PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION

The mental journey is still the most important aspect of exercising (to me):

So, I’ve been making banana exercise videos for a week already, it’s been getting better as far as finding some kind of angle that will cover all the motion, lighting, those kinds of things, still not calling all the cues, not sure if I want to dub over vs try to do it during active exercise, either one would work better than indecision, but… indecision it is for now.

I don’t exactly know where this is going and I don’t exactly know why I’m doing it, but it’s healthy and it feels right and it doesn’t cost much time since I was doing the same exercise anyways.

WEEK 3 T25: Beta Mode, it’s strange to me that it’s only been a week since I started the banana exercise, because it feels like forever now. I drew that banana icon by the way, and added it with Autodesk SketchBook. I used to use Sketch.io, but it started crashing so much, then I used something new and found it to be much better for me. I guess that’s the opportunity in difficulty, without problems it’s so appealing to never change from something that is fine to something great.

FINANCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Doing fairly bad if by good you mean making money… but I’m learning about things and the overall market, especially in the tech sector took a loss of value, my husband said analyst adjusted the market to lower the value of stocks, I didn’t check that, I don’t care enough to check that.

It was nice making money at first, then it was painful loosing money, then it stopped being painful loosing money, at this point I am still loosing, but since it wasn’t important money I was investing (it was like spending money) it’s cool. I’ve learned a few things, one is that I don’t check more than twice a day the stock values because I refuse to push aside the kids for that and I have needy kids. So I can’t really be at good as buying low as someone who keeps watching throughout the day. Another thing is that my husband is a better investor than me… I was hoping to beat him easily, for no real reason, but I didn’t (at least I won push ups).

Another thing I learned was that when you don’t have a lot to invest and also are not a good investor, it’s much easier to make more money by just going to work. Passive income sounds really fun, but if it was very easy there may not be enough work getting done. It’s possible, many talented people start with little capital and many people with a lot are able to make something decent, yet without either the investment skill set, which isn’t universal, or a large initial investment, regular work still makes a lot more money.

FAMILY TRANSFORMATION

Each day I start out with an imaginary wheel barrel of love for both of my kids, and my daughter wants more than that, but I have only what I have… my son has so much left over, because he wants so much less.

As I made peace with the way my daughter is, needy, dramatic, unsatisfied, but also sweet, hard working, and ambitious, I made peace with my inability to meet all her needs. I do what I can and try to allow her a lot of other people, family and friends in her lives to try to add to her support and world view, yet I think she will only ever have enough love when she learns to bake her own love cookies.

She struggles to be less neurotic, we had to stop her from washing her hands 100s of times a day over the past two days, it was a bit ugly. She thought that if she washed her hands she wouldn’t get sick and actually she did get sick, with what seems like a normal runny nose. She was really afraid of getting sick due to the panic that the news has spread. No matter how much we explained that young people were doing really well with recovery, she was afraid to get sick and she is sick, so she is kind of terrified. We are trying to help her know real facts about microbiology, virus, bacteria, physiology ext, but it’s hard when conflicting information tells her that if she washes her hands she won’t get sick (which is unfortunately not true for airborne particles). I don’t know how many people this year have gotten sick and worried about it being worse than data indicated it should be, it must be truly scary for the elderly who are at real risk, but it’s interesting how easy it is to dismiss the mistake in panic legitimacy in children and honor the feeling in adults. It’s stupid in both or valid in both and I don’t even know for sure which one, but I do know if it’s valid for one it’s valid for both children and adults to be panicked. Children are seen as a nuisance when they freak out and adults are seen as completely in the right due to these “unusual circumstances”.

Each day I keep failing to be as patient with my kids as I’d like to be, but I’ve accepted that that will probably be the outcome of the day and as long as I do the best I can I keep hoping that someday my patience will exceed their ability to annoy me greatly.

SOUL TRANSFORMATION

I haven’t made as much progress here as I would have liked, but since I’ve leveled up in physical and family sectors, I can accept that pretty gracefully.

I recently read about a speech Winston Churchill gave where he said “never, ever, ever, ever, give up,” or something like that. That’s me in the kitchen, trying, hoping, doing something, but it’s not exactly a victory yet.

