Intentions for my 47th year

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I am finding that the only way to change is to do things differently now. (Yes, seems pretty obvious doesn’t it? But it seems I have the tendency to think that “someday” I will do…[insert wonderful things here]. ) So, with a birthday coming up, decided it’s worth the time to take a moment and imagine what changes I want to make, and get them in front of me so I can start “doing all the things” now.

  • More Being, Less Consuming – Greatly reduce my social media time and spend it being present and interacting with the world around me. There’s so much to see all around me, and I know I’ve missed a lot. Good-bye Facebook app.
  • Flexibility and Strength – “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” – said someone somewhere. I’m fortunate that prevention is still possible. I’ve spent some time lately looking into the exercise styles of people like Max Shank
  • Read, Read, Read – I miss reading. My attention span has been reduced to scroll, scroll, scroll; simply scanning topics looking for something more distracting. I miss in-depth reading. I already have a stack I’m ready to dig into!!

Cheers!

Back to the Basics of Being Me

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There’s a reason the title of this blog, Lundie’s Life resonated with me back when I got started. It’s because it doesn’t have a “theme” or “topic” that would constrain me in the future. It really is the core of my focus. This. Is. My. Life.

With my Mother-In-Law’s illness, and the recent death of acquaintances, I am reminded yet again that this life, and the way I live it is all will ever really “have”. Nothing is permanent. The only thing that I can truly call 100% mine is my life.

Of course that statement immediately triggers a “backlash” thought, a quote from the bible, “You are not your own, you were bought at a price.”1 I don’t believe this is true. I believe I am my own. I don’t have to struggle to be what someone else wants me to be, expects me to be, demands that I be. I just get to…BE. No more constant second guessing, measuring, struggling, losing, and failing to be enough. Enough is enough.

I’m rebuilding my confidence in my ability to “human”. To adult. To woman. To Lundie.

I’m working toward being solidly myself while feeling my feelings, and not reacting to stress in life by eating, hiding, avoiding or burying the emotions that come. Should be interesting. Messy, but interesting.

1. 1 Cor 6:19-20. That verse originally was used to evoke a sense of obligation. Why all the externalizing of motivation? Value was placed because of outside forces (e.g., bought by someone else) rather than a value placed on life itself.↩

Starting Tuesday – 2017 The100DayProject.org

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Patience and Presence

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This has been a doozy of a year so far.

It’s hard to remain present all of the time. Everything in our society is geared toward escaping the current moment. Don’t feel good? Just take something, drink something, watch something, buy something, go somewhere!

Waiting is hard. Even more so when you have no power to change the outcome.

Distracting myself with current world events only exacerbates the overwhelming desire to escape the current moment.

Practice makes perfect though. When the weight threatens, a deep breath and a “note to self” that “Hey. I feel kinda shitty.” helps. It puts a little gap between me and my feelings and my current situation. Puts me into observer mode rather than sufferer mode. From there I get a little break from the weight of things. (I’m sure learning a lot from Eckhart Tolle’s talk on the “Pain Body”. It makes me happy when my audiobook selection clicks in serendipitous ways.)

My goal still stands. Right here. Right now. Whatever’s in front of me.

Love and light,
Lund

Just do something

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Really frozen today. Not talking about the weather, but yes, it is god-awful cold outside right now. House just can’t keep up.

What I’m talking about is my propensity to get overwhelmed and then get stuck. It’s not that I don’t know what to do, it’s that I don’t know what to do NEXT. Quicksand for the brain. I have this chaos of things that I want to do, things that I should do, and things that I need to do. I have gotten a taste of doing things I want to do, and I know how restorative it can be. But I also know that neglecting the things that I need to do will make things worse. So where to start?

On days like today, the only real answer is “Just do something”. It’s a priming the pump of activity – just to break the trance that I’m in. Even if that something isn’t the highest priority. It’s like the record is skipping and I can’t go to the next thing. I’m just stuck, with the same noise repeating over and over in my head.

Fun huh?

