My birthday has come and gone making me another year older and hopefully a little bit wiser. I had a wonderful day doing some of my favorite things like taking a couple of walks, snapping some pictures, hitting the coffee shop, the bookstore and the library. Then I came home and ate some roasted veggies and tofu which happens to be one of my favorite meals along with birthday cake of course. I honestly can’t think of spending my day doing anything other than that because it was wonderful. I am not a fancy girl by any means and I am a complete introvert by nature so for me it was a perfect day.
This year I have decided to look at my birthday as my New Year and since I am working on bringing myself back to good I think that maybe some goals are in order. I have already decided that I want this year to be different from years past. This year I really want to put my focus on being in the present moment and not lost inside my own head. Now I say this as a person who has been diagnosed with OCD so I am well aware that this will be a challenge for me but one I am willing to take on. You see one of the things that I obsess over is coming to the end of my life and having regrets and not just one or two but a lifetime of them and that makes me sad to think about so enough is enough I have got some goals.
Goals and Reasons:
One of the major things I really need to do this year is accept myself, my whole self and work on my confidence. I have learned life is way to short for anything else and these past few weeks have really shown me that with the passing of seven friends and people that I knew. So that is goal number one..body acceptance and confidence.
When I was younger I started learning Italian but sadly I never took it seriously so I didn’t stick with it. Over the past year or two I have dipped in and out of learning it but again I never stuck with it and honestly I have no idea why because I do want to learn it. So this year I have decided that I am really going to put the effort in and really go for it. I chose Italian because it is part of my heritage and Italy is a place I would like to visit one day. So goal number two.. learn Italian.
I recently took a class from Kate Flowers about slow living and staying in the present moment and it really got me thinking about this area. Like I said I have OCD so I spend a lot of time in my head and I miss out on things which in turn makes me sad. Honestly I am tired of my head never quieting and always worrying about the next thing or the what ifs so this is something I am really going to try and be mindful of this year. I am really going to work on slowing down and just being still. Don’t get me wrong I am a very observant person meaning that I do notice the flowers, the breeze and the birds among other things but I do struggle to hold onto the peace that comes from noticing these things. My counselor has talked to me about calling out or naming my OCD to in a sense stop it in its tracks…to break the looping cycle or thought spirals that are having their way in my head. So with that being said I am going to really work on calling it out when a spiral begins so that I am able to stay in the present moment the one outside of me head. I guess you would say that my third goal is to be and stay in the present moment.
Now I realize that these are some hefty goals and ones I won’t accomplish perfectly every time but they are definitely ones worth striving towards. They are also ones that I am proud of because in the past my goals have always been weight focused…losing weight to fit a certain societal ideal of what a woman’s body should look like. This year I am going to focus on accepting my body the way it is and being good with it regardless of what society says is acceptable. Today as I write this I am feeling pretty good like I could conquer anything so here is to 2021 and turning thirty seven. Now as you have seen I have some goals to work on so bye for now and stay safe everyone.
All of these pictures are my own and were taken on a Cannon EOS M50.