What did I do on my two week break from work and social media? Well I sure spent a helluva lot of time in my own head - I can tell you that much. 😂 Sometimes it was nice to be in my own company. Sometimes the songs in my head really got annoying. Sometimes it was lonely. But surprisingly, it was never boring. In the space that was previously filled with funny cat videos and learning more about ADHD or sharing my latest flexing gym pics, I found other ways to occupy my time.
I originally wanted to set out on this 2 week break from work and Instagram with big plans and lofty goals to get massive amounts of things checked off of my 23 in 2023 list or my big photo album or minimizing all my stuff projects.
But I scaled back and told myself that I would be doing no such thing. No big goals. No lofty expectations. One goal. Just don’t go on Instagram. Don’t post. Don’t spend time looking at all the latest funny reels. Just be. Be at peace with myself. And see what happens.
Boy, I’m gonna tell ya that was harder than expected. One good thing was I kept up my workout routine. Much of my day was taken up automatically by my 5+ times per week weightlifting routine that’s followed by 20 minutes on the treadmill. Next, I would head home and do all the usual care task stuff. Make food, tidy the kitchen, shower.
But I couldn’t help but place pressure on myself to take advantage of this time off and “get more done”. Originally, I had taken this time off from work to participate in an endurance ride. But I hadn’t been training Arya enough to warrant putting her into a competition where I would likely not be able to hold myself back from pushing her to a top ten completion. Super not fair for her since the most we have ridden as of late is 10.6 miles. I’ll tell ya though, the last 3 times I’ve taken her out she has NOT wanted to go back to the trailer. She legit U-turned whenever we got within 1/2 mile of it and started heading back out. I had to forcibly steer her back to the trailer. So that’s a great sign for our future together in endurance! If I can just get back into it enough…..but that’s an issue to discuss another day.
One thing that massively helped with my mindset was…painting…
Have you ever taken one of those classes where an instructor walks you through the process of painting a picture? Did you know you can do this at home following tutorials on YouTube?? I swear YouTube has a video for everything!
Trevor and I decided to do this as a date activity one night. We enjoyed it so much that we painted 2 more during my time off. Though I’m not entirely sure how long it took each time…we completely lose track of time while painting…it probably took at least 3 hours each time - not including set up and clean up.
The thing about painting is when you are a beginner like me, you have to just let go of perfectionism. When the artist instructor says to tap the canvas with your mop brush to make leaves of a tree and your tap looks like a blob, it’s incredibly hard to not be disappointed in yourself. My trees will not look like the instructor’s trees. They just won’t. At least not with lots of practice first.
In bodybuilding as in many things in life, we are told to “trust the process”. Each time I do this activity I wonder how on earth this is ever going to end up looking like a tree, a waterfall, a cat, or whatever. And every time I start to get frustrated or annoyed, I take deep breaths and tell myself to let go and just trust the freaking process. Nobody is going to judge me on these beginner paintings. Nobody really cares how they turn out. I mean, do you dear reader? Haha. Hell, it’s not like I’m trying to accomplish anything at all with these except to have fun in the moment. To enjoy the journey that is involved in creating something out of nothing. And what do you know?? This shit really does end up looking like a tree or a waterfall or a cat after all is said and done! It’s quite amazing that it does, honestly! 😂
I tried to take this lesson and apply it to other things I worked on during these two weeks.
After my divorce, I had a goal of never ever having credit card debt again and climbing out of debt. I have made massive improvements in this area and only have $7,000 left in student loan debt. I owe money on the 20 year old LQ horse trailer we got last year. And I’ll eventually need to get a new vehicle. But we have made massive improvements to our property all on money that we have saved and then spent bit by bit as we’ve gone along. And though it’s taking time, the anxiety I used to have around money in my previous marriage has significantly dissipated. Money still makes me anxious, surprisingly similar to the way painting a picture following a video on YouTube makes me anxious. But I’m breathing through it and trusting my process.
I changed the way I track my expenses a couple of years ago. I now use an app called YNAB. When I made the switch from Mint and an excel spreadsheet to YNAB, I deviated from the way I first did my finances after my divorce. I set up the expense categories in the way that the YNAB folks say to do it. I watched all their videos and tips and followed how many of them do it.
Knowing what I know now about how my brain works differently than others, I decided to go back to trusting my own process and I revamped my categories to the way I did it before. This was a pretty big undertaking as I had to go through all our categories for the past two years when Trevor and I first merged our money.
But already I feel better. I KNOW I can have a better understanding of our financial situation because I was able to do this before. I’m leaning into the confidence that I gained a few years ago and am excited about being able to get back to having a one page summary view of our income and expenses per year the way I had it before.
Budgeting and painting are just two of the things I’ve been up to these past two weeks.
Will share again more soon! Be well, my friends! ❤️
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