The New Me!

I don’t know about you, but it feels like everyone, including me, is just getting, or is just getting over being sick during this first month of  2020.

And after the hustle of the holidays, I have no desire to hop into the stress of maintaining some new rigid regimen.

Look, I get it if that is your jam. It invigorates you to make moves. You are ready for the new routines. Taking control of your life and all that jazz. Its just not me right now.

For me, the hype of starting New Year’s resolutions right after the holidays feels like a setup. Just another arbitrary reason to put pressure on myself.

We’ve all been bustling about for the last couple of months, dinner menus and presents, cleaning and decorating, traveling and arranging pet sitting.

All the things we needed to do to make sure the holidays and all the myriad family gatherings went off without a hitch. Not only is it going to take me a minute to shift gears, darnit, I just want a break!

It’s not that I don’t have goals for the year ahead of me. In fact, I am literally bubbling inside thinking about my plans. All the things I’m going to accomplish, all the ways I’m going to blossom.

One thing I do know is that I want to continue to work more from intention. I’m 2 months out from my now bi-annual tradition of Spring Resolutions, so for now I’m focusing on small moves.

I have already cleaned out the kids’ closets, and I’m pulling back from my food over-indulgences. Like not eating the second half of the giant cookie sandwich.

Half is fine.

I decided another small reset I could do is to go through my email folders. What a trip!

It was kind of like going through a photo album. I came across a moment of gratitude in an email exchange from someone unexpected. I found the admissions package for classes at my first child’s Preschool. I found my report card from Culinary School, over 100 recipes I just had to remember, emails saying goodbye to NY friends after announcing we’d be returning to California, an exchange from a friend that passed away 3 years ago…

I also once again became grateful for my practice of writing and saving. In my Notes folders I found this…

     Natalie Freed<[email protected]> Tue, Oct 21, 2014, 1:26 PM

         October 3

     -7:00am starting to feel twinges of anxiety creeping in. Play date requests and thoughts of dealing with those, and the kids at home for fall break. Concerned another cycle is starting.

     October 10

     -Daughter drew a picture for Lyfe kitchen and spelled it wrong. She was disappointed. I became overwrought with sympathy. Silently cried. Immediately in a funk that I can’t shake. Everything is upsetting me now. Feel fat, ugly, unaccomplished, unimportant.

     October 21

     Feeling anxious about play date tomorrow. Feel paralyzed throughout my day just trying to ‘manage’ my feelings and do what I need to do for the day. Heart beating hard. Weight on the chest. Severely anxious.

Time has a way of softening the hard edges of your memories. And pictures capture the smile you put on your face to brave the world.

5 months after I wrote those words, instead of just writing my feelings on random notes in my phone, I created my website My Source Life, a giant online diary I could share with others.

And what happened was I became a friend to myself.

I wrote about things that made sense to me, and things I was still trying to figure out. I wrote about my struggles and my triumphs. I encouraged myself to adopt practices that would enrich me, and examined the habits that were diminishing me.  I was a shoulder to lean on and an ear that listened.

I also recognized that  I don’t need to panic.

The small adjustments I made, did make a difference. A big difference. And now, I am fully confident that I am capable of making changes that are just as profound during the next 5 years.

I’m so excited to start on 2020, but I need to get some clarity before I go galavanting off using up my finite amounts of energy.

Life happens, and has a way of derailing our big plans, so if we don’t plan with the realities of our personal lives in mind, then they aren’t going to happen.

I need to sit and take inventory. Then create goals and timelines that make those goals achievable.

As for cleaning out my email inbox. Well… I didn’t clean it all the way out. I decided I’m not even going to look at the 184 emails in the School Garden folder.

And I decided that its actually kind of poignant to reflect on major moments in your life, so I left them to discover again on another NY clean out years from now.