And neither are you!
AKA, fresh starts. AKA, more on the return….
Hello again after nearly three years! I am tiptoeing back onto the everyday magic blog to share something from my real-life, hand-written journal this morning, a very unplanned and delightful reemergence. I hope you are well. If you’re reading this, thank you for sharing your time and attention with me! If you find some of yourself mirrored in any of the words here, I hope we can keep each other in good company and feel the encouragement and connection of never being alone, as we keep carrying on through the changes and experiences of our lives, united through common human feelings and trying to grow and stay engaged! With our true selves and with a good, human life, in its many forms. That’s what I’m doing, though my life looks quite different now in some ways than it did three years ago, when I was regularly writing on everyday magic. And I have been a bit untethered and disconnected lately, from many things that best help me be me, but more on that in the blog below…
There are a few great questions here to ask yourself, to help ground yourself, which I got from an Unlocking Us podcast episode (more details and link below), and I hope it helps you as much as it helped me!
Have a lovely day and season of November thankfulness and noticing! Sending you lots of magic!
Now into my journal…
What a beautiful morning. November, yet I’m sitting outside in shorts and a t-shirt, basking in the sun on my cushion by the wildflowers, like a cute pregnant lizard. 😊💕
I’m so glad to be starting a fresh, pretty journal. I need a fresh start. (It seems I am often saying that when I come back to journaling.) I attach so much expectation and judgment to practices and their structures (like perfect, full-send, max-effort Artist’s Way — which I began earlier this year but didn’t finish — or else give up and no journaling at all for months, guiltily, and much to my own detriment), that of course I inevitably tend to burn myself out on them and not want them anymore.
I wasn’t feeling “it” — magical motivation, flow, excitement, whatever “it” is — when I woke up this morning, but I resisted getting on social media (I’m back to my no-phone social media rule, laptop only, out of sheer personal necessity and realizing I really don’t want to spend what days and years I’m lucky enough to get, on social media all the time, and I want to feel better), and I got up and chose an outstanding Brené Brown podcast episode and walked with my best pal, Blue. 🩷
I noticed many delights / good things / gratitudes on my walk and throughout my morning. I stopped and took a picture above my head of the yellow-yellow fall leaves on my favorite tree on our street, in the neighbor’s yard, against the blue-blue sky. I reveled in the warm sunshine on my body. A kind stranger neighbor was putting his bins at the road and stopped to wait for us to walk by in case the cans scared Blue, and we struck up a small chat… he was a genuine delight of a person! Lovely, warm energy, maybe Irish accent. What a joy that I walked up his cul-de-sac at that precise moment, a route I don’t usually take, and met him! I noticed another delight in my kitchen, a new head full of leaves on a succulent in the window… and when I feel constantly the pressure and dread-filled guilt of not caring for my plants and failing to water them for a month, etc. Apparently this succulent is thriving! Then I came outside with my delightful breakfast of yogurt, strawberries, granola, and dark chocolate chips, to this delightful garden moment of simple beauty, with my dog and journal and cushion.
Wow!
All that on a morning I “wasn’t feeling it!” 🩷
I forget that I am not a robot. And then I wonder why I am languishing away while treating myself like one.
I need to slow down. Slooowww dooowwwnn…
Like the ancient, seasonal, mammalian creature I am. Slowed and attuned to the speeds and rhythms of the ebbs and flows within me.
Front-loading joy and self-compassion, kindness and self-care, delight and presence, instead of only treating these essential, daily elements of a good, human life as emergency, last-resort, triage tools.
🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷
I am here to fill my cup. I am here to start finding my rhythms and spirit again.
How can I feel connected today?
Choose better wording when texting about my morning and work schedule today, and ask for what I want to meet my needs. ✅💖 Just did this. It helped.
Ask Jake tonight for a delight / good thing / gratitude from his day. 🩷 And share mine. I would love to start this daily practice with him.
How can I feel healthy today?
Go for a walk. ✅
Eat a good brekkie. ✅
Drink a lot of water.
Do my prenatal birth-prep exercises.
Go print my new gym programming and go lift.
How can I feel purposeful today?
Water my indoor plants. ✅ Takes 15 minutes max, yet I dread this task and let it lapse for weeks. It felt good to do it with slowness, patience, presence, simplicity, and compassion this morning.
Drop off surprise Cover’s apple cider and a new baby ultrasound picture for our neighbors on my way to work.
Perhaps most importantly of all this is that I met myself and made many small deposits into my joy-and-delight bank, many mini moments and best next steps of genuine care and presence for myself this morning. I am slowing down. I am halting the robotic machine life. I am choosing grace and trying to remember I cannot have everything at once and do not need to do it all at the same time, all immediately, all perfectly. I can just be Bri.
P.S. Another delight! I can feel the baby moving often a lot now! 🩷🤰🏼
P.P.S. Noticing, noticing, noticing… A holy act. And wholly transformative.
P.P.P.S. As Brené said in this episode of Unlocking Us that I listened to this morning (with Karen Walrond) (and which was an inspiration behind much of my writing today, including the three questions above, for feeling connected, healthy, and purposeful)… knowing this stuff doesn’t mean jackshit if we aren’t practicing it. I’ve long forgotten to practice and live in it. I’ve dropped off my practices of self and spirit, joy and presence, connection and alignment. Hence, the robotic languishing. Hence, the return (a beautiful, crucial part of any practice). 🩷
As an aside, when I finished journaling this morning and decided to share this on everyday magic — the first blog post in almost three years! — I opened my computer to get started publishing it, and I found a notification for a comment just an hour before, on an old post! I almost never get comments on the blog, so this timing was surreal! The comment was left on this post about a playful spirit… such a timely reminder I needed right now too! It felt serendipitous to get this tiny connection and encouragement from a kind stranger at the same moment I was writing and had already just decided to post here after the long hiatus! Thankful. 🥰
I read that playful spirit post from a few years ago and then wandered down the rabbit trail of many other posts here, refreshing my spirit and re-reading through many things I have discovered, pondered over, practiced, and learned again and again before.
Here are a few posts from the everyday magic archives I re-discovered this morning that were most supportive and relevant for me, still now, in today’s season, and connected with the writing I did this morning:
A playful spirit & self-parenting (this post even mentions the Becca Piastrelli quote I have long-loved about being ancient animals navigating through modern times, not machines! It’s the slow down/ancient creature idea I referenced in my journal this morning! Seriously, what full-circle serendipity and timing that kind commenter unknowingly had today!)
Life (right now) in two sentences
The art of returning (Hello, it’s me, three years later, re-appearing on the blog! Hello, it’s me, journaling by hand this morning for the first time in a couple months, after not much journaling — a very grounding practice for me — most of this year!)
Here’s to the everyday magic around us all, always, and may we stop being too busy, too tired, too robotic, to see it!
