Day 95 of 365 - Winter Nesting

It's Monday.  My husband has returned to work after his holidays.  The weather outside is quite unpleasant, a blustery mix of freezing rain, snow and rain.  It's an excellent day to nest at home!

Although I will be doing some household tasks today, including putting away Christmas decorations, I'm also slowing my pace and taking time for personal activities.

This morning I decided to start a new journal for 2019 with a delayed New Moon oracle card reading.  I used a deck I'm preferring lately, of Spirit Animal cards.  The New Moon card spread is with seven cards, which represent different aspects of your life.  Since it's more time consuming than my usual daily one card selection, and also to allow for journaling time, I gave a block of time to this.

The main themes and words that came up repeatedly in today's card reading were surrender, trust and following my intuition more.  Those fit well with my previous intention of being kinder to myself this year, and also with my New Moon intention words of feeling more restored, comfortable and peaceful.

This sounds gentle and lovely, but is challenging for my 'get 'er done' usual way of being.  It seems like it would be beneficial for me to get out of my own way, at least in regard to the way that I mentally attack my goals and tasks.  More productive ways of doing things could come my way if I'm willing to take my blinkers off.

Though I am willing to give this a try, my mental resistance will require doing it in small baby steps, the kaizen approach I spoke of before.  I'll have to override my resistance with tiny actions that feel good.  Right now, what I think that will look like for me is moments, or short spurts of time during the day where I literally go more with the flow, rather than following my mental 'to do' list.

I want to learn to savor more the small authentic moments that bring me contentment.  To do that, I need to stop racing towards the end goal of whatever task I'm doing.

So, when I'm taking the decorations off the Christmas tree, I'll take a moment to examine each one, remember how it came to me, and what I enjoy about it.

This afternoon I'm also making baked beans from scratch.  I can't recall if I have ever tried this in the past.  My mom used to make great baked beans!  My beans have been soaking for 24 hours as recommended and I have all the ingredients for the recipe I'm following.  Instead of rushing through the preparation steps, I will take my time measuring and mixing ingredients to lovingly prepare the roasting pan for the oven.

I look forward to a delicious and comforting supper tonight  to round out this nesting day!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 53 of 365 - Christmas Decorating at Tortoise Pace

This past weekend the Facebook posts with photos of completed Christmas decorating began showing up.  Some people decorate every room of their common areas.  Some have up to three Christmas trees.  I admire those photos.  It's all very lovely and festive.  Those people are the hares in the race to Christmas.  I am the tortoise. I'm not judging.  People have their reasons for wanting to get it all done early.  That way they can enjoy gazing upon their holiday décor for several weeks.  Or, they may be entertaining with holiday parties or family get togethers on whatever date works for them. I love the holiday season, the lights, the decorations, the food, the general sense of magic in the air.  But this year I'm just having a little trouble getting the momentum going for decorating.  Before our first snow, which is now gone thanks to a few days of rain, I got excited and put up the balcony lights and garlands.  We have been e...
Read more

Day 86 of 365 - Year End Gratitude

Today I was out doing some of my usual weekend grocery and household shopping.  I noticed that the selection was more limited and that there were empty spaces and shelves.  Most of the holiday inventory that was added to aisles and end displays is disappearing, now at clearance prices.  Regular inventory shelves have not been fully restocked, probably due to some staff being on a vacation break. This made me realize how much we take for granted that everything we want will just 'be there' when we arrive at stores to shop.  It's part of our instant gratification culture here in North America, but it is certainly not at all typical in many other parts of the world.  We are so fortunate with all the choices we have, but we also just assume they will always be there. I felt grateful for the staff of the stores who are spending their shifts restocking the shelves for us.  I said a friendly hello to the produce manager at the grocery store, a man who goes out...
Read more

Day 13 of 365 - The Joy of Singing - Part 1

When I was growing up we had an old upright piano in our living room.  My mother had learned to play piano and organ as a young girl.  She continued to enjoy it as a past time during her years of homemaking and raising a family.  Often she would play from one of her songbooks and some of the children, usually the girls, would stand nearby singing and looking over her shoulder to read the lyrics. Those were fun times for me and I enjoyed singing melody lines and sometimes trying a harmony.  In elementary school I learned some basic sight reading of music and had some time in the school choir.  But, most of my singing happened at home or at church. I was raised as a Catholic and in my pre-teen and early teen years what were then known as folk choirs and now are better known as contemporary choirs came into vogue.  Our small town choir seemed to have limited access to that spiritual music genre and struggled by with a limited number of hymns/songs.  I...
Read more