A Reminder from Garfield

Every so often a Garfield comic strip reminds me of lessons I'm learning about self-care, self-love, and self-confidence.  This strip from earlier this week was one of those times:

I need the reminder that how I see myself matters.  That I need to give myself the freedom to compliment myself and enjoy it, rather than just critique myself.

So, Garfield once again made me smile and taught me a lesson!  Hurrah!

My Feelings Exactly

When it comes to desserts, I'm totally a cookies and brownies and things I can eat with my fingers kind of girl.  And I'm totally with Garfield on the length of waiting in today's Garfield cartoon:

Change?

I laughed when this Garfield cartoon arrived in my inbox last week:

My sentiments exactly.

(Though, actually, it turns out that I'm getting much better at accepting change somewhat gracefully, instead of hating it and being forced, kicking and screaming, into it.)

A Chuckle

I get the daily Garfield cartoon by email, and have for years.  It's been a while since I've posted one here, but this one really did make me smile when I read it:

Seeing Myself

This was today's Garfield cartoon.  It made me smile, and then pause to reflect just a little.  Because I haven't always been a big fan of myself.  In fact, it's something I still struggle with.  Just before I turned 25, a dear friend and I were talking about self care, and self image, and seeing oneself as the creation of God, and she assigned a task to me.  She asked me to make a list of 25 Things I Love About Myself.  Not things that connected to other people, but things that were actually about me.  The very idea made me cringe.  I finally sat down one Sunday afternoon a few months before my 26th birthday to complete the task she'd been strategically reminding me of all year.  If I'm being totally honest, I completed it partly because she told me I owed her an extra item for each birthday that passed before I completed the list, and the idea of needing even one more item when 25 was so hard was daunting.

I won't share the list here, as it's rather personal, but the excercise forced me to look at myself just a little bit differently.  To celebrate little things that are unique to the way God created me.  It's an ongoing process, and I was reminded of that process, of the progress that's been made, and the distance left to come as I read this cartoon this morning.  I think I'm going to print the cartoon out and stick it up on my wall at work, and at home, as an ongoing reminder that the quest to see differently includes seeing myself differently.

Almost Weekend

Something about this Garfield cartoon that arrived in my inbox this morning made me laugh.  Maybe because it's definitely been the sort of week where I've spent more hours awake than asleep.

House church went late last night, and when you don't have a vehicle, it means you stay until the people who drove you are also leaving.  Which means I got home after 11.  And that I then dealt with the usual sleep issues.

It was a bit of a rough night again.

Thankfully today will be a pretty laid back day at work.

But I'll be busy tonight.

Tonight is the night for packing my books, and my "altar spaces".  I own probably somewhere around 2000 books.  The altar spaces are simply prayerful reminders, scattered around my bedroom.  With all of those things packed, the transition will truly become real.  For the next week I'll live in a relatively empty space.  It's a little bit crazy to consider, really.

I'm just not entirely certain yet how to process the fact that a week from tomorrow I'll be vacating the apartment that I've loved, in the neighborhood that I've loved, with the roommate I've loved, and moving into my Grandma's basement.  It's not exactly what one would consider an "upwardly mobile" relocation.  Not that I've ever been all that concerned with being upwardly mobile, but I guess some part of me is struggling with that move.  With the fact that, at nearly 27 years of age, for at least the next six months, when asked where I live, the answer will be, "with my Grandma".

I need to write out some thoughts on this move.  I have lots to share.

But for the moment, I'm thinking about tonight.  About packing my books, and all those precious little things that truly make my bedroom a prayerful space.  That make it home.  I'm thinking about the next week lived in transition.  I'm wondering how to make the new space cozy.  I'm considering details like whether or not I need to recruit a few more people to help with the move, how I need to list my couch and loveseat on kijiji, the fact that I definitely need some new audiobooks since my commute is about to become even longer, whether I can work in moving a few more loads of things to Grandma's during the evenings next week, the process of packing our kitchen, and cleaning the apartment, and then the exhale, of doing the process in reverse, unpacking, and creating peace and space and home again.

This is the fourth time I've moved in 3 and a half years.  The packing isn't particularly intimidating anymore, but I'm realizing that sometime late next week it will hit me that I've again made a major transition.  So I'm waiting for that to sink in, and handling preparations in the meantime.

Can't Do Anything Right

Today's Garfield cartoon made me chuckle in appreciation. I've been having a challenging few days, and this one resonated just a bit.