Listening:

Today I experimented with making charcoal bread rolls (inspired by this

Quatre Saisons Au Jardin

Tartine de pain au charbon scandinave - Quatre Saisons Au Jardin

Aujourd'hui nous rendons visite à Pierre Ragot de la Maison Saint Honoré. Pour le déjeuner, ce sera une tartine de pain au charbon végétal.

They were not unsuccessful and I tried one topped with avocado and salmon.. which was not bad.. but it turns out that my stomach resented having its toxins removed (the hypothetical impact of eating activated charcoal-infused foods). 😝

Mood music

Day 25 Take some deep breaths. I need to reset and add all my hacks back into my day. With everything going on, I lost the flow and my stack of habits fell apart. Time to put it back together. In the meantime, I suspect that I am cheating myself of oxygen.. and deep breathing would do a world of good and bring a way to be more aware of how I am breathing (or not) through my day.

Day 24/60 of self-care Make room for the campy or cheesy. I think it’s easy to be weighed down by the heaviness of a day or week and sometimes, good feelings seem indulgent or hard to access or allow. I think there is real value in the ridiculous and it can bring about real happiness and warmth when it’s hard to get there naturally. My brother has recently been diagnosed with cancer and it is bordering on metastatic. That comes with a range of hard possible futures and stirs up a lot of heavy emotions and sometimes my sources of emotional support have not been accessible. Buying silly Christmas pajamas today (and matching them with my dog) was cliche and cheesy but I found it helped me access a feeling of warmth and comfort I couldn’t find organically. A sort of “fake it til you make it” holiday hug.

Day 23/60 of self care / hacks I think today is a good day to think about adding some grace and mercy as a hack. Sometimes we make mistakes, we say the wrong thing, we provide a suboptimal or even regrettable reaction.. and many of us tend to be much harder on ourselves than others would be or than anyone else would even find reasonable. But, we are human animals and not machines. And while I believe in accountability, sometimes we also just need to give ourself grace and mercy for mistakes and imperfections and lessons learned the hard way. Or just being human animals with human emotions.

Day 22/60 of self care I’m waiting for someone to post a 5 minute morning mobility routine today and that’s going to be the add for today. I wasn’t sure what the hack would be but I’m feeling stiff from too much sitting and then stumbled across a post. Algorithmically stumbled.. it’s often worthless but on occasion, it’s not wrong.

Day 21/60 of self-care Towards the end of my morning walk, identify the 1-3 top priorities for the day. I like to start the first walk off in a quiet headspace but by the end, my brain is waking up and I am transitioning into a more active “feed the dog, coffee the human, get organized for work” mode. This add on would fit in well and it would probably make the logging on to work transition more smooth (or give it a little more momentum). Plus, as a kid I used to listen to my dad and grandfather plan their farm tasks for the day over breakfast. There’s something that feels very cozy to me about making a morning strategy based on what the conditions of the day are (although really, it’d be nice to be sharing my plan with someone). Lately I’ve been thinking about what gives someone a sense of continuity when they navigate changes. For some it can be objects or ties to physical places or performing cultural activities or spiritual rituals or.. well.. so many things. But it’s on my mind.

Another “making stuff out of mistakes” dabble.

Day 20/60 of self care Today’s hack is to allow room for controlled chaos. Maybe this is just an excuse for not having a better hack (or feeling like I can’t keep up with the ideas for hacks I’ve already thrown out), but I think magic happens for me when I don’t try. I have a good friend from childhood that excels at refining her techniques and processes and she’s the embodiment of the idea of mastery. Although I envy that, I don’t thrive that way. I do need to always work at developing skills but the magic seems to happen for me when I seed a lot of possibilities and then let go and see what happens. Today, I attempted to learn a gel printing / transfer technique. I thought I’d use it to make some art prints for gifts. My attempts failed (miserably and often) but when I looked at what was left behind, and all the things strewn around, I thought I sensed something that could be transformed into an art piece and the result was something I was delighted with. My good friend would tell you that this sort of loose intuitive flowiness is where my strength lies. I am adaptive. And it’s perhaps a quality I am not utilizing fully lately. I’ll share some autumn trees.. not the piece I was talking about but another little happy byproduct of today’s failures

