Centered.

"New Year; new you" is not how I roll. I am not about reinventing myself, or trying to adhere to strict diets, or protocols, or lifestyles as a way to start a new year. Been there. Done that. It doesn't work.

What I am about is intention. I see the new year as a chance to re-examine, re-configure, and re-focus. As I re-examined my goals for last year, I see that I had to many. I didn't make big goals, but I made a lot of little, very specific goals. I accomplished a lot of them, but not all of them. That leads me to see that this year, I need to simplify, again. There is nothing wrong with goals, but I need to be able to accomplish them.

Once again this year, I need to reconfigure to focus on what matters. We've had life changes, major budget expenditures, illness and more this past year. These lead us to need to regroup and perhaps do things differently.

I particularly want to re-focus. I don't think I have lost my center per se, so much as focused on too many things that did not matter as much as I thought they did. Everything tends to be urgent and/or a crisis for me. My husband often reminds me that it is not. That does not always help in the moment, though. What I need is to have both a larger perspective and a smaller focus. I need to be able to accommodate more of the unexpected while remaining tied to what matters. Because what matters is what keeps me centered. When I am centered, I believe I am of more use to God, others, and even myself.

So on that note, here's to a more centered 2023, and perhaps a few more blog posts along that topic.

Happy New Year!

Celebration

Those that follow me on Instagram may have noticed something different about November. I posted every day. If you didn't catch the theme, the posts may have seemed random. And they were, but with intention. Using the National Day Calendar, I found something to celebrate every day. Silly at times? Yes! Needed? Yes! In this season of days without end, I needed something to mark my days. I also needed to flex my happiness muscles. 

I'm no brain scientist, but I do have a degree in behavioral health. In my personal and professional experience, I have realized that we need not only the chemicals in our brain to produce happiness (which is why I think that sometimes anti-depressants or other psychotropic drugs are needed), but also need to have the experiences that give those good brain chemicals chances to work. I was running low on at least the latter, and I needed to change that.

I had grown weary in trying to celebrate life. I would make plans to celebrate and then let them go, giving the excuse that I was too tired and weary. Celebration just seemed like a stressor. And in a way, it was. But it was a good stress, a stress I needed to feel happy.

The early days of November came with some struggle to get to my daily celebration. I just wanted to give up, but my commitment to celebrating and posting about it kept me going. (I honestly put celebration Instagram post on my daily to-do list.) Some days were a stretch. Some days, I celebrated late, but I made it through.

Do I feel happier? No, not necessarily, but I know I gave myself a chance. I also gave myself a task to work at and complete. That alone helped my brain at least a little. Will I continue? Maybe. Maybe not. What I do know is that I need to keep working at celebration, as it does not always come easily or naturally. And does anything good come steadily and easily? I'm beginning to wonder if it does. Maybe work is part of the process of celebration.

The Bucket List Project

I don't make New Year's Resolutions, at least not the rigid, "I will do this thing every day for the whole year," type of resolutions. I make lists of things I want to do, like I did in 2016, or set small monthly goals like I did with this year's yoga challenges. I want to have reasonable and attainable goals, if I even call them that. Maybe I should call them intentions.

My overall goal for 2017 was to pursue passion and find purpose. I wrote a little bit about that, but let's be honest, it came late in the year. For most of the year, I struggled. When I changed jobs, I realized that I'd been faking life for most of the year and hadn't really been present or truly living. That epiphany brought with it a wave of self-discovery and honestly, a lot of struggle and pain. I don't have a bad life, but there are certainly parts of life that are very hard. I wasn't quite ready for the overwhelming feelings that came with real living and lost some of my pursuit of what mattered in the process.

I am turning 30 this year. Realizing that I'm growing older by the year, I've decided to try a different approach for living in 2018. I'm constructing a bucket list. 

When I think of bucket lists, I think of Second-Hand Lions and doing what I want to do in my latter years, or at just the last minute before I die. I don't want to live like that. I want to live as many moments as I can being intentional, and present, and purposeful. Having a life's end list makes me want to put things off that I could do now. I considered a reverse bucket list for 2018, but decided against it, too. Yes, I want to be grateful, but a reverse bucket list is about what's been done. I want to focus on doing things now. 

So for 2018, I've made myself a list of 30+ things I want to do this 30th year of my life, and with my fellow JoySquad member @717jr decided to embark on the #bucketlistproject. This is a project to try to focus on doing things that matter to us now instead of later. It's a project about being intentional and taking advantage of the moments we have.

Want to join us in this project? Tag your Facebook or Instagram posts with #bucketlistproject so we can share each in other's joys. Link up with this blog by posting about your bucket list projects in the comments section. Let's seize the day today instead of waiting until tomorrow.