“Passion rules reason, for better or for worse.“ – Terry Goodkind 🕊️

GOALS THIS WEEK: Cleaning house.

Last Week: Struggling with paperwork.

This Week: Feel better, not 100%, but 80%.

HEALTH OVERVIEW:

Mental Health: I am so invigorated with the garden.

Physical Health: So much better, exercised once so far, but planning to do about 3 times a week.

Social Health: Doing well again, somehow made peace with the migratory nomadic lifestyle again.

LIFE JOURNAL:

“Without forgiveness life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation.”
– Roberto Assagioli

“There is no small act of kindness. Every compassionate act makes large the world.”

–Mary Anne Radmacher

Saturday: Last week I wanted to catch up with our paperwork. This week I am 43 pages into the paperwork, but I found a great guide so I feel more confident writing a business plan. That wasn’t something I’ve ever done and I was intimidated. I went to my friend’s store opening, so proud of her. My husband left the state at night, the kids were okay with it, I don’t know how to feel about it, I don’t feel bad, I thought I would feel bad, but I’m focusing on eating better for the kids and I to have better immune systems and cleaning up around the house so when I leave in a few months everything is pretty much in order already… I’m onboarding five members to our non-profit corporation, doing paperwork for that… Fixing up my garden and hoping to help the community gardens soon.

Sunday: Last week I was sick with a fever and body aches. This week a tiny bit of cough left, but almost none. It was a great day, I went to a friend’s house and helped her garden, we moved a shelf into her shed, placed the old one in the garden and are getting some pots and beds ready for the spring. Then went to another friend’s house to garden as well and was able to block out a pathway, two garden beds, get some mint and some lemon balm planted. I’m having a lot of fun in the garden lately, at my home I am planning to graph tomatoes onto avocado.

Going to start hydroponics again indoors to make salads to eat, I eat $10 of salads a week, the hydroponic system cost $109 I wonder if it will ever earn it’s money back?

Got 400 plant bags for seeding, since I started 140 roma tomatoes I guess they will go quickly… I got lavender seeds again they did germinate well after cold stratification, I just didn’t pay attention to watering them enough. I got Cherry Blossom seeds, it’s still on my bucket list to sprout them. Morning glory seeds, they never have done well, but maybe I need to wait longer before planting them outside. Two compost barrels… rhubarb, clover, and alfalfa.

Roma Tomato – Germinated in 2 days via paper towel, waiting to move to grow bags. Need more steer manure and vermiculite. Straw and weed cloth.

Lavender – Waiting to grow and share.

Cherry Blossom – Waiting to grow and share.

Morning Glory – Waiting to grow and share.

Rhubarb, Clover, Alfalfa – For the Hilo Garden.

I did a class about mental redirection during the pandemic, it was helpful. I remember at that time I often felt like a loser, with 40,000 of student loan debt, no car, no house, no job, I have two kids I love, but our family life was chaotic, so I didn’t love our battles, routines, and overall life together. This year things are better because I’ve applied to have my debt reduced, I’ve got a budget to try to stick to for food and items, I still have no car, no house, and no paying job, but I have a unpaid job at a non-profit that I love and my family is getting along better. So I don’t really feel like a loser anymore, mostly because of having a martial art’s class and being involved with our Scout Non-Profit, but also because I have been writing consistently on this blog and I’ve been talking to other people. Even now that I talk to people I like more than ever before I find writing the blog helps me know my own mind, and it makes me feel better because I see the things that I do get right, where as in real life I notice more of the bad things. So thank you to you, my readers! It’s different than talking in person, but it is fun talking to the whole world as well, the feedback I get is often really motivating and inspiring. The main difference between talking and blogging is blogging gives you more time to think, so the quality of thought is a bit higher, that really helps me when I am making goals, reviewing goals and to be honest it helps in the feedback quality too. I love my friends in person, but often they are too tired to even think of something to say, or maybe not interested in what I am, but online though the relationship may not be intimate you can find people who deeply share your interests or who take the time to write very helpful comments which are sometimes more thoughtful or thought-provoking then we would have time to say in person.

During lockdown in our urban area in our really small living areas I felt like a prisoner more than ever before, it added a lot of pressure to my life that was pretty much in crisis, so that it defiantly tipped me into a crisis and a depression despite not wanting it too. I didn’t really think I was depressed, but I knew my empathy had run out and that I was burnt out as a parent. My marriage survived, but didn’t bounce back to it’s pre-pandemic level and I don’t really expect that it will. But me as an individual I am more “not sorry” about who I am now, yes I was reading Sarah Knight books, but also over time I found I couldn’t be anyone else other than myself, so I started living as myself without being ashamed more and more, until I like myself and I don’t care what other people want me to be, I care about who I am. I trust that I am who I am to fill some need in the world for someone like me, it makes me feel at peace believing that.

I used to feel like an idiot, because to be honest family members I trusted treated me like an idiot. But I am not any more of an idiot than anyone else, I just have strong and weak subjects, I couldn’t have known everything and I know quite a bit within my strong subjects, so… I know I’m not an idiot, even if I make mistakes and don’t know everything, that’s just human, I am human.

This is still a hang up I can’t seem to shake, but 3/4 of my most negative mindsets changing is pretty awesome, so for now I’m not even going to worry about it. Though this feeling does affect me, it keeps me from finishing a book, it keeps me from feeling like an artist, from enjoying painting and music more.

Part of my mind is wanting to keep a lot of notes, but another part is wanting to let them go… I don’t all the way understand it, but when I took the Stregth Finders Test it said Input people like to keep notes or information but perhaps as a Resolver I like to get rid of them?