Day 19/60 of self care I’ve been in a learning rut for a while (too long) and feel frustrated by this. I don’t like myself as much when I go through these periods. I read various random things and pick at thought threads but nothing sticks. In the past, a learning phase is almost being obsessive about a subject. It often lasts more than a year but less than three years. I was thinking that maybe I should try bullet pointing topics that bubble up each day and see what comes up repeatedly (for the next 40 days or so) and then transition (after this self care journey) to reading 5 pages a day on that thing. Or maybe there’s other alternatives folks recommend? I kinda want to be obsessed with a subject again

Day 18/60 of self care Building in a reflective pause. I’ve added a lot of things to this list and realistically, I am probably not going to be able to sustain 60 new daily hacks. It seems like after 60 days, picking and choosing from among these hacks and narrowing it down will be necessary. One thing that used to be in an old morning routine that is currently missing is prayer. I’m not sure if that will get added back yet (it may), but in the interim, putting a reflective pause in my morning sequence seems useful. So today’s hack is to add a reflective pause in the morning sequence. Having so much routine seems, perhaps, rigid.. but it has brought a lot of functionality to my life. One of the things I pieced together during the pandemic (when things ground to a halt) was that I probably have an inattentive flavor of adhd, which commonly went overlooked in my generation (and among women). I used to excel at challenging tasks and fail at easy ones, do all my hard homework and forget to turn anything in, routinely misplace and lose keys, phones.. anything essential. I’ve been given really great hard projects and excelled but had a lot of frustration completing really simple things. And some of the most hurtful things said to me during my first marriage could be equated to someone interpreting inattentiveness to a lack of capability or caring or to an outright moral failure. Sometimes I still feel a sense of shame around things that are much less present and observable. So now, loose routines help me take some things I am inattentive with and stack them into a habit so that I don’t have to be very attentive to have them happen. These are anchored around the walks I take my dog on.. and she’s very good about seizing attention at the appropriate time if we don’t go 😂 . I also don’t put super rigid expectations around routines so when they fail, I rebuild them. Anyway.. the fun stuff today was working on my indoor garden, making and planning holiday crafts and watching part of my favorite holiday Netflix series. And it was absolutely gorgeous out. Heavenly. What routines improve the quality of your life? How did they come about? What are they centered around?

Day 17/60 of self care Feeling quite a bit better today but still tired. Very glad for the weekend and some sleep. I’m still on a cooking kick.. I some protein apple muffins by adding protein powder, more apples and spices to a mix I had. It’s still a bit underwhelming but better than what I started with. I thought might have to take a rain check on adding to the list of hacks... but maybe today’s could just be to identify one thing to repair, restore, repurpose or reuse from what you already have. Being resourceful and not wasting what I have is also a form of self care and honors my resources.

Day 16/60 of self care The brewing sniffles erupted into a full fledged storm so I am giving in and downing some Theraflu. I minimize how often I take convenience remedies but I’m feeling pretty physically terrible today. My horoscope said to expect a spicy weekend but I think the only thing likely to be spicy (unless something radically changes) is this tomato soup. The practice for today is, accordingly, making sure that every day has at least one intentional moment of focus on making or eating nutritious and wholesome foods. I don’t eat a ton of junk but I also can sometimes just be erratic about what gets thrown together. I made this soup from scratch in the crockpot with lots of spices and 3 tomatoes, 1 red pepper (roasted) and one onion (roasted) that were stragglers in the fridge, so it was also a good (accidental) preventative of waste. At the finish, I experimented with adding cream to half and both versions were very satisfying. What nutritious inputs does your physical self crave today? Stay well 💕