I have a meal plan, I deviated this week because I found out about Charlotte Mason’s school ideas last Friday, thus I adapted our life style to be outdoors for 6 hours a day this week. Which is great and crazy to me. I thought it would be harder, but since I, my daughter, and my son all love being outside, it’s not too hard at all. We have breakfast, I set up a fence, we go out, have lunch out there, and come back in at 3PM. It’s only been two days, but it feels like a glove that fits for us. The kids do not get board of 6 hours outside, I think we could probably just live outside all the time… my daughter gardens and plays, does more art, does some experiments, plays ball. It’s not the same life as indoors transferred outdoors, it’s a different life. My son crawled under a golf cart to get a ball today, he was figuring out so much of problems solving, cause and effect, spacial awareness. Us three are all better people outside. I’m more patient, because I enjoy the blue sky, the trees in the view. It would be wonderful if we had grass, we have concrete, but at least the kids enjoy drawing on the concrete. At one point in my life I realized I would never be happy if I didn’t learn how to McGuyver happiness with the (sometimes ghetto) stuff available in the current moment. So, although it doesn’t look very much like Waldorf, at least we are finally outside.

Last year my dad left to go to help care for his dad for about a week, he was the chef in the house. I had a bunch of ground beef, so I learned to grill hamburgers. Tomorrow I think I’ll grill our lunch or at least grill the meat I was “supposed to” make into a stew today. It will be easy to grill since the grill is right where I will be with the kids for 6 hours… perhaps I can roast tomatoes on the grill too? We have a grill pan kind of thing maybe I can try.

MENTAL TRANSFORMATION

The more I have going on in my life, the more easily I seem to be able to forgive. I guess I don’t want to be bogged down with the past when I have a present I enjoy?

For whatever reason forgiveness is coming easier. I think I’ve been laughing everyday since I started dressing up in the banana costume.

Laughing at the absurdity of life that is always there, but that is usually invisible. When I can laugh at myself, laugh at life, then I can laugh at the mistakes of myself and others and that paves a pretty good pathway for forgiveness to follow.

I’ve been doing things without fear that I used to be to afraid to do, draw, write, try to write a book, then I have fun, then I forgive others because I don’t want old conflicts cluttering up my mental space that I want to use for the projects I’m enjoying. I never felt fear held me back in major ways, but it’s almost impossible to deny that. It’s weird that I only feel the fear as it leaves, I’m only conscious of it in hindsight. It’s not something I lie to others about, but I’m finding it was something I deeply lied to myself about. I don’t really know why so much fear has left me and so suddenly, but it seems like it has.

I think in part, I was always afraid to ever seem silly, and to be a beginner, which I am in many ways (as an artist, as a writer, as a teacher, as a wife, as a parent) is to make silly mistakes often, such that I wasn’t comfortable being myself until I got comfortable with the silliness that I have. My shadow side was not violence or lust, but mere silliness that I wasn’t owning. I was very afraid to put myself in a position to be laughed at, but I think as humans we are almost constantly in a position to be laughed at… once I stopped trying to not be silly I had so much more energy for the rest of life.

ONE WEEK IN LIFE IN SUMMARY

Body – Can’t explain exactly why, but banana costume exercise is really deeply correct for me, it’s a good core to my preferred lifestyle.

Finances – The stock market isn’t great, but I didn’t depend on it for food or rent, so that’s fine, things are great right now, perhaps nothing is not a good retirement savings, but why dampen the abundance of the moment worrying about tomorrow? It’s not the same as actually saving to worry about savings.

Family – It could be better, but it’s so much better than before that it’s almost blissful. My daughter is volatile, but wants to work with us, that’s major, she still throws huge fits, but it’s 2% as often, which is amazing.

Soul – I’m starting to live outside of my comfort zone often and it’s weird how much more alive I feel, I’m only a tiny bit out of my comfort zone, but life feels amazingly different.

Mind – I’m starting to get a lot of confidence back in my ability to keep going. I may not have completed anything major like a book, but I’m trusting myself to at least consistently take steps towards my goals and I think I will finish those big dreams in a time that works with reality.

THANK YOU READERS!

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.‎

– Oscar Wilde

You are the best you the world will ever have. We are all depending on you to be you. Thank you, for being you. There is a lot of happiness in accepting who you are and owning it, it’s not that easy, but you have to carry who you are, either as debt or profit, you can’t get rid of you, no matter how hard you try. I thank you for being you, and remind you, you are the best you ever, really. No one can ever take that from you.

🐔🌈🌞

(Chicken Art – Life Balance – Things to Be Happy About)