Day Eight: Create a gratitude list. Continue adding.Self-care is an enormous movement right now. A lot of times, when you think of self-care, you may think of spa days, eating a ton of tacos, a good nap, or the "treat yo' self" mentality. While all of those things are wonderful and make you feel good, sometimes on your bad days, you don't have the energy or mentality to do one of those things.
And isn't that when we need self-care the most? When we're having a terrible-no-good-very-bad-day? Today wasn't horrible, but it also wasn't great. I have been on edge all day and I can't figure out why. Little things that I normally wouldn't care about have made me stupidly frustrated. Childish things like my brand new office is a little small and I have little storage space because my filing cabinet hasn't been setup, and there are wires everywhere and I was supposed to get a wireless mouse and keyboard but it's not here yet and workers did more stuff in my office and didn't bother covering it and there is dust and dirt everywhere on my new computer and there is no coffee and people kept playing with my door while I was working and my brand new out-of-the-box printer doesn't work..... None of those things are something I would normally even think twice about. Shit happens, we find a solution, and move on. Today, I wanted to whine and complain about everything. And I still haven't figured out why. But I guess that's what happens when you're healing from trauma--negative shit just appears and shows itself some days, without even explaining why. Kind of like when a kid is experiencing difficult things at school and may act out in school. It's misplaced and kind of just--comes out--in other environments and towards others. The key, I suppose, is what you do about it. I'm not going to lie, ya'll. I whined to my supervisor and coworker about everything, while acknowledging out loud to them that I wasn't really upset about anything, I just felt this desire to bitch and moan and complain. They laughed, and let me do what I needed. But I didn't feel any better. So, I decided to write my gratitude list. Mostly because I didn't feel like it today, which probably meant I needed it most today. I forced myself to sit down, take a few breaths, and write stream-of-consciousness about the people, places, and things I am most grateful for in this life. Usually this is really easy for me. But today, I felt a lot of resistance. My body and my brain wanted to stay in this negative space. I was about to just give up on the whole thing and try a different item on the list when my cat, Hoban, jumped on my lap. I smiled. I wrote Hoban on my gratitude list. The rest of my list started coming more easily, and by the time my alarm sounded, I had lots of my favorite things all on one piece of paper. I was having a pretty frustrating day. This small task, even though I didn't want to do it at first, turned my mood around. To be reminded of all the wonderful things happening in my life--my family, my friends, all of you who have read and support my journey here, my cat, living in Pittsburgh, having a new desk chair, a good gin and tonic, food in my refrigerator--is sometimes a brilliant act of self-care. My plan is to continue to add to this gratitude list. I may even try to write something new down every day for the rest of the year, so on NYE 2019, I can look back at the amazing and wonderful things I have experienced, rather than the shit storm that began 2018. What do you all think? With so much gratitude, Farrah ♥
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