single step

A MONTH IN REVIEW

IMG_0056The sun greeted me this morning.  No more Groundhog Days!  Yipee!

It goes to show that there are beginnings and endings.   ‘This, too, shall pass’ is true.  I can believe it now and will again and again.  I will hug it to my heart for future reference for difficult days ahead.

I’m looking ahead to beautiful days in spring and a hot growing summer.  But I’m also looking back at the month of April to see how far I’ve come and what I have learned.  Each day is a step forward for me.  That is what a challenge and a commitment did for me.

I HAD TO GET UP, DRESS UP AND SHOW UP.

Now, I am reaping my rewards.  I have 30 posts, one for each day of the month.  It is P1050766very satisfying!  And it really isn’t THAT difficult.  Each day I just put one foot in front of the other.  When you make a start, something always follow.  It is no rocket science.  I sit at the keyboard and the words come – somehow.

And just so comes my doodles.  I see the picture in my mind and somehow they IMG_0486come out of my fingertips onto my iPhone screen.  How amazing is that!  I have to thank my FB friend Janet Riehl for telling me about the doodle apps on smart phones.   I’ve been doodling ever since.   When I am surrounded by greyness, rain or sleet,  I can surround myself with my own light and colours.  We can choose and create how we want to live our lives.

Perhaps that is the biggest lesson I have learned in these 30 days of April.  I can choose how to be in each and every moment.  Some days the choices are harder and fewer but I am still the captain at the helm.  I get to steer.  Of course the sailing is much easier if I know where I am going.  That is another challenge!

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SOME DAYS

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Some days life is damn hard.  You just want to lay down,  even amid your own dirt and grime.  You don’t want to lift your head off the floor.  It is on those days when I feel I can’t, I DO.

I do any little thing that I can .

  • lift my head off the floor
  • take a single step
  • make the bed
  • make a cup of tea
  • write a word, a sentence, a paragraph
  • put in a load of dishes, laundry
  • pick up something off the floor besides myself
  • sit on the deck, sweep the deck
  • pull out last year’s tomato plant(s)
  • put in pickets around flower bed to keep Sheba out
  • take Sheba for a walk
  • yoga. qigong
  • file one thing

These days have been hard.  It does not matter for what reasons.  But one thing for sure is that they will pass and in the meantime, you still have to do, whatever you can, however you can.  Cause you want to be ready to rock and roll when you come out of the ‘some’ days.

DO ONE THING

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They say that a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.  He, who coined that phrase is such a wise man.  Everything begins with a single action.

It is Boxing Day.  How did I get here?  It has been a tough week, what with battling the flu and other mayhems.  You could say that we hacked our way through everything.  Even Sheba got sick….threw up four times yesterday.  Yuck!  Poor baby!

But, at long last, I think I’m going to make it….thanks to my leftover stash of drugs from my overseas trip last winter.  Christmas morning at 3 am found me up, googling ciprofloxacin and doxycycline – which one to take.  Now I know we’re not suppose to self medicate but I was distraught from coughing and worried about the funny noises coming from my chest.

I think I’ve turned the corner but life does not looking easy.  Everything looks messier and dirtier.  Sheba’s hair seem to be everywhere.  What to do and where to start?  And so that is where I am at.  I tell myself:  Just do one thing.  At least it will be something done.

My one thing was chasing down Sheba and brushing her out, ridding at least some of her hair.  And it is a reminder that there cannot be perfection here.  There will be less hair.  That is the way life is.