Tag Archives: focus

Reboot, Restart

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Photo by Renee B on Pexels.com

A grey drizzling kind of morning. Grateful to have a few of these days lately. Not alot of rainfall but all our water catchments are full. These mornings this spring/summer have been strange. They are still dark at 5/6 am whereas in normal times, I’m awaken by the sunlight already. It is what we have now. There is nothing to do but to carry on.

I made a tour of the greenhouse and garden while waiting for breakfast. The greenhouse is not exactly thriving. No crazy vines climbing to the roof yet. The snowpeas and lettuce were big performers in early spring. The lettuce have been removed for other things. The snowpeas are still performing but the leaves are turning colour. Don’t know whether it is their time or because of aphids. They’ve been causing trouble especially with the peppers and bitter melon. The peppers have made a slow recovery in the raised bed outside. I’m not so sure if I will get any bitter melons this year even though I’ve started and planted new ones. Time will tell.

I’m trying to make small changes in my morning routine to give myself a boost. I’ve stopped writing morning pages. They were not helping. I was focusing too much on my feelings and symptons. I was making deeper ruts to sink in. I see no harm in playing Spelling Bee and Wordle. They are relaxing and maybe exercising my brain a little. I have not been too successful with my goals for June. Not making a regular show on my keyboard might have something to do with it.

Some days are hard and I lose focus. Life is busy. There’s work everywhere. Sometimes I get overwhelmed. I tell myself it’s ok to stop and just hunker down. I just have to remember to push the RESTART button again and again. I’m still on top of the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge. I didn’t get very far reading War and Peace but I can get back to it – later.

IN THE WORLD, OF THE WORLD

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So it is -34℃, feeling like -42℃ with the wind chill. I’m pretty warm and snug. It’s the supper hour. I’m just starting to tackle day 13 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’m thinking it could be a struggle but Mary Oliver’s words are inspiring me . I’m starting right away. I am in the world. I am of the world. I belong.

In this moment, I’m finding life very sweet. There’s so many interesting things to learn, so many things to do, so many souls to know and befriend. I have to get right on it. I don’t have a moment to spare. I have to be like Keats – to be of purpose and focus.

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.
— Mary Oliver, Blue Horses

FOCUS – ATOMIC HABITS

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The sun has finally risen, lighting up my world. I’m happy to see it. I’m feeling my moody blues coming on. I’m treading carefully, not making any quick decisions or moves. I was thinking of thinning more out of my closets and drawers. I nixed the idea and to wait for a better time. Not having anything of urgency on my to do list today, I feel it’s ok to just wallow in whatever it is here for me now. I can just relax into my mood.

It is the perfect morning to have another cup of tea and finish watching an episode of Lewis on Prime Video. It did help to ease my moody mind. I’m ok with feeling what I am feeling. I’m focused enough now to sit here and tap out a few words and thoughts. I’m wearing a jacket I was gathering for the goodwill bin. I tried it on, discovered it still fits and match what I am wearing. Looks pretty good, doesn’t it? It is keeper. I will throw out something else in its stead.

I am not so full of vim and vinegar today. I am relying on good habits to help me along. It’s a good thing I’m reading Atomic Habits at the moment. It contains many good ideas and motivates me in moments like today. It’s like that light in the tunnel that keeps beckoning me forward.

The plantar fasciitis in my left foot is better today. I dare not feel too gleeful. I am tempted to head out for a walk around the block. The sun beckons.

UBC Day 19 & 20 – Focus – Note to Self

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The words for today’s post are focus and note to self. They are prompts from the Daisy Yellow Index Card a Day Challenge. They are very appropriate words for me to work on. My mind and brain are totally out of focus. I have no sense of direction, planning. I live by the seat of my pants. I get lost every day. I still get by very well because I am a highly functional disfunctional person.

I’m living up to my own self analysis. It is July 21 and I am still working on finishing this post from yesterday. It is not that I am a lazy person, though I have lazy moments. When I don’t have a plan or outline for a post, things don’t always flow and I stutter and hiccough. Rather than sitting stuck, I get up and tend to other things. The other thing that came along was 4 pails of peas crying to be shelled. That took up a whole afternoon. By the end, my fingers were stiff and sore. AND it was time to make supper. I think these are good reasons to get sidetracked.

