- A pretty mellow day to round out my time off before heading back to work tomorrow morning for the last couple days of my temporary contract
- going to bed in freshly washed pajamas
- watching the Anne of Green Gables movies over the last couple of days
- a long hot shower
- a free sample of body butter that came in the mail, and slathering it on my legs after my shower
- wearing my hair curly two days in a row
- smooth sorting out of a problem with my VISA card
- getting some errands (including a few I wasn't expecting to do) done
- Spending $8 total for a really cute new hat and a pair of great earrings
- going shopping with mom - time with her, and a small purchase was her birthday present
- a natural health treatment
- getting a ride home, with all my stuff, after being at mom and dad's for several days in a row
- hemp lip balm from The Body Shop
- a glass water bottle, with a silicone protector around it. love that I have a glass bottle
- really good homemade fried rice for supper
- getting passport photos taken, at a very affordable cost, for BOTH of the passports I need to apply for/renew in the next month or so
- a big mug of tea upon my arrival home, while unpacking, cleaning, and tackling other tasks
- working on marking items off a list
- 10 minute yoga
- Lindt hazelnut chocolate balls
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 135
Today's Daily 5:
Reverb 10: Day 28 - Achieve
Today's Reverb 10 Prompt:
December 28 – Achieve
What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.
(Author: Tara Sophia Mohr)
I'm not a big achievement driven person. At all. In fact, I'm quite possibly the least motivated by competition, winning, and achievement person that you'll ever meet.
It's why I generally hate games. (Among other things, anyway.) I just don't care about the outcome.
That said, when I read this prompt, an answer immediately sprang to mind.
The thing I would most like to achieve in 2011 is to be admitted to nursing school.
That will hopefully happen either in the first week of 2011 (possibly requiring a miracle), or it will possibly happen in September.
I don't know, honestly, what I'll feel, when that happens, other than perhaps relief and joy. And maybe some excitement.
And that combination of feelings, well, it's not one I really want to experience today, or every day, so the part of this prompt that suggested I brainstorm ways to replicate that feeling (can you replicate something that hasn't happened yet?) is the part of the prompt that I am going to ignore.
December 28 – Achieve
What’s the thing you most want to achieve next year? How do you imagine you’ll feel when you get it? Free? Happy? Complete? Blissful? Write that feeling down. Then, brainstorm 10 things you can do, or 10 new thoughts you can think, in order to experience that feeling today.
(Author: Tara Sophia Mohr)
I'm not a big achievement driven person. At all. In fact, I'm quite possibly the least motivated by competition, winning, and achievement person that you'll ever meet.
It's why I generally hate games. (Among other things, anyway.) I just don't care about the outcome.
That said, when I read this prompt, an answer immediately sprang to mind.
The thing I would most like to achieve in 2011 is to be admitted to nursing school.
That will hopefully happen either in the first week of 2011 (possibly requiring a miracle), or it will possibly happen in September.
I don't know, honestly, what I'll feel, when that happens, other than perhaps relief and joy. And maybe some excitement.
And that combination of feelings, well, it's not one I really want to experience today, or every day, so the part of this prompt that suggested I brainstorm ways to replicate that feeling (can you replicate something that hasn't happened yet?) is the part of the prompt that I am going to ignore.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 134
Today's Daily 5:
(an introduction to the Daily 5 can be found here)
(an introduction to the Daily 5 can be found here)
- A very uncharacteristically good sleep. (I was horizontal for almost nine hours, and asleep off and on for much of that. That number is almost unheard of for me, and worth celebrating.)
- toast with butter and jam
- a lazy but productive morning
- finished writing my Christmas cards (sent off 14 more today)
- doing laundry
- a hot shower
- pomegranate green tea
- making lists
- crossing things off of those lists
- sunshine
- curly hair
- a brisk walk
- unexpectedly knocking errands off my list
- some excellent snarking material for emails with a friend
- sharing a quiet evening with my parents, each of us doing our own thing, but in the room together, all resting, since all of us have been feeling under the weather
Reverb 10: Day 27 - Ordinary Joy
Today's Reverb 10 prompt:
December 27 – Ordinary Joy
Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
(Author: Brené Brown)
Ordinary Joy.
It should be an easy theme for me. It's basically what I make a list about each evening when I write the daily 5. (In fact, today's daily 5 in my iphone, just waiting to be transferred to the blog, is filled with very ordinary joys from the last 24 hours or so.)
Dictionary.com defines ordinary as, "of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional."
I thought quite a bit today about what moment I was going to use here tonight.
I have two.
The first is an afternoon spent in a bookstore. It was only a few hours really. A brief stop on a road trip home from Ontario, with my dad, and my baby brother and his wife of approximately two weeks.
Dad and I planned the stop before we ever left Calgary to drive in the opposite direction. I had the address for this store written in my little notebook, so that Emily, the GPS lady, could guide us directly there. It was the destination we set when we left my sister-in-law's childhood home and headed back towards our own city.
The store is basically a clearing house for seconds from two big Christian publishing houses - slightly damaged or off-kilter or slightly misprinted books, still perfectly good, but not saleable to retailers, sold for a pittance.
