Tis this season too

Seasonal depression timing is coming. Are you doing the things that you need to do to prepare for it? Are you making sure that you are planning things that you will actually follow up and do? Here are some of the things that I do to prepare.

First off, I allow myself to know that it is perfectly acceptable to have down days to do nothing. It is ok to have days that running laundry through the washer and dryer are considered productive. Reading a good book is productive. Watching movies and allowing your feelings to fall out of your eyes is productive. SOMETIMES. However, not all the time. Not when it is day after day after day.

Personally, I like to bake during the colder months. So I start a Pinterest folder for the things I want to bake this year. Since it helps me feel like I was productive and gives me a momentary smile I consider it a win. Even though I will never look at it again.

So then I print out the few that I may actually make since it now shows a different level of seriousness. This may or may not work, but it sure makes me feel like it will.

These last few years I have chosen to start a new gym routine in the beginning of December so that I already have a routine set in my mind before all of the ‘resolutioners’ bear down on the local gyms. There is nothing worse then trying a new routine when you are climbing around a bunch of fresh and clean gym members who talk too much while they stare at every move you make thinking if they watch hard enough they could remember each and every step. They won’t, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Would you like a little piece of advice from someone who has been enduring torture as my self care routine for a few years? It’s ok to watch for motivation, but we know the difference between someone being creepy vs someone with honest intent to learn.

Now, does that mean that my routine won’t get shook up during the first six weeks of the year before they drop like flies? Nope not at all. It will absolutely get shook up. The difference is that now I am in the mindset of getting through it so that the work I put in wasn’t a waste. When I started the routine I gave myself a goal. Inches off the measuring tape in a certain problem area, or a pair of jeans that I want to fit in. Sometimes it is as simple as how I want my arms to look in a bridesmaids dress that I know someone is making me wear. Whatever it is, I want those results.

There is a feeling that you get when you set a goal, push through the bullshit and get the results. It is unmatchable by any amount of laziness, or comfort food. That makes me move. Is that enough for you?

The last thing that I do is make sure that I feel out where the people I live with are at with their mental health. Sometimes it can’t be about me. Sometimes I have a child struggling and instead of allowing myself to wallow, I now need to be watching them and keeping them moving instead. That changes from year to year of course, but if I am not prepared for it then there is a lot of scrambling. I can handle my boat being rocked a bit of course (well, hopefully) but there have been years that it comes so far out of left feild when I wasn’t ready that it blows me out of the water.

That’s going to happen sometimes I suppose, but if I can make it to where it isn’t EVERY year then I feel like I am winning the battle.

Do you have a plan?

Worldwide Beatiful

Take a moment and feel these lyrics. Then go search the video if you can. ❤

White churches, black churches
Different people, same hearses
It’s kinda hard to fight with each other
Laying down in the ground, six under
At every show I see my people
They ain’t the same, but they’re all equal
One love, one God, one family

You’re missing every color
If you’re only seeing black and white
Tell me how you’re gonna change your mind
If your heart’s unmovable
We ain’t that different from each other
From one to another, I look around
And see worldwide beautiful

Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God
Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God
Coast to coast, city to city
Reach out your hands if you’re with me
Still got some work but we still got a dream
Every shade, every heart come together and sing
Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God (woo)

You’re missing every color
If you’re only seeing black and white
Tell me how you’re gonna change your mind
If your heart’s unmovable
We ain’t that different from each other
From one to another, I look around
And see worldwide beautiful

One love, one God, one family (one family, y’all, c’mon)
One love, one God, one family
One love, one God, one family
One Love, one God, one family (sing it with me)

You’re missing every color
If you’re only seeing black and white
Tell me how you’re gonna change your mind
If your heart’s unmovable (we’re not that different)
We ain’t that different from each other
From one to another, I look around
And see worldwide beautiful
Look around and see worldwide beautiful (so beautiful)

Look around and see worldwide beautiful
(Worldwide beautiful)
(Worldwide beautiful)
(Worldwide beautiful)
Look around and see worldwide

beautifulSource: LyricFindSongwriters: Jordan Mark Schmidt / Kane Brown / Ryan James Hurd / Jordan Schmidt / Ryan Hurd / Shy Carter

Open doors

They always say when one door closes another will open.

I’ve heard multiple ways for that saying but that is the one I heard the most.

There is nothing wrong with making decisions to change things up to fit your desires better.

Who cares if its a job, a city, a lover or a friendship. You are not stuck anywhere or with anyone. They are all a few choices away from being different. When you decide to be free to make your own decisions the whole world opens up to you.