Day 15/60 Perhaps this is not the most refined suggestion, but intentionally do one small act of creating everyday, whether it’s improvising a recipe or doodling or doing something more formal. The practice is just to do something creative. Today I worked on some homemade ornaments for a small tree I hope to get next week. And improvised a batch of cranberry sauce that used up the orange marmalade and rosemary simple syrup in the fridge. It was apparently National Clean Out Your Fridge Day so I tried to at least eliminate some easy things. I’m hoping to support the return of my creative brain, which was on a hiatus for a while. I’d love to see studious nerd energy come back into my life also but so far, no dice. I did go down a rabbit hole reading about lysosomes yesterday and my brother suggested I might enjoy looking at some radio astronomy links. But generally, I’m still stuck in that facet of life… not quite able to focus on learning. What are you creating these days? What ideas are grabbing your attention?

Day 14/60 I seem to have been about one time zone off with my mental framework of where people were in relation to me today 😂 My poor mom just got a call from me way past her bedtime and I feel bad for worrying her (oof)… and now I realize that’s probably been going on all day. Oops 😬 I suppose that’s a weird side effect of last week’s travel. Today’s practice is to think about one thing given and one thing received at the end of each day. Not a formal journal practice but just a mental note. While I read about it in a self help / relationship article, it seems like it would be a good way to work on being more of aware of how I am connected to others. I was pretty isolated at times during the pandemic. I notice that post-pandemic, possibly as a result, it’s very easy for me to slip into feelings of isolation, even when that’s not really true. I’d like to work on rewiring my brain a little bit.

Day 13 of self care. Today I stumbled on a bunch of different hacks, so I had to think a bit. For example, I threw out the hack that involves dunking my head in a bowl of ice water. I am sure it is energizing and I am also pretty sure that I wouldn’t do it more than once. So… with that in mind, I am going to try to do 10 squats or lunges a day. Nothing major or complicated. Tomorrow I should revisit my list of 13 and make sure I am being faithful to it. Not much else to philosophize about tonight. The romantic in me has this song on repeat -

Spotify

I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) - Recorded at Electric Lady Studios

Father John Misty · Live at Electric Lady · Song · 2022

So what can I do to work on myself and my stuff, in a move to reverse engineer that outcome, if I want it?

Days 11 and 12 of self-care. For Day 11, I decided to add “say no to at least one thing “ as a daily habit. There are a lot of low value things that beg for attention and sometimes there are worthwhile things we just don’t have capacity for. I want to make saying no a more intentional practice (so I can say yes more intentionally as a result). Yesterday, I said no to several things, one of which was posting here (because I was busy and bone tired) For Day 12, I would like to add “do one small act to “date” yourself”. I like to do little things to express my affection for a partner when I have one, which actually sometimes people have not been appreciated. Since I am not partnered (and perhaps, even in the future when I am again), there seems to be a lot of value in redirecting some of that energy to myself. Today, I went on a date with myself to a beautiful garden. Some days, it might be something small like a love note (or affirmation) or drawing a heart in my milk foam on my coffee. What are other small gestures you do for others that you can do to express love to yourself?

Day 10/60 of self care Add a daily purge. Maybe this is partly because of my current task trying to clean out an old storage unit, but I think consciously purging something every day would be a good practice— whether that be tangible (like shredding old bills, selling old junk, etc) or emotional (chucking outdated beliefs), I feel like having a habit that prevents things from lingering might be helpful and healthy.

Day 9/60 of self care Today is a travel day which means the routine stuff is more difficult to work in.. but it is still being worked in. To add to it, though, I’m going with something small.. a tiny hack I saw on instagram for how to release tension from the scalene muscles in your neck. I’ve realized recently that one of the places where I am stuck has to do with letting new folks into my life. I had some experiences a few years back which really played with my sense of comfort and trust in engaging with someone I don’t have any shared connections or context with. I have come to realize that I no longer want to meet folks without some shared connection (work, friends, well known acquaintances of someone I know) In this day and age where the default ways we often meet involve no shared context, that poses a lot of challenge for me. I don’t want to change my boundary around this but how do folks gain comfort with new connections (in the “you are who you say you are”, “someone I know vouched for you” sort of way?)