Buoyed by yesterdays’s success of doing small, I was able to plant 3 more tomato plants with kosy coats. Now there’s 5 in a row. I feel pretty good and proud of myself for the deed. I can give myself another thumbs up. Let’s make it 5 👍👍👍👍👍. It’s not often that I give myself much credit. It’s not often that I’m conscious of what good feels like either. Now I know. It feels good to see the 5 red kosy coats in a row. The tomatoes love it, thriving already inside the warmth.
I love sitting in the sunroom facing the dining room and looking out the living room window. I see the trees framed by the bay window. There’s something about the afternoon sunlight on the green of the leaves that is so pleasing. I sit and savour the feeling goodness of it. I’m waking up and feeling the good vibes. It’s a good place to end the day.
A super grey cool day with drizzles. The drizzles are welcome, no matter how small. They’re much needed moisture. However, the grey and cool are not conducive for cheer and action. I am in a grey slump, not jumping up and down with excitement nor smiling with glee. I am feeling glum and being negative. There is no point in putting on a phony face. I do apologize for my negativity but I thought it is okay to feel not okay and face and accept what is here.
I am not a total ‘loser’ for lack of a better word. Though I feel lackluster, I am not inert. I still have a bit of life force in me. I’ve been reading Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by B.J. Fogg. It lit up a small spark in me on this dreary day. I’m already a fan of doing small and doing easy. This book is a great addition to what I have already learned from Atomic Habits.
Rainy days are good for falling asleep and not so good for for finishing posts/projects or for starting them as you can see. I’ve come back to finish what I started yesterday. This way I can honestly say I’m writing every day. Chocolate cake and a coffee does help to wake me up a bit. Writing on doing small and easy and tiny habits do push me to test out the idea of tiny. A bunch of tinys do add up. They have the potential of becoming something big. On difficult and/or rainy days when tasks look monumentally difficult, taking small bites works better than trying to tackle the whole thing.
It works for me. That is how I am getting through the days of this difficult year. Today, I’ve meditated and wrote my morning pages. Last night’s supper dishes and today’s breakfast dishes were done after breakfast. That’s how I start the morning. It starts me up. Then I cosy up with a cup of tea and some reading. We took my father out for lunch. It gets us all out of the house on a grey rainy day. It’s cheery to eat in a restaurant full of other diners. Dad gets a walk in the mall after. Takes his mind off his shingles. The pain is not too bad. He is on tylenol and can sleep and nap despite the discomfort. I feel I’m doing a good job as a daughter with short time spent.
The afternoon is peaceful. I seed a small pot of broccoli and another of brussels sprouts. They will germinate fairly quickly. Our spring is none too warm yet. I’ve painted my teacup for the #the100dayproject. I’ve bagged up some old clothes for the garbage. Then I’m out in the yard, pulling a few of those darned creeping bell flowers. After all the digging up I did last summer, they are creeping up again. I’m applying doing small and easy on them. I will see where that gets me. I’m going to learn how to live with them wisely. And that is not killing myself trying to obliterate them.
It’s day 8 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and I got day 48 of #the100dayproject under my belt. These challenges are working for me. Putting my commitments in writing and making them visible make me more accountable. It’s strengthing my perseverance muscle. When I feel myself reverting to my old ways or thinking of doing it, something inside gives me pause. In my mind’s eye, I see my written words. And I am saved from falling into the same hole again.
I need not to paint a master piece or write a great piece that will go viral. Something small will do just as well in keeping me moving along. I’ve been going into the greenhouse daily in the mornings. Sometimes I just want to have a look around. Other mornings I plant a few seedlings before the call for breakfast. In a few days a whole bed is planted with snowpeas, spinach, radish and Gai Lan (Chinese broccoli). The overcast sky this morning was perfect for transplanting. The young seedlings will take better without a hot sun.
Pausing works for turning around my bad attitude. I hear my whine and grump. It doesn’t sound so nice. It’s voiced but it doesn’t have to continue. I can stop and say I’ll be better the next time.
Today I’m focusing on creating flow, making good use of my time and not getting bogged down with negative feelings. There’s so much to feel bad about the world but feeling sad and helpless is not going to make it better. On the flip side there’s still alot of good in this world of ours. My energy is better served by thinking about how I can make it better. What can I do? How can I contribute? I’m not a big person. I don’t do big but I can still do something, even if it is small. Sometimes my small is someone else’s big. We don’t all see the same. We don’t all measure by the same yardstick.
I thought I knew that before but I didn’t. I had thought that everyone see and think like me. The real realization only came the other day. I’m more than halfway through The100DayProject. My project is sewing a logcabin quilt block a day for 100 days. I post each block on Instagram. I enjoyed the whole process – sewing the strips and posting. It is very relaxing and satisfying but I thought that my followers would find my blocks boring. After all, they’re all the same except that the strips are of different fabrics and colours. To my surprise, I’m getting alot of good responses. What surprises me the most is the ones that I don’t really think I’ve done well gets a lot of likes.
Take these 3 blocks for instance. I did not think the colours were put together well for the first block on the left. But I got 247 likes for it. I was totally amazed. The other 2 on the right got 29 and 24 likes respectively. I thought they were more soothing to the eye. Beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. But I am straying from my intented post.
I’m feeling a little stuck with this conversation at the moment but my day has flowed somewhat. Success is a little easier than intention and planning. I haven’t quite got my quilt block sewn yet. I’m almost there though. I got my daily walk in the park behind the library and by the Wildwood Golf Course. It was lovely, a little country amid the city. I’ll let the photos tell the story.
It’s good to shake up the day with different activities. It gets my brain out of that sad/mad groove. Being outdoors in nature and with the animals that we share this planet with is much healthier than shopping or stewing about things we can’t change. It soothes my soul and creates flow.
onethousandandtwo 