The question is how long will it take you to decide to make the change?

Will it take you even longer to accept it and forgive yourself for it?

No questions

There are a few things I have learned in life, without needing to randomly question it.

Here is the most important.

Everyone needs to have that group of people that they can just unload on without worry. Sometimes its just one person, sometimes its ten of them.

Life without them however is not ok.

They stand by you when you go through a breakup. They are right there when you fail that test, again. They don’t judge when you drop plans because you aren’t in mood (unless you do that too much.) They just get you. They don’t hesitate to call or show up at the wrong time.

They know that life brings high points, laughter, and great memories.

They also know that there will be bad times. Low times. Bad diagnoses, deaths, tears and heartbreak’s.

And yet they stay, through all of it.

Those people are vital. ❤

Golden rule

It seems as though these last few years has brought out the asshole in everyone doesn’t it?

Everyone seems to have forgotten to have a filter on what they say to other’s. What’s worse is the excuses they use to explain away the bad manners!

Sure we all have different opinions. These opinions come from life experiences, stories we’ve heard from people we know as well as online sources/news stations.

I respect that. I respect your opinion. I respect your decisions. I applaud you for standing for who and what you believe in.

HOWEVER!

When the hell did that give them the right to tear down others that don’t agree wholeheartedly?

Who says what you believed in was the end all for every human being? Why would they not be able to have their own opinions?

Who the hell do these people think they are, honestly?

So now what

Now what?

That’s the only thought I have for this summer in the year following the Covid shutdown. Last year we did our part and stayed home or out of places more often then not. We made sure we wore masks and had a very realistic fear of the ‘what if’ seeing as I work healthcare and saw this from a different very deadly point of view.

However as a parent who’s children virtually learned all year so we didn’t get sucked into the quarentined bubble off and on, my kids need the outside world more then ever.

Every adult in my family has been vaccinated so I should be able to not worry as much going in and out of these places right? Yet I’m not sure.

It has nothing to do with false media junk, or the pressures of the world fear mongering me so please refrain from commenting about that OR the negative opinions of the vaccines. Yes I am asking out loud on social media platforms, so your opinion is valid to respond with I just don’t want the disrespect to outweigh the honest communications. I do respect your choice for you and yours, just please show the same respect here if you chose to comment.

Are you out and about? Indoor and outdoor? Still masking?

❤ Much love to you all. ❤

Heavy

I haven’t been writing recently. There really is not a good reason, and yet there are millions of excuses. I don’t often talk about feelings very well unless I am writing. Anytime that I don’t want to stop and think about something heavy happening in my life, I stop writing.

I have always done that. Sometimes I can recognize it fast, other times it takes longer. I’m not super down or dealing with things that are too heavy. No need to send out the men with straight jackets to lock me away.

Things are just heavy enough to keep me quiet.

Politics, COVID, healthcare working, shutdowns, unemployment, homeschooling, choices about sending kids back to school this year, to mask or not to mask… which promptly circles itself directly back to politics.

All things that I am not willing to talk about with people, keyboard or reality. Why do people have to be so mean? So petty when speaking to other human beings? Why is it so hard to accept that everyone has their own opinions? They don’t have to match yours. They SHOULDN’T match yours. They don’t live the same life as you. They haven’t seen the things that you have, not have they learned all of the things that you have. They have seen and learned their own. We can accept that as a difference and use the literal words ‘Embrace your differences’.

However when that becomes put to the test, the claws come out.

I have never seen so much ignorance as 2020 has brought to our lives.

There is no escaping it.

You can’t log onto anything on the internet without seeing it.

You can’t go to the grocery store without being accosted or glared at for whichever side of the mask debate you land on.

You can’t watch television, or speak to half of your friends or family without it coming up.

I understand that they all have purpose, and a good reason for debate. I absolutely see the point.

But DAMNIT this all is heavy.

‘Twas the night

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blixen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too–
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes–how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight–
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

By Clement Clarke Moore

When nature provides

These are not my pictures. These were all found on google while I searched ways to edit my own winter pictures. However these were too gorgeous to pass up and not share with you all.

Happy holidays! ❤❤🎄⛸❄☃️

Winter blues

This winter my challenge will be helping my family and myself fight seasonal depression. This has been a trying year and being stuck inside is never the best thing for that.

I have been looking for crafts and cheaper options of things around us to do. One would think in such a big city there would be an endless amount of things to do but sticking to a budget makes it ridiculous.

However the battle has only just begun….