After supper I am too tired to take up the keyboard. Sometimes I have to choose my battles and decide what is more important. I chose some relaxation but made a note to myself to finish this post today, blanch and freeze the shelled peas and go to my exercise class. I am happy to say now that I have succeeded in all three. I am a happy camper.

SEEK AND YOU SHALL FIND

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January 11, day 11 of the Ultimate Blog challenge. I wonder how I am going to write this post. I feel as if I can’t even work myself out of a wet paper bag. I did go for my ski, though I can’t remember how I got there and back. It wasn’t a great outing. I had a fall trying to sly down the slope. My legs and butt got a head start. I forgot to bring the rest along. Down I went! I haven’t fallen much at all this year. It was hard to get up. I’ve forgotten how without practice. I ended up taking one ski off. Practice does make for better.

So here I sit, fingers on the keyboard. My desk is crowded and full of paper clutter again. It adds to my can’t-get-out-of-wet-paper-bag feeling. At least I am at peace with it at this moment. I was not so this morning, digging through the piles and boxes for art supplies. They are not in one place but scattered here, there and everywhere. My head was in a spin. I want to throw up my hands and give up, but the Introduction to Watercolours is starting Saturday. I need to focus and see if I have all the material on the check list.

If I hadn’t chosen the word FOCUS for my year, I probably wouldn’t have stayed with the hunt. I probably would have left it till the night before and then get into a frantic mad search. I felt frenzied but I don’t think I was frantic. I slowed down, went up and down the stairs a few times, pulling out various drawers. I found things I’ve forgotten I bought. I found art that I have forgotten I made. I have a lot of supplies. I made a lot of art. Parts of my forgotten self stared back at me. They made me feel good.

Life is messy. I am messy. I’ve gathered up my material. I am short of just one or two things. I’ve got it under control. This is no time for me to be Wonder Woman and whip all my clutter in shape. I feel like a wet noodle. It is sagging time. I can just let it all hang out. Tomorrow is another day. Tomorrow I can regroup, refocus and get back into the track.

STOP, LOOK, SEE, ANALYZE

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January 9 and day 9 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. Today I gave into my fatigue and gave myself a break from my ski in the park. I don’t do it often. I am rather obsessive that way, staying on the track, not missing any days. But enough is enough. Sometimes it is good and necessary to step off the merry-go-round, look and reassess. It is the rightful thing to do. I need a rest, some TLC.

Funny how the Universe knows what I need. While I was drawing hot water for a nice long soak, I rediscovered Cheryl Richardson’s audio book The Art of Extreme Self-Care. It’s telling me something. I didn’t have to look far to find it. It’s right on my iPhone. It also reminds me that I already have many resources. I don’t need to search for more. What I need to do is to USE them. I have good reasons to choose FOCUS as my word of the year.

January 10, day 10 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. I lost my focus or rather I saw what was more important. I needed a break/rest more than to finish my post yesterday. I’m feeling more rested physically. I am not so sure about mentally. We watched the movie, Bird Box (2018) starring Sandra Bullock on Netflix last night. It’s a science fiction movie of a post apocalyptic world. It feels quite similar to our present world. Whereas in the movie the people will die if they look at the monster. The people had to blindfold themselves. In our world, we will die if we breathe in our monster and we have to mask ourselves. You will have to watch the movie yourself. It might not resonate with you. Maybe you won’t see the similarities.

I have felt the weirdness of living in a sci-fi world before this. Now it is all the more eerie for me. There’s a lot of strange things and people out there/here. It emphasizes that I need to focus more on my boundaries and not let them infect my mental and physical health. I have to keep up with my routines of daily living. Tapping here gives me relief from thoughts trapped in my head. Stepping back on the ski trails will release tension in my physical body. The sun is out and it is WARM.

POSITIVELY OPTIMISTIC

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January 7, Day 7 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. After announcing yesterday that I will finish the Positivity Challenge, I have stepped out of it. Why? It’s not that I don’t think I can still benefit from it. It’s because I have a finite amount of time and energy. It’s a priority choice. Since I am not a terribly negative person, I want to direct my time and energy towards more urgent areas of attention. I have a keener and more discerning eye now. That is one thing I have learned about myself during this pandemic. I have/had a habit of spending time on things that I already know how to do or am good at. Time is precious. I don’t want to waste any of it. I want to utilize it in the best way to serve myself.

