I know, I know. I missed last week. It has been an emotional two weeks and I’ve definitely struggled to stay on track. I have mostly failed at that, but I’m going to keep trying. Here’s a quick recap:
- Violin – I practiced a couple of hours this week. I was going to start learning second finger, but there is apparently two different positions for second finger and it’s relative to first and third. I had been avoiding getting the stickers that show you placement, but I had to break down and get one. On top of that, my violin case fell off the little table it was sitting on and when I opened it, the strings were all screwed up. My big lesson for that time was learning how to put strings back on and re-tune everything. Still a learning opportunity, but not one I wanted to have right now.
- Art/Drawing – I haven’t done anything here this week. Every day I think about the fact that I need to pick up my sketchbook and start moving through the 30-day challenge and every day I’ve been side-tracked enough that I don’t even have time for that.
- Health/Exercise – Last week I managed to lift some weights one day, but I unfortunately haven’t since. On the positive side, I did buy ingredients for wellness shots this weekend. We have been buying them whenever we go to Costco just as a little boost given the time of year, but then we are limited to whatever brand and flavor they have at the moment.
- Reading – I did finish Anathema last night. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but I finished Water Moon two weeks ago. I’m trying to figure out what my next book is going to be. I do want to read the next book after Anathema but I don’t have it and with the snowstorm that has completely blanketed us, I won’t be getting it soon. I do have Valor which is the next book after Malice, but I haven’t figured out if I’m ready yet. The Tainted Cup is another option, but it’s another series and I have two already started. I think that’s a big problem right now, especially in Fantasy & Sci-Fi. Everything is a series. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that you get to spend more time in these worlds, but sometimes I need a one-and-done. Maybe I read The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. It has amazing reviews and might give me the break I need before continuing on with Valor.
- Gardening – This is where I spent a bunch of time the past couple of weeks. I really dove into creating my ideal garden. However, the design could take one of two paths depending on my homeowners’ association. If you don’t know, your HOA can dictate what you can put on your property. Almost everything on the exterior has to be approved by a committee. One thing I want to have for my garden is a greenhouse. That will allow me to do a lot of seed starting as well as grow some plants that wouldn’t otherwise do well in my zone. For example, I’d like to grow ginger plants and some fig trees, but I would have to drag them inside the house for the winter. I spent a lot of time planning out what the garden would look like both with and without a greenhouse. Regardless of which ends up happening, though, I did include a fountain. The sound of the water is so soothing and with a little bistro table next to it, I can imagine myself out there with my morning coffee while the dogs run around. Even though the greenhouse wouldn’t be something I could do this year, I’d like to contact the HOA soon and get it approved for planning purposes.
- Spirituality – I’ve spent a considerable amount of time here, too. Aside from my desire to get more into tarot, some things happened in the past couple of weeks really drive me back into practice. I have read Of Blood and Bones this week and have pulled some other of my books off the shelf to go through. I’ve so desperately wanted to get more into cyclical living and more gritty, old, nature-based practices. For me, it feels like a sense of strength, grounding, and fluidity in life. I’ve also discovered that I’d like to try bone reading and runes at some point.
On to what drove me further into my spiritual practices this past couple of weeks. I know I spoke about my raid group in gaming before, and I’ve come to the realization that after we complete this content, I need to step away. I’m missing 12 hours’ worth of time on my other goals each week plus it is really messing with my sleep by staying up in front of a computer for another hour. I haven’t been getting to sleep until at least 1a which does not set me up to get up early in the morning. The bigger issue was that we’ve had 3 out of the 8 people leave the group. One seems to have left because his best friend did and I can understand that because she tends to be active for short periods of time. He wants to spend that time with her and I can’t fault him for that. However, she specifically mentioned me and my performance, saying that I learn too slow. For context, both of them go run with random groups outside of our dedicated time. They have significantly more experience on each encounter than I do. Then, the third person left after Wednesday this week. He said a lot about me, including that I’m a bad player in general and that I will single-handedly delay the group. That’s the short version. And then he had the nerve to say it was nothing personal. I was in tears. It hurt pretty badly. I’m by far not the best player, but I’m far from being bad and no one has ever said that about me. I was resolved to leave the remaining group because I was just done after that. I realized, though, that it wasn’t because I’m a bad player. It was because this person also spent 60+ hours on a single encounter while I had only spent about 12. Needless to say, I don’t think his assessment was fair. I have this group so I can do content in a dedicated time slot and balance it with other things I need or want to do. If others want to spend more time outside of it, that’s totally fine, but don’t judge me by that standard. After talking it through with the remainder of the group, I decided to stay because we had a heart-to-heart about everyone’s expectations of pacing and it turns out that we’re all on the same page there. It made for a very emotional couple of days, though, which completely drained me and to have it happen twice in two weeks made it impossible to be as productive as I would have liked. My plan is to still step away after we have finished this content, though.
All of that led to me feeling angry and sick of just taking it without standing up for myself. I think I worry that doing so will send the message that I will fly off the handle or am not able to take criticism. That I’m some emotional, crazy woman who isn’t meant to be taken seriously. I finally was like “no, my anger is valid and justified.” So I started digging back into my practice to try to harness that rage into building my personal power and standing in it rather than shrinking.
We did get a lot of small things done around the house last weekend. We replaced a set of blinds that had broken, took down Christmas decorations, and finally completed our hobby table area. In our computer room, we have a desk on the opposite wall for us to work on other hobbies. My fiancé is into building Legos and Gunpla, and I would love to get into Warhammer which means miniature painting. We were also able to reorganize the closet in that room for better storage and we moved the IKEA bookcase with glass doors over by the desk as a display cabinet. It looks really nice and is actually functional now.
I think this week I’m going to really focus on getting caught up and back on track. I watched a video last week about never letting your habits get to zero. I’d heard the concept before, but the way it was presented this time hit home for me. The thought is that even if you don’t have as much time or energy to dedicate to something that day, do something. It can be a tiny little amount, as long as it’s not nothing. What was different to me about this is that they suggested defining what a full 100% session looks like and what does it look like when you have only 0.1% of the time and/or energy? If a full workout looks like 20 minutes of cardio and then another 30 minutes of weights, what does 0.1% look like? Is it maybe lifting weights for 5 minutes? I’m guilty of being an “all or nothing” person when it comes to new habits and routines and I struggle with the follow through. Maybe defining what 0.1% is will help me do something each day.
As far as the site goes this week, I am planning to catch up on the book reviews and the tarot deep dive. I managed to get the star ratings for the book reviews up, but I do want to finish filling them out as well as adding pictures of the books.
Oh and I know I haven’t even touched on my political leanings and what’s going on in the U.S. Here it is: if you support Trump or any of his policies and actions, there is the door. Period. After everything that has happened, there are no “different interpretations.” There was really no justifying him before and there definitely isn’t now.
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