It's heaven for a book lover, and my dad, brother and I were in bliss. Dad and my brother were busy stocking up on commentaries for their professional libraries, while I happily searched shelves with the joyful ease of one who is convinced that heaven will look and smell like a bookstore. We shared finds, bought a few duplicates, adding multiple volumes to each of our libraries, and just generally baffled my poor sister-in-law, who enjoys reading, but perhaps not to the same book nerdish extent of her new husband and some of his family members. It was delightful. Such a simple activity that it was ordinary, and completely out of the ordinary at the same time, since we likely won't be back in that place for a long time.
The other afternoon I'm thinking of happened in California in the fall. After a full morning of church related activities, we spent the afternoon comfortably, in pajamas, sorting a giant bucket of the little metal monopoly tokens that had been given to my friend for sale in the Sunday school rewards store. Basically, we spent the afternoon laughing, talking, taking turns picking questions to mutually answer from a book full of fascinating prompts. It was perhaps one of my favorite parts of that trip, because it was simple. We weren't touring around or doing anything extravagant or unique to that area, we were just getting to know each other better, enjoying each others company without pretense, resting, talking and laughing.
I suppose it's not all that ordinary to sort a giant bucket full of thousands of monopoly pieces, laughing and exclaiming over some of the stranger ones, and some of the funny ones, but the afternoon felt ordinary, natural, and beautiful.
And perhaps that's the key to ordinary joy. It's certainly the key to the things that make my daily 5 lists night after night. They are the things that may or may not happen regularly, but seem natural, and beautiful and carry smiles and laughter and joy within them.
December 27 – Ordinary Joy
Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
(Author: Brené Brown)
Ordinary Joy.
It should be an easy theme for me. It's basically what I make a list about each evening when I write the daily 5. (In fact, today's daily 5 in my iphone, just waiting to be transferred to the blog, is filled with very ordinary joys from the last 24 hours or so.)
Dictionary.com defines ordinary as, "of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional."
I thought quite a bit today about what moment I was going to use here tonight.
I have two.
The first is an afternoon spent in a bookstore. It was only a few hours really. A brief stop on a road trip home from Ontario, with my dad, and my baby brother and his wife of approximately two weeks.
Dad and I planned the stop before we ever left Calgary to drive in the opposite direction. I had the address for this store written in my little notebook, so that Emily, the GPS lady, could guide us directly there. It was the destination we set when we left my sister-in-law's childhood home and headed back towards our own city.
The store is basically a clearing house for seconds from two big Christian publishing houses - slightly damaged or off-kilter or slightly misprinted books, still perfectly good, but not saleable to retailers, sold for a pittance.
It's heaven for a book lover, and my dad, brother and I were in bliss. Dad and my brother were busy stocking up on commentaries for their professional libraries, while I happily searched shelves with the joyful ease of one who is convinced that heaven will look and smell like a bookstore. We shared finds, bought a few duplicates, adding multiple volumes to each of our libraries, and just generally baffled my poor sister-in-law, who enjoys reading, but perhaps not to the same book nerdish extent of her new husband and some of his family members. It was delightful. Such a simple activity that it was ordinary, and completely out of the ordinary at the same time, since we likely won't be back in that place for a long time.
The other afternoon I'm thinking of happened in California in the fall. After a full morning of church related activities, we spent the afternoon comfortably, in pajamas, sorting a giant bucket of the little metal monopoly tokens that had been given to my friend for sale in the Sunday school rewards store. Basically, we spent the afternoon laughing, talking, taking turns picking questions to mutually answer from a book full of fascinating prompts. It was perhaps one of my favorite parts of that trip, because it was simple. We weren't touring around or doing anything extravagant or unique to that area, we were just getting to know each other better, enjoying each others company without pretense, resting, talking and laughing.
I suppose it's not all that ordinary to sort a giant bucket full of thousands of monopoly pieces, laughing and exclaiming over some of the stranger ones, and some of the funny ones, but the afternoon felt ordinary, natural, and beautiful.
And perhaps that's the key to ordinary joy. It's certainly the key to the things that make my daily 5 lists night after night. They are the things that may or may not happen regularly, but seem natural, and beautiful and carry smiles and laughter and joy within them.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Daily 5 - Year 2, Day 133
Today's Daily 5:
- Wearing the fun new hoodie that my brother J and his girlfriend R gave me for Christmas
- a few brief moments in worship at church this morning
- getting to take communion as Christmas draws to a close and the new year grows close
- I'm still doing the operation world daily prayer for a country, and loving it.
- trying out the new nail art kit mom and dad gave me for Christmas on my toenails. Let me tell you, I'm going to have some fun and professional looking toes from here on in!
- magic bags (I'm fighting a cold, and having a hard time getting warm, and these have been fabulous)
- the freedom to say no to a set of plans for the evening, in favor of recognizing what my desires and needs really were
- a long hot bath, reading a novel
- writing the reverb 10 post for today, and remembering some of the great food I've eaten this year
- the simplicity of a chef salad for supper, after a few days of nothing but very rich foods.
- catching up on my email inbox (now totally caught up!)
- ordering a movie online that I can't wait to collect some friends to watch together
- time with family, but also time alone.
- smiling at mom's face when her family called her from their get together, just as their football team (they're from Wisconsin, guess which "cult" they're a part of?) won their game today
- having a spot to curl up in mom and dad's basement for the evening, free from the pressures of my living situation at grandma's, and close to family, but still alone.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
