, also 10% Happier) and learning to breathe…like really, breathe
- walking or biking around our neighborhood and picturesque lake
- strength training (currently at home, but who knows in the future. Sorry, honey, it won’t be Crossfit, though.)
- juggling multiple podcasts (some favorites: The Lively Show, 10% Happier (yup, it’s a podcast, app and a book – all are fantastic in their own ways), Young House Love, How I Built This, Hidden Brain, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me
- writing, writing and more writing (journal, stories, essays, ideas/plans/lists, love notes, and even a few blog posts here and there)
- re-writing and re-writing said blog posts, stories and essays
- reading, reading and more reading (some faves: 10% Happier, The Bright Hour, What Alice Forgot, The Girl Before, How to Be a Badass, In the Company of Women, Dangerous Boobies (not really a huge fave, but informative and somewhat comforting none the less), Bird by Bird
- practicing calligraphy (was finally able to pick it back up again late last Fall after finally starting to get my hands back to their original, non-medicated shakiness)
- trying to be gentle with myself as I work through, somewhat unexpected, emotions of my surgery, mid-life career change, etc. (see writing above)
- various online classes & career quizzes (some educational, some fun and even some celestial – oooooh! Who wants to hear more about that one?)
- trying valiantly to hone my baking skills in this enemy-to-cake high altitude (at least B’s not complaining too much about being my go-to guinea pig)
- housewifing (we really need to come with a better term than the super dowdy “housewife” though, don’t we America? But I actually enjoy cleaning, laundry, cooking, said baking, yard work, etc., for the most part and it’s so nice to be able to not have to spend our (now) free weekends on things like that since it’s now the only time B and I really get to spend together now and we’d much rather go to a movie, brewery or on a little road trip exploring our beautiful state
- redecorating/redesigning/painting (and sometimes repainting!) several rooms of our new place and spending way too much time on Pinterest doing “research”
- errands (how do people working F/T get so much of this done, especially ones that have to be done during the 9-5 timeframe!?!)
- investigating and researching some potential jobs/career paths that interest me
- volunteering and getting more involved in our community (which I’d like to do much more of in 2018)
- already thinking about next years holiday card 😉 (B wishes I was kidding)
- redesigning Holland Photo Arts website to focus on our travel/adventure photography (hopefully including making it easier to purchase prints, too)
- planning a certain somebody’s half-century(!?!) birthday celebration in our favorite city in the world
- grabbing lunch and coffee with friends – so nice being able to reconnect after hibernating (ie. recovering) for so much of 2017
Things still on my To Do list:
- go through the boxes and boxes of my Mom’s of collectibles, photos, scrapbooks and letters (a bit of a hoarder, but thankfully not quite to the level of a certain reality tv show)
- go through the boxes upon boxes of Holland Photo Arts clients files going all the way back to 2002! (also a bit of a hoarder, see above)
- pulling together, organizing our personal photos and making back year albums/photo books
- converting a 5 lb binder carrier of paper recipes to digital
- tryout the many various forms of yoga and choose a local studio
- research career counselors and get that LinkedIn profile up to date (pretty much want to work on anything but this one)
- our wedding album – yup, the wedding photographers never did a wedding album! We have all the 4×6 proofs though so it always felt too time consuming since the negatives are not yet digitized, etc. and of course, clients’ albums always came first
Oh, wow, the things still on the yet to do list sound like so much fun for the most part, don’t they?? Can’t imagine why I’ve been putting those off. Ha! Actually, FINALLY doing our wedding album is uber exciting so I’m looking forward to that and have already gotten started on getting all the negatives scanned.
Making that list, though, I can now see that it’s been quite a lot. I guess since I don’t feel like I’m working on any ONE thing 80% of the time, it feels like I’m just spinning my wheels sometimes, but I shouldn’t minimize my contributions. I do know that a more fulfilling purpose awaits me just around the corner, though.
Since the start of the new year, I’ve seen a couple different people reframe “resolutions” to “intentions” and I think I quite like that. So I’m sharing a few of my intentions for 2018 with you in order to hold myself accountable, as well as perhaps, inspire others to copy one or more of them as some of mine are somewhat cribbed, too. In no particular order they are:
- I intend to take a breath every time a negative thought about my body and instead remind myself that everything I’ve put it through from surgeries to exercise, I’ve done to maintain or better my health and increase my chances of living a long, healthy life. I intend to remember that I’m grateful for it all that it’s taught me and especially that it houses a beautiful, breathing heart.
- I intend to maintain a more positive attitude and find the joy in the little moments of each day.
- I intend to be completely honest with myself and with others where warranted.
- I intend to increase my meditation practice, apply more mindfulness to everything I do (like driving, eating, exercising, etc.) and to be fully present instead of always thinking about the past or the future.
- I intend to listen to my intuition more and work towards finding perfect alignment with my heart, body and soul 99% of the time.
- I intend to get outside everyday to commune with nature and other human beings. (Being an introvert and working at home, it’s way too easy for me to never leave the house some days. Callie is quiet and usually good company most days, though.)
- I intend to ignore my harsh inner critic more and recognize that I’m doing my best more often than not.
- I intend to take long walks on the beach with my dog. (Just wanted to see if you were still with me. Hee hee!)
So, enough about me if you’d like to share, what are some of your intentions for 2018?
We had so much fun doing our 2017 card! HUGE shout out to Dani at Rock, Paper, Scissors who truly gets us. Okay, truly gets me. But seriously, love them and how they’re always able to take our crazy vision and Tim Gunn it!