Peace,
Lund

Say It Now

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Living in real life to me means being unbuffered by the white noise of social media and the hurry/scurry of future events traipsing on the now. It also means having to face the bad stuff head-on as it comes.

And, it means expressing my genuine thoughts and feelings in the moment, rather than trying to save them up for some somehow “more appropriate time”. (This is of course, within reason. Waking your SO up in the middle of the night to discuss wall color options isn’t what I’m talking about.)

It just means living with a little less regret. Taking the extra moments to go give your kid a hug before heading out to get groceries, or kissing your SO for a couple of extra seconds as they head off to work. That’s living in THIS moment, and leaving yourself less exposed to regret in future moments. It doesn’t prevent anything bad from ever happening, but it does bring more awareness and enjoyment to the only period of time you have actual control to make a change…right THIS minute.

Recent family events are bringing this to the forefront of my thoughts. I’m so grateful that I’ve been putting this into practice — acting on the small but truly more important things first, even when the pressure of “the urgent” gets high.

#IRL2017 today means really looking at and seeing the people in front of me and making an active choice to be open and engage them. Real appropriate connections do not disappoint.

Peace and love,
Lundie

Decluttering and Gratitude

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It’s been another really good day off. This has been a wonderful holiday break. A real introvert recharge. Spent yesterday lounging and today stretching my minimalism wings in my study — the place where stuff goes that I don’t know quite what to do with, but am not ready to let go of.

That’ll be an exciting next step for me – really dig into the minimalist/decluttering world.

Cheers!

Write Despite and Go High

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I just love lazy holiday days off.

Snuggling on the couch, watching J5 create Mario levels for his own game.

Drinking coffee + espresso lovingly made by J4 from the new machine!

Re-engaging with a paperback, Zeroes, from an author, Chuck Wendig, I enjoy following on Twitter, @ChuckWendig, and who offered a challenge I can really get behind, Write despite.

This next year will be another year of change. (They all are, but I want to embrace and focus on the concepts of change this year – the good, the bad, and the ugly.) I am going to fight against the bad and ugly. I will accept reality, but I do not have to let certain realities alter me. I will go high when the world around me seems to be going low. I will relax my fear filters and try to let them go altogether. I will speak truth in love. I will be me.

I am grateful for yet another day to experience life in this body, in this place, at this time. There’s nowhere else to be!

Peace and love,
Lundie
#gohigh

New Year-ish

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Goals for this next year:

  • #IRL2017 – Extract myself from the majority of social media platforms, connect with the people around me F2F. This also includes offline forms of entertainment, more reading, drawing, and resting.
  • #Unsweetened2017 – Go sugar free / low carb. Ease myself away from the Diabetes diagnosis.
  • #Move2017 – Make movement a daily thing – Find what I love, and what I like and just do it
  • #Minimally2017 – Embrace minimalism – Let go of the stuff that I don’t love or need

The nice thing about these is I don’t have a marked “I started here, and I will end over there” goal. These are just lights in the sky to give me something to look up at to give me a general direction when I get a bit lost in the noise.

The holiday season is all about the noise.

2017 – Thoughts on a New Year

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2016 has been an intense year.

I’ve realized I don’t daydream, or imagine things about my future. I’ve spent a lot of my life working to prepare defensive strategies and prevent failure as best as I can. It really is exhausting, and I’ve also realized that shit’s gonna happen no matter what I do.

Only I can do my best work.

So, I’m working out some thoughts out loud.

I have things I want to do. Time to dream, time to set some direction.

I know it will take baby steps, but without a direction, I’m bunny hopping in circles.

Some ideas for my future aim:

  • Take a FB/Twitter/etc. hiatus – Replace with F2F connection, offline activities
  • Go sugar free – Back away from the Diabetes diagnosis
  • Make movement a daily thing – Find what I love, and what I like and just do it
  • Embrace minimalism – Let go of the stuff that I don’t love or need

I don’t know that I’m setting any resolutions, but I guess this is close. Looking forward to a reboot.