March started out like any regular month, with a long list of goals to work towards and tasks to get done but then, just a few days in, a worldwide health crisis erupted, and none of those things seemed to matter anymore. I spent a couple of weeks just trying to make sense of what is unfolding, but throughout it all, one thought kept coming up in my mind - that, even in the darkest times, light is still present. In other words, even when things feel particularly hard and scary, as they have for many of us, there is still plenty of good to be found as well.
In that spirit, here are a few of the things I want to remember about March 2020:
-----------------------------
making lemonade out of the oversized bucket of metaphorical lemons that this month served us
cooking lots of brussels sprouts; we found them at a great price and stocked up on 10 pounds of them (yes, really!), so I made this recipe several times - that marinade makes all the difference (I make 4-5 times the amount recommended, use most of it on the brussels sprouts, and save the rest for other dishes) and the sprouts come out so juicy - I love eating them both hot & cold
drinking so much water (I really notice when I get out of the habit, whether it's getting a headache, my skin being dry - especially with all the hand washing - or feeling low on energy, so I'm making it a priority every day) and trying out some orange peel and fennel tea too, inspired by Olivia’s post & stories on Instagram (check out her immuniTEA highlight too for more ideas and options of ingredients to add into this tea)
reading The Four Tendencies by Gretchen Rubin, and starting to figure out how to work best for my own tendency
enjoying all the sunshine - we’ve gotten quite a bit of it throughout the month, and it just doesn’t get old; I guess if there’s a silver lining to these long winters, it’s how much I notice and truly appreciate the light and sunshine during the rest of the year
waiting eagerly for spring to arrive - and thankfully it did! We had temperatures above zero almost exclusively for the second half of the month, and by the end, most of the snow had melted - which doesn’t seem like much, but it definitely is in our area. Usually, in March, we still have several feet of snow left, so this early start is pretty unexpected but so welcome
loving Notion; I found out about it from Michelle’s video and decided to try it out. I started out using her Life Dashboard template and have been slowly adjusting it to fit my own needs ever since
needing some time to find a new normal, like most of us, I’m sure; once things started getting serious around the middle of the month, I really had a hard time focusing on, well, practically anything, and perhaps as an involuntary “survival” mechanism, disconnected from my goals and dreams - it wasn’t until the end of the month that I started finding my focus again
smelling spring flowers - these beautiful hyacinths and daffodils that my mom and I received for Women’s Day - and getting excited about seeing the ones in our front yard pop out of the ground in just a few weeks
watching our favourite TV shows on the weekend; everyone in our family is on such different schedules now, that there’s just no way we can keep up with most of our favourite shows as they first air on weekday evenings, so it’s become the perfect excuse to sit down together on Saturday afternoons and catch up with them after doing some work around the house
knowing that, among all the hard and scary, there is still plenty of good around too - and leaning in to that as much as I possibly can
feeling like myself again; to say the last few weeks have been a rollercoaster of emotions would be an understatement, but after feeling unfocused and disconnected for most of the month, by the end, I started to get a sense of normalcy again
bookmarking all the positive quotes and reminders on Instagram - like this wise quote about gratitude, this helpful approach for dealing with overwhelm and this collection of positive news amongst all the heartbreaking ones
listening to a few episodes from two of my favourite podcasts, The Perfectionism Project (this one helped me start writing and documenting again) and Grow with Soul (this one shared a refreshing perspective on tracking & using numbers in our businesses)
-----------------------------
Tell me, besides the health crisis and social distancing, what's standing out in your mind from March?
No comments:
Post a Comment