I haven’t always have seldom serve my own best interests. It’s not that I don’t want to. I haven’t realized before that I tend to gravitate outwards, towards others’ interests and well-beings rather than my own. For what purpose I do not know. Perhaps it’s because I’ve learned or have been taught it’s better to think of others first. It’s being unselfish and giving. It’s being kind and generous. I haven’t thought about turning it around for myself till now. It’s a gift from our present pandemic circumstances. It’s given me stillness and silence to waken and see with different eyes. It’s given me time and space to breathe in a new vision of how to be. I agree with Caroline Myss that we are living in a remarkable time. It’s up to me how I want to evolve, transform and transcend. 

I am having a good winter – of skiing, cooking, reading, writing, musing… – despite the pandemic, the omicron, the cold, the news, whatever. I am open to see and hear what is going on around me and the world. I try not to be overwhelmed by the avalanche of good news, bad news and fake news. I have chosen FOCUS as my word for the year. I am practicing on focusing on what is good, true and what I can do to serve myself, my family, friends and community. Life isn’t perfect. There are some not so good moments. There are inconveniences and adjustments. It might mean taking more time and using more energy to make changes and adjustments.

I hope I can stay focused and not to fall back into my well worn habitual ruts. I like to default into the familiar. I need reminders and a warning system. Feelings of fatigue, frustration, grouchiness, etc. could be a sign for me to take a moment to rethink, step out of the loop and take another look at the whole picture. Then assess, analyze and implement change.

The end. Good night.

FOCUS AND COURAGE

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January 2, second day of the new year, second day of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and first day of the 30-Day Positivity Challenge. My word for this year is FOCUS but already I’m feeling iffy, wishy-washy and a bit cranky this morning. I could blame it on the weather. I woke up to -20℃ instead of -35℃. It should be a cause for celebration instead of a case of grouchiness and moodiness. But it is what it is. I will just have to focus and move on with the day and this post.

It’s a good thing I have this writing space and challenges to work on. I’ve had this space since 2012 when blogging was new and a rage. I started out on Blogger in 2005. It was a struggle getting things to work but I managed to get some photos and a few words up. It did not have too much of a public presence. I then moved on to WordPress. I found it much easier to work with. It took a year or two before anyone noticed me. It didn’t really matter because I had no business to promote. Writing is pleasure and therapy for me. I love the rhythm of tapping on the keyboard and seeing the letters march across the screen.

It is not so at this moment. There is a stickiness and lack of rhythm. There is no flow. I have to work getting the words out. I’ve done the Positivity activity of the day. I looked at myself in the mirror and said, “I love you” a few times already. I don’t feel it. Rather, I feel irked. I don’t feel love but I said it anyways. I hope to reap the benefits eventually. Nothing happens that fast, right? I have to make being positive a habit first.

I’m considering the next 2 questions in my Unravel My Year workbook. 1) When did fear hold you back in 2021? 2) Where did you practice courage in 2021? I can’t say that anything held me back last year. When there was no fear, courage wasn’t called upon. Now if we were talking about 2020, there was alot of anxiety and challenges. Covid-19 came into our lives in early 2020. My 90 year old mother came down with shingles February 2020 right in the midst of lockdowns. I was busy taking her to appointments and worried about her pain, eyes and medications, I had no time for fear. That period lasted almost 4 months. Then I lost my fur baby Sheba. We were still in lockdown and I could not be with her at her time of passing. That was hard.

Sitting where I am now, life is pretty good. I may be feeling a little tired and moody, but it is still all good. I hear so many people say that Covid has made everything so hard. It is true but life have always been hard. If it is not one thing, it is another.

UNRAVEL MY YEAR

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Happy New Year! January 1, 2022 and day 1 of the Ultimate Blog Challenge. We are having bitterly cold temperatures. It’s conducive to be here in my sunroom, sipping a hot one and tapping on the keyboard. My goal is to show up every day with a post for the month of January. Each year I download Susannah Conway’s workbook, Unravel Your Year, but I’ve seldom finish it. I thought it might be a good project for the January Ultimate Blog Challenge. I’ll be killing two birds with one stone.

