Good Job, 2018 You

I don’t really love the whole resolution thing. A lot of the time, we’re encouraged to be way too all-or-nothing in our goals, and frustration naturally follows. There’s also a whole culture of guilt built up around it that kinda sucks, where we look back at the past year only to find things to fix with our new resolutions, and to feel ashamed of the ones we abandoned last January.

That said, this is still a perfectly good time to look back at the past year and do some self-reflection. I think it’d be nice, though, if we were all encouraged to be proud of the growth we did achieve, instead of looking at our failings. Everyone has probably done at least a few things in the past year that they can be proud of. They might have learned something important about themselves, built a new routine that made them more productive, changed an old pattern of behavior that didn’t work well, or started eating vegetables a little more often. I did all of those things, and I’m making a conscious effort to give myself credit for all of it. It was hard, but I grew a lot.

I also wrote a blog post every single week in 2018. It’s not a perfect record – a number of the posts came out late – but it’s still a big deal for me to be able to be that consistent about anything. I want to thank everyone who has read any of those posts, because knowing that people might notice if I didn’t put them out helped keep me on track.

I really appreciate you all, and I hope you can find things to congratulate yourselves for when you look back at 2018. I hope you can be kind to yourselves in 2019, too. Your specific resolutions may or may not be manageable, but you’re still going to grow and change this year. We all will.

Round moss clumps on bare tree branches on a sunny winter day.

Writing days this past week: 3

Getting in Motion

I’ve been walking a lot more, lately. It seems kinda vital to take advantage of these last bits of nice weather before things get truly wintery and unpleasant. Walking is my favorite form of exercise, and it’s been recommended by a surprising number of successful writers throughout history as a form of meditation when inspiration is lagging. It’s peaceful, the scenery provides stimulation for the imagination, and moving around is generally pretty good for the whole system. I’ve known for a long time that people with ADHD in particular tend to have better focus when they get exercise, but it has to be somewhat consistent to be effective, and consistency is difficult when you’ve got ADHD. Somehow, though, I’ve managed to get something like a routine established.

There’s a beautiful bike path around a lake near my place, and I love going out there, even though my dogs absolutely lose their tiny minds at the sight of all the fat and insolent squirrels who taunt them from the sides of the trail. It takes us a lazy hour and a half to go around the lake, and I don’t usually spend the time specifically thinking about anything in particular. I think it’s been helping with my general mental clarity, which makes it easier to choose to keep going out, and to make choices about what to do with my time without getting overwhelmed. I’ve always unconsciously classified walking in pretty places as “the stuff I do when I should probably be doing the dishes or writing.”

That was not great. Jogging around the neighborhood will never be my thing, even if it might seem more efficient, or like a “better” form of exercise, or whatever other judgement I had in the back of my mind about the whole thing. It’s boring, it hurts, and my dogs would rather tie their leash into a bow around my legs than trot faithfully at my side. It just doesn’t work for me, but walking in a spot with some good trees and water does, and I can do it for a long time before I get bored or tired.

We’re often taught a very adversarial approach to exercising our bodies, but healthy movement really doesn’t have to be any kind of a punishment to be beneficial.

These shots are all from this evening’s walk. An orange sunset over the lake framed by lacy tree branches.

A cute red and white spotted mushroom in leaf litter.

A great blue heron carefully ignoring me and the dogs from the water’s edge.

Canada geese silhouetted on the lake under an orange sunset.

Writing days this past week: 3

100th Post

Like it says, this is my 100th post on this blog. That simultaneously feels like a really big number and a small one. I’ve been doing this every week for quite a while, so I kinda feel like it should be higher, but 100 weeks is still a significant chunk of time. I wasn’t as regular when I first started out, so it’s actually been much longer than that.

In 2018, I haven’t missed a single week. I’ve been late a few times, but I’ve put out a post every Friday. That’s a huge personal accomplishment for someone who absolutely sucks at consistency. It’s been a struggle, but it’s also been getting a little easier over time. Slower than I’d hope, but it’s still happening.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the season change very intentionally, because fall used to bum me out pretty hard. It has been surprisingly beautiful in Seattle all week, though. It’s just pleasantly crisp and sunny, not soggy and gray. I’m sure that’ll change soon, but for now I’ve been trying to get outside as much as possible. I even got a few pretty pictures today on my evening walk with the dogs.

Writing days this past week: 1

Doing Stuff and Things

I’ve been feeling kinda crummy this past week, but I’m trying to focus on the progress I’ve made over the past few years. It’s still much easier to be generally productive than it was a year ago, and much better than a couple years ago. Like, holy crap levels of better. A not insignificant example: I haven’t missed a blog update at all this year. A few have been late, and they don’t all have much content, but I’ve managed to put one out every week, which would’ve been impossible for me to believe not too long ago.

My husband has been helping me with a fun DIY project to make my office more functional. My beat-up old desk is getting a huge overhaul, which isn’t quite finished yet. It’s useable again, though, which is the important bit. Waiting for paint and varnish to dry is hard, especially when it rains on a night that looked perfectly clear, which gets the varnish all wet again so that it takes even longer. It just needs one drawer fixed now, and some new handles and things to match the new colors. It’s all pretty now, and I like it.

I like pink. This probably shocks no one at this point.

I also made it to the local Sunday market with the boyfriend and found a super cool preserved salamander at the vintage store. Gotta have my weird curiosities, otherwise I won’t make the writerly strangeness quota this month and there could be dire consequences.

I have yet to identify his species, but I think he’s cute.

Writing days this past week: 3