Life is the dancer and you are the dance.
- Eckhart Tolle
I think I am very good about being appreciative of my life.
I often have a lot of time during the week while I'm alone and I just sit and reflect on how lucky I am to be me and to be alive.
I will continue to practice this state of mind.
But being grateful for the good things in your life isn't the whole way to look at Thanksgiving. It's also an opportunity to reflect on the bad things that have happened to you in the past year and how you can look at them as a chance to learn or take away something from them.
Aside from that, I have something new to be grateful for this year.
My job.
Everyday I walk into my office - the big beautiful building that is home to the thing that has inspired my ambition in life. Hint: it's black, white and red all over.
A newspaper.
Working at a newspaper has changed my life. For the better obviously. I get to learn more and more about it everyday; practice and perfect my tasks which I hope are preparing me for the next phase of my job. The next phase is coming soon.
And the people - working alongside seasoned people in the industry - including but not limited to award-winning reporters and editors has been a gift in itself.
And don't get me started about my two co-workers. They make work so much fun just talking and making jokes. I feel right at home with them. I love them so much.
The best part is the feeling I've been getting daily. It's a joyful feeling that makes me smile on the spot, on my way to work and on the way home. It's something I've been waiting for, for a very long time. Something to smile about everyday.
While I'm thankful for all of this, none of it would be possible without the support of my mom. From holding my hand during my first phone interview to driving me every day to and from the train station. I wouldn't be able to feel this way without her.
While I won't really go into how I've been trying to take the bad things that have happened to me this year on here because it's personal, I just wanted to make the point that it's possible and might make you feel better.
Happy Thanksgiving: cheers to a great rest of 2016.
Usually my blog posts are pretty well thought out, and on top of that, I almost never set goals for myself. But here I am. At 10:41 pm when I should be watching Fuller House on Netflix and getting sleepy for work tomorrow...
I have had a lot on my mind lately. I think it's when I'm inside all day that my mind wanders off and I feel like I'm going nowhere quickly. It gives me too much time to think.
Not saying that's a bad thing, but I wanted to jot down some things I'd really like to do this year. Here we go, in no particular order...
- Practice mindful eating, drink more water
- Get up and move - attend gym classes, tone legs on the treadmill, walk around the neighborhood, get a bike?
- Finish my project life (Jan-Nov)
- Do a separate December Daily album
- Get my new Happy Planner
- Finally get my desk
- Destash all of the planner supplies I don't use anymore
- Destash clothing I don't wear anymore - give to charities, sell for extra cash
- Get a new TV
- Invest in a new Mac
- Back up my computer to an external hard drive & clean it out
- Get a car - get better at driving!
- Make new friends - rekindle old friendships too
- Read 5 books I've been wanting to read and can't seem to finish (The Catcher in The Rye, Looking for Alaska, The Alchemist, Attachments, Add More -Ing to Your Life)
- Blog consistently
- Get a paying job
- Get freelance work
- At the end of the year, comfortably say I am happy with where I'm at and like where I am going. I need to have plans for my future.
Sometime this weekend, I will further refine this list and figure out how to implement it into my planner and project life, for they are the outlets I am constantly in (aside from my phone and computer) so they will sufficiently remind me. Looking forward to this new journey and taking you, reader, along with me!
I'm excited to announce a new challenge I'm partaking in - "a mile a day in March," a movement challenge coined by Amanda Zampelli.
As a person whose hobbies involve being sedentary, this monthly movement challenge will do wonders for me - and Amanda (a planner/craft girl herself) has created printables and activities to motivate people like us to get out there and do it - and then craft/plan/record/document/scrap about it!
Below you'll see how I'm using some of her printables and documenting my experience with it.
- Weekly Documenting - using Amanda's small square printables made for The Happy Planner, I've decided to dedicate the last box of my day (or the "Evening/Night" box) to keep track of how I'm doing. This will let me jot what I did quickly so that I can journal about it other places. A motivational sticker from the Fitness Planner Stickers Pack for The Happy Planner jazzes it up a bit!
- Pocket Pages - these cute 2" x 2" squares Amanda created are perfect for The Happy Planner Pocket Pages, and similar to her, I'm using it to document but also as motivation. I stuck some Pocket Cards in for motivation, as well as some of her printables which act as my cover page for the final documentation in my planner.
- Journaling - these larger inserts Amanda created lets us participants write a little story, convey our motivation and intentions behind why we're doing this challenge, and memory keep. Since I didn't have cardstock to print on (the best paper to stick in The Happy Planner) nor The Happy Planner Punch, I opted to adhere my journaling pages to a piece of graph paper. They are double sided, so I only had to use one sheet! Now it's thick and nice to write on. As you can see, there is a space to cross off each day you complete the challenge (which I forgot to do) and a place for each day to record your distance, time, the place you completed your daily movement, the story of why you ended up doing what you did, and motivation to finish the challenge.
- Project Life - I haven't downloaded them yet, but I plan on using Amanda's 3 x 4 and 4 x 6 journaling cards, plus the pictures below to document in my PL. They're perfect because I don't have many fitness/health related embellishments (thanks Amanda!). More on this to come post-challenge!
Behold - a beautiful scenic picture on my Day 1 walk through my neighborhood.
Action shot!! Those pants are so big and comfy.