It has always been rather easy for me to relapse, to fall back into what was. If I am not careful and if I am not in the moment, I could dwell there for a long time. I have more focus now. I’ve relapsed only momentarily, maybe it was a day or two. I’ve climbed out, not savouring living the old, used and not useful. I saw the draw and the harm of it all. I decided that it was not for me any more. I don’t have to stay in the what was. I can make a new beginning. I can start, have a middle and an end.

I’m setting up for my beginning, the first day of the rest of my life. Did I say it’s cold? It is – minus 35℃. It’s good to cuddle up in a warm sweater and with a cup of Ovaltine. It is a good to just sit with it all and watch it like a movie as it plays across the screen of my mind. It’s coming out blank though, with white noise. I cannot remember anything. I will have to access my recorded photographs and watch them as a slide show. Perhaps I can put on Jim Croce’s Photographs and Memories as background music. I will wait for my mind’s eye to warm up.

Last year I did not have to word to guide me. No wonder I have no immediate recollections. I chose FOCUS to help me with 2022. With focus life will be easier. It will help me to find the heart to carry on and finish what I start. Looking back through my photographs and what memories I have of the year past, I spent the winter learning how to cross country ski. We were out almost every day. I slipped, stumbled and fell – uphill, downhill and on flat terrain. I learned that for some things, I don’t give up easily. It was like that for swimming and riding a bicycle. I guess I yearn for physical agility and ability.

The spring, summer and fall were spent in the greenhouse, gardens and yard. I was out of doors alot. I had my physical checkup in May. My doctor phoned and told me my serum vitamin D was almost at the top recommended level. At one time, it was almost at 0. He recommended that I cut back my supplement, at least for the summer. In 2021, I discovered that I really loved the great outdoors and that dust and pollen did not bother me as much. I also discovered that I hang on to things and maladies far too long, way beyond the best past due date. I am happy to let some of it go.

I do not regret hanging onto my love and memories of Sheba. I miss her soft animal body, how she circles and lays down with a grunt near me. I miss the sound of her kibbles falling in her bowl in the morning when the guy feeds her. I miss finding her laid across the bathroom door whenever I come out. Some things you never get over – love. And I don’t want to. I want to hang on to love and affection. They warm the cockles of my heart.

WEEKEND MORNINGS COMING DOWN

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It’s Saturday morning, September 25th. It’s sunny and warm – 17℃. I should be happy but I am quirky and irritated as hell. I am living in the moment of how it is. I had a restless sleep, waking up every couple of hours. Things creep under my skin, unwelcomed as they are. I am pissed at the ineptitude of our government, the stupidity, ignorance and selfishness of anti-maskers,anti-vacs and conspiracy theorists. How can we go from stringent restrictions for Covid to have them all lifted on July 11th? There was no easing in period to see what would happen. The outcome was quite predictable given that the variant was already in our midst and that it is much more contagious.

It is Sunday morning, September 26th. Another beautiful sunny day at 16℃. It is 20℃ in the greenhouse. It’s pretty fabulous for this time of the year. My cucumbers and bittermelons are thriving. I’ve lost count of how many and which of the little starting cukes I have pollinated. The tomatoes and peppers are still going strong. I am really surprised at all the new growth. This is my therapy room. I feel better the moment I step into it.

I am feeling a tiny bit more cheerful, having gone to bed super early last night. I had a good sleep the first 3 hours. Then it was awake every 2 hours. It’s like my body was on alert, waiting for something to happen. I’m not fretting over it. It is what it is. My kitchen drain is still not free flowing. I will give it till after the weekend and the bottle of enzyme is finished. A professional plumber might be in order. Somethings you can’t be stubborn about.

The other day I noticed how difficult it was for me to focus. I had trouble even looking at a flyer. I see the pictures but the information was not travelling to my brain. I’m buggered! I need to get my mind back. This time I am working on not going down the same old paths. They haven’t been too successful. I’m resisting looking for and reading another self-help book/video. What I need is action and practice. What do I need to do? What is my next step? What comes to mind is first is:

  • I need to clear my mind by: not multi-tasking, doing one thing at a time
  • stop wasting time scrolling through social media, googling for needless information

I think that these two things are enough for me to work on and chart on for this week. I will get better results if I am mindful and not overburdened. These last two mornings I am mindful, noticing that it doesn’t take any more time or energy if I put things back neatly where they belong instead of just tossing them to wherever. In fact it saves time and energy. A light bulb moment. I am a slow learner!