Notes about redirecting ANTS/automatic negative thinking.

I would change Warrior to Martial Artist, Philosopher to Human, Story Teller to Teacher and Artist to Community Member. My duties at the Adventure Scouts have changed how much connection I get, how healthy my mind is as a parent, and changed the way I think about myself in everyday, so it makes sense why I feel better now. Instead of focusing on how much I struggle and fail, I almost constantly focus on how I can make the world better, that we are making the world better and how I enjoy helping my friends when I can… it’s less me focused, but there is still an introversion, a knowing myself, a trying to enjoy life for myself, it’s just less now, it’s found a good balance now. I had to think less about my kids, trying to solve their problems was driving me crazy, our even our problems, or even how to give them a reasonable home life… but thanks to PCIT I was lucky to find what was a good solution for my biggest problem child and then also just not thinking about it and still having problems has been good for me.

As a community instructor, I teach math, science, karate, and music, as a human I need to exercise, eat, write and talk to my friends, as a home school teacher I teach traditional subjects, but also focus on outside time, also focus on art, also focus on conscious life balance, as a Non-profit Director, I bring supplies to the beach, I update the website, I do paperwork and I try to bring people together to create a village for our kids and also for us, because we need a village to be really happy for the most part most of us need that.

That feels good, like I have finally found a good place in life, a humble place, perhaps a weird place, but a place I can use my talents to improve the world in a way that is significant to me, in a manner that suits me.

Monday: Last week taking it easy since I was sick. This week feeling good. Thinking about gardening. We are starting some medicinal herb gardens like peppermint, and coconut, maybe neem. I’m excited to try coconut bonsai trees hopefully soon. I don’t see whole coconuts too often, I guess some Walmarts have them, but ours is out of stock. 1. Mullien 2. Mugwort 3. Spilanthes 4. Comfrey 5. Lemon Balm 6. Holy Basil 7. Aloe 8. Sunflower 9. Oregano 10. Thyme 11. Lavender 12. Spearmint 13. Peppermint 14. Coconut 15. Curry Leaf 16. Cleavers 17. Italian Basil 18. Raspberry Tea 19. Garlic 20. Neem

Tuesday: Last week I was wondering about the scout group, where its ultimate fate lies? This week I still care, but I feel more grounded baking bread with my own family and both kids played a Mesopotamian civilization-building game (Nebacanezer) where they grow wheat for bread to feed the people, so we looked at the wheat we grew last year and made some bread together. My son beat the first mission and my daughter the first three. So math, civ games, some class, music 3 songs, lunch… Built a chicken coop and had tacos, it was very fun.

Wednesday: Last week we were pretty much all sick with flus so most of us cleaned up, I cleaned one room well and put most the house in order, it felt nice. This weeks feels like 10 years after last week for some reason. My mental landscape shifted to gardening, a friend commented two weeks ago about how important food is to humanity and struggling between the kids and gardening since both take so much time and that reinvigorated my deep passion for gardening. So now we have a medicinal herb project going, but I hope I can be more consistent than I have been before. It was lovely to be with friends, it was a lovely day.

Thursday: Last week we sent my husband’s car to the port, he got his ticket to leave Saturday night. This week it feels as if he had been gone for ages already. My daughter’s mental health treatment machine’s wires broke, she spent hours in inconsolable fits. I’m so lucky we ever found that treatment, the new wires are on the way. The upside is I can see she still needs it, when we do use it I am not sure if she needs it at all, but without it, she can’t settle down to sleep, she gets crazy at night instead of tired, and she can’t do her school work without fidgeting or worrying or running off, plus she looks unhappy because she stays in a negative miasma of ANTS (automatic negative thoughts) that probably drives the other behavior, she picks at her face x40 more than normal and in general, just cranks up her natural neuroticisms to 11. I had some gift bananas so we made “banana” banana bread muffins. Built a turning composter.

Friday: Last week felt optimistic about the future again. This week I feel borderline crazily optimistic ie “exhilarated.” We made noodles and muffins and more muffins, we covered Kindergarten math, second-grade math, third-grade math, sixth and seventh-grade math, and high school algebra, it takes a different mental state to hold all the math together, but I enjoy it. We started Japanese lessons finally… which was awesome. It’s hard to overstate how much I enjoy seeing our friends, it’s only been more now that we are planning to migrate out of state back and forth.

Found this quote again since we started Crash Course world history:

“The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you’ll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you’ll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it.”The test will measure whether you are an informed, engaged, and productive citizen of the world, and it will take place in schools and bars and hospitals and dorm rooms and in places of worship. You will be tested on first dates, in job interviews, while watching football, and while scrolling through your Twitter feed. The test will judge your ability to think about things other than celebrity marriages, whether you’ll be easily persuaded by empty political rhetoric, and whether you’ll be able to place your life and your community in a broader context. The test will last your entire life, and it will be comprised of the millions of decisions that, when taken together, will make your life yours. And everything, everything, will be on it. – John Green

Something new this week: Set up an aeroponic garden in the kitchen for green onion or basil so we won’t have slugs on what we eat fresh, since our area is ubersluggy.

Something good this week: Been integrating world history lessons from social studies with Civ games and with Crash Course World History and with cooking, I like it when our curriculum is heavily integrated, plus my daughter integrates again with art.

Something unexpected: Gift bananas, they feel so special from the farmer.

Born to Be Alive

Grateful to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love…

Day: August 21, 2022

🏮 2022 Thirty-Second Week 